Terrorist Threats amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

While governments focus their attention and resources on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, many lawmakers and counterterrorism officials and experts are warning of growing vulnerabilities to other  threats, such as extremist groups and terrorist organizations that are exploiting the situation to increase their operations. While some of the clearest examples of heightened extremist and terrorist activity are overseas, in places like Africa and the Middle East, experts advise incidents there can serve as early indications of events that may soon take place in the U.S. “It’s very hard to wall the United States off from instability far away,” said Mona Yacoubian, an expert on conflict in the Middle East and Africa with the U.S. Institute of Peace. “We are all deeply interconnected. There are effects of things happening elsewhere in the world that will reverberate here in the U.S.,” she added. Eric Rosand, nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, said strategy planners focused on counterterrorism operations globally are looking to create new ways to address threats in a world consumed by COVID-19. “There’s a lot of thinking going on how to retool counterterrorism approaches or countering violent extremism approaches so they can withstand the changed environment,” he stated, adding that no conclusive plans or strategies have developed yet. Read the article at The Hill.