Addressing the home-grown threat With recent terrorist attacks in the West ‘home-grown’, Wellington based Security Consultant Marc Collins explains how governments might go about countering the threat whilst preserving freedoms.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence, the US is facing a growing threat from ‘home-grown’ terrorism. Domestic threat actors often plan and carry out their acts of violence alone and with little apparent warning, in ways that limit the effectiveness of traditional law enforcement investigation and disruption methods.
Marc Collins CSyP is Director of Straif Security Specialists. He has 35 years of security and intelligence experience in military, government and private sector roles.
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The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in its annual threat assessment in March 2020, issued a warning that right-wing groups are more organised than in previous years. “In Australia, the extreme right-wing threat is real, and it is growing. In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology.” Technology plays a critical role in facilitating the spread, evolution and interaction of violent ideologies and narratives of personal grievances, and the subsequent security implications, are recognised. For some time in the US, there has been a move towards recognising terrorism and targeted violence as intertwined and interrelated, and the DHS national-level strategy explicitly
states that terrorism and targeted violence overlap, intersect and interact as problems, and that they necessitate a shared set of solutions. Guiding principles in countering the ‘home-grown’ threat Defending borders is necessary to prevent foreign terrorists and other hostile actors from entering the country. Border security, however, cannot stop violence originating from within the country. Governments must therefore focus on empowering and equipping agencies and the public with prevention strategies and capabilities. Prevention efforts must be multidisciplinary and include enhanced whole-of-society partnerships with mental health professionals, social service providers, and civil society in order to provide “off-ramps” away from terrorism and targeted violence. The DHS details five guiding principles for operationalising countering terrorism plans, all of which are relevant to other governments facing similar challenges: 1. Understanding and adapting to the threat environment A government’s capacity to respond to terrorism and targeted violence depends on its ability to understand the evolving threat environment, and
February/March 2021
