There are more than 100 members of the Islamic State operating on the dual-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, the admiral in charge of U.S. Southern Command said, according to stripes.com.

“There are individuals who have been radicalized, where this pernicious message has taken root. That’s a concern to the government of Trinidad and Tobago. They have focused on it and so I think it’s an area that we all have to take under consideration,” Adm. Kurt Tidd told reporters at the Pentagon.

Tidd said other nations in the Caribbean are starting to realize Islamic extremism could be a serious problem in the region.

“I think there was an unwillingness to acknowledge that perhaps they had a problem with radicalization from these extremist messages,” the admiral said. “Now it is a matter of routine conversation that we have in which we recognize, as we saw in our own country, in San Bernardino and in Orlando, as we saw in Nice and as we’ve seen in other countries sadly throughout Europe and the rest of the world, it’s all too easy for radicalization to occur and so it’s something that we must have our eyes open to and be on the lookout for.”

U.S. officials are working to protect the continental U.S. from possible chemical attack by ISIS followers in the Mideast, who are plotting to bring chlorine or other “simple” weapons of mass destruction to America’s shores, U.S. officials told to thecipherbrief.com.

The U.S. has intercepted “chatter” by ISIS followers who were discussing how to engineer deadly chlorine and similar attacks used in Syria and launch them in the United States, one official said, speaking anonymously to discuss the sensitive matter. There was no specific plot, but rather an aspiration that U.S. counterterrorism officials are working to block.

The revelation follows public comments by Homeland Security official Col. Lonnie Carlson confirming that DHS is actively working to thwart ISIS activity.

“We are working on a real world threat related to ISIS in the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] space that is really an export of something happening in the Middle East that is causing us to devote thousands of dollars in very near-term funding,” Carlson said, speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict conference in Crystal City, Va., Wednesday.

“We’re putting capabilities out in the field right now to counter this threat that 6 months ago, we probably never would have thought of happening. I can’t get into the details right now. It’ll come out shortly,” added the officer, who is director of strategy, plans and policy in DHS’s Counter WMD office.

He said the White House had “principal committee- level meetings with senior cabinet officials” on the issue.

“The bottom line is…the threat is real,” he said to the audience of current and former special operations forces.

“ISIS and other terrorist groups continue to explore novel attack methods, including chemical weapons,” another U.S. official told The Cipher Brief, downplaying the remarks. “We saw that with the terror plot disrupted last August in Australia when ISIS operatives allegedly tried to fabricate an improvised chemical dispersal device to attack civilians,” he said, also speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“But we are a step ahead of them. We’ve taken steps to make it much harder for terrorists to threaten the transportation sector, including through seen and unseen security enhancements,” including measures to defend against chemical weapons threats, he said.

The White House declined to comment and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.  An NSC official would only say that the Trump White House was “constantly monitoring and evolving the response” to the WMD threat.

The intelligence community’s 2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment states that ISIS uses “chemicals as a means of warfare” in Syria, and continues to present the leading terror threat to the United States, together with al Qaida.

The U.S. State Department branded seven Islamic State groups from around the world and two of its leaders as terrorists in an effort to cut off any financial support they may have been getting from within the United States, like reported by voanews.com.

The top U.S. diplomatic agency blacklisted ISIS-West Africa, ISIS-Philippines and ISIS-Bangladesh, along with four other ISIS-affiliated groups — ISIS-Somalia, Jund al-Khilafah-Tunisia, ISIS-Egypt and the Maute Group. The State Department said it also has sanctioned two ISIS leaders, Mahad Moalim and Abu Musab al-Barnawi.

Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, said in a statement that the designations “target key ISIS-affiliated groups and leaders outside its fallen caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Today’s actions are a critical step in degrading ISIS’s global network and denying its affiliates the resources they need to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.”

The law under which the sanctions were imposed blocks the IS groups from conducting any business transactions linked to any properties they may have in the U.S. and prohibits Americans from doing business with them.

The State Department said the sanctions send a message globally that “these groups and individuals have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism. Terrorist designations expose and isolate entities and individuals, and deny them access to the U.S. financial system. Moreover, designations can assist the law enforcement activities of U.S. agencies and other governments.”

It said the terrorist designations are part of the U.S. plan to defeat IS insurgents.

“This whole-of-government effort is destroying ISIS in its safe havens, denying its ability to recruit foreign terrorist fighters, stifling its financial resources, countering the false propaganda it disseminates over the internet and social media, and helping to stabilize liberated areas in Iraq and Syria so the displaced can return to their homes and begin to rebuild their lives,” the State Department said.

The document dated Monday, 29 March, 2010 was an internal bulletin sent to al-Qaeda members, like reported by alarabiya.net.

In the series of Abbottabad files, discovered in Osama bin Laden’s house which was raided by the US military in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan in 2011, one document has exposed particularly sensitive information.

It reveals that al-Qaeda targeted “common” and “ignorant” recruits worldwide, as stated by the group’s Libyan military commander Abu Yahya al-Libi.

Abu Yahya was al-Qaeda’s second-in-command after Ayman al-Zawahri and was killed in a US drone attack in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.

The document dated Monday, 29 March, 2010 was an internal bulletin sent to al-Qaeda members. It read: “Warning: To be published among the media, but not for public publication, a special message to the brothers of the jihadist media.”

Recruiting and inciting ‘common people’

Terms of the group’s recruitment were defined by Abu Yahya, who wrote: “Concentrate on your speeches and publications on the Muslim common people, do not to indulge in discussions with the so-called ‘elites,’ they are the most beneficial to the jihad, because they are mostly pure and full of goodness, even they have failed in some sins. However, their thoughts are not contaminated with corruption and do not have the complex ignorance [of common Muslims].”

Abu Yahya added: “As you know, most of the common people do not realize the truth of the scientific discussions and political analysis, but they are incited by emotions.”

Previously released documents show the strains of managing al-Qaeda’s external networks, including identifying capable leaders and finding resources to fund operations abroad.

The monthly ISIS magazine designed to incite murderous lone wolves, recruit violent extremists and instruct acts of beheadings and mass slaughter appears to be dead and buried.

Islamic State’s highly-organised media unit has not published Rumiyah, its one-time flagship propaganda tool, for almost six months, like reported by 9news.com.au.

The last time an issue of Rumiyah was dispersed through the tentacles of Islamic State’s online networks was September 2017 – just before the fall of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria.

