And why stopping it requires that governments get out of the way…

As it stands, the international coalition is far from winning the information war against the Islamic State. Its air strikes may be squeezing the group in Iraq and Syria and killing many of its leaders, but that has not halted the self-proclaimed caliphate’s ideological momentum. Indeed, at the end of 2015, it was estimated that the number of foreigners travelling to join militant groups in Iraq and Syria—predominantly the Islamic State—had more than doubled in the course of just 18 months. What’s more, while these figures may be striking, sheer numbers are less important than intent when it comes to the organization’s actual threat to the world. As we have already seen, it takes a very small number of people to unleash great terror, whether in Iraq, Syria, or elsewhere.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s organization does not enjoy mass appeal, but it is certainly having mass impact. After but 18 months of caliphate-hood, the group’s preeminence is already coming to shape what it is to be a millennial Muslim and inspiring attacks far outside the caliphate. Hence, the strategic communications war—where hearts and minds are won and lost—is just as important in the long-term as any military campaign, if not more so.

To be fair to the coalition, it has not missed the ideational menace that the Islamic State presents. As a direct result of coalition efforts, especially those of the United States government, counter-Islamic State information operations are more prolific now than ever before, the quantity of counterpropaganda is snowballing, and social-media giants like Twitter are being more aggressive in their efforts to hobble ISIS propagandists. Even Anonymous has thrown its hat in the ring.

In January, the State Department restructured its own counterpropaganda apparatus, creating a “Global Engagement Center” to “more effectively coordinate, integrate and synchronize messaging to foreign audiences that undermines the disinformation espoused by violent extremist groups, including ISIL and al-Qaeda.” However, even in this new guise—which, while it marks an important push in the right direction, risks being too centralized within national governments at the same time that it lacks the requisite level of coordination among different countries—the coalition’s information operations are facing an almost insurmountable challenge. Such a state of affairs is untenable. To ameliorate it, a new communications architecture is required, based on three pillars: global strategic direction, local delivery, and a broader, more accurate understanding of how and why the Islamic State appeals.

The Competition

It’s no secret that the caliphate has a compelling story, coupled with a sophisticated ability to deliver it. But what is often overlooked are the underlying strategic elements that enable the group to land its messages so effectively.

First, while the international media tends to obsess over the Islamic State’s ultraviolence, the group’s propaganda is incredibly varied. Unlike the coalition’s primary weapon in the information war—negative messaging—the caliphal narrative combines positive and negative themes that appeal to both ideological and political supporters. On a daily basis, the group parades images of civilian life, ruminates upon the concept of mercy, and highlights the visceral camaraderie allegedly felt among its members. Crucially, it doesn’t just do this online—propaganda is just as important in person in the Islamic State’s heartlands as it is on its members’ smartphones.

The Islamic State expends huge amounts of energy building this composite narrative because its propaganda is being created for, and directed to, a number of audiences: potential members, sympathizers, enemies, general publics—the list goes on. Whoever they are, the Islamic State propagandists tie them all together by communicating the same core narrative to each—that its caliphate is a triumphant, model society that offers community to all who desire it, and destruction to those who don’t.

To active supporters and potential sympathizers, in particular, the power of this narrative steamrolls the coalition’s counter-messaging, which is currently set up only to address a handful of discrete strands of the Islamic State idea, instead of the core narrative in its entirety. This has led, at times, to coalition counter-messaging being bogged down by well-intentioned but questionable reproductions of the Islamic State’s ultraviolence, and social-media posts intoning variations on “The Islamic State is brutal and isn’t Islamic—so don’t join it.”

Second, the Islamic State’s media team evidently recognizes that in the digital-communications age, everyone—from sympathizers to adversaries—can be a tactical instrument of propaganda. Reflecting this, they have made the strategic choice to not pigeonhole themselves by reaching out just to sworn believers in jihadism or those that they consider to be potential supporters, as coalition governments so often do in their counter-messaging efforts.

By catering to a wider set of audiences, ISIS propagandists reinforce their message gradually to build layered support, which is made all the more sustainable because they retain astonishingly tight command of the Islamic State brand. Indeed, despite its geographic spread, the caliphate’s dispersed network of 48 official media offices—one for each self-declared “province” (of which it claims 19 in Syria and Iraq, 7 in Yemen, 3 in Libya, and various others corresponding to its footholds in additional countries) and nine additional, centrally administered outlets—seemingly never goes off message, always transmitting the same carefully constructed ideas of the triumphant, defiant caliphate and the promise of community. As recent video sets regarding the Saudi Arabia-led Islamic alliance against terrorism, the Paris attacks, and the refugee crisis demonstrate, if the “Base Foundation”—which is how the Islamic State refers to its “corporate headquarters”—issues a communique saying “Jump,” all its provincial foundations are on standby to say “How high?” and respond a few days later with the on-message HD fruits of their labor.

Critically, the aggregate impact of the offices is greatly amplified because, instead of disseminating the material themselves, the ISIS outreach team actively cultivates unofficial spokespeople who share their media outside the caliphate’s formal communications structure, encouraging others around the world to autonomously spread the Islamic State message alongside them. Because those unofficial propagandists are best-suited to identifying the ideal channel for reaching their respective local audiences—and tailoring the core narrative accordingly—the influence of the Islamic State’s communications skyrockets.

The Current State of Play

For the coalition to have lasting communications impact against this formidable enemy, it requires a similarly nuanced—and expansive—understanding of message delivery and audience segmentation. Twitter suspensions are not nearly enough.

