Margaret MacMillan: Terrorism almost fully died out in the 20th century. It could burn out again

2015/11/18 Leave a comment

Lessons of history:

In the next few days and weeks there will be many attempts to find explanations just as there have been after previous atrocities. Poverty is often singled out but that does not account for the fact that so often, as with 9/11, the perpetrators have come from the middle classes and had solid professions. Religion is blamed but the connection of many previous terrorists to Islam has frequently been tenuous. When two would-be jihadists left the United Kingdom a couple of years ago for the Middle East they took with them a copy of Islam for Dummies.

What we can say is that we are now seeing the dark side of globalization. The spread of information, ideas and above all images, are powerful tools of radicalization. Young men and women can identify with causes thousands of miles away. Most stop there, but a handful select themselves as warriors with a mission, even if it means they and others will die in its name. Every society has its maladjusted who, for whatever reason, feel themselves neglected, humiliated or marginalized. The cause does not make them radical; rather they are in search of something that will make them feel important and powerful. That could be the radical variants of Islam — or Christianity or Buddhism — today, or, as in the 19th and 20th centuries, revolutionary socialism or fascism.

The reasons for which people are prepared to commit terrorist acts against civilians have varied over time but terrorism itself is not new. In the years before the First World War anarchists in Europe and North America threw bombs, blew up railway tracks and assassinated key political figures from President McKinley of the United States to the Tsar of Russia. Their goal, as much as they had one, was to destroy what they saw as a corrupt and decadent capitalist society. One anarchist who calmly finished his meal in a restaurant in Paris and then shot a fellow diner said simply ‘I shall not be striking an innocent if I strike the first bourgeois that I meet.’ And like the terrorists of today those of the past frequently radicalised themselves. The young conspirators who succeeded in killing the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo ordered and read the works of the leading anarchists of the time. Gavrilo Princip, who fired the fatal shots, died without showing the slightest remorse for the catastrophe his act had brought on European civilization.

The terrorists of the past, like their counterparts today, were well aware of the disturbing effects of random acts of violence. In Barcelona, a bomb at a performance of an opera which killed 29 innocent people served to terrify the local population. In Paris in the early 1890s a series of attacks on the cafes, business offices, or the French parliament, spread panic and for a time Parisians avoided public spaces. Terrorists then as now knew the value of publicity both to call attention to their cause and to spread fear. Where in the past terrorists used handbills and letters to the newspapers, today they have access to a much greater range of techniques from tweets to professionally made videos such as the ones ISIS makes of its atrocities. And in the past as now there was the copy-cat effect. Terrorists imitated earlier atrocities perhaps to demonstrate their own revolutionary determination. In a chilling recent article in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik explores the ways in which successive students carrying out mass shootings in American high schools have consciously modelled themselves on the Columbine murders right down to getting the same type of weapons and wearing similar clothes.

As we think about the events in Paris and wonder what is to come next, it is not much comfort to think that we have been through such things before. While history cannot offer us clear lessons as to how to respond, it can perhaps help us to avoid making some mistakes. We should remember the importance of good security and policing. Already this year effective surveillance and co-operation among police forces have uncovered and foiled several terrorist plots in Europe. Governments have to be careful not to act hastily in ways that can be counter-productive. An indiscriminate crackdown on, for example, all mosques and Muslim organizations, runs the risk of alienating a significant community.

The aim of terrorists is not just to panic societies but to sow divisions among them. Already in some of the responses in France and across Europe we are hearing demands that immigration from the Middle East be halted. An Egyptian passport found near the stadium was initially said to have belonged to one of the terrorists. It now appears to have belonged to a man who was killed. Whatever the truth people are already jumping to conclusions. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front Party, is suggesting that France needs to drastically tighten its border controls and that French society is under threat from its own Muslims. If such reactions take strong hold in France and elsewhere across Europe, there is a grave danger that moderate and even secular Muslims, which most in Europe are, will feel themselves no longer part of European society.