Prior to their demoralising overthrow in Raqqa, ISIS had never failed to publish a monthly issue of a remarkably stylish magazine that could be read in up to 10 different languages, including English.

Rumiyah gained notoriety for its regular eulogising of so-called martyrs, including radicalised men who have launched terror attacks in various Australian cities.

The online magazine also became known for its blow-by-blow terror tactics features.

Detailed first-person accounts, such as the Australian mother who fled with her childrento Syria after her husband was killed fighting for ISIS, were carefully crafted to recruit and encourage fighters and families to travel to the so-called caliphate.

But despite heavy territorial and strategic defeats in Syria and Iraq, ISIS and its crucial media operations is now showing signs of rebuilding.

Raphael Gluck, a US-based analyst who monitors the online activity and propaganda of ISIS, told Nine.com.au he has observed a recent uptick in Islamic State attack claims in Syria, Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan and Egypt.

“Several analysts predicted the end of ISIS media or a collapse, but that’s not the full picture. Islamic State does seem to be regrouping in the online caliphate,” Gluck said.

“ISIS seems to be focusing on a lot of smaller media – shorter videos of attacks and posts for claims of attacks.”

Gluck said ISIS are continually trying to get their radio station, al-Bayan, back online and “they want us to know they are still around”.

Earlier this month, ISIS media released a new video showing an Islamic State bride fighting on the front lines, firing an AK-47 in an urban battle.

Other footage showed a group of gun-toting women in black robes on the back of a truck carrying the ISIS flag.

Gluck said Islamic State’s portrayal of women in combat videos is “new”.

Although Rumiyah appears to have been killed off, at least for now, the group still produces a weekly Arabic-language newspaper, An Naba.

Battlefield infographics deemed prestigious by ISIS are taken from An Naba and converted into English and French posters which are distributed on Twitter and encrypted messenger app Telegram, Gluck said.

Research released by BBC Monitoring unit last week shows ISIS media output has significantly increased in January this year, following vastly depressed activity at the end of 2017.

The noticeable bounce back in ISIS media syncs up with the group’s rise in ground attacks, particularly in eastern Syria.

Media and Islamic terrorism are inextricably linked, like reported by aspistrategist.org.au. The media is expected to report and analyse terror as a matter of international priority. Yet striking the right balance between informing the public without unnecessarily stoking fear or giving disproportionate publicity and attention to a terrorist organisation is a complex task. To make matters even more complicated, since the emergence of new media—social media in particular—‘traditional’ media has had to adapt to and compete in an accelerated news cycle of reporting, commentary and analysis.

Digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have changed the flow of information in a way that enables unverified user-generated content (UGC) to appear alongside media outlets’ fact-checked content. Unlike traditional media, UGC isn’t subject to strict editorial, ethical or practical guidelines—and the speed and scale at which this information is created and disseminated is hard to contain. This presents challenges to news reporting on terror, such as the spread of misinformation and ‘fake news’.

While there are many advantages in removing hierarchical barriers to news distribution, there are also drawbacks. Falsehoods, hate speech and conspiracy theories penetrate vast areas of unpoliced online spaces. These narratives have real socio-political and security implications, particularly in creating or promoting community tension and public disorder, which can play out offline as well as online.

Research by the UK-based think tank Demos found spikes in the use of ‘anti-Islamic’ language on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks. This happened after Charlottesville when Russian propagandists employed hundreds of Twitter bots to peddle far-right extremist content. The dissemination of these provocations increases the risk of ‘reciprocal radicalisation’, where extremist views on different ends of the spectrum fuel each other’s conspiracies and hatred. Opposing ideologies rooted in mutual grievances about the ‘other’ are reinforced in an escalating cycle.

For example, the far-right attack on Muslim worshippers at London’s Finsbury Park mosque last year allegedly aimed to avenge the sexual abuse of white girls by Muslim men. On the other side, avenging the suffering of Sunni Muslims at the hands of imperial white Crusaders is often cited as the justification for jihadist extremism. Another example: Britain First’s Islamophobic tweets that were shared by Donald Trump reinforced existing grievances of the far right, while simultaneously strengthening growing anxiety among Muslims.

Communicating accurate information and minimising the spread of rumours and conspiracy theories is vital to supporting the public during a time of crisis. News media outlets and social media platforms should play complementary roles in this process: news media must try to ensure that correct information is disseminated, and social media platforms should be more vigilant in preventing bots and propagandists from flooding online platforms with misinformation.

The role of independent, nuanced and responsible journalism has never been more important—and yet there’s a growing distrust of mainstream media’s reporting on terror. This stems from Trumpian rhetoric and accusations of fake news, as well as from public perceptions of media bias when reporting on attacks.

For example, there’s a perception that the ‘terrorist’ label is reserved for Muslims, while white Caucasian criminals are reported to be suffering from mental health issues or called murderers. The fatal attack on British Labour MP Jo Cox wasn’t reported as an act of terrorism, but as a ‘murder’. The perpetrator of the Las Vegas shooting in October 2017 that killed at least 58 people was not labelled a terrorist. In contrast, the Westminster Bridge attack in March 2017, perpetrated by an equally disturbed criminal with tenuous links to Islamic State was clearly treated as a ‘terrorist’ attack and was ‘squeezed for every conceivable ounce of sensation and emotion’ by the media. Research has highlighted that terror attacks carried out by Muslims (in Western countries) receive more than five times as much media coverage as attacks carried out by non-Muslims, which has further damaged trust in media reporting on terror.

Media outlets should remain grounded in facts in the aftermath of an attack, rather than speculating about the perpetrator and their potential terrorist links. A disproportionate response to terror only cultivates further chaos and fear.

Violent extremists across the spectrum have capitalised on the spread of misinformation that creates knowledge vacuums and pushes myths and rumours into mainstream society. Media outlets have a responsibility to dispel such myths and rumours, to minimise harm—both physical and rhetorical—when reporting on terror.

In this age of social media, the spread of misinformation, or ‘fake news’, has made the job of journalists much harder. There are examples of sincere efforts to maintain journalistic integrity, but there are many challenges to overcome, especially related to UGC on social media.

So what is the solution? Calling for greater government control or a ‘content watchdog’ to police online platforms isn’t necessarily the right approach. It echoes precisely the ‘Orwellian’ sentiments that Silicon Valley tech companies are pushing back against. Rather, as a first step, it should be in their own interest for online platforms to work with news media outlets to develop appropriate ethical, editorial and practical guidelines, and then to regularly adapt and revise those guidelines.