As it stands, the coalition’s counter-messaging is not structured to attack the Islamic State’s entire narrative, but instead looks at and attacks specific elements of its messages individually. This structural weakness is compounded by a lack of credible voices and a surplus of risk-averseness, in large part because these efforts have, so far at least, been both led and delivered by a handful of Western governments. The resulting, overly bureaucratic approach persistently gets in the way of flexibility and dynamism, both of which are required for success.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that, no matter how well-intentioned they are, governments’ ideational responses to jihadism have been marked by memorable slip-ups and controversies. The media is always quick to report on things done wrong, and tends to steer clear of assessing successes. As such, no matter how much rebranding and restructuring takes place, efforts like the U.S.’s “Shared Values” campaign (an early-2000s set of commercials aiming to show Muslims living happy lives in the U.S., which was mocked as the “Happy Muslim” campaign); the ultraviolent approach to counterpropaganda embodied in a State Department’s “Think Again Turn Away” campaign (which, in purporting to show “some truths about terrorism,” disseminated gory videos among other things); and government officials swapping insults with jihadists on Twitter tend to be the most memorable, defining points for U.S. forays into counter-jihadist public diplomacy.

And, while it’s true that for every mistake there is a success story, even those are but drops in the information ocean. Indeed, even when supplemented by the efforts of the newly formed £10 million UK-based Coalition Communications Cell—not to mention other strategic-communications centers proliferating globally, from Nigeria to Malaysia—overtly government-directed initiatives are fighting an unwinnable battle. They are too centralized, too rigorously managed, and too reactive. The amount of their activity is structurally bound to be insufficient, and its content bound to lack credibility among the most at-risk target audiences.

Marginalized communities that feel indifferent or hostile to their respective governments, let alone supporters and potential sympathizers of Mr. al-Baghdadi, will never, ever be swayed by a foreign state telling them on social media that the Islamic State’s caliphate is not Islamic or that it is killing more Muslims than anyone else. For that reason, even initiatives that are ostensibly tailored to be more “local,” like the UAE’s Sawab Center (“the first-ever multinational online messaging and engagement program,” which operates in overt partnership with the U.S. government), are bound to struggle, simply for the fact that their messaging is unable to truly resonate with the right people.

To be sure, the people that matter have not missed this problem. In June 2015, for example, Rashad Hussain, former coordinator of the U.S. Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, noted that Islamic State recruits and sympathizers are “almost always influenced by a figure in their community […] who uses grievance and ideology to reel them in.” Such recognition is all well and good, but there is a big difference between not missing a problem and being able to take effective action to mitigate it.

A New Approach

What needs to happen is, in conceptual terms, simple. Instead of governments, the burden for reaching potential Islamic State supporters must rest entirely on the shoulders of local, non-government actors. They can be Muslim or non-Muslim, individuals or institutions, community leaders or cultural organizations. What matters most is that they are trusted as enemies of the Islamic State and hold preexisting and offline relationships with—and are respected by—those at risk of radicalization, the communities around those at risk of radicalization, and the general audience being targeted by the Islamic State’s propagandists. It is crucial that they are not perceived as being under the thumb of the coalition’s Western leadership.

To achieve this separation, governments should provide funding, logistical support, and training in communications best practices, whether to groups already doing counter-radicalization work or to those wishing to start from scratch. Since all this must contribute toward the shared goal of undermining the Islamic State’s brand, it will only work if governments never publicly endorse these actors or include their communications on official channels, unless specifically requested otherwise. With governmental support and the coalition’s core messaging priorities in hand, local actors will be able to benefit from a globally coordinated campaign that will, in theory, amplify the anti-Islamic State message more widely, in turn creating a better condition for success in each local context.

There are two major benefits to empowering such communicators. First, doing so would dramatically increase the volume of audience engagements, which is a fast way to expand the number of people delivering anti-Islamic State communications. Second, and more importantly, using the right channel to broadcast to each audience increases a message’s impact.

For example, if a government wants to get support for a policy change, it could be better off targeting the network of influential people around a given individual (say, John Doe), than by advertising in his local paper. John is far more likely to be convinced by his friends, family, or others in his community that something is worth backing than by a government nakedly pushing its agenda. Likewise, if the government is buying advertisements in a newspaper’s print edition, but John only reads his local on a tablet, he’ll never see the message in the first place. In both of these cases, if the government chooses the right channel—something it can only do if it has a strong understanding of its audience (in this case, John and others similar to him)—it has a much greater chance of convincing people of its argument.

Governments still have an integral role to play in the communications battle with the Islamic State. But they must shift their primary information activities away from direct communications, to flexibly supporting and trusting local actors to deliver messages on their behalf—a model reminiscent of that currently employed by the Islamic State.

Local actors are incomparably better-placed to identify the best channel for communicating than distant governments, but they need to be given the freedom to do so. This requires a large dose of autonomy. If, for example, a local actor decides that a poem is the best way to reach his or her target audience, then so be it. If they want to deliver the same idea through an animation, a conversation over coffee, a tweet, or a pamphlet, that is okay, too. Likewise, if the message itself needs to be tailored to be effective, that is acceptable. If, to get around the “Islamic-State-is-a-Western-conspiracy” trope that is so widely accepted in the Middle East, the anti-Islamic State message is dressed up in a way that does not necessarily cater to Western fancies, then that must be accepted as a necessary evil. For example, a Friday sermon criticizing the Islamic State’s interpretation of Islam would need to be considered acceptable, even if it contained a condemnation of Israel’s settlements. A closely monitored “anything goes” approach is the coalition’s only chance of success.

The Architecture

If that’s the theory, what does the structure look like in practice? First off, it would need to operate on three tiers: coalition, national, and local.

