The FTO Reporter 2010

Abstract

From the jungles of the Philippines and Colombia to the deserts of Yemen and Somalia, from the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the cities of the United States and Northern Ireland, 2010 demonstrated that the threat posed by international terrorist organizations is not waning. “Death by a thousand cuts” is what al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula calls their strategy against America, but the evolving nature of the threat from designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations suggests that the technique is not limited to AQAP. Spanning the ideological spectrum, and claiming a variety of grievances, terrorist organizations pose just as much, if not more, of a danger than they did when the State Department first began designating them in 1997. These are just a few of the conclusions that come out of The FTO Reporter, a collection of selected news stories regarding groups designated by the United States as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). Even a cursory review of news involving FTOs in 2010 reveals the scope of the problem. And while the FTO Reporter is intended to offer data rather than analysis, themes have emerged. Here, we highlight only a few of those themes focusing on the evolving nature of the terrorist threat. By now it is axiomatic that the threat posed by FTOs is constantly evolving. One need only open a newspaper or tune into the news to see that terrorist groups continue to change their organizational structure, recruitment strategies, and operational tactics. The FTO Reporter, drawing on that open-source intelligence, indicates that 2010 was no different – new terrorist groups were identified while inactive ones were de-listed; terrorist groups expanded their reach and capabilities by increasing FTO cooperation; terror financing continued to pose a challenge to international law enforcement and intelligence officials; and the terrorist groups increasingly turned to the Internet to revolutionize the processes of radicalization, recruitment, training, and planning required for acts of terrorism.