The British government has unveiled an artificial intelligence system designed to remove terrorist material from video-sharing websites, part of attempts to clamp down on extremist propaganda online, like reported by middle-east-online.com.

Questions remain, however, as to whether machine learning is sophisticated enough to automatically detect and remove extremist content in an ever-evolving online landscape.

The British government said it was working with London-based ASI Data Science to create an algorithm to detect content distributed by the Islamic State (ISIS).

“I hope this new technology the Home Office has helped develop can support others to go further and faster,” UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd said. “We know that automatic technology like this can heavily disrupt the terrorists’ actions, as well as prevent people from ever being exposed to these horrific images.”

ASI said the algorithm has detected 94% of ISIS propaganda with a 99.99% accuracy. The online tool uses “advanced machine learning to analyse the audio and visuals of a video to determine whether it could be ISIS propaganda,” the company said. The tool would flag suspect videos for human moderators to review.

The algorithm will be offered to smaller video platforms and cloud storage sites such as Vimeo and pCloud to vet their content. It will not be used by many of the biggest companies, such as YouTube and Facebook, which have developed their own algorithms to detect extremist content.

Machine learning — which means that a programme improves through experience without being explicitly rewritten — is undergoing a revolution.

AlphaZero, a game-playing artificial intelligence (AI) based on a machine-learning approach last year beat what had been the world’s best chess-playing programme in a 100-game match without losing a single game. It did this free of human guidance except the basic chess rules, which it had been programmed for four hours earlier.

The ASI algorithm has been trained using more than 1,000 videos, learning to recognise the ISIS logo and musical and visual cues common in ISIS propaganda. However, there are questions whether the algorithm would remain effective if ISIS simply switches its propaganda techniques.

“We’ve been very thoughtful about trying to identify characteristics of the propaganda that are very difficult for ISIS to change,” ASI’s head of data science consulting John Gibson told Wired magazine. “It’s something we’ve thought about a great deal and clearly for this thing to work well it needs to be adaptive and it needs to be able to keep up to date as the threat evolves.”

If the adaptive algorithm is successful, it could be a turning point in the fight to combat extremist and offensive content online.

Some of the world’s biggest social media and video-sharing platforms have faced increasing pressure to clamp down on extremist material, with questions about how efficient their in-house monitoring systems are.

YouTube claims to have an algorithm that can detect extremist content with a 98% success rate. In December, YouTube, which has 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, said it deleted more than 150,000 videos promoting violent extremism in the previous six months.

Facebook, the world’s largest social media network with more than 2.1 billion users, claimed last year to be removing 99% of content related to militant groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, with 83% of “terror content” removed within one hour of uploading.

Despite the claims, questions remain about Facebook’s and YouTube’s ability to screen extremist and terrorist content. Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer goods producer of brands including Lipton tea, Persil laundry detergent and Dove soap, threatened to boycott social media advertising unless more was done to tackle offensive content.

Speaking at the recent Interactive Advertising Bureau conference in California, Unilever Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed said digital media had become a “swamp” and called on corporations to do more.

“It is in the digital media industry’s interest to listen and act on this before viewers stop viewing, advertisers stop advertising and publishers stop publishing,” he warned.

Many advertisers complained about the presence of extremist content online, particularly given the way online advertising works in which ads and videos are paired by computer algorithm.

The British government was embarrassed in 2014 when ads for the BBC, the National Citizens Service and other UK agencies appeared in front of ISIS propaganda videos on YouTube.

Time will tell whether the ASI machine-learning algorithm will prove successful but what is certain is that tech companies will need to continue to innovate and adapt to screen out offensive and extremist content.

Speaking at the Digital Forum on Terrorist Prevention February 13 in California, Rudd called on tech companies to clamp down on extremist propaganda online.

“We know that in the UK, three-quarters of those convicted for terrorist offences consumed, possessed or disseminated terrorist material,” Rudd said. “Increasingly we are finding a recurring theme [in terrorist attacks]. That theme is the internet. All of the five attacks on UK soil last year had an online component.”

During his first State of the Union address, US President Donald Trump correctly pointed out that “the coalition to defeat ISIS [Islamic State] has liberated very close to 100 percent of the territory just recently held by these killers in Iraq and in Syria and in other locations as well.” His observation about ISIS being uprooted from nearly all of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria was spot-on, but the reference to other locations as well almost sounded like an afterthought. It shouldn’t have, like reported by rand.org.

Theories differ on what will happen next, now that ISIS has lost its “caliphate” in the heart of the Middle East. Some scholars believe the group will seek to re-emerge right back where the group started, in Iraq and Syria, while others suggest that ISIS (or a similar group) will reappear elsewhere. The US and its coalition partners are assessing where that might be.

Historically, terrorist and insurgent groups tend to establish roots in weak states plagued by persistent civil conflict, sectarian tension and government inability to maintain a monopoly on the use of force. Given where ISIS already maintains franchises and affiliates, there are several potential candidates for the next ISIS headquarters, including Libya, the Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Philippines and several regions across Africa.

In Libya, where ISIS boasts approximately 6,500 fighters, the group has carved out space roughly 160 kilometers southeast of its former stronghold in Sirte. ISIS maintains training and operational bases throughout the central and southern parts of the country. US bombers conducted air-strikes against ISIS training camps in Libya in late September, killing dozens of jihadists linked to the group. To date, ISIS’s Libyan affiliate has been tied to two major external operations — the deadly Manchester concert bombing last May and the Berlin Christmas market attack in December 2016.

Similar groundwork has been laid in Egypt, where the Sinai Peninsula already has a dedicated ISIS franchise group that has gathered momentum over the past 18 months. ISIS fighters in the Sinai regularly clash with Egyptian security forces and were responsible for the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268, downed nearly two years ago by an ISIS bomb that killed all 224 people on board. The group is also responsible for attacking Coptic Christian churches and firing rockets into Israel.

Furthermore, the ISIS Sinai affiliate declared war on Hamas, sparking fears that ISIS could attempt to move into Gaza, bringing its fighters even closer to the Israeli border. In response to the growing anarchy in the Sinai, Israel has waged a covert air campaign over the past two years, relying on a mix of unmarked drones, jets, and helicopters to target militants (all with the tacit approval of Egypt’s top military leadership).

