FIGHTING THE CALIPHATE, THE OTHER WAY

Author: Kushal Kumar Sinha

As the Islamic State is losing ground in Syria and Iraq, the group is opening new fronts in different parts of the world which poses new challenges to the Western world (Barrett 2017). The Islamic extremist group grabbed the world’s attention and headlines when it suddenly burst in Iraq and Syria and engaged in spectacular brutality in June 2014 (Byman 2016). Many terrorist organizations operating in Africa and other parts of the world have pledged allegiance to the group (Siegle &William 2017). Eyebrows raised when agencies learnt that not only locals but many foreign fighters, especially youth from the west formed a large part of the extremist organization and are now fighting for the “The Ummah” or the Islamic Caliphate. Islamic State, lures young minds from across the world through their various mediums of propaganda which this essay will be focusing on. The first part of the essay will give statistics and a brief background of the extremist organization’s propaganda machinery and connect it with theories of criminology like the Chicago school study (zonal hypothesis) and rational choice theory. The second part will suggest possible methods to identify and categorize the returning fighters and explore new methods of rehabilitation and methods to reintegrate them into society.

Reports regarding the number of foreign fighters are conflicting, but most of them settle down with the estimate to be more than 40,000 from more than 120 countries (Radicalization Awareness Network [RAN] 2017). Talking about Australian fighters in the Islamic State, the government claims to be around 100 (Australian National Security 2016) while think tanks predict it to be 165(Barrett 2017). The group mainly targets young Sunni men from around the globe exploiting anger at the perceived mistreatment and encourage them to join the fight for the Islamic Caliphate(Upadhay 2017). This propelling of hatred among youth is done through a piece of intricate propaganda machinery involving various tools including warmongering magazines, graphic videos and documentaries accusing others of committing atrocities on the Muslims and romanticizing violence. Not all videos are violence centric but an analysis shows that 48% are military-themed, 20% related to governance, 7% on commerce, 19% related to lifestyle issues and surprisingly only 7% of their videos are related to religion(Milton 2016 cited in Kraidy 2017 pp.95), a staple for the extremist group. The group has laid a network of twitter accounts and multilingual media houses with dedicated roles, like Al Furqan, Al Hayat Media Centre, Al Itisan Foundation, Al Bayan and Amaq Agency. Going the unconventional way the group also calls for women to join the terrorist organization, for this the Islamic State has established a Zoya Foundation which has garnered 32,000 followers(Upadhay 2017). It is noteworthy to see how the extremist organization has managed to justify its’s atrocities and heinous acts by first, describing itself and its enemies from a religious prism, second Salafi-Jihadi describe their acts, mission and strategies as religious, Lastly, they justify violence with reference drawn selectively from Quran (Moghadam, 2008). Heaven is projected as “Utopia” which would welcome slain fighters from the battlefield, this is backed by selective quotes from Quran which are misused and misrepresented by the group like Al Toor 52:20, Al Rhmaan 55:70:76 or Al Dhukhaan 44:54. Recent reports suggest that the Islamic State also uses sexual slavery as a tool to attract more recruits and often reward them with the same(McCrum 2016). To put things in simple perspective, the group has successfully managed to convince many westerners to take up arms by different means involving propaganda, offering perks and project that it is worth joining the fight for an Islamic State. Taking an account from the “victim’s” end, people who are swayed into the stream of extremism, and going according to the Freeman (subpart of Rational Choice) theory, every recruit who joins the group was born freely, it was him/her who took the decision independently and with full capacity of joining the group (Newburn et al. 2017). There could be many factors behind it but some are motivated by zeal and desire for martyrdom, and some for the sense of adventure. Others seek it as a way to escape abuse, discrimination, poverty, social problems and marginalization by society (Samantha Mahood & Halim Rane 2017) this can be backed by the example of South France which is heavily infested with immigrants from Algeria and Morocco who have been repeatedly discriminated and oppressed. (Upadhay 2017) which brings us the to the Chicago school study, where the city is divided into zones and the people living in zone 2 are most likely to have delinquent behaviour due to the depleted infrastructure and low financial capacity(Newburn et al. 2017). In the case above the zone, 2 is the southern cities of France which have witnessed the most number of crimes committed by immigrants. Largely, recruits miscalculate and think that the path of extremism is the rational path and takes consequences to be insignificant or usually ignores them. These consequences could be punishments, death or social marginalization. This brings us to the rational choice theory which states that delinquents miscalculate the risks and the benefits before committing a crime (Newburn et al. 2017) To conclude this part, freeman, rational choice and zonal hypothesis theories can be equated to the case of those taking the path of extremism, as they are born free but willingly embraced the path of extremism, the ecological and environment around them forced them to embrace extremism and the extremist group projects in such a way that the foreign recruits tend to think that the benefits overshadow the costs and the consequences of joining the terror organization.

