News Analysis: Terrorism continues to be major threat in U.S. in 2016: experts

Islamist terrorism is expected to continue to be a major threat this year in the United States, amid the ongoing global influence of the radical group Islamic State (IS), U.S. experts said.

Islamist terrorism has risen to the top of Americans' concerns after the recent IS attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead, and one IS-inspired attack in the U.S. state of California that killed 14 victims. IS, which has over the past year overrun vast swaths of turf in the Middle East, has threatened attacks on the United States which has engaged in an ongoing bombing campaign in IS-held territory.

Washington's worst nightmare is another attack as large and deadly as the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on Washington and New York that killed nearly 3,000 people. The attack's mastermind, Osama bin Laden, had built training camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where he had the safety and space to orchestrate and plan the strike. The U.S. fears IS could likewise use its conquered territory to plan more attacks on the United States.

The recent attacks in Paris have shown that IS has grown in strength, and that it is able to conduct deadly attacks on populations in the West. What the group touts as its successes has galvanized followers worldwide amid the ongoing spread of radical Islamist ideology around the globe.

In the San Bernardino attack on Dec. 2, a U.S. couple believed to be radicalized by IS, carried out the shooting rampage with military grade weapons.

In the United States, the main threat is not active terror operatives, but rather religious radicals that are inspired by radical Islamic ideology, experts pointed out.

Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Middle East Intelligence Office, told Xinhua that the U.S. federal government, the states and local authorities realistically cannot do much more than they are doing already in the face of lone wolf terrorists or small groups of largely domestic zealots inspired by IS.

There are hundreds of thousands of "soft" targets across the United States such as malls, shopping centers, schools, lesser-known public buildings, restaurants, bars, stores and sports venues. There is no way to defend such a vast array of targets from terrorists who at times leave very little electronic trail about their preparations, White said.

Also, the end of National Security Agency (NSA) metadata collection in late November slows the retrieval of suspicious personal communications linked to potential overseas operatives. There also simply isn't the manpower at NSA, other monitoring agencies to keep tabs on potentially revealing conversations on the vast number of jihadist websites and online chat rooms, he said.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that much of the challenge, particularly seen after the California attacks, is that an individual, or handful of individuals, can self-radicalize and carry out a terrorist attack.

At home, key to this has been continuing strong relationships between law enforcement and the Muslim community -- which differs greatly from European countries -- and avoiding rhetoric by some that could threaten those strong relationships, Mahaffee said.

Where the effort has lagged somewhat is countering the messaging from radical groups like IS online. These groups have developed a strong presence in social media, and many see the efforts of the United States and allies to "counter-propagandize" as lacking, he said.

Colin P. Clarke, a RAND Corporation associate political scientist, told Xinhua that what is working is the identification and surveillance of suspected extremists.

"There is no single key or silver bullet to combating Islamic extremism, which is what makes combating it so difficult. There is no single pathway to radicalization," he said.

Brookings Institution's senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua that U.S. efforts to counter Islamist terrorism at home have been mixed.

"The (California) violence shows American vulnerability to lone wolf attacks. It is hard to find individuals who plan their attacks in isolation from other people. There are numerous soft targets in the United States with few defenses and high vulnerability," he said. Endit