Through a series of coordinated and highly lethal attacks targeting Afghanistan’s minority Shi’ite community, ISIS has established itself as one of the greatest drivers of instability in that country. In late October, the group orchestrated a wave of suicide bombings directed at Shi’ite targets, including several mosques, which killed more than 100 and wounded another 200. And in late January, ISIS militants in Afghanistan continued their orgy of violence, attacking the aid group Save the Children, which was followed by another attack on a Kabul military academy that killed 11 Afghan soldiers.

The US Defense Department has acknowledged that ISIS has doubled its size in Yemen over the past year, with militants taking advantage of a power vacuum due to that country’s ongoing civil war. American air-strikes targeted ISIS training camps in Yemen in mid-October, killing scores of fighters in the failed state on Saudi Arabia’s southern border. In recent months, Yemen has moved up on the US list of counter-terrorism priorities, as American policymakers and military officials are increasingly concerned that ISIS fighters fleeing Iraq and Syria will head to the southern parts of the country, previously an insurgent sanctuary dominated by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in remote tribal areas.

In many ways, the Philippines could prove to be an appealing destination for ISIS fighters to relocate and establish a home base. The geography of the country — the Philippines is an archipelago consisting of more than 7,600 islands — makes counterinsurgency and maritime security difficult for the Filipino government. Moreover, the presence of longstanding insurgent groups that already embrace a radical Islamist agenda could allow ISIS to gain a foothold as it works to champion local grievances. Muslim insurgents in the area often clash with Christian militias, which would provide ISIS with the sectarian angle it often seeks to exploit in countries where its affiliates have been fighting.

And despite recent calls for ISIS fighters to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa to organize a new safe haven, the country is not an ideal sanctuary for terrorists, since its civil war does not feature an Islamic dimension and the nation still has a rather nascent transportation, financial and communications infrastructure. The Congo is a strong indication that, for terrorists seeking out weak states in 2017, some states may actually be too weak or geographically isolated.

For many of the ISIS’s surviving fighters, a number estimated to be between 6,000 and 11,000, the loss of Iraq and Syria may merely signal a temporary pause in the fight. A significant percentage will almost certainly seek out new battlefields to continue waging jihad. And while the number of foreign fighters returning home to their countries of origin has been far lower than expected (many died on the battlefield), the situation is still one where “hundreds of jihadis are believed to be searching for new battlefields or refuge in Muslim countries,” Robin Wright, a Middle East expert, wrote in The New Yorker last fall.

By coordinating with its allies around the globe, the US could work to help alleviate the conditions that lead states to fail, making them less appealing to groups like ISIS as sanctuaries where the terrorists can rest, rearm and recuperate. This is no easy task, as past efforts at building capacity with suboptimal partners has yielded a less than stellar return on investment, although the alternative of doing nothing seems even less palatable.

Working by, with and through partners to strengthen security cooperation arrangements, the US, in partnership with its closest and most capable allies, can force terrorist groups to spend their time focused on survival, while depriving them the freedom to operate in weak and fragile states and ungoverned spaces.

Abu Qatada, who many have called the spiritual father of al Qaeda in Europe, is a scholar of Islam and what many might deem a terrorist instigator, or an ideologue who puts out arguments in support of militant jihad, but never himself fights jihad or spills blood. Yet, in these interviews, the third and fourth ICSVE researchers have made with him over the past year, he spoke candidly about his views on terrorism—making statements that will surprise many, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

Palestinian by birth, Abu Qatada grew up in refugee camps in Jordan, carrying within himself a heritage of bitterness over his lost homeland. He is angry and rebellious against what he believes to be Western hegemony. He does not hide his strong desire to see a fundamental reordering of the Arab world. In this interview, we spoke to him about the changes he longs to see in the Middle East and the guiding principles by which to influence such changes, including his predictions as to what might actually happen.

Earlier in his career, Abu Qatada resided in London, where he was editor in chief of the Usrat al -Ansar weekly magazine, a propaganda media outlet that he started on behalf of the Groupe Islamique Army’s (GIA). In the early 90s, Abu Qatada issued a fatwa, which was published in his weekly bulletin Al-Ansar, after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win elections in Algeria but was denied an impending electoral victory by a military coup. Some hold his issued fatwa against the military responsible for justifying GIA massacres against innocent civilians, including unleashing a rampage of beheadings. [1] In 2006, the GIA who Abu Qatada was aligned with in London, announced a union with Al-Qaeda, and by 2007 the group changed its name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

In 2000, Abu Qatada was deemed by the UK as a security risk and was arrested as a terrorism suspect, imprisoned and subjected to a secret parallel system of justice. He was held in Belmarsh Prison without a conviction, on and off for 10 years, under an emergency legislation that authorized indefinite detention of “certified” foreign nationals in the U.K. representing a national security risk.

Held with the aim of disrupting a network of extremist ideologues from promoting acts of violence in the UK, he was never officially and directly linked to any terrorist plots in Europe. A source close to the case, however, shared that intercepts of those who visited Abu Qatada revealed that they were later contacted and invited to meet others actually involved in terrorism, although nothing was ever found to directly implicate Abu Qatada.

Abu Qatada’s angry grievances and teachings against the West are believed to have inspired numerous al-Qaeda- related terrorists plots and killings, allegedly including, through second generation ties, the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacres.

While a Jordanian court convicted Abu Qatada in 2002 in absentia on terrorism charges related to the thwarted millennium terrorist plots aimed at attacking Western and Israeli targets in Amman, such charges were overturned in 2014 on the grounds that evidence may have been acquired by torture. In 2013, after many delays, due to concerns that he might be tortured in Jordan, or again convicted on the basis of evidence taken under torture, Abu Qatada was deported back to Jordan. Already railing against the West and siding himself with al-Qaeda, Abu Qatada does not forget his time in Belmarsh. He is still angry over it, though, as we were able to witness, his anger profoundly resonates with a power of righteousness and moral superiority that must also affect his followers.

No longer in prison, Abu Qatada now resides in his stone hewn home on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. Dressed in a long dark thobe and his grey beard reaching over his chest, he hosts us in a large diwan, with its walls filled with collections of books—translations of histories and philosophies from around the world, and books about Islam. Surrounded by towering shelves supporting hundreds of such books, mostly in Arabic, one could not help but be drawn to the “intellectual warmth” we sensed, including the room’s distinct touch and setting that offered a glimpse into Abu Qatada’s character, interests, and passions.

During our two days of conversing with him, he covers a whole range of topics and makes numerous statements. The most surprising to us, however, is that Abu Qatada, the supposed terrorist instigator, does not appear to support terrorism at all. Despite expecting armed conflict in the Middle East and hoping for the demise of regional dictatorships and the rise of an Islamic State of sorts, he strongly condemned the use of terrorism.

