By Alexander Perepechko

Published on December 30, 2015

From Organized Crime to Low Intensity Conflict? (continued)

Together with small families and mammismo, changes in governmental regulations pertaining to legitimate and other types of societal activities partially explain why Americans do not want to fight and die in wars. In spite of this unheroic realism, the Middle East slowly but surely exports low intensity conflict (LIC) to American state territory. Also, proper American organized crime might evolve into LIC by coalescing along religious, racial, political, and socio-economic lines and merge with foreign-born LIC…

Based on an analysis of temporal patterns of radical Islamic terror attacks in the United States, I suggested in my previous research essay that the hierarchically organized bureaucratic security and intelligence agencies created after September 11, 2001 might not be up to the task of fighting radical Islam. Indeed jihadists change strategy and tactics very often and operate efficiently. American security and intelligence agencies operate according to governmental regulations which frame their strategy. How good is this strategy?

Before we look at governmental regulations pertaining to illicit activities and activities regulated by classified legal procedures, we need to analyze one more interesting pattern – a geographic pattern of radical Islamic terror attacks in the United States.

A geographic (spatial) pattern is a perceptual location, arrangement, and structure of features on Earth. In combination with temporal patterns, spatial patterns of radical Islamic terrorism will help to better understand the enemy’s strategy of LIC in the United States.

Like temporal patterns, geographic patterns do not have much in common with patterns generated by the National Security Agency and other agencies of America’s global security state. These agencies access our personal information, codes, communications, purchases, bank card transactions, location data, travel, interactions with friends, tastes, likes and dislikes, and so on (see Engelhardt, 2013). To generate many kinds of patterns, these agencies sort the data using a system of powerful computers. Essentially this strategy puts information technologies (IT) in charge of uncovering terrorist networks and preventing terrorist attacks. But does IT have algorithms to identify infinite variations of human evil intentions?

After September 11, 2001, American elites received the support of the public to set up this global security system. According to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, 16 federal intelligence agencies employed 107,035 workers and had a $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, not including another $23.0 billion for military intelligence (Nelson, 2015). Elitologists know that in order to survive and thrive, new bureaucratic organizations need to prove their efficiency. To maintain their budgets, new federal intelligence agencies must protect American citizens against terrorism and organized crime. Today American taxpayers pay more for their security and expect more safety from their “post-modern” state. Safety and infrastructure are among the critical achievements of Western civilization in the period of Modernity. Safety and infrastructure are two powerful magnets attracting foreign elites, investments, and citizens to the West.

So, what can geographic patterns tell us about radical Islamic terror in the United States?

To answer this question will require a small geographic database and some knowledge of geographic theory and human nature. We utilize a database of radical Islamic terrorism designed by the Mulltimedia Solution Corporation and published by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, which uses a Google Maps web-based service. This geographic database provides information on the history of homegrown and foreign Islamic extremism in the United States (U.S. Terror, 2015). Location data on court cases, radical activities, and mosques and Islamic centers pertaining to terrorism have been mapped. Each location related to terror is symbolized by a tentacle and has a link to legal documents about a terror event.

The court cases involve terrorist plots or financial and other forms of material support for terrorists. Some of these court cases are referenced again as radical activities, which entail multi-player criminal cases of terrorist plots or financing. In some cases, those activities have “tentacles” in more than one location. The mosques and Islamic centers listed once were home to radical clerics or to conspirators in a terrorism-related investigation, or had other connections to radical persons or terrorist organizations. Their inclusion does not need to be interpreted as an indication that all who attend the mosque or Islamic center share radical views or had information about related activities. The map of radical Islamic terrorism in the territory of the United States is available at http://www.investigativeproject.org/maps/terrorism-map.php.

The picture is much more interesting when we move from the small scale (the United States level) to the medium scale. Homeland – a geographical term referring to an essential place at the medium scale – is an area (a city or a countryside) sufficiently large to support people’s livelihood. At this scale, the connection of dwellers to the homeland can be intense (Yi-Fu Tuan, 2001: 149). The location, arrangement, and structure of terror events at the medium scale in almost all areas of the United States is not random: geographic uniformity definitely exists. What does this mean?