Source: Margaret MacMillan: Terrorism almost fully died out in the 20th century. It could burn out again | National Post

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Internet plays role in terrorism, but is rarely the single cause, study says

2015/11/17 Leave a comment

Despite the previous government’s rhetoric, some good work done:

The Liberal government is inheriting a new study into the “root causes” of terrorism – a study the Harper government ordered last year, despite mocking Justin Trudeau’s call for the same basic research.

The report into how the internet plays into violent extremism concludes the web does have a role, though its psychological and social effects are often overstated, and says more research is needed.

The $40,635 study, delivered to Public Safety in late June, is an ironic rebuttal to Harper and others who dismissed Trudeau for wanting to “commit sociology” rather than combat terrorism as a crime requiring policing and surveillance tools.

“The internet is almost never in itself a sufficient nor a necessary causal factor of violent extremism,” concludes the study by five Canadian criminologists.

“It would be wrong to think of the internet as a monocausal and homogenous factor that impacts individual trajectories towards clandestine political violence in the same way.”

CBC News obtained a copy of the document under the Access to Information Act.

The report is among five that Public Safety commissioned in October 2014 as part of the Kanishka Project, a $10-million anti-terror initiative spawned by the inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing.

The internet study ordered by Public Safety does just that, referring to the “biographical preconditions” that make individuals susceptible to becoming violent extremists, including their “social isolation and marginalization.”

A key section of the study assembles 15 case studies of violent extremists, eight of them Canadian, including Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the Parliament Hill gunman who attacked on Oct. 22 last year. Zehaf-Bibeau is classed as “Jihadism/ISIS inspired,” but the group also includes Justin Bourque, an “anti-establishment” killer who gunned down five Mounties in Moncton, N.B., killing three. The list also has three “right-wing” examples from abroad.

The lead author of the report, Benjamin Ducol of Laval University, defends the inclusion of non-jihadists.

“By focusing too much on the jihadi threats, and on the jihadi militancies, we are missing other kinds of militancies that can be quite dangerous for Canadians’ safety and in terms of national security threats,” Ducol said in an interview.

The internet report drew on news media accounts as well as court records, but the group was denied access to confidential police intelligence on these cases, said Ducol, who’s seeking permission from Public Safety to produce a scholarly article on the findings.

“The internet is part of our daily life, so it kind of makes sense that it’s going to be part of the radicalization process,” he said.

Each case unique

But the impact is “very different from one case to another. … We’re still at the beginning of understanding how the internet plays a role.”

Source: Internet plays role in terrorism, but is rarely the single cause, study says – Politics – CBC News

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Q&A with Phil Gurski: Why we should be horrified, but not shocked, at Paris

2015/11/16 Leave a comment

Good, detailed interview. For those interested, Phil’s blog is well-worth following (Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting) My selected quotes, with last point on refugees particularly worth noting:

Q: We’ve seen Canadians go off to join ISIS, and we’ve seen Canadians inspired by ISIS. What is the allure?

A: It’s multiple. Some are simply horrified by what the Assad government is doing: they’re killing their own people with barrel bombs, there are people starving, refugees, families being slaughtered. Some of them buy into the ideology that the West isn’t a good place to live for a Muslim, and that a true Muslim has to leave and go to an Islamic country—and what better country than Islamic State, because they’ve established a caliphate. The caliphate is a draw—even if it’s fake, even if it’s not real. They can claim: ‘We have territory. We have a regime. We have a system of laws. We have a system of banking.’ They can say: ‘Look, we are the true Islamic State, and if you a true Muslim you should come and join us.’ For some people, it can just be a sense of adventure. And for some people, there is also a sense of the end of time. The Islamic State is big on apocalyptic messaging, and some people are inspired by it. ‘If I’m going to die, what better place to die than on the battlefield where good finally defeats evil?’