This is our third time talking to Abu Qatada and we already know he is a fervent advocate of the Palestinian cause. Speaking about the defensive posture he feels he was born into, Abu Qatada states, “We [Palestinians] have only one choice. [We were] forced to take one choice of adapting to a reality on the ground. If you are put in the corner, you have to scratch out to defend yourself.”

Having witnessed the Palestinian-Israeli peace process fail repeatedly, he is also cynical. “I’m very afraid of the word peace, because it’s the word most used by the oppressor,” he says. Furthermore, he adds, “You talk about peace after you take your rights…you are not given rights, through oppression. For the Palestinian, regardless of other identities, ‘peace’ is not in his interest.”

“Twenty-five years ago, when they told us the word ‘peace,’ they presented it to us as hope, but now after the experience of ‘peace,’ we found out it is a lie. Now, when I hear the word ‘peace,’ I hold my pocket, for the new theft going on, ”Abu Qatada says with a smile crossing his face.

“Beautiful things are only built with strong foundations,” he explains. “When you entered the house, you saw the book shelves and chandelier, but didn’t see the foundation that is represented under the stones. You can’t talk about dialogue without a fundamental basis.”

“Principles?” I ask, eager to discuss this very thing, as we want to hear where he stands on the principles underlying terrorism.

“No, before principles, it’s rights,” Abu Qatada answers.

We discuss Trump and his recent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, while we wait for the opportunity to ask him about how he justifies Palestinian terrorism. Using the example of Wafa Idris, the first female suicide bomber whose surviving family members I interviewed in 2000, I tell him about my visit to her family and ask him about Wafa’s attack on civilians. A number of Palestinians I spoke to at that time told me, “We have to use our bodies to fight back against a much better armed force, to explode ourselves to equalize the battle.” But she exploded herself among civilians, in a shoe store. Do you agree with this?” I ask.

“To talk about details distracts!” Abu Qatada answers, with his face reddening in sudden fury. “To take the whole Palestinian issue and to drill down to such details!” he sputters.

“But it’s not details, it is the principle behind details. Is it correct to say that if I’m fighting a much stronger enemy I can attack children, for instance?” I ask.

“No, this is not accepted,” Abu Qatada responds, still unable to avoid the barrage of angry expressions showing on his face. “But I am not talking about people talking with their emotions,” he continues. “I am Abu Qatada talking from a scientific [i.e. religiously defended] position. This I will not allow it. I consider it a destruction to the issue that I believe in.”

He goes on to tell me that Wafa Idris was acting from emotions, and that we cannot possibly know the depth of pain for what motivated her to engage in suicide bombing and target civilians. Indeed, having interviewed her family members, I know her story intimately. I know that she served as a nurse on Fridays with the Red Crescent during the Second Intifada and witnessed countless casualties from demonstrations against the Israelis. For instance, shortly before the suicide bombing, she was helping to transport a man whose skull had been fractured by Israelis. Her job was to hold his skull together as the ambulance bounced over rough Palestinian terrain, but she ended up with his brains falling out into her hands as he died. Her brother stated she was never the same again.

While Abu Qatada might not necessarily know all the details of her story, he does not have any trouble imagining them.

“This attempt to enter details to discuss the moral reality of the fight from our side, it is like a denial, a journalist denial,” he practically shouts, as he stands up now. “Like being mad at a child under the boot of a solder because he doesn’t have the right appearance, ” he adds. His face is now red with anger, and I wonder if our interview will be abruptly terminated. I wonder if I have touched a raw nerve of Abu Qatada or trampled upon what he views as the Palestinian right to fight back, even using terrorism as a weapon.

“Definitely Wafa Idris was mobilized by her emotions and her anger,” he continues, calming somewhat. “The question should be why a young girl’s emotions would be moved to this extent.”

That is a powerful and meaningful statement indeed. Having traveled throughout the West Bank and Gaza during the second Intifada, I know what it is like to be mistaken for a Palestinian woman and hauled out of buses at Israeli gunpoint or nearly run off the road by Israeli Humvees. It is a constant feeling of threat with no rights, except in my case when I presented my American passport. Then everything changed—for me at least.

“I know my mother, my wife, my daughter. I know how they think. I know what mobilized her. A human emotion that should not be discussed ideologically,” he continues.

“I was in her home,” I counter. “Her nieces and nephews were playing beneath this giant-sized poster glorifying her and her act. Do you think that’s the right thing to do?” I ask, trying to draw him out on the principles of the battle for the things he wants most in life and for which he is willing to encourage others to fight.

“To consider her an icon within her society just because she represented the anger,” Abu Qatada sputters again. “It’s not whether she went into a shoe shop or a military camp,” he states. Piercing me with his eyes and standing tall in his dark thobe, he gestures with his hand warning me, “I’m angry now.”

That was already obvious, but he has put it out there, so I try to calm the situation, keep him talking, as I want to know what he really thinks.

It does matter if it was a shoe store frequented by civilians or a military camp—that is the heart of the matter. I want to hear him address it, but we will not get there if he abruptly ends our interview.

“If we brought the Muslim world, not just the Arabs, and put them on a scale and compared their deeds to the deeds of the Westerners,” Abu Qatada states. “And talk about history. How many people did you kill? How many bodies did you bury?”

The argument amounts to what I often heard all through my time in Palestine: that the Israelis killed civilians at a much higher rate than Palestinians killed Israeli citizens. The question I always countered with was whether the Israelis specifically targeted Palestinian civilians, as the Palestinian terrorists targeted the Israeli civilians? The answers were often vague: that Israelis did not aim for civilians but when they targeted their enemies they knew full well that they were killing civilians as well, and in high numbers, and still did not refrain from carrying out their acts. “So, what is the difference?” the Palestinian terror leaders would ask me and that would be our stalemate—perhaps to be repeated here as well.

For me the difference between targeting civilians vs allowing for collateral damage is important, although one could argue that the moral difference between the two can become slim indeed. When premised upon the right to live a full life, the morality of killing innocent human beings becomes unjustifiable in both scenarios, but is still much different when the intention is to kill innocents versus acts aimed at heinous criminals in which innocents also get killed. Nonetheless, these issues have troubled many even former Shabak (Israeli Security Agency) leaders who discuss these very points as documented in the 2012 Israeli film, the Gatekeepers.