Naturally no two places are exactly the same. Yet the physical and cultural distinctiveness of places reveals patterns similar to other places (Stoltman, 2012: 223). For example, megalopolises in different parts of the United States will manifest similar features of terror, similar density of these features, and similar structures of terrorist activity. At the medium geographic scale, I identified and clipped three different patterns of terror in this country. These examples are in no way perfect and do not exhaust the complex geographic mosaic of radical Islamic terrorism in the United States.

1) Cultural diversity and the density of population and communications in the largest urbanized areas are high. U.S. megalopolises manifest dense clusters of terror-related court cases, radical activities, and mosques and Islamic centers. These three features are usually located along public highways and primary streets. The pattern of terror in the New York megalopolis is a complex mega cluster (figure 16).

2) In different parts of the United States, smaller (but still large) urban areas tend to manifest particular clusters of radical Islamist terror. For example, the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington conurbation and the Oklahoma City metropolis show moderately dense clusters of terrorist activity (Figure 17). These clusters are smaller than in the case of New York. Unlike in megalopolises, they are more localized and isolated and usually do not have mosques and Islamic centers. In these urban areas, court cases and radical activities are typically located a) along public highways and primary streets and b) at nucleuses where transport routes meet.

3) Even less urbanized areas exhibit a dispersed pattern of terrorism: individual terror-related events are scattered over a wide area and separated by large spaces. Some South Central states (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) are good examples of this pattern (Figure 18). New Orleans with 369,000 dwellers and towns like Ruston (LA) with 21,900 dwellers, Starkville (MS) with 23,900 dwellers, and Oxford (MS) with 19,000 dwellers – each shows a single localized, disconnected event of terrorism (court cases or radical activities). Such events tend to gravitate toward city nucleuses, where transport routes meet.

Figure 16. U.S. terror history: Complex mega cluster in the New York area (Source: Generated by the author based on Investigative Project on Terrorism).

Figure 17. U.S. terror history: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Oklahoma City manifest localized isolated clusters (Source: Generated by the author based on Investigative Project on Terrorism).

Figure 18. U.S. terror history: Disconnected localized events in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana (Source: Generated by the author based on Investigative Project on Terrorism).

The geographic uniformity of terror history in the United States can imply three things.

I) It took time for terrorism to develop geographic uniformity. The geographic patterns (Figures 16-18) indicate that those people directly and indirectly involved in radical Islamist terrorism had enough time to develop intense attachment to their homeland in America. For some of them various parts of the United States are a new homeland.

II) People directly and indirectly involved in radical Islamist terrorism made themselves at home in the American countryside and urban landscapes. This attachment is achieved through religious and ethnic communities, mosques and Islamic centers, and other networks and organizations using face-to-face communications, telecommunications, and modern means of transportation. In different parts of the country, similar types of settlements tend to manifest similar patterns of radical Islamist terrorist activity.

III) Radical Islamists blatantly use the Muslim diaspora (Moghissi & Ghorashi, 2010) in the United States as a pool for the recruiting of jihadists and backup for the planning and executing of terror. These radicals are possibly on their way to turn terror on American state territory into a chronic sluggish LIC.

How does this intense attachment work?

Unlike abstract knowledge about a place that can be acquired quickly using airplanes, satellites, drones, and other modern sensors, a concrete knowledge (an intimate relationship) of the place (homeland, some part of the environment) takes longer to acquire. This intimacy is created of a repeated daily routine, year after year (Deutsch, 1977; Yi-Fu Tuan, 2001: 183-185). Movements and paths of a person in an area where he or she lives and works (homeland) are parts of this routine. The routine is made up of a distinct combination of sights, sounds, and smells and a special synchronization of natural and artificial rhythms pertaining to sunrise, sunset, work, and leisure. In the long run, a person learns from his or her experience of the place and modifies his or her behavior adaptively. His or her bond with the place becomes registered in skeletal and musculature and circulatory systems.