The coalition level—which would operate behind the scenes, except for direct communication with select audiences like global media and policymakers—must have primary responsibility for developing the core narrative of the operation. Ideally, that narrative would be developed by about 20 people operating full-time, drawn from the governments of a diverse range of coalition members, as suggested by U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel. This range would provide the coalition with the global perspective required to combat the entirety of the Islamic State’s propaganda narrative. It is critical that this unit have the authority to disregard outside influences, such that no one member state can direct the coalition’s narrative to its own geopolitical advantage. With this structure in place, the coalition would have responsibility for setting the strategic narrative, updating its constituent messages to reflect recent events, and regularly communicating this messaging framework internally to each member. However, its responsibility must stop at core narrative development and coordination. Decisions about how that message is delivered need to be left to the lower levels of this structure.

The national tier would be the lynchpin that connects the centralized coalition narrators with their autonomous local messengers. While governments must also communicate on issues of policy, within the structure of this campaign, they would be more important as a means of identifying and empowering trustworthy actors to carry out the direct communications of the global counter-Islamic State campaign, helping those individuals coordinate activities with other local actors, and providing training in communications techniques, if required. To enable those direct engagements, coalition officials must be willing to free non-government actors to make decisions without fear of repercussions for doing something that could be perceived as the “wrong” kind of communication.

The local, front-line level, which covers any place where people are at risk of radicalization by the Islamic State (essentially making it global) is the largest tier of the structure. Internationally, there are already hundreds—if not thousands—of actors, whether individuals or institutions, directly engaging with appropriate audiences. They should be offered incentives—in the form of financial, logistical, and training support—to integrate into the anti-Islamic State campaign, while at the same time enjoying independence in how they choose to deliver the coalition’s anti-Islamic State narrative. The messengers must still be subject to oversight from their national government and the central coalition hub and, in order to continue enjoying its support, they would also be required to prove that they are delivering counter-Islamic State communications.

To facilitate the speedy flow of information across the entire campaign, the operations of each tier would be tied together by an internal communications structure that would allow the local levels to relay their activity, and successes and failures, up to the coalition level, and the coalition to push key information or messaging updates the other way. This chain, moderated at the national level, would ensure that each step is coordinated—from the coalition’s message planning right through to the local delivery—to amplify the campaign’s core messages globally.

Crucially, such a structure requires contributions from all 66 coalition members. For that to work, states should be obligated to engage in the ideological battle against the Islamic State in order to be part of (and benefit from) the military alliance. With this being the case, it must be accepted that, even if the make-up and immediate result of elements of the campaign look different from one another, as long as they contain a variation of the same core narrative, their long-term contributions against the Islamic State are valuable. Communications in different parts of the coalition cannot be judged by the same standards, because the international audience is fundamentally heterogeneous—while it might be difficult for some to accept the idea of a country like Saudi Arabia participating in this, the kingdom and others will need to be a central part of this ideological fight.

There are significant obstacles to achieving this level of cross-coalition coordination, collaboration, and ambition, but this is what’s required. If the states currently leading the coalition are able to relinquish absolute authority in the ideological battle, in favor of coordination, they stand a real chance of making a meaningful impact. Rebranding the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications as the Global Engagement Center, and directing it to engage with allies bilaterally, as the U.S. government announced it would do last month, is a start, but it is nowhere near enough, not even when it’s coupled with the U.K.’s building of a coalition communications cell. Without revising the communications campaign’s underlying principles and implementing a wider, more holistic approach, the coalition will never be able to meaningfully undermine with the Islamic State’s outreach in the long term.

theatlantic.com

Social network has supported several initiatives to promote counter speech and increase its visibility.

Facebook has begun combating terrorist propaganda online with its own form of “counter speech,” The Wall Street Journal reports, attempting to discredit extremist content with posts from its users. The social network has supported several counter speech initiatives in recent months, offering ad credits to some users and collaborating with the US State Department to develop messaging from college students.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum last month, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg expressed her support for campaigns that counter propaganda from terrorist groups like ISIS with messages of tolerance and hope. Sandberg pointed to a recent case in which a Facebook page for a neo-Nazi group was flooded with “likes” and positive messages.

According to the Journal, a team led by Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, met in December to plan ways to encourage counter speech through competitions and ensure that it reaches target audiences. The company has provided ad credits worth up to $1,000 to those who post counter-extremist messages, and together with the State Department, launched competitions in 45 college classes around the world. Those who participated in the competition were provided a budget of $2,000 and $200 in ad credits.

Last year, Facebook allowed former members of extremist groups to create fake accounts and engage with current members. The experiment delivered encouraging results, a person involved with the test tells the Journal, though it’s unclear whether Facebook’s broader counter speech efforts will be effective.

Combatting online extremism has been a priority for Western governments, as jihadists increasingly focus their recruiting efforts on social media. Last month, executives from tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google met with President Obama to discuss strategies including counter speech initiatives and efforts to identify potential terrorists online.

theverge.com

Ten years ago al-Qaida was the bogeymen of the West, a terrifying secret network that had brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11, and inspired bombs in Madrid and London. Fast forward a decade and that same spot in many people’s minds is filled by the Islamic State (ISIS), the media savvy ultra-violent organization that has carved out a small empire for itself in the Middle East.

But al-Qaida has not disappeared. Although its leader Osama Bin Laden was killed by United States Special Forces in 2011 the network still operates, nominally under the command of Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

ISIS once swore allegiance to al-Qaida, but now brands itself as the dominant Sunni-Salafist Jihadi-group, outdoing its former master at its own game.

So how has the world’s former premier terrorist organization been eclipsed by an upstart and what differentiates these allies-turned-rivals?

