Rethinking the Terrorist Pipeline

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REPORTING FROM KABUL

It was reported in today’s LA Times and ABC News that a young American made his way from Long Island. NY to the Al Qaeda camps of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia -all on his own.   Bryant Neal Vinas went from suburban New York City youth to an Al Qaeda trained fighter through his own desire and making his own contacts in Pakistan.  The LA Times story details his journey, what is interesting is the reaction to his story by counter-terrorism experts both in the US and Europe which has been surprise.  There has been much written about the path of the 7/7 bombers in London-being typical youth that somehow were sucked into the terrorist pipeline by a cleric and became radicalized to the point of carrying out their murderous acts.  Or the story young Somali youths from Minneapolis who through family ties were found to be suicide bombers in the streets of Mogadishu.  As difficult as it is to understand these stories there still is a thread to connect cause and affect with some connection that allowed them to make their way.  This is why the story of Bryant Vinas has both fascinated and frightened experts, not because of his desire to commit terrorist acts but because he found his way into the terrorist world all by himself-no family, no cleric no ties to the dark underbelly of terrorist networks.   There have been numerous reasons postulated by a variety of experts as to what causes one to turn to violence such as economic deprivation, religious zeal, revenge for perceived past injustices are but a short list of many reasons. In each case there was a pipeline that took the willing through the sequence of training to violence-now we have the case of a young man who simply bought a ticket from JFK airport to Lahore, Pakistan and made his way into the terrorist network that many felt was a guarded secret.  Apparently the only secret is we know less about it than we care to admit.  As he continues to detail for investigators his path, the hope is our understanding of these networks expands faster than the networks themselves.