It is not surprising that people develop a passion for a certain type of environment. The utmost expression of this passion is the readiness of members of a territorial group to defend the territory and be killed if necessary. This defense of homeland is called territoriality (Dyson-Hudson, Smith, 1978; Sacks, 1983). Therefore, engaging in a war or conflict is a strategy individuals may choose when it is to their advantage to do so.

But only a subset of dwellers, those who developed intense attachment to their homeland, are ready to defend it and be killed if necessary. Passionate love and positive experience will in most cases induce the majority to act patriotically and this patriotism is, in fact, to their advantage.

We already know that for immigrants, segmented assimilation and non-assimilation are among alternatives to Americanization. Segmented assimilation and non-assimilation reflect the persistence of nonnative subcultures in the larger American culture. So, what about dwellers who indeed developed an intense attachment to their (new) homeland but whose experience is negative, who passionately hate their (new) homeland and under certain circumstances might choose to attack it? What might be the advantage for such destructive behavior? Pragmatic westerners can hardly grasp the strategy of those who are willing to commit terrorist attacks and go to paradise as a reward (Van Creveld, 2009: 400).

Olivier Roy (2015), a French expert on Islamism, made the observation that almost all French radicals belong to one of two categories: they either come from the second generation of immigrants or they are converts. What do the two groups have in common? They break with their parents, or, more accurately, with the culture and religion of their parents. Some representatives of second generation immigrants resemble Pinocchio – a persona of Late Modernity emptied of transcendent inspiration (ideal motives) (Figure 4). In part a product of left liberal, multicultural, and postmodern policies, this Pinocchio can be easy prey for radical Islamist recruiters.

Roy’s observation is related to the human life cycle as part of the experience of place. Really, a child knows the world more sensuously than an adult (Yi-Fu Tuan, 2001: 185). Experiences at different cycles of life are not equivalent. A native citizen knows his or her country in a way that cannot be duplicated by a naturalized citizen who grew up abroad. The territorial behavior of second generation immigrants and of converts enables them to maintain an intimate relationship with the parts of the environment that are crucial to planning and executing – then escaping from – a terrorist action: shelter, nourishment, hiding places, and escape routes. Compared to a naturalized citizen or foreigner, a native citizen moves faster and with greater security in his or her homeland. The concrete knowledge of local dwellers, telecommunications, and transportation are among the crucial factors facilitating terrorist activities in a specific place.

How to measure the LIC in the United States and the Middle East? We will discuss it in my next essay.

Deutsch, R. D. (1977) Spatial Structuring in Everyday Face-to-Face Behavior. Orangeburg: The Association for the Study of Man-Environment Relations.

Dyson-Hudson, R., Smith, E. A. (1978) Human Territoriality: An Ecological Reassessment. American Anthropologist, Vol. 80: 1-41. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1978.80.1.02a00020/epdf

Engelhardt, T. The making of a global security state. Le Monde diplomatique, June 17, 2013. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/global-security-surveillance_b_3453265.html

Moghissi, H. & Ghorashi, H. (eds) (2010) Muslim Diaspora in the West. Negotiating Gender, Home and Belonging. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Muslim Americans: no signs of growth in alienation or support for extremis. Section 1: A demographic portrait of Muslim Americans. Pew Research Center, August 30, 2011. Available at http://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/section-1-a-demographic-portrait-of-muslim-americans/

Nelson, S. Obama Won’t Disclose Spy Agency Budgets. U.S. News & World Report, February, 2, 2015. Available at http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/02/black-budget-requests-remain-secret

Roy, O. Le djihadisme est une révolte générationnelle et nihiliste. Le Monde, novembre 30, 2015. Available at http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2015/11/24/le-djihadisme-une-revolte-generationnelle-et-nihiliste_4815992_3232.html

Sacks, R. D. (1983) Human Territoriality: A Theory. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 73, No. 1: 55-74.

Stoltman, J. P. (ed) (2012) 21st century geography: a reference book (2012). Los Angeles: SAGE. v. 2

U.S. Terror History Map. The Investigative Project on Terrorism, 2015. Available at http://www.investigativeproject.org/maps/terrorism-map.php

Van Creveld, M. (2009) The rise and decline of the state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.