The Islamic State was born out of the violence that gripped Iraq following the US-led invasion in 2003. Responsible for some of the worst acts of violence witnessed in the country, the group was eventually defeated and almost driven out of existence by pressure from the US military coupled with rejection by local Sunnis. The collapse of Syria into civil war served as a lifeline to ISIS, one which it exploited to the maximum to revitalize and bolster itself.

During its early years ISIS did not go by the grandiose title, Islamic State. Instead, it was known in Iraq as al-Qaida, which suggests that both groups espoused similar ideologies and objectives. Their strategies were, however, and continue to be, quite different.

From the outset al-Qaida in Iraq was noted for its brutality, a trait that ISIS continues and which marks it out from the mainstream al-Qaida branches. Although the older organization can hardly be thought of as moderate or non-violent, it consistently chastised its Iraqi affiliate for its attacks on Shi’ites and its use of gory videos showing hostage-executions during the conflict in Iraq.

These were seen as “contrary and damaging to Al-Qa’ida’s broader struggle,” Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the Middle East Institute wrote in his paper entitled Jihadi Rivalry: The Islamic State Challenges al-Qaida. But despite this, ISIS “repeatedly ignored orders to cease public displays of gruesome violence and mass casualty attacks,” Lister said.

Al-Qa’ida believed that it was necessary to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis and that acts of extreme violence would backfire. This belief appeared to be correct in view of ISIS’s initial defeat in Iraq. But the same strategy gave the organization much of its clout following its rebirth in the wake of the Syria conflict and its subsequent seizure of territory in Iraq.

Differences in their attitude to and use of violence was one way in which the two rivals diverged. The second relates to their view of the caliphate.

“Islamic State’s strategy is that first of all you declare the caliphate and then you try to hold and expand it,” Prof. Assaf Moghadam, director of academic affairs at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, told The Media Line. For al-Qaida, on the other hand, the caliphate was more of a “distant Utopian dream” that required preparation before it could be achieved.

These preparations – the removal of Western influence from the Middle East and the spread of Salafi ideology among Muslims – amounted to the majority of al-Qaida’s efforts. ISIS skipped the preparation and got straight into the business of creating its caliphate when it declared itself a state in the summer of 2014 following its land grab into Iraq.

One of the most significant factors surrounding the establishment of the caliphate is the prestige and credibility it gave ISIS. In many ways the announcement of the ‘State’ can be seen as the moment of ISIS’s victory over al-Qaida, the point at which the organization achieved something the previous generation of Jihadists never could.

Not only did it give the organization prestige that attracted large numbers of foreign fighters, but it allowed them to recruit directly from populations living in the territory ISIS now occupied, Moghadam said. “These are people who have the misfortune to be (living) in territories that ISIS seized… the male population, children, who are joining ISIS for reasons to do with intimidation.”
al-Qaida on the other hand never controlled a territorial body or a population from which to recruit, the counter-terrorism expert suggested.

The two rivals also differ in how they seek to spread their influence through the region. ISIS frequently makes use of fear and intimidation – the same methodology it uses to control its territory – to coerce other groups throughout the Middle East into joining its brand. Al-Qaida by contrast creates its connections through, “tight close-knit alliances based on joint fighting, common training and friends on the ground,” a model which, in the long run, is likely to be more successful, Moghadam said.
This leaves Western planners with a complex calculation: How to react to the Sunni Jihadist split.

“On the one hand the Islamic State is clearly more violent and more aggressively hard line. But until last year it was not really committed to acts of terrorism against Western countries,” Gilbert Ramsay, a lecturer in international relations at St. Andrews University, told The Media Line. On the other hand, “al-Qaida, even though it was more moderate, was primarily committed to acts of terrorism in Western countries,” he said.

It might be tempting for policy-makers to sit back and watch the two factions devour each other, as they fight it out for position of top dog. But the alternative scenario could be more dangerous, Ramsay suggested.

“The reason we ought to be more concerned about the al-Qaida/ISIS rivalry is that it places more pressure on both organizations to compete for attention,” the academic noted. Unfortunately for the West, Ramsay said, “The way to outbid the other is to conduct larger and more spectacular attacks.”

jpost.com

voanews.com

On February 7, 2016, Spanish police arrested seven suspects accused of sending guns and bomb-making materials to the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The arrests themselves demonstrate the group’s continued international appeal. Furthermore, according to Spanish authorities, the leader of the cell had been in direct contact with an Islamic State member who had, on multiple occasions, specifically asked the cell leader to recruit women to travel to Iraq and Syria to become wives of Islamic State fighters. Despite increased military pressure on the group, the Islamic State remains dedicated to ensuring the longevity of the so-called caliphate—in which women play a key role. 

As of 2014, 10% of individuals who had traveled to join the Islamic State from Europe, North America, and Australia were women. By May 2015, 100 women were known to have traveled from the U.K.; 119 from Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia; as well as 700 from Tunisia. On the surface, it seems counterintuitive that so many women would choose to join a group that has demonstrated such institutionalized brutality towards women. Female recruits nonetheless continue to leave their homes—sometimes bringing their entire families—in order to live under the dominion of the Islamic State. As with male recruits, these women have a diverse range of motivations driving them to travel to join the Islamic State. 

Though their individual motivations may differ, women in the Islamic State occupy a central role in serving the organization’s ‘state-building’ ambitions, though far from the front lines. Beyond serving as wives to male members, women in the Islamic State care for the ‘Cubs of the Caliphate,’ and are responsible for rearing the next generation of fighters. The extremist fervor of the Islamic State’s female recruits is often reflected in their responsibilities: the all-female al-Khansaa Brigade patrols the Islamic State capital in Raqqa, doling out harsh punishments to women deemed to have violated strict social codes. There are also reports that female Islamic State members run the brothels where minority women are held as sex slaves. Women who have escaped from Islamic State captivity relate that the wives of their captors are often extremely abusive, violently lashing out for the most minor of infractions. Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, AKA Umm Sayyaf, was recently charged by the U.S. FBI for her role in the detention of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, killed in February 2015 in Syria. Umm Sayyaf played a leading role in the detention and torture of Mueller as well as several kidnapped Yezidi women. 