This paragraph will shed light on the returning fighters of the Islamic State and will offer ways to identify and deradicalize the returnees. Often recruits are in the fog of uncertainty and are not aware of the harsh life and the ground realities, they heavily rely on the propaganda videos which are concocted stories and illusions. This has led to many foreign recruits flee and abandon their fight and return to their home countries (Barrett 2017). Think tanks like Soufan Centre (2017)predicts the number of returnees to be 5,600 while European Commission’s think tank RAN (2017) predicts about 20–30% of the foreign fighters from Europe have returned(RAN), Russian authorities claim out of the 3417 fighters , 400 have returned(Barrett 2017). As mentioned in the first line, returning fighters pose a huge risk to the internal security apparatus, the ghastly attacks in Paris involved attackers who were returnees, same implies to the attack in Brussel where out of 5, 3 attackers were returnees (RAN 2017). While there has been a slow but steady rise in the number of returning fighters, security agencies are now equipping themselves to identify, deradicalize and help them reintegrate into the society. As the returnees fall in the hands of the security agencies, it is the government which has to decide whether to focus on the act (terrorism) rather than the individual or to focus on the individual rather than the act and appropriately deal with the situation. But this paragraph will explore the latter option. The method involves 3 steps as recommended by think tanks (RAN 2017) which involves 1) Identification of returnee 2) Risk assessment and 3) Tailored approach towards radicalization. There is a need to identify the returning fighters and the security agencies have to allocate the returnees into 5 categories. The classification is as follows 1) Jolted by the delusions of propaganda, 2) Captured and deported back 3) Traumatized by the war, 4) Share the extremist views but vouch for a better environment and 5) Sent back to carry out more attacks. The second step involves threat and risk assessment by the agencies through various methods like ERG+22 (United Kingdoms) which is a multi-agency assessment, IR46 (The Netherlands), VERA-2 prison assessment and TRAP-18 which focuses on lone cases (RAN 2017). After the risk has been analyzed the agencies can now have an altered plan for deradicalization which involves counselling, support and reintegration into the society. Deradicalization is not a “fit for all solution”, as it depends on the individual’s case as the agencies have to take in stock the reasons behind their joining and returning, their social situation and ideological convictions. For example, different genders must be treated differently, this does not imply that leverage should be given to women and children. Most of the men returnees are involved in brutalities and crimes like rape and war crimes, making them battle-hardened, indoctrinated leaving them traumatized. Tackling this kind of mentality would require different set of intervention and counselling method as compared to those used for women and children who often accompany the fighters and return back after the death of their spouse and children who are indoctrinated right from the age of 8 and are sometimes involved in heinous acts like massacring which creates a deep psychological impact on their minds. Agencies can introduce a tailored indoctrination and rehabilitation plan just like the Norwegian Police’s “Conversation Intervention” which pragmatically states that police should intervene and engage in conversation with children especially teenagers who show signs of extremism this method could lead to the prevention of youth being swayed into extremism (National Police Directorate 2011). Concluding this paragraph, the agencies should focus more on the person than on the crime and deal radicalized western youth with counselling and early intervention.

To conclude this essay, the Islamic State has systematically brainwashed western youth and the western recruits have taken the path of extremism for different reasons. While the returning fighters should be dealt with clinically, and agencies should intervene if anybody exhibits signs of extremism.

REFERENCES

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