Q: What is the lifespan of this Islamist threat facing the west?

A: Let me get my crystal ball out. I’ve always said this threat had 20 to 50 years left in it—and now I’ll say 10 to 40, because I’ve been saying this for ten years now. It’s not going away. We certainly saw the al-Qaeda threat appear to wane post-9/11 because of the invasion of Afghanistan. We kind of mopped up al-Qaeda—we thought—and then the Islamic State came. Where did the Islamic State come from? The invasion of Iraq. So these things can come from directions you don’t anticipate. The ideology doesn’t seem to be on the wane. The ideology seems to be quite strong. Whether or not the Islamic State is going to last another six months, I have no idea. The attacks in Paris may lead to an incredible international response that just decimates these sons of bitches, but the ideology will still be there—and that is the thing that’s worrisome. If the ideology is still existing and still appealing to some people—for whatever reason—then you can get the next stage.

Q: Reports have surfaced today that at least one of the Paris attackers may have arrived amid the wave of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria. Poland is now saying it will not accept Syrian refugees in light of the Paris attacks, and some believe Canada, poised to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year, should rethink its plan. What do you say to those people?

A: From my perspective, they are abusing a tragedy for their own purposes. I’ve said it on my blog quite frequently: we have to do it right, and CSIS is the agency responsible for screening refugees under its legislative mandate. It will be a challenge to do that, but I have every confidence in the job that CSIS does. The vast majority of people who were radicalized in Canada and took part in plots in Canada were born and raised here. They didn’t come here through the immigration system, so shutting the doors does not preclude radicalization. To me, I find it an unfortunate and hateful response to what happened in Paris. Is it possible that one [terrorist] is going to come through? Absolutely. As I said, you can’t expect perfection from our security and law enforcement agencies. But this country was built on immigration, and saying we can’t [bring in refugees] because of an attack on Paris is unjustified.

Source: Q&A: Why we should be horrified, but not shocked, at Paris

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Terrorism has come about in assimilationist France and also in multicultural Britain. Why is that? | Kenan Malik

2015/11/16 Leave a comment

Kenyan Malik contrasts Britain and France in their approaches to multiculturalism and integration, ending up, with slightly different wording, with Canadian integrative multiculturalism:

In the past, when London was seen as the capital of Islamism and of terror groups – Londonistan, many called it – French politicians and policy-makers suggested that Britain faced a particular problem because of its multicultural policies. Such policies, they claimed, were divisive, failing to create a common set of values or sense of nationhood. As a result, many Muslims were drawn towards Islamism and violence. “Assimilationist” policies, French politicians insisted, avoided the divisive consequences of multiculturalism and allowed every individual to be treated as a citizen, not as a member of a particular racial or cultural group.

So how do we account for the way that terrorism has been nurtured in assimilationist France too? And how different are French assimilationist and British multicultural policies?

Many of the French criticisms of multiculturalism were valid. British policy-makers welcomed diversity, but tried to manage it by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. They treated minority communities as if each were a distinct, homogenous whole, each composed of people all speaking with a single voice, each defined by a singular view of culture and faith. The consequence has been the creation of a more fragmented, tribal society, which has nurtured Islamism. The irony, though, is that the French policies, from a very different starting point, have ended up at much the same place.

…. Yet, far from including North Africans as full citizens, French policy has tended to ignore the racism and discrimination they have faced and institutionalised their marginalisation. Many in France look upon its citizens of North African origins not as French but as “Arab” or as “Muslim”. But the second generation within North African communities are often as estranged from their parents’ cultures and mores, and from mainstream Islam, as they are from wider French society.

….Kouachi’s [responsible for the Charlie Hebo killings] story is not that different from that of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombings in London. They are of a milieu caught not between two cultures, as it is often claimed, but between no cultures. As a consequence, some of them have turned to Islamism and a few have expressed their rage through jihadi-style violence.