“These are the guys, these are the Jews, who went into villages and massacred them—the Egyptians, slaughtered them with kitchen knives,” Abu Qatada states referring perhaps to the Rafah and Qibya events.

“Then you come to a society, you don’t know how a young girl in our society can…” Abu Qatada booms, but his voice trails off, overcome with emotion. “I am a man, I am an extremist, a terrorist, but I cannot explain Wafa. On a human level, I don’t understand what mobilized Wafa. But, the explosion of emotions and the anger I can understand,” he states, his eyes blazing, still towering above us.

“The pain, people do things that cannot be understood ideologically,” he continues, as I recall him telling us in the first interview that he feels the pain of his lost homeland every day. The gnawing bitterness inside. “I am not going to apologize for what she did.”

We talk a bit about the recent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and as we talk politics, Abu Qatada sits down again and calms himself down.

“Those barbaric settlers have no values,” he states. Suddenly, the conversation veers into the issue of settlements and my unpleasant experience way back at a checkpoint in Nablus with settlers supported by Americans. I shared my fear and anger when Israelis pointed guns at my face, including my feeling of disappointment and temptation at the time to remind them that “my tax dollars probably paid for the rifles they pointed at me.”

“I don’t hate very many people, but I hated them,” Abu Qatada states, clearly glad to hear that I also did not think well of the settlers’ misbehavior at their checkpoint. “They take from Americans the weapons,” he continues. “Everyone knows that a solution would come if America disengages from Israel.”

I try to steer the conversation back to the discussion on principles. Which principles does Abu Qatada stand by when he advocates for fighting back to win back Palestine, to bring down corrupt and unrighteous governments in the region, or to bring his hoped-for ideal of an Islamic state in the Middle East? I tell him how the Palestinian terrorist leaders I spoke to in the West Bank and Gaza would argue that it was permissible to kill Israeli civilians, even children, because they all eventually end up serving in the military—that Israeli society is militarized with the aim of keeping Palestinians down.

“I told you from the start, religiously I oppose the idea of killing children and all civilians. But I understand the emotions. Israel is a militarized society, but it does not justify killing children.”

“I cannot understand, not just psychologically but religiously also, how could anyone justify killing a child,” he states unequivocally.

“We are talking about when we can control the battle,” he adds, and I nod.

“Throughout history, Westerners were the ones who first started using civilians to put pressure on soldiers,” Abu Qatada explains, citing various examples from history. “ Even Hitler, they used civilians to pressure soldiers to submit,” Abu Qatada argues.” If there were those [civilians] affected by us, they were more affected by the West. We never used [killing] civilians to pressure as a strategy.”

I ask again, as I’m surprised to learn that Abu Qatada’s views seem to stand in stark contrast to those of other Palestinian terrorist leaders I spoke to in the West Bank and Gaza. They justified terrorist killings of Israeli citizens by arguing that Israeli men and women are part of the military—arguing that even their children who will grow up to serve. They also argued that Israelis have modern equipment while Palestinians have only their bodies to explode in terror attacks. None of this sways Abu Qatada from his clear denunciation of terror attacks against innocent civilians, particularly against killing children.

“I am surprised that there is any Islamists who will support it,” he says. As we have spoken for hours at this point, he tells us we need to adjourn the interview until two days later.

When we return, Abu Qatada begins the interview telling us that he told his wife about our discussion on suicide terrorism aimed at civilians. The topic has clearly caught his attention, and he has been brooding on the subject.

“From that day to today, I have been thinking how can anyone with feelings issue a fatwa of killing women or children outside of the battle, I honestly ask you?” Abu Qatada asks, his big brown eyes sincerely gazing into mine as he speaks.

I have been thinking about it as well and am ready to list Palestinian leaders for him who justified killing innocents using suicide terrorism. Khaled Mashal [the leader of Hamas] and Ahmad Sa’adat [the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, an organization that engaged in terrorism], we mention for starters.

“Who was Hamas following?” Abu Qatada asks.

When I tell him that Sheik Yassin supported martyrdom operations against civilians during the second Intifada, Abu Qatada answers that Yassin did not have the ability to issue a fatwa of this type.

“Fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] doesn’t deal with things like symbols,” Abu Qatada explains. “In the sharia [Islamic law derived from the Quran and Hadith], there is a big difference between targeting civilians and targeting a military man, as with collateral damage, trying to reach a military target and the consequences of reaching a target.”

“No one announces that they target civilians, like the Russians did. This is not the act of a person of resistance or of ideology. This is an act of revenge. I cannot imagine an Islamist or a Palestinian who does this,” Abu Qatada states with what appears to be full sincerity, as I wonder where he was during the Palestinian second Intifada, when Palestinians were engaged in suicide bombings in crowded Israeli restaurants, nightclubs, and grocery stores. I find his stance on the issue surprising to say the least.

“I really thought about our talk,” he continues, appearing disturbed. “The people inside [Palestine] are more aware of things than me. They look at every [Israeli] man and woman as a military person. Israeli society is a military society. They look at the Jewish guys in Palestine as military guys.”

“I cannot imagine going against children,” he repeats.

What about beheading journalists like ISIS has done in recent years?” I ask, curious to know if he is willing to condemn such acts as terrorism as well.

This gets us off on a discussion of whether journalists are who they say they are, as Abu Qatada references what he calls, “the dirty work of the CIA.”

“[What] if you catch someone who says I’m one thing and is something else?” he asks. Yet, ISIS has assassinated numerous journalists who were highly unlikely to have been spies, James Foley being one of them, I tell Abu Qatada, also mentioning that I have met and spoken to his bereaved mother in person, hoping this human element will make him feel the horror of it.

“You judge a journalist as you judge a messenger,” Abu Qatada answers. “A messenger is never to be killed. But if there is a journalist who is really a soldier, he will be dealt with as a soldier.”

I press him on the journalist James Foley and Nicholas Berg, both beheaded by terrorists (ISIS and al Qaeda) in Iraq.

“I don’t know this issue. I didn’t study this issue,” Abu Qatada answers. He appears sincere in what he is saying. Perhaps he is so buried in his religious and political studies that he just blanks out all the violence carried out by those on his side?

“I understand the grudge and bitterness that is carried against the Americans,” Abu Qatada explains, kindly excluding me from that hatred, which makes me wonder if sharing my many experiences of being mistaken as a Palestinian in dealings with the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, and how I, too, felt under threat and sometimes felt the urge to fight back has somehow softened his heart these days when he is talking with us, or is this how he normally feels when it comes to terrorism. We are two women talking to him after all, I wonder if he is showing a softer side on these days for us, but it is not how he really feels? But it does not seem that way, as he continues to repeat himself.

