Blogpost: Lessons Learned? Reflecting on Two Decades of Counterterrorism

In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, images of the burning towers evoked a deep sense of shock and loss that reverberated across political boundaries, prompting global solidarity with the United States.

• This blogpost is related to the event Taking Stock of the 9/11 Era
• The blogpost is written by Naureen Chowdhury Fink, Executive Director of The Soufan Center.

Only days thereafter, the United Nations Security Council adopted an unprecedented resolution that set out a sweeping number of obligations for states to implement in order to counter terrorism and established a complex multilateral architecture to address the myriad of issues associated with transnational terrorist threats. However, in all that activity, the focus remained disproportionately on kinetic measures, heavily invested in resourcing law enforcement, military and criminal justice actions, rather than investing in prevention. 

Proportionally, there was little stock put into understanding and addressing the drivers and enabling factors promoting radicalization and mobilization of support and recruits for terrorist groups, or strengthening community resilience. Moreover, as several states appropriated or instrumentalized counterterrorism laws and frameworks to perpetrate human rights abuses or suppress freedoms at home, they compromised the efficacy and credibility of counterterrorism, and in doing so, created an infrastructure of rhetorical justifications for abuse of power in the name of counterterrorism.

Furthermore, by spotlighting the kinetic responses rather than understanding enabling factors, counterterrorism efforts ignore the ideology and motivations underpinning the successes of jihadist groups, and their appeal. In adopting the language of a “war on terror,” the United States failed to outline early on a clear strategy and objective, fluctuating between targeted attacks on terrorist groups, wider nation-building and counterinsurgency approaches and in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, regime change.

The U.S. never adequately addressed the economic, political, and social factors and grievances facilitating radicalization and driving the persistence of the jihadist threat.

Since the early years following 9/11, several key lessons have emerged. First, the human rights impact of both terrorism and counterterrorism has been tremendous. Many victims of terrorism continue to struggle for support and justice, and states which have rarely shied away from repressive measures have been able to appropriate the language of counterterrorism to justify abuses. Accountability and prosecutions for perpetrators of heinous ISIS crimes remains low. Among the unintended consequences of efforts to counter the financing of terrorism has been the negative impact on civil society and humanitarian organizations whose operations have been impaired by fears of punitive material support legislation, a lack of access to financial services and widespread derisking, and prohibitive donor clauses that can compromise the impartiality and effective delivery of humanitarian assistance. 

Second, gender remained a deeply understudied aspect of contemporary transnational terrorism and counterterrorism for nearly fifteen years. Where gender was in fact considered, it was boiled down the question of a singular role – rather than the multiple roles – of women. Any gender considerations typically neglected the gendered dimensions of terrorist narratives and recruitment strategies aimed at men and women; the differential impacts of terrorism on women and girls; the operational implications of gender; the need for concrete measures to address gendered needs; and issues in efforts to prosecute, rehabilitate, and reintegrate terrorism offenders, for example.

The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2242 and increased efforts to ensure complementarity and convergence between the counterterrorism and women, peace, and security agendas have served to highlight the many different dimensions of this issue, though gender continues to be an under-resourced aspect of counterterrorism.

Third, the increasingly diffuse nature of the terrorist threat has complicated prevention and interdiction efforts. So-called “lone wolf” actors – though their radicalization and mobilization are often shaped by a network rather than in isolation – have been difficult for security actors to identify and track, and their prevalence indicates a trend toward low-cost and low-tech approaches.

Terrorism measures aimed at formalized groups have had little meaning in the instances of individuals, previously unknown to security services, who have perpetrated terrorist acts. The increased focus on transnational far-right extremism and terrorism has also heightened the complexity of efforts to prevent and counter terrorism, including by addressing the financing and mobilization aspects, particularly where groups are not designated as terrorists. Not only have many terrorist groups become more decentralized, regionalized, and in some cases, individualized, there is also a wider array of ideologies driving terrorism.

FBI Director Christopher Wray referred to a “salad bar” of ideologies where individuals are picking and choosing from different narratives and objectives, whether from far-right, Salafi-jihadist, anti-government, or conspiracy-based groups.

Over the past two decades, terrorism research and counterterrorism practice has evolved to deliver a more robust evidence base and more inclusive approaches that bring together practitioners beyond the security sector, from media, education, development, gender, and public policy backgrounds. This has resulted in more specialized studies that highlight the complexities and nuances of radicalization, moving beyond conceptions of linear and predictable processes, and ones that reflect more regional permutations of the threat and lessons learned.

The challenge, however, is that counterterrorism remains heavily dominated by securitized approaches, and few of these lessons and findings appear to translate into strategic outcomes.

In order to fully reflect the lessons learned about what went right and wrong in countering terrorism over the past two decades, it will be essential to: continue to develop and support a better knowledge base; invest in partnerships between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners; strengthen information sharing and interagency and international coordination; and promote more inclusive decision-making, planning, and implementation.

Much of the challenge in responding to lessons learned about counterterrorism lies in the reluctance of donors and policymakers to have an honest discussion about failures as much as successes, and the short-term nature of funding cycles make it difficult to invest in longer-term relationships and processes that are essential to sustainable and effective prevention and mitigation efforts. These obstacles make it particularly difficult to honestly evaluate projects and design more effective iterations. Without the ability to learn from the past two decades, we run the high risk of repeating the same mistakes.