There are aspects of both the multiculturalist and assimilationist approaches that are valuable. The multicultural acceptance of diversity and the assimilationist resolve to treat everyone as citizens, not as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, are both welcome. And there are aspects of both that are damaging – the multiculturalist tendency to place minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, the assimilationist attempt to create a common identity by institutionalising the differences of groups deemed not to belong.

An ideal policy would marry the beneficial aspects of the two approaches – celebrating diversity while treating everyone as citizens, rather than as simply belonging to particular communities. In practice, though, Britain and France have both institutionalised the more damaging features – Britain placing minorities into ethnic and cultural boxes, France attempting to create a common identity by treating those of North African origin as the Other. The consequence has been that in both Britain and France societies have become more fractured and tribal. And in both nations a space has been opened up for Islamism to grow.

Source: Terrorism has come about in assimilationist France and also in multicultural Britain. Why is that? | Kenan Malik | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Paris

2015/11/14 Leave a comment

  

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Doing Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) right: Gurski

2015/11/10 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski’s sensible advice:

Which brings me back to the new government and its CVE plans (see article here).  For what it is worth, here are my suggestions, based on 32 years as an intelligence analyst and 18 months as an outreach advisor/participant”

  1. Keep the government role low-key.  “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” does not work on this file.

  2. Leverage community leaders.  They know their communities best

  3. Use Muslim youth. They have a wealth of energy and good ideas

  4. Make sure CVE covers the entire ideological spectrum, even if the single greatest national security threat today is from violent Islamists

  5. I know this one is nigh impossible but here it is anyway: do whatever you to ensure that senior public officials do not say anything really stupid (like equating wearing the hijab with terrorism – yes it was done!).

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

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Experts say Liberal counter-radicalization office should bridge, not drive, regional efforts

2015/11/04 Leave a comment

Not sure it is an either/or choice, some mix of the two approaches may be best:

The challenges, say security and radicalization experts, will lie in defining exactly how the office would work with regional actors: namely, whether it will act as a bridge or a driver.

“Is this going to be driven top-down by government or will it be government supporting more grassroots initiatives?” asked Michael Zekulin, a terrorism researcher at the University of Calgary. “I think most people would agree that it cannot be government-driven because part of the narrative is that government is part of the problem.”

During committee hearings on C-51, the Conservatives’ controversial anti-terrorism legislation, the critique given most often by terrorism researchers was that the bill ignored the need to nip radicalization in the bud, before individuals become inspired to commit violence.

Yet nothing in the legislation provided any kind of a plan for doing that.

The RCMP also promised to launch their own $3.1.-million program — initially called the Countering Violent Extremism Program but later changed to the Terrorism Prevention Program — which then-Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney admitted had no designated timeline and relies on “leveraging existing resources the RCMP already has in place, including frontline police officers, Integrated National Security Enforcement Team members and outreach coordinators.”

At this point, there are few details available about what the Liberals would plan to do differently or how a national coordinator would work with existing programs already being implemented by regional bodies.

There are various initiatives being launched by police agencies and local governments across Canada, said Lorne Dawson, co-director of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.

In September, the City of Montreal was the only Canadian city out of 23 from across the globe that signed on to the Strong Cities Network, a forum for leaders to share best practices and community-based approaches for tackling violent extremism, while the Edmonton and Ottawa police departments are rumoured to be planning their own counter-extremism initiatives.

The York Regional Police are also in the process of hiring a “Counter Violent Extremism Subject Matter Expert” and just two months ago the Calgary Police Service launched ReDirect, which aims to prevent youth from becoming radicalized after several high-profile instances of local youth leaving the country to join ISIS.

One of those young men was Damian Clairmont, who died in January 2014 after going to Syria to fight with ISIS.

His mother, Christianne Boudreau, became an active proponent for stronger initiatives to prevent youth from becoming radicalized and in addition to launching her own family counselling network, Hayat Canada, also helped launch the the Extreme Dialogue video campaign earlier this year.