“You can never kill civilians intentionally,” Abu Qatada stands firm in his statement. “Our battle is not with civilians. This is an indisputable rule.”

“Why do people around the world think you say something else?” I ask, dumbfounded to hear him disavow terrorism.

“No one has interviewed me,” Abu Qatada answers a smile crossing his face. “I expected to sit with you once only. Most come only once,” he states. This is our fourth time visiting Abu Qatada. With each visit, we have ensured that we do not overstay his welcome, but have talked with him for hours. Although considered the spiritual father of al-Qaeda in Europe, I cannot underestimate his wide range of knowledge on the most pressing global issues, not to mention his intellectual potency and immutability in character when it comes to narrating the story of human suffering, particularly as it pertains to Palestine and the Palestinians. He is clearly well read, follows politics closely, and has a fire inside for justice: “No one has heard of me and sat with me, except [when] he was stunned by what I said,” Abu Qatada explains as his friendly smile covers his face. “It’s a big propaganda [about me], ”he adds.

“Many reports credit you as having issued a fatwa to kill civilians in Algeria,” I say, letting the harsh words come out between us like the wood table that separates us as we talk. I am afraid it will anger him again, but better to get it all out in the open.

“What I said was…if the Algerian army used our women and children to pressure our fighters, the mujahideen are allowed to use the threat of killing their women and children, if they continue in this way,” Abu Qatada explains. “It was a battle to stop the ugly way of killing civilians if this battle continued. On this message it would not have continued,” he explains. “It was the reason to stop an ugly battle going on.”

“If the only way I can stop your killing my wife and children is by threatening to kill your wife and children, then so be it,” he explains, looking exacerbated at this point. “The reality of this fatwa was not to open the door to actual killing of women and children,” he explains.

“Sometimes a surgery will take you 15 minutes to do but will give you rest for the rest of your life,” Abu Qatada says, suddenly feeling defensive. He is obviously disturbed knowing that he many have repeatedly blamed him for the carnage that resulted after his fatwa was issued. It appears it was not his intent, as our conversation today indicates.

“My picture is an atom on the head of a needle compared to bombs dropped on a city to stop a war,” he says, while remaining defensive. “Were the Japanese killing women and children for the other side to threaten them?” he asks, and continues, “There is a difference between threatening to kill innocents and actually doing it.”

I decide to ask him what I asked Ahmad Sa’adat in a prison interview with him during the second Intifada, telling him to imagine I am dedicated to the “cause.” “I want to go bomb myself in Jerusalem for al Aqsa, will you give me your blessing?” I ask.

“No I won’t give you my blessing. I won’t give my blessing to kill a clear civilian,” he answers, again unequivocally and without hesitation denouncing terrorist acts aimed at innocents.

“Do you remember when the Palestinian groups started hijacking planes?” he asks. “ Wadie Haddad, [the Palestinian leader of the militant wing of the PFLP] was the architect. He was with George Habash [the founder of the PFLP]. They asked him why he was doing this? I want the world to hear the Palestinian message,’ he answered.”

“In this thing now,” Abu Qatada asks, “What will a civilian target accomplish for me now?”

“Even when the military targets a civilian target, it’s a loss from a military perspective,” he adds.

“So, 9-11, was it wrong?” I ask.

“I went to prison for 11 years because I answered a question that wasn’t right,” Abu Qatada fires back, referring to his time in British prisons. “I don’t like my answer to look like I want sympathy from Americans,” he demurs.

“If Hamas did something against civilians, if they went to a religious kids school [to attack it], is it up to me to condemn or to be hung?” Abu Qatada asks, placing the responsibility back on the group.

“There is an area of agreement between us, and all Muslims: that it is not allowed to kill women and children,” he explains. “We all agree on this, but in any dialogue, someone will come and tell me, I did this in different circumstances. This is a sub dialogue and could create an exception,” he states. Referring to when there are disagreements on exceptional cases, he adds, “This disagreement that will come out would not make me go towards my enemy. At the same time, to be honest, I will have no sympathy for my opponent. I cry for my family, my people.”

He further explains that it is important for him to show solidarity for his own people. “The sheiks, because of their positions, from certain times, they started sympathizing with the opponents of the nation; they went against those in the ummah who fight their enemies,” he explains. “I will not go against anything an Islamist did,” he adds.

“So you will not go against ISIS?” I ask.

“My problem with ISIS is that they killed Muslims,” Abu Qatada explains. “And I never said anything against them when they killed Muslims, he adds, reflecting how he doesn’t like to break ranks even when he fundamentally disagrees with [such] tactics and principles.

“My priority is my nation,” he continues. “I always want to be in sync with their feelings. I am not willing to upset Hamas or the mujahedeen in exchange for hand clapping by the West.”

I can see his point, but ask him all the same. “Does not a person of principle have to have his principles and openly state them?”

“My principle is to be on the side of my nation. If a Palestinian is listening to me saying I condemn the killing of James Foley, then what is this in comparison to what Human Rights Watch documents?”

I tell him that I see resemblance in his response to what Shamil Baseyev, a Chechen terrorist, admitted to a journalist after over 300 schoolchildren and their parents were killed in the 2004 Beslan siege. While he grudgingly admitted to being a terrorist in that interview, he also demanded that the journalist add Putin to his terrorist list, as an even worse terrorist, as Basayev killed over 300 while Putin killed 40,000 civilians in carpet bombing the capital of Chechnya. “Yet, his terrorists shot those children in their backs as they tried to escape,” I point out as Abu Qatada reaches out to his toddler granddaughter who has entered the room. She is adorable, with curly dark hair and a red dress.

“To take them as hostages to use them,” Abu Qatada states, referring to the Beslan children, then kisses his granddaughter on the head as she passes by. “There is a difference between using and killing the children,” he concludes. “I will be guilty if I show compassion,” he adds.

“But, is there right and wrong?” I press as my heart breaks that we are discussing such things while he is kissing his grandchild so sweetly.

“With my words, I cannot simplify 99 rights and concentrate on one wrong.

It will condemn all 99 rights,” Abu Qatada explains. “They [Westerners] will use our words against us,” he warns, while admitting, “We do have an internal debate, and it’s known that I don’t handle these debates.”

