Terrorist Dropouts

By Michael Jacobson

I had a piece in Foreign Policy yesterday on the subject of why some seemingly committed jihadists have left terrorist organizations. This piece is drawn from my recent Washington Institute monograph, entitled "Terrorist Dropouts: Learning from those who have left."

Here is an excerpt from the Foreign Policy piece:

When I served on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, one of our primary tasks was to assemble the story of how al Qaeda's plot developed. One of the aspects of the plot on which we focused our attention was, therefore, the movements, activities, and associations of the 19 hijackers. The basic question we struggled to answer was how al Qaeda persuaded 19 young men to participate in an attack that would result in their certain death. Although al Qaeda's "success" on this front was rather startling, the organization failed to convince all of the initial would-be attackers to go through with their plot. Why not? The stories of the individuals selected for the 9/11 attacks who backed out, even in the face of pressure from the terrorist group, have received little attention in the media or among policymakers, but could teach us important lessons for thwarting future attacks.

While Mohamed Atta, the hijackers' operational leader, is now a household name, Mushabib al-Hamlan and Saud al-Rashid are far less well known. These two young Saudis were selected by al Qaeda's leadership to participate in the attacks and left the training camps in Afghanistan to return home to Saudi Arabia to obtain visas for travel to the United States. Both, however, were beset by second thoughts after arriving in Saudi Arabia.

To read the entire piece, click here:

The Washington Institute also recently hosted a launch event for this monograph. I was joined on the panel by Mark Williams, a senior official from the UK's Home Office, and George Selim, a senior policy advisor in DHS's Office of Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. Click here for a rapporteur's summary of that event.