While male recruits are often encouraged to come die for the group, the Islamic State recruitment strategy differs for women. Regardless of their motivations—be it extremist zeal, an attraction to violence, or investment in the idea of a utopian Islamic society—the longevity of the Islamic State is a pivotal selling point for the majority of female recruits. Given the increased military pressure on the group in Iraq and Syria—and the continued exodus of refugees from the region—the endurance of the caliphate is becoming harder for Islamic State propagandists to maintain. If women stop traveling to join the Islamic State to help establish an Islamic utopia, the legitimacy of the group’s professed caliphate would be further called into question. 

The Islamic State aims to depict the territory under its control as a functioning society, one that not only requires fighters, but also doctors, engineers, and bureaucrats—and most importantly, women. Ultimately, women are valuable commodities for the Islamic State leadership, and their depletion is unacceptable. It is likely that more recruiters will specifically target women, as was requested of the Spanish cell. The Islamic State may attempt to grow its peer-to-peer recruitment networks, which are often more persuasive than anonymous online recruitment. This will mean women within the Islamic State will be increasingly used to reach out to family members and friends, encouraging them to travel to join the group. As with male recruits, female recruits may begin to be directed toward other Islamic State territories, particularly in Libya. This is especially likely for female recruits from Tunisia—700 of whom have already traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. 

soufangroup.com

A team of West Point cadets has found a better use for social media than posting selfies and 140-character witticisms: going undercover and online to steer young Muslims away from terrorist recruiters.

The cadets crafted an online strategy to stem the flow of disaffected young people to Islamic State as an entry in an international contest sponsored by a group of federal agencies and tech companies. Unlike the competing teams from universities all over the world, the West Point contingent, which took second place, worked undercover.

“Since our website was targeting what we called ‘fence-sitters,’ I think if individuals who visited our social media platforms knew that they were being produced by anyone in the U.S. government, then the site would lose credibility,” Lt. Col. Bryan Price, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, told FoxNews.com in an email.

Under Price’s direction, the team designed a recruiting strategy of its own, in which members go into chatrooms and websites where potential targets gather, engage and guide them toward websites and Twitter pages containing moderate Muslim voices. Those sites include a website, Facebook page and Twitter account the team created, which remain in effect and secret even now that the contest is over.

“We post after Friday prayer, when many people would be home and at their computers,” Cadet C.J. Drew told Christian Headlines.

The campaign was part of the “Peer to Peer [P2P]: Challenging Extremism” initiative, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Facebook and EdVenture Partners and hosted by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The task was to use digital tools to counter violent extremist narratives and reach those most likely to get sucked in by the dark vision.

“One of the U.S. Government’s highest priorities is preventing and challenging violent extremism, and we realize we cannot do this alone,” said Evan Ryan, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. “We need civil society, in particular students like those involved in this initiative.”

West Point competed against 44 other U.S. and international universities—more than 900 students in all—and received a scholarship of $3,000 for placing second. Team members include Austin Montgomery, Brittany Scofield, C.J. Drew, Jordan Isham and David Weinmann, and the project will be passed on to a new class of cadets when the graduate.

While two of the cadets involved with the project have studied Arabic, they turned to fellow cadets of the Muslim faith for help identifying and understanding ISIS’ target audience, cadets told Religion News.

Interviewing psychologists helped them determine which colors to use on their Facebook page. They found that green and black would be effective colors to use; green because of its sacred nature in the religion of Islam and black because it is a commonly worn color among terrorists groups.

In two months, the cadets’ Facebook page gained more than 900,000 users in more than 25 countries, according to Christian Headlines.

The first-place winner was Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan, while the bronze went to Universita della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. Each group was given a $2,000 budget and a semester-long timeframe to complete their projects. The basic instructions were to create an effective online campaign to stem digital radicalization.

The fact that West Point’s project continues is testament to its effectiveness, and importance.

“These students are helping us reach those who are most vulnerable to extremist recruiting,” said Ryan.

nypost.com

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is telling members how to avoid internet surveillance by Western authorities with an online “help desk”.

The advice is offered through a channel on encrypted messaging app Telegram, and has about 2,200 members.

The channel is operated by Isil cyber security experts that call themselves the Electronic Horizon Foundation (EHF), researchers from the Middle East Media Research Center told The Hill.

The EHF’s goal is to “spread security and technical awareness among the monotheists.”

The news that Isil uses Telegram for communications came to the fore after the Paris attacks. Telegram has since shut down more than 660 public Isil-affiliated channels across 12 languages.

Isil released a 34-page operational security manual back in November that covered encryption, safe browsing and secure messaging. It is known to offer further technical support on Telegram channels such the “Islamic State technician”, according to the Middle East Media Research Center.

The group translated an announcement that Isil is extending the “help desk” to offer further assistance to those avoiding surveillance.

In it, the EHF said it was created “due to the electronic war and tight surveillance imposed by the Western intelligence apparatuses over internet users.”

The Middle East Media Research Center said that the Isil security experts have not posted much yet, but it expects the channel “to take the lead”.

The group is likely to focus on defence and privacy rather than launching attacks, said the Middle East Research Center.

When hacktivist collective Anonymous declared cyber-war on Isil back in November, the group responded by issuing a five point guide to avoid being hacked. It included the advice to use Telegram to avoid hackers and governments.