Boudreau says it’s essential to have someone who can coordinate efforts nationally and help integrate global best practices into domestic, community-based approaches. But she cautions that any coordinator will face the added challenge of having to earn the trust of organizations who may be skeptical of working with the government.

“I think the biggest difficulty is the diversity of the various organizations and helping them connect — there’s inter-faith, there’s the authorities and everybody else involved, and right now [there’s] the trust factor with the authorities, with the government,” she said, noting that any national coordinator should also be prepared to work with international partners as well as domestic ones to learn and adapt best practices.

“It’s integral to help bring the groups together to help cross those barriers, to help foster the diversity that’s there and help everybody get along.”

Experts say Liberal counter-radicalization office should bridge, not drive, regional efforts

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F.B.I. Tool to Identify Extremists Is Criticized – The New York Times

2015/11/03 Leave a comment

Although understandable that the FBI would have a targeted approach with respect to Islamic-inspired extremism, the criticism is valid given that it ignores the elephant in the room: gun violence and white extremism:

The F.B.I. is about to introduce an interactive program it developed for teachers and students, aimed at training them to prevent young people from being drawn into violent extremism. But Muslim, Arab and other religious and civil rights leaders who were invited to preview the program have raised strong objections, saying it focuses almost entirely on Islamic extremism, which they say has not been a factor in the epidemic of school shootings and attacks in the United States.

The program, according to those who saw it at F.B.I. headquarters, called “Don’t Be a Puppet,” leads the viewer through a series of games and tips intended to teach how to identify someone who may be falling prey to radical extremists. With each successful answer, scissors cut a puppet’s string, until the puppet is free.

In the campaign against terrorists such as the Islamic State, law enforcement agencies have been stepping up efforts to identify those susceptible to recruitment. The agencies have enlisted the cooperation and advice of religious and community leaders. But the controversy over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new online tool is one more indication that there is no consensus on who should be involved in detecting and reporting suspects, and where to draw the line between prevention and racial or religious profiling.

“The F.B.I. is developing a website designed to provide awareness about the dangers of violent extremist predators on the Internet,” a spokeswoman for the agency said late Sunday, “with input from students, educators and community leaders.”

The F.B.I. had told the community organizations that the program would be available online as soon as Monday. The organizations’ leaders spoke to a reporter only after learning that the F.B.I. was likely to proceed despite their concern that the program would stigmatize Arab and Muslim students, who are already susceptible to bullying.

“Teachers in classrooms should not become an extension of law enforcement,” said Arjun S. Sethi, an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Sethi, who specializes in counterterrorism and law enforcement, was invited by the F.B.I. to give feedback on the program.

“The program is based on flawed theories of radicalization, namely that individuals radicalize in the exact same way and it’s entirely discernible,” he said. “But it’s not, and the F.B.I. is basically asking teachers and students to suss these things out.”

He said the F.B.I.’s program amounted to “misplaced priorities.”

“The greatest threat facing American schoolchildren today is gun violence,” he said. “It’s not Muslim extremism.”

Teachers do not always have the training or judgment to identify extremists, said several religious leaders who mentioned the Muslim student in Texas who was detained and handcuffed after taking a clock he built to school.

Source: F.B.I. Tool to Identify Extremists Is Criticized – The New York Times

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Former CSIS analyst on homegrown terrorism and Islamic doctrine – The Globe and Mail

2015/10/14 Leave a comment

Good interview with Phil Gurski, former CSIS homegrown terrorism expert, regarding the messages in his new book, The Threat From Within. Last para particularly noteworthy:

You write that extremism is like the aphorism about real estate and location – but “narrative, narrative, narrative.”

What they [al-Qaeda-inspired radicals] are propagating and distributing is this conviction they are responding to our aggression as Westerners, and they are merely defending themselves. And that’s not true, but it doesn’t have to be true to be effective. The whole point of the book is there is no pattern to this. We have to accept that terrorists come from us. They come from Canadian society. They are not off-the-boat immigrants.