I remind him of how mercilessly the terrorists shot the children while attempting to flee the school during the Beslan siege. His granddaughter is running around our table as we talk, and I cannot wipe from my memory, while gazing at her pure innocence, the images of the bereaved parents I talked with—whose children had been killed there and the traumatized siblings who survived when their brothers and sisters did not.[ii]

“I’m 58 years old and I learned how to resist my emotions, even when I see a documentary of what happened to my opponents,” Abu Qatada answers. Everyone is sympathizing with our opponents. No one is sympathizing with us. I understand. You, as an American, want to be just in distributing your sympathies, but me as a Palestinian, I visit my father every two weeks, and he cannot sit with me once without talking to me about Palestine.”

“Sympathy is not the same as principles,” I press.

“I don’t own a media podium that will be equal to what my opponents have when I talk about the pain of my nation,” Abu Qatada explains. “But when I talk about what my brother does, the whole world will listen to it and use it? Which is about something that is right but reaches a wrong. You should not [judge] as the act itself but the end itself.” While what he is saying might read as “the end justifies the means”, he does not quite mean that. He proceeds to explain that he is referring to the possibility of his standing up for principles being used to delegitimize what he holds sacred, such as the Palestinian struggle, or the Muslim/Arab struggle, for that matter.

“When my word is being used, whether in right or wrong against my people,” Abu Qatada explains, while temporarily halting his speech. “I saw how people who made this type of mistake and were coopted into the fold of the opponent, whether they meant to be or not. We have a saying: don’t hang your dirty laundry outside. Don’t do that especially now, when we are at the point of weakness. He goes on to explain that he does not want his words condemning attacks on civilians to be twisted against the Palestinian or the greater Muslim struggle, especially when he feels that instead of his call for a reordering—even if by armed struggle, if necessary—to bring justice to both, only that particular sound bite will be extracted from his many statements,

“Once I am able to reach out my word to the nation’s enemies in the same strength as my opponent is using against my brothers, then I can speak out,” he comments

“It’s not a question that just happened now,’ he continues. “The whole time I was in prison [in the UK] it was the same. I could have gone out in public and condemned 9-11… and become a hero, well known…and obtained UK nationality, among others. I didn’t accept it. It would be a betrayal.”

“When a nation is in a battle, you must balance what you should and should not say,” he metaphorically encapsulates his reticence to publicly condemn terrorism at this point in time. “When things are more relaxed, it’s the time to talk. It’s dumb to give your opponent a weapon,” Abu Qatada concludes.

Drinking coffee together, we end our chat with Abu Qatada. We drive away trying to make sense of the so-called spiritual father of al Qaeda in Europe apparently being against attacks against innocent civilians or terrorism essentially. We wait to hear if he will deny having said it or quietly accept his words in print—hopefully not used to harm the legitimate bases of his cause in any way.

Last Thursday, U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean, aided and advised state security forces in Trinidad to apprehend four extremists who sought to carry out an imminent terrorist attack during Carnival, like reported by newsweek.com.

The rumored attack represented a broadening of the threat from the Islamic State militant group, or ISIS, which has disbanded into a network of ragtag insurgency movements after losing territory in its traditional strongholds in the Middle East.

The fall of Raqqa in Syria last year, in which U.S. backed forces declared that major military operations against ISIS had ended, marked the end of ISIS’s self-declared Islamic “caliphate.” But it left the broader Middle East and the international community asking: What happens next?

The apparent threat appearing in the Caribbean went some way to answering the question. ISIS sympathizers, such as those found in the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a small nation off the coast of Venezuela, would continue to follow the established agenda.

Trinidad and Tobago appeared on the radar of Western state security services in recent years when it emerged that it had the largest per capita number of foreign fighters joining ISIS of any country in the western hemisphere. Though estimates of the true number of recruits vary from under a couple hundred to close to 300, the exact numbers are beside the point. One individual is too many and the greatest concern is how the fighters plan to utilize their newly-acquired skills after returning home.

This issue isn’t new to those of us in the field. In 2011, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an offshoot of one of the major Al-Qaeda franchises, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was created because local black Africans wanted to carry out attacks inside their countries of birth, including Senegal, Niger, Mali and Chad.

They expressed that with their new technical skills and newly-adopted Islamist ideology, they were best prepared to carry out attacks in their homeland. They placed special emphasis on the historical figures of Islamic West Africa—a strategy to gain new recruits from their region and to connect the broader extremist ideology with the local reality in which they lived.

This precedent gives major concern to governmental, civil society and grassroots community members in Trinidad and Tobago as the nation finds effective strategiesto respond appropriately.

Late last year, I traveled to the Caribbean island nation to engage with local communities, civil society and governmental officials to firstly understand the complexities of the situation and the measures that could be put in place to receive individuals who were likely to return home post-ISIS.

Secondly, we explored what measures were put in place within government structures to rehabilitate. Lastly we needed to determine how communities at the grassroots level can aid in ensuring and encouraging the resilience against extremism.

Solutions are not easy to find, but having an opportunity to engage with local actors, here are just a few recommendations to consider:

Establish a Counter-Extremism Rehabilitation Center

Trinidad and Tobago has decades of experience working with criminal gang and drug violence prevention including the work of leading organizations like Roots Foundation and Vision on Mission. Some of the organizations’ members were previously involved in the drug and gang culture and they can serve as a model to work alongside other counter extremist organizations and networks. They can share good practices as they engage with the emerging Islamist extremist ideology. Finding a tailored and focused Trinidad and Tobago-appropriate response will allow for long term sustainability to combat the problem.

Support Arts and Culture

It could be effective for local leaders to work in collaboration with existing U.S. Embassy efforts, including the International Visitors Leadership Program, to create dialogue at the grassroots level between faith based communities in Trinidad and Tobago and the U.S. Together they can attempt to find effective strategies to combat extremism. In addition, empowering local voices across societal lines on a range of topics will allow for long-term sustainability.

Trinidad and Tobago Government Counter-Extremism Policy  

The government at large is moving in the right direction and has begun some positive efforts to address the rising threat both internally and regionally. However, the issue of violent extremism is a bipartisan issue on the island nation and is a public safety issue.

By working across political divides, governmental officials have the opportunity to create a focused and effective policy that is not only government-supported but also includes an all-of-society approach. It is important to include civil society, inter-generational and religious communities including representations from Afro-Trinidadian and East Indian Muslim communities, whose voices and diverse views are critical for long term success in the country.