Telegram was “disturbed” to find out that Isil had been using its service to “spread their propaganda”. It has said that it will take down illegal content, but it is committed to free speech.

“For example, if criticising the government is illegal in a country, Telegram won’t be part of such politically-motivated censorship. This goes against our founders’ principles.

“While we do block terrorist (e.g. ISIS-related) bots and channels, we will not block anybody who peacefully expresses alternative opinions.”

telegraph.co.uk

In December 2015, Malaysian police reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had set up camps in Kazakhstan and Syria to train and indoctrinate children as young as two years old to become militants. It was alleged that the camps were training children from all over the world in the use of firearms, as well as immersing them in what one senior Malaysian police officer called a ‘false jihad’.

While the Kazakh ambassador in Singapore swiftly issued a rebuttal of the Malaysian claim, it is worth noting nevertheless that news is available – including apparently video evidence produced by ISIS itself- of Kazakh children being trained by ISIS. More generally, terrorism researchers have confirmed that ISIS ‘actively recruits children’ to engage in ‘combat, including suicide missions’ (Stern and Berger 2015: 210). In any case, Southeast Asian authorities were hardly surprised at the latest allegations of ISIS targeting youth for Islamist indoctrination. Since September 2014, it has been known that ISIS has set up a Southeast Asian unit of Malay-speaking militants, drawn from mainly Indonesia but also Malaysia. According to some estimates, the unit called Katibah Nusantara (KN), or the Malay Archipelago Unit, held sway amongst 450 Indonesian and Malaysian fighters and their families in the Syrian/Iraq region, as of November 2015 (Arianti and Singh, 2015).

Of particular interest, KN has apparently set up the Abdullah Azzam Academy for the education and military training of children of Malaysian and Indonesian fighters. The medium of instruction is in the Malay language, and KN appears desirous of training a new generation of Malay-speaking militants indoctrinated from childhood to be committed to ensuring that the so-called ISIS Caliphate, inaugurated by its titular leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi in June 2014, eventually encompasses Malay-speaking Southeast Asia as well. In March 2015, moreover, a two-minute video emerged via ISIS social media sources in which ethnic Malay-looking children were seen training with weapons. The video declared that these children will ‘finish all oppressors, disbelievers, apostates’. The underlying message to Southeast Asian governments was unmistakable: ‘These children will be the next generation of fighters. You can capture us, kill us, we will regenerate, no matter how hard you try’. Terrorism scholars agree in this connection that from the ISIS perspective, ‘[l]eadership decapitation is significantly less likely to be effective against organizations that prepare children to step into their fathers’ shoes’ (Stern and Berger, 2015b: 211).

ISIS is hardly unique in targeting youth – especially young males – for indoctrination. Its ideological parent Al Qaeda sought to radicalize youth into its virulent varieties of Islamist extremism as well. The British MI5 warned in 2007 that Al Qaeda and its affiliates were seeking to radicalize children as young as 15 into mounting terror attacks in the United Kingdom. In like vein the former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency warned that Al Qaeda was seeking to radicalize western youth for the purpose of mounting terror attacks in the West. Some estimates suggest that youth between 15 and 18 years of age comprise 20 percent of all suicide bombers (Samuel, 2011:109-113). As we shall see, youth are particularly susceptible to radicalization into violent extremism of the ISIS and similar ills, for a variety of reasons. This article will first examine widely accepted definitions of the term ‘youth’. It will then examine, drawing on a number of disciplinary perspectives, a few key intertwined factors – neurological, psychological, family and social – that impact the degree to which youth are rendered susceptible to the seductive ideological appeals of ISIS and the like, and ultimately radicalize into violent extremism. I shall then end the article by briefly suggesting ways to mitigate the relative vulnerability of youth to the highly professionalized and seductive Facebook, Twitter and YouTube propaganda of ISIS.

‘Youth’ Defined – and How ISIS ‘Unleashes’ Them

That ISIS seems keen on targeting young children and youth for recruitment into either active militants serving on the frontlines in Syria and Iraq, or so-called ‘lone wolves’ carrying out terrorist acts inspired but not necessarily orchestrated by the organization, is evident enough. A brief definitional discussion is warranted at this juncture before proceeding further. The term ‘youth’ is interpreted differently across national and institutional jurisdictions – and at times even within the latter. While the United Nations Secretariat and the World Bank both define ‘youth’ to refer to individuals between 15 and 24 years old, the Denmark Youth Council establishes the age range of individuals considered to be youth more expansively – as between 15 to 34 years of age (Ramakrishna, 2015: 115). The African Union further extends this latter definition of youth by a year, to age 35. Within the UN system itself, UNICEF’s Convention on the Rights of the Child broadly defines the term ‘youth’ as a ‘child until 18’ while the UN Habitat identifies an age range from 15-32 years.

In any case, as mentioned, quite apart from the children in training camps that have been featured in ISIS propaganda videos, the ISIS message has clearly resonated with youth that are older, as evidenced by a cursory glance at newspaper headlines on lone wolf attacks in the second half of 2014 and throughout 2015. In September 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani – in response to the Obama administration’s launching of airstrikes a month earlier to stem the terrorist army’s seemingly inexorable advance in Iraq – issued via social media a call upon ISIS supporters worldwide to engage in so-called ‘lone wolf’ attacks in Western coalition capitals. This appeared to be deadly effective: two months after al-Adnani’s call, a 25-year old ISIS-inspired lone wolf, Martin Roulea, ran over two Canadian soldiers in a Montreal parking lot before being killed by police. In January 2015, 20-year old Christopher Cornell was arrested by the FBI for a plot to open fire on US government officials and the Israeli embassy. He claimed to have been acting on behalf of ISIS. Six months later, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, al-Adnani urged ISIS supporters to turn it into ‘a month of disasters, defeats and disgrace for the kuffar [infidels] everywhere’. Subsequently, in the Tunisian tourist resort of Port el Kantaoui near the coastal city of Sousse, 20-year old Rafik el Chelly shot dead 37 mainly Western civilians near the beachside Rui Imperial Hotel (Ramakrishna, 2015).

