Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on U.S. Response to Terrorist Attacks
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed discussing the frustration of U.S. government officials over the difficulties in stopping recent lone-wolf terrorist attacks.
Aftandilian published the July 17, 2016 Op-Ed, entitled “US Officials Frustrated Over Lone-Wolf Attacks,” in The Arab Weekly.
From the text of the article:
US officials expressed frustration over the inability to stop “lone-wolf” terrorist attacks such as that in Orlando, Florida, that took the lives of 49 people in June. While such attacks may continue, authorities hope that more effective counterterrorism narratives on the internet and better outreach to Muslim-American communities will stem the violence over time.
After meeting victims’ families in Orlando, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch described the killings as “clearly” an act of terror and hate but then remarked that no one has found “the magic bullet” to prevent people from becoming radicalised over the internet.
Her comments were followed by US State Department official Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the anti- ISIS coalition, who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee there was no evidence of a direct link between the Orlando killer and the Islamic State (ISIS). He added that such attacks were not only extraordinarily difficult to predict but likely to persist.
You can read the entire article here.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999). Learn more about him here.