Lone-Wolf Terrorism Analysis

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After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the United States and the international community made a number of drastic improvements to their counter-terrorism strategies. These improvements have not only severely disrupted the lines of communication between terrorist cells and their leaders, they also have severely degraded their ability to travel across international boundaries. As a result, terrorist organizations have been forced to adopt new tactics. One of the latest emerging terrorist threats against the Western world is the Islamic lone wolf terrorist. Even though lone wolves usually conduct acts of domestic terrorism, they are being influenced more and more by international terrorist organizations and their actions are blurring the lines between international and domestic terrorism. …show more content…
9). Of the 73 documented cases, 63 were directed against civilian targets and 10 were directed against military targets (Teich, 2013, p. 9). Though casualties from lone wolf attacks are usually fairly limited when compared to attacks conducted by organized terrorist groups, they still inflict the same level of fear and are on the rise.
From 1955 until 1977, only 7% of people who were killed in a terrorist attack were killed by lone wolves (as cited in Spaaij, 2010, p. 859). By 1999, that percentage would increase to 26% even though lone wolf attacks represented less than 2% of all terrorist attacks against the United States and other countries (as cited in Spaaij, 2010, p. 859; Meloy & Yakeley, 2014, p.350). Today attacks by lone wolves are still on the rise and are one of the foremost security concerns for counter-terrorists organizations and security forces (Kushner & Martin, 2011, p. 361).
Defining the Lone

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