Youth have featured heavily in lone wolf incidents in Australia as well. In September 2014 an 18-year-old male was killed by police after he had stabbed two counterterrorism police officers in Melbourne. In April 2015, several teenagers were arrested on suspicion of plotting an ISIS-inspired assault on police at a Veterans’ Day ceremony. This particular plot even had a transnational dimension: Australian authorities revealed that the alleged mastermind of this plot was a 14-year-old British boy operating ‘from his bedroom in northwestern England’. A month later, again in Melbourne, police arrested a 17-year-old for being implicated in a plot to detonate three homemade pipe bombs.

Youth and Radicalization into Violent Extremism: A Preliminary Psychosocial Analysis

Why are youth so heavily represented amongst militants radicalized by ISIS? While some argue that the role of social media is crucial in understanding how ISIS attracts today’s tech savvy youth, in reality the Internet, though not unimportant, is merely an accelerant of the radicalization process (Homeland Security Institute 2009: 6). What makes youth vulnerable actually reside off-line in a real world context; to properly elucidate this assertion would require more space than is permissible in this article. Nevertheless, insights from several disciplines offer us some preliminary answers.

Neurological Factors

To start with, neurologically youth are pretty unique as their brain development proceeds in a rather uneven fashion. Specifically, during the teenage years the prefrontal cortex that guides reasoning and self-control develops more gradually than the amygdala – the center of human emotions. This helps explain why teenagers between 18 and 20 years of age often appear to many an exasperated parent as impulsive and rash (Leong, 2011). Second, the amygdala-driven and rather intense emotional turbulence that many teens more or less experience at regular intervals is not without implications. It suggests a certain psychological instability that expresses itself frequently in a quest for absolute cognitive certainty – which violent fundamentalist groups like ISIS conveniently appear to offer. In sum, youth are anything but regular folk: they are actually in a ‘tumultuous biological, cognitive, social and emotional transition to adulthood’ (Ramakrishna, 2015:116). It is precisely this process of transition that renders youth to be akin to psychological putty in the hands of skilled extremist ideologues.

The Family Context

The essential psychological vulnerability of youth arising from neurological factors is further influenced by the immediate family context. British psychiatrist Russell Razzaque in this respect has argued that the ‘the initial parental bond’ is utterly crucial for the healthy emotional development of youth (2008: 80-83). He asserts that ‘just as oxygen deprivation can impair growth or cause damage to the unborn child, so lack of attachment and emotional deprivation can harm the growing infant and stunt his psychological development’. Razzaque warns that a youth growing up without a stable role model in the immediate family context ‘will see things in a very different light from the way adults do, even as he grows older’. This requires elaboration. Psychologically speaking, it has long been understood that ‘our personality, character, thoughts, and feelings are shaped by our early childhood experiences’, and central to the process of ego and identity formation until even well into adulthood is as noted the ‘early and influential parent-child dyad’ (Jones, 2008: 119). Hence those youth who, because of a deeply dysfunctional relationship with early parental figures, possess ‘fragile senses of identity and unhealthily developed egos’, they would lack the utterly important ‘inner strength and personal stability required to endure life’s ordinary trials and tribulations’ (Alper, 2006:173-4). A weak and/or dysfunctional immediate family context, therefore, could well render a youth ‘desperately hungry’ for ‘external objects that claim to be perfect and ideal’, and that supposedly offer ‘that necessary sense of connection to something of value’ that can ‘buttress his self-esteem’ (Jones, 2008: 133-4). This is the point where for instance ISIS extremist ideologues can strike home with their social media appeals. The adverse impact of a poor family background is no exaggeration. In Saudi Arabia as one instance, it was found that many who had grown up in homes of relatives ‘without their parents present’ were in need of attention, as their ‘personal and social problems’ appeared to ‘contribute to radicalization’ (International Peace Institute, 2010: 9).

The Social Milieu

Another factor that plays an instrumental role in at times rendering youth susceptible to ISIS extremist appeals for example is the wider social milieu within which they and their immediate families are embedded. Of special concern are Muslim communities or sub-cultures that are relatively insulated from the wider polity and have been beset by a range of political, historical and socioeconomic setbacks that have generated a sense of alienation vis-a-vis dominant out-groups. In some cases, such ‘countercultures’ – not just in the Middle East but including poorly integrated migrant communities in the West or elsewhere– may share a generalized perception that their communities are facing political and socioeconomic marginalization – or worse (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 12). In a broadly similar way, the aforementioned training camps for children ISIS has apparently set up can be considered as seminal ‘cultures of violence’, that are ‘a crucial part of understanding religious terrorism’ (Jones, 2008: 120). Youth that are immersed in their formative years in such stressed communities rarely emerge unscathed. From a neurological perspective, growing up immersed in a countercultural milieu characterized by interactions and experiences that heighten out-group prejudice has a significant impact on their highly plastic youthful brains. Specifically, within the hippocampus, a part of the ancient limbic system of the brain, strong emotional reactions to experiences of social and economic discrimination or worse at the hands of out-groups – as well as repeated exposure to negative out-group stereotyping – cannot but be stored as long-term memory (Johnson, 2004: 8); (Wilson, 1999: 116-17); (Newberg and Waldman, 2006: 32).