You point out, though, the narrative is partly rooted in religious doctrine, or at least concepts like jihad, hijra …

Here’s the dilemma that mainstream Muslims face: The people who commit these acts of terrorism see themselves as actually representative Muslims. In fact, they see themselves as the only true Muslims and start criticizing everyone else as being non-Muslims. So it comes from within Islam, but it is not Islam. How do we accept they have taken pieces of 1,400 years of Islamic history, and use it to their advantage?

You write that fundamentalist imams in Canada should be challenged.

Even if we’re not talking about terrorism, if we’re talking about small pockets of society that will basically advocate intolerance and rejection of other parts of society, do we want a country like that? What the [fundamentalist preachers] do is they are very intolerant and rejectionist of other Muslims, let alone non-Muslims. I think we have an obligation to challenge this, to argue against this.

But our political leaders don’t know the difference between Islamic doctrines.

Politicians are going to do what politicians are going to do. That’s fine. Everyone recognizes if we’re going to talk about this issue, to do something about it at an early level, we need early intervention, before it becomes a security-intelligence issue. The government’s role is to foster and encourage the grassroots that are starting in this country. The government role has to be very much a background role.

But if the problem is narrative, and the narrative has had 1,400 years, how does someone in Ottawa come up with a program to counter it?

The line I like to use – and it really shocks some audiences – is that right now the only solution we have is to start with the four-year-olds. If we can get all the four-year-olds to understand what this narrative is saying and reject it, we’ll be fine.

Like in junior-high assemblies where the police used to say, “Don’t do drugs?”

No, it’s more than that. We as a society have to understand the child you’re raising has to be raised in an environment of tolerance and acceptance. So if you can get that right across the board – not just Muslim communities, not just immigrant communities, but in Wonder Bread white communities – we’re going to be in good shape.

Source: Former CSIS analyst on homegrown terrorism and Islamic doctrine – The Globe and Mail

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Investigation shows cracks in Canada’s plan to stop homegrown terrorism

2015/10/01 Leave a comment

More indications of the gap in the Government’s anti-radicalization strategy:

Federal authorities argue they are tackling the problem in a number of ways, by enhancing enforcement powers, toughening laws and developing strategies to counter terrorist propaganda.

But with gaps in programs to prevent radicalization, grassroots communities across Canada have stepped up, using their own time and money to stop young people from reaching the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

“We Canadians have been scared into believing that there are locust-like masses” of terrorists, says Hussein Hamdani, who’s helped with 10 intervention cases of young would-be terrorists, and sat on the government’s terrorism advisory panel for a decade.

“All this rhetoric, and there seems to be no corresponding investment in prevention.”

Instead of being given counselling or mentorship, he argues Canadian youth at risk of radicalization are largely ignored, left to watch videos glorifying their compatriots abroad.

… Security experts such as Phil Gurski say Canada is at risk of losing the battle for the hearts and minds of at-risk youth, without improved efforts to combat the underlying message of violent extremists.

“The Islamic State has a lot going for it. It’s got territory, it’s got quasi-religious authority,” says Gurski, who spent 12 years as a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent and has specialized in al-Qaida-inspired radicalization for three decades.

Others like Blaney argue Canada has a solid record of deterring attacks and thwarting terrorist travel, but it’s hard to deny ISIL’s momentum.

…“There’s a sense of purpose, there’s a sense of addressing historical grievances,” Gurski explains. “That’s why people are flocking to it — that’s why it’s got 20,000 foreign fighters.”

 

… But how big is the threat?

By last October, the RCMP flagged 80 Canadians as having returned after supporting groups like ISIL abroad.

Source: Investigation shows cracks in Canada’s plan to stop homegrown terrorism | Calgary Herald

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