Homegrown terrorism: myth or reality?

The London bombings in 2005 led to the perception that the terrorist threat had changed from external to internal. This phenomenon was soon to be conceptualized as "homegrown terrorism."

In the DIIS Working Paper "Homegrown terrorism in the West" Senior Researcher Manni Crone and Consulting Analyst Martin Harrow trace an ambiguity in the term homegrown, which is both about belonging in the West and autonomy from terrorist groups abroad. They suggest a distinction between on the one hand internal/external terrorism, and on the other hand autonomous/transnational terrorism. Homegrown in the strict sense is then internal autonomous terrorism.

A quantitative study of Islamist terrorism in the West since 1989 reveals an increase in both internal and autonomous terrorism since 2003 and that most plots are now internal - but still not autonomous.

Finally the authors suggest that an increase in autonomous terrorism is a transitory phenomenon, and that transnational links are still critical for terrorism in the West.