Freud elaborated on this process with his concept of so-called critical periods. During such periods the unique architecture of a youth’s hippocampus stabilizes in a relatively enduring way. Hence when such critical and brief windows close, the youth’s learned habits, beliefs and attitudes become relatively resistant to change; put another way, once certain neural pathways are laid down, they become entrenched (Doidge, 2008: 52-3); (Ridley, 2004: 167-70). In essence, therefore, youth who come of age within cultures of hatred ‘tend to be self-righteous, prejudicial and condemnatory toward people outside their groups’, whilst possessing an especially pronounced ‘‘us versus them’ mentality that many will carry throughout their lives’ – shaped in no small part as well by ‘the stories’ they have ‘heard and read while growing up’(Newberg and Weldman, 2006: 121).

The Middle East offers one illustration of how culturally sanctioned out-group prejudice can be socialized into youth: ‘hatred for Jews and Zionists’ is widespread in the mainstream and social media and even in textbooks for children as young as three years old, ‘complete with illustrations of Jews with monster-like qualities’. In short, Jews are painted as ‘bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians’ (Ali 2013: 37). Not entirely surprising perhaps then that in one Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip a Hamas official informed the terrorism scholar Scott Atran in 2004 that ‘our youth are running into martyrdom’ (Atran 2010: 353). So generalized and pervasive was the countercultural hatred of Israelis that one young man very matter-of-factly discussed with Atran the ‘costs and benefits of a roadside versus suicide bombing’, a topic that appeared normal within the ‘group’s moral frame’ (2010: 355). Even more remarkable was the little boy kicking a frayed soccer ball near the border crossing at Bayt Lahiyah who assured Atran that ‘he wanted to die a shaheed, killing Israelis’ (2010: 356). It is thus not hard to see how immersion in a countercultural milieu characterized by deep out-group hatred and prejudice can – in tandem with the neurological, psychological and family factors just discussed – erode the ability of youth to withstand the siren call of violent extremist ideologues, like those that currently promote the seductive ISIS narrative across various social media platforms.

Conclusion: Promoting Good Families via Good Societies

The United Nations Secretary-General recently inaugurated his Plan of Action for Preventing Violent Extremism, which inter alia, identified the importance of strategies of preventing radicalization into violent extremism to complement security-oriented counter-terrorist approaches. He specifically identified youth, moreover, as a critical global resource that had to be protected against the deleterious pull of virulent extremist ideologies. By way of conclusion, the foregoing analysis of the unique psychosocial attributes of youth suggests that at a minimum, a suite of policies guided perhaps by the principle of promoting ‘good families via good societies’ may represent a way forward to cope with the youth radicalization problem. A ‘good family’ here is defined as one possessing a strong parent-child dyad at its core. As seen this helps foster healthy and normal ego and intellectual development in youth (Jones 2008: 119-20). What the eminent psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott (2006:148-9, 236-8) termed ‘ordinary good homes’ are needed to nurture youth capable of navigating the adolescent journey from emotional dependence on parents to mature adult independence in the context of a democratic society – with its emphasis on inter-ethnic and inter-religious tolerance.

However good families presuppose the prior and enabling existence of the good political and socioeconomic governance provided by what Ervin Staub considers as good societies (Staud 2005: 76). Apart from programs addressing the poverty that ‘creates stress and negatively affects parenting’, good societies construct ‘cultural and societal institutions in a manner that helps adults and children fulfill their needs in constructive ways’ and leverages upon the ‘resulting potential and inclinations’ to further promote inclusiveness instead of out-group ‘devaluation’ and ‘discrimination’ (Staub, 2005). Moreover, the good-family/good- society relationship is mutually reinforcing as well: strong and stable families help ‘build commitment to mainstream values in the larger social system’; hence Wills and Resko reiterate the importance of ‘social policies that are ‘friendly’ toward children and families’ so as to ensure that parents are empowered ‘to act supportively’. This is needed they tellingly add, to generate salutary ‘long-range effects in terms of pro-social behavior’ (in Miller, 2005: 419-36). In sum, a suite of policies that promote good families via good societies would arguably go a long way to enhance the preventive capacity of communities to discourage youth recruitment into violent extremism (Ozerdem and Podder 2011: 71). If, as the UN Secretary-General recently warned, the world ignores the need to ‘harness the idealism, creativity and energy of young people’ in the struggle against ISIS and its ilk, the prognosis for the future will be that much bleaker. The hearts and minds of today’s youth therefore, is one battle-space that we ‘need to reclaim’ (Report of the UN Secretary-General, 2015).

e-ir.info

More than 300 possible jihadists were blocked from leaving Australia in the seven months to January — almost double the rate of the year before — amid a Government crackdown on Australians travelling to fight in Iraq or Syria.

There were 312 people pulled off planes in the seven months to the end of January, compared to 336 in the almost 12-month period before that, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s office confirmed.

It was not clear how many of the suspected jihadists stopped from leaving were actually heading to the Middle East to fight, with some eventually allowed to resume their journey.

“In some cases, a person who was ‘offloaded’ may be allowed to continue with their travel plans if they are no longer considered a risk,” a spokesman added in a statement.

The Federal Government has been increasingly concerned about Australians fighting with jihadist organisations, such as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, saying some 120 Australians had left the country to join such groups.

Another 160 are actively supporting extremist organisations at home through financing and recruitment, the Government has said.

Under sweeping counter-terrorism measures aimed at blocking jihadists from going overseas, the Government introduced laws in late 2014 that would see anyone who heads to nominated areas face up to 10 years’ jail.

Legislation was also passed late last year to strip duel nationals involved in terrorism of their Australian citizenship.

Iraq’s second city Mosul and the IS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria have so far been added to the nominated areas list.

abc.net.au