Federal law enforcement is the missing link to stopping ISIS

Since September 11, 2001 we have seen the military and the Central Intelligence Agency use drones and Special Forces teams hunt down the world’s most notorious terrorists in order to capture or kill them.  One by one they have all been replaced and the organizations they led, not to mention their ideologies, have lived on.  Many of the current presidential candidates continue to talk about how many troops they would put on the ground in Syria and Iraq to stem the growing ISIS tide while others hedge in their responses and look new potential solutions.  While a strong military is a must, current and future policy makers have an existing group of Americans able to solve this problem. 

After over a decade of war many are unable to see any gains of our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and only recognize deposing Saddam Hussein and ousting the Taliban.  What is often overlooked are the gains made within the U.S. Government.  After over ten years of war in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military was next door to its law enforcement brethren, the two groups realized the mutual gains that could be made by attacking criminal pathways.  Rather than send 50,000 troops to fight another conventional war in the Middle East, we should take advantage of what we learned from our last two wars: strangle our adversary’s means and methods of sustaining and exporting their enterprises.

{mosads}The FBI currently has a presence in over 60 countries while ICE has 40 international attaché offices to say nothing of CBP’s pre-clearance operations and the DEA’s overseas partnerships.  These investigators and inspectors are attacking the infrastructure and tactics of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other organizations.  For example, ISIS needs fighters to resupply its ranks, money to pay its bills, and communication tools as well as infrastructure such as the Internet to spread propaganda.  Rather than targeting individuals who have varying degrees of control over their flocks, these federal law enforcement agencies are going after their networks and cutting off their ability to exist and thrive by building and leveraging sustainable partnerships with like-minded countries across the globe. 

As ISIS has spread its tentacles to Europe, the Sinai, and Libya where it seeks to use propaganda to incite violence, it isn’t enough to commit troops or continue the aerial bombing campaign. Furthermore it would be futile to implement a no-fly zone in a single country or region, as this is a much too limited and simplistic solution that does not meet the complex and decentralized nature of the threat.  U.S. federal law enforcement has built a strong and capable network across the globe that is perfectly placed to attack this problem through countering criminal pathways.  Moreover they can do so in a way that is much more likely to positively engage local populations than the use of military force and much more likely to be effective and sustainable in the long run.

Law enforcement agents are trained to dismantle criminal networks– to find the criminals and terrorists who use U.S. and International institutions in order to perpetuate their enterprises.  We saw Joaquin Guzman, El Chapo, arrested and escape twice now, but more important than seeing him behind bars is neutralizing his organization’s means of moving goods across the border.  The same tenet holds true for front companies tied to North Korean nuclear weapons engineers or Hizballah operatives laundering money for any number of male fide uses.  Rather than solely focusing on capture/kill type missions, equal time and energy should be paid to forensics and blocking access to legitimate pathways that can be used for crime.

Congress and the president need to do more to empower and support the FBI, ICE, Secret Service, DEA and others.  They need to send more agents overseas and the Department of State must do more to support their presence in U.S. Embassies—which is often stymied for legitimate space reasons or less legitimate bureaucratic and political ones.  DHS and DOJ agents and inspectors not only have the authority to conduct investigations in certain instances, but they have the unique ability to train less developed or capable partners to American standards and the latest techniques as opposed to other agencies who fund contractors that may not be training up to these new norms.  

U.S. federal law enforcement, in cooperation with its International partners, is uniquely placed to disrupt and dismantle the networks and pathways are used to build and maintain terrorist and criminal enterprises.  It is time to invest further in their success so that we can allow them to better investigate and prosecute the perpetrators and enablers of all crime.

Wein is a senior consultant for Cambridge Global Advisors and a former policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security.