In the age of lone-wolf attacks gaining prominence, the focus of counterterrorism has shifted to the phenomenon of radicalisation on the American soil. Now the challenge is not to locate terrorist hideouts in the rugged caves of Tora Bora, but to spot the potential ultras from among the millions of innocent civilians in the US

Whether it is the South Asian firmament or any other territorial nationality, the theme of mainstreaming the younger generation has always been a pet peeve in the Indian and the American policy mindset. However, the growing radicalisation has drawn the attention of the security and intelligence establishment. Radicalisation is the bane of an ordinary civilisational narrative. Going by the organic conception of the State, if the sinews and the arteries of nation state are blocked or the life blood of functionalism vitiated, then it is a matter of worrisome introspection on the part of the nation and its population.

The United States has been an avid target of terror mongers and violent Islamic anti-state actors, especially since America created Frankenstein in Afghan conundrum along with its interventions in West Asia since the days of the Persian Gulf conflicts, where the battlelines were finally drawn with the radical and Wahabi Islam. The United States of America has been known since the days of its founding days in the seventeenth century to stay away from the entangling alliances of the world polity. Still, the American interventions in Cuba and the US-Spanish wars initiated a trajectory of never-to-look-back pathway to a coincidental world domination with the replacement of Great Britain by the United States of America, as the world’s sole surviving superpower.

In the contemporary context, since the September 11 attacks, the American Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act were legislated in order to restore parity with the ministrations of the non-state actors. The American literary bestseller titled “Terrorist” has hewn an interesting narrative upon the rising and expanding throes of radicalisation in the suburbs and the educational institutions of the American nation. The narrative of the fictional work provides a glimpse into the lives of a Muslim student and his single mother, along with the Jewish mentor in the high school. Witnessing the racial and social segregation, which misguided Muslim youngsters feel in the American schools and the sequestration leading them to empty parking lots and Basketball courts, is a theme which has received its much deserved attention in the contemporary time span. The issue of undocumented aliens can be taken up here as it is this corpus of population from Latin America and South Asia which poses a rankling security threats to the American homeland. This is what has resulted in the brass tacks of a talk about a Mexican wall and the scrapping of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy, which separates minors from their undocumented alien parents in the form of initiating limits on the H1 visas for the employers in the United States.

Radicalisation is more of a mind game in the United States. The containment of terror attacks by disillusioned youths, till the Boston Marathon attack, speaks volumes about the effectiveness and efficacy of the American security establishment in the aftermath of the plane’s deep dive on Pentagon in September 11, 2001. The Oxford English Dictionary attempts a stolid definition of radicalisation, “The action or process of causing someone to adopt radical positions on political or social issues.”

There was a vehicular attack in Manhattan in November 2017, which was traced back to a migrant from Uzbekistan. New York Daily News reported, “Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old from Tampa, Florida, reportedly emigrated to the US from Uzbekistan in 2010. The investigation is in its early stages, but if previous cases are any indication, it is likely that Saipov did not come to this country — legally or illegally, that is still unclear — as a violent extremist. Odds are he was radicalised here.”

This is a matter of worrisome analysis and efficacious introspection by the American establishment as the old storyline of pre-radicalised migrants spoiling the American Dream is the cause of all trouble. How can an ordinary starry-eyed youth takes up cudgels against the system or the entity of the American establishment after getting radicalised in America and its school and university system? It is not a matter of ungainly criminalisation due to poverty and impoverishment, but an ideologically driven and madrasa hewn narrative, which catches them young in the homeland in the United States of America. It is this deleterious vitiation of the national and patriotic narrative that the United States guards against by relying on psychotherapists and mentors to wean away youngsters from the glare and attraction of rebellious strife. Now, it is part of an institutional striving in the United States.

The United States Homeland Security committee report in 2016 reported, “Now at this juncture, the homeland faces the highest threat from the ISIS and fundamentalism since the September 11 attacks.” The Department of Homeland Security has already reminded the security establishment against the threat of vehicular ramming attacks which pose a challenge to the institutional effectiveness in tackling terror and the sentient invincibility of the United States. What the terror mongers are attaining to achieve is to point out in a gladiatorial contest, the invincibility theme of the American security and make it part of a larger jehad to civilisationally vituperate the grandiloquent American Dream and its spectacularity which is part of the soft power approach of the American Foreign Policy. It is this sheen and the larger-than-life one-uppance of the American manifest destiny and the fable of America being the sparkling city on Camelot which the global terrorist organisations are attempting to strike against. Also, the entire exercise is part of the tenet of “Super terrorism” where terrorists strategise to utilise as a true blue utilitarian, the nodes and inter nodes of the American infrastructural superstructure. It aims to utilise the American web of infrastructure such as its oil depots, refineries, highways and the transport and communication network through locally trained agents who have their origins in the schools and madrasas of the nation despite the multicultural rubric which America takes pride upon.

In the age of lone-wolf attacks gaining prominence, the focus of counterterrorism specialists has shifted to the phenomenon of radicalisation. After the incidents like the terror attacks in San Bernardino and Manhattan, the challenge is not to locate terrorist hideouts in the rugged caves of Tora Bora. The challenge is to spot the potential terrorist from among the millions of innocent civilians loitering around the streets of New York City, Boston or any other city in America.

(The writer teaches International Relations at Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi)