Evaluation of the Department of Defense's Counterterrorism Approach -Fighting Transnational Terrorism, ISIS, al-Qaida, Middle East and South Asia, AQAP, Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs)

House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services hearing - We are looking to get a greater idea of where we are at in combating international and transnational terrorist groups. And on this committee and at the Pentagon, I know we have a pretty good idea when we look out at the threat environment. And obviously, there are a lot of issues, but there are five that we are all focused on: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and the subject of today's discussion, which is transnational terrorists. And this has been, obviously, going on for some time, even before 9/11. But after 9/11, we reorganized significant portions of our national security apparatus to try to combat that threat. So that effort has been going on over 17 years now. What we want to learn today is where is it at? What are our priorities? What is working? What is not working? And what do you see the future of this effort?

To begin with, I think our response was fairly effective. And I remember General McChrystal talking about it, that basically when we had a full understanding of what al-Qaida was, he said, "It takes a network to beat a network."

So we systemically did a whole-of-government approach building up our network to counter that terrorist threat. Now it has morphed and metastasized in the years since then. Originally, obviously, the focus was in Afghanistan and then shifted to Pakistan, and then we faced threats out of Yemen. And now you have a very extensive list of transnational terrorist groups. We are all familiar with al-Qaida and ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] as the two at the top. But there are dozens of others in different places throughout the world, primarily in Africa and the Middle East and South Asia. So when we are combating those threats, how do we prioritize? Obviously, the number one biggest concern is when these organizations threaten the U.S. directly, or our Western allies. We want to try to stop those groups first. That is what took us to Yemen a long time ago when AQAP [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] started planning attacks against the U.S. and was behind the attempted bombing in Detroit, and also the attempted bombing using the package airlines. That shifted our focus there, so that is part of it.

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

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