Daily Times

One of the more dreadful features of the Islamic State’s regime is that it has managed to recruit suicide bombers to die for a country that doesn’t even exist, and which, if did would not even be their own. Until recently, suicide bombing was a tactic practised by civilians in revolt against an occupying army. But in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Europe, the Islamic State has used this tactic aggressively. Nonetheless, the brutal nihilism of the jihadi movement continues to attract young men and women from Europe, the US, Middle East, Central Asia and the subcontinent. None of the simple explanations for this stands up to reality. Simply western foreign policy cannot be blamed since the Islamic State is fighting a sectarian war against almost entirely Muslim armies, and its most effective enemies, Iran and its allies, are also enemies of America and Europe.

Difficulty is finding the level of socially disparate groups that recruits to the global jihad, and this is unfortunately outside the scope and competence of the intelligence agencies. The growing threat of terrorism stems from the eagerness with which many young men and women from other parts of the world are being lured by religious fanatics. Nothing confirms this better than the increasing involvement of radicalised youths from Europe, United States Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. It is this globalisation of terrorist networks that spells doom for many countries though the hand of foreign recruits is also evident in the barbaric acts carried out by the so-called Islamic State.
Recruitment tactics in the current global jihad is a phenomenon that has been studied by government, security services, academia and the media throughout the US and Europe up until the rage of recent terrorist attacks surprised the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. The gravity of attention to this phenomenon will take further time, but the indispensability of such endeavours became quite clear with the attacks in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Previously seen as a relative backwater in the war on terrorism, Middle East and Asia are now on the frontline. It is trench warfare, the harder you get at them the stronger they come back.

The recent geographical extension imposed by the Islamic State necessitates serious concern. Strictly speaking, it would be impossible to consider the Saudi Arabia dimension of the global jihad as an isolated phenomenon. Instead it is intertwined with individuals, organisations, ideologies and situations across the world. Jihad is truly global in nature, and it would amount to folly to ignore its close links to the Middle East, South East Asia, Central Asia and North Africa. The idea for the terrorist analysts is to examine the level of changing pattern of recruitment activity as it unfolds in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, and whether it has a direct impact on the US and Europe, or affects other countries.

While some may be surprised by the actual number of individuals being recruited for terrorist activity in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh, this may not be the case. Since to present reliable figures on Saudi Arabia terrorists would require access to restricted government information across Saudi kingdom, needless to say, this would not possible to obtain, nor is it actually desirable. Several recent remarks by officials from European security services state that terrorist recruitment is on the rise.

Taking these remarks into consideration, and at the same time assuming that evidence exists to verify claims, focus remains on the general trends exemplified by specific cases. An obsession with numbers would likely result in a skewed and potentially misleading analysis. Central question that should be answered is what future trends are to be expected in the recruitment to jihad in Europe and Islamic countries. In short, will Europe and Islamic countries experience a decline or an increase in recruitment to “Islamist” terrorism in the near to mid-term future? One is inclined to argue that they are likely to see increased participation in the global jihad.

This development could lead to the assumption that threat from IS terrorism has not been annulled. While it is true that some terrorists have been put under considerable pressure, this perspective emphasises the organisational structure of a more or less defunct terrorist organisation, and does not take the wider social context into consideration. To simplify the argument, the war on terrorism has not been successful because although the al-Qaeda has suffered irretrievable losses IS has simultaneously managed to metamorphose into a new rapidly growing terrorist threat.

Something that unites a very diverse group of militant Islamists is their decision to make a link to jihad. Previously, the radical mosques facilitated these contacts and served as important recruitment localities. But by constantly applying pressure on militant circles they either became exposed or have slowed down their activities considerably. This approach however, did not eliminate the further recruitment of terrorists but it has pushed IS militants to consider other options.
There are signs that recruitment pattern has changed due to the intensive surveillance of radical institutions, which has forced militants further into different thinking. Instead they have now formulated a different strategy to recruit, and the continuing terrorist attacks signal a new development in which IS seems to be operating.

Another stage in the war on terrorism has reached where young Muslim men educated in prestigious colleges and universities and raised in affluent backgrounds are being recruited. More importantly, after selection they are reported missing, or they disappear from their homes for months and their parents seem to have no knowledge about their whereabouts or information about the radicalisation of their children except for them becoming more interested in religion. In spite of the police reports registered by their parents there has been no information about what they were doing during their disappearance. The behaviour profile emerging from the individuals involved in Pakistan, US, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh terrorist attacks suggest that the first signs of such a development were invisible for the law enforcement agencies in their terrorism risk analyses. There is a strong case to argue that this may no longer be a simple case of missing children scenario, but the hidden act of terrorist recruitment in process.

Anti-terrorist operations and arrests of suspects are the visible element in contemporary counterterrorism. These are, needless to say, indispensable, but do not address the roots of the problem. Intelligence and security services should also, while fighting terrorism, concentrate on behavioural profiling that will allow them to better understand the ideological, cultural, educational, and social factors of this phenomenon in order to counter it efficiently. Averting the next attack obviously is a priority, but this can only be done when there is a thorough understanding of the changing tactics of IS recruitment strategies. The role of security services is vital but is only the tip of the iceberg.

The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com