Radicalization, the Loss of Canadian Innocence and the Need for Perspective

2014/10/23 Leave a comment

With the two killings this week of Canadian soldiers, one by Martin Couture-Rouleau’s running over soldiers in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the other by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau and his the attack on the War Memorial and Parliament Hill.

Surreal morning for me as I was downtown for meetings, about 8 blocks away from the Hill, learning about the shootings from TV monitors, along with others glued to TV monitors following developments. Felt very much, albeit on a much smaller scale, when I was in LA during the 911 attacks.

Some common points in recent commentary.

A note of caution on over-reacting and the need to maintain balance between freedom, access, and security. John Ivison: In response to Quebec terror attack we must remember a healthy balance between security and freedom, a point echoed by Andrew Coyne in Andrew Coyne: We can’t stop every little terror attack, so let’s brace ourselves and adapt where he recommends, not “a panicky search for false assurances, nor even defiance, but a collective insouciance.” Martin Regg Cohn praises the Ontario political leaders for keeping to the normal Parliamentary schedule in The democratic show must go on: Cohn.

While there was universal praise, and deservedly so, for Parliament’s Sergeant-at-Arms, Kevin Vickers, both for his quick and efficient handling of the attack as well as his philosophy of keeping Parliament a public space, Michael Den Tandt savages the overall handling of the attack in Michael Den Tandt: Ottawa shooting shows Canadian capital’s utter lack of readiness, and how information was not communicated. Haroon Siddiqui makes similar, but less well argued points, in Killings of two soldiers raise troubling questions: Siddiqui.

Margaret Wente takes the opposite tack, in an almost boosterish tone, contrary to much of the reporting, argues that Canadians will not change and that the attack was handled calmly and without hysteria in  Terrorists don’t have a chance in this country. Joe Warmington of The Toronto Sun takes the opposite tack in Canada will never be the same, as does Ian MacLeod in The Ottawa Citizen, in Analysis: Effects on Ottawa will be lasting and far-reaching (with video).

Also in the Post, which generally has some of the strongest reporting in this area, Tom Blackwell, their health reporter, reports on the “lone wolf” phenomenon and some of the factors that may result in some being open to radicalization in ‘Rhetoric and bluster’: Was attack on soldiers really terrorism, or just the violent act of a disturbed man? The Globe has a good profile on Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the War Memorial and Parliament Hill in Suspected killer in Ottawa shootings had a disturbing side, that reinforces some of these points.

From La Presse, a report on the local mosque in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and what appears to be a very conservative Imam in terms of social teachings but no indication that he preached violence, or whether Couture-Rouleau went to the mosque regularly (seems he was most active on social media) in Un imam controversé à Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

Listening to the RCMP outline what they did and what they could do, particularly in the case of Couture-Rouleau (as of writing not as fulsome an account for Zehaf-Bibeau) hard to see that any of the Government’s recent or planned initiatives would have made a difference. The RCMP monitored him, spoke to friends and families who shared their well-founded worries, confiscated his passport but as the RCMP officer at the press conference said, “We couldn’t arrest someone for having radical thoughts, it’s not a crime in Canada.”

Couture-Rouleau, like Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, were both born in Canada. Couture-Rouleau was not a dual-national and would not be subject, had he lived, for citizenship revocation. It is unclear whether Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, given his father was Libyan in origin, would be entitled to Libyan citizenship and thus theoretically subject to revocation.

And while tragedies for the families and friends of the soldiers killed, and (another) reminder that we have extremists among us, both reassuring and worrying that both of these appear to be “lone wolf” attacks rather than groups and more “sophisticated” plans and conspiracies that could result in significantly more casualities.

I tend to be between Wente and Warmington: no, not everything has changed but neither has everything remained the same. Our political leaders, of all stripes, as well as the media and others, will play a role in ensuring, or not, that we retain perspective and balance.

 

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ICYMI: CSIS has tabs on radicalized Canadians who have fought abroad

2014/10/23 Leave a comment

Good analysis of the challenges in knowing the numbers and the nature of radicalized Canadians:

“When we’re talking about 80 returnees, we’re not talking about 80 people who have fought in Iraq and Syria, and we’re not necessarily talking about people who were directly involved in planning terrorist activities,” Coulombe told the committee. “We have Canadians in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Lebanon, in the Sahel, in the Maghreb, who are involved in terrorist-related activities. But it could be fundraising, could be propaganda, so I don’t want people to believe that we have 80 returnees who are hard fighters in Iraq and Syria, because that is not the picture we have at the moment.”

CSIS has tabs on radicalized Canadians who have fought abroad.

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Denmark tries a soft-handed approach to returned Islamist fighters, sending them to therapy, not jail

2014/10/22 1 Comment

Another approach:

In Denmark, not one returned fighter has been locked up. Instead, taking the view that discrimination at home is as criminal as Islamic State recruiting, officials here are providing free psychological counseling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with stanching the flow of recruits.

Some progressives say Aarhus should become a model for other communities in the United States and Europe that are trying to cope with the question of what to do when the jihad generation comes back to town.

For better or worse, this city’s answer has left the likes of Talha wandering freely on the streets. The son of moderate Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, he became radicalized and fought with an Islamist brigade in Syria for nine months before returning home last October. Back on Danish soil, he still dreams of one day living in a Middle Eastern caliphate. He rejects the Islamic State’s beheading of foreign hostages but defends their summary executions of Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.

“I know how some people think. They are afraid of us, the ones coming back,” says Talha, a name he adopted to protect his identity because he never told his father he went to fight. “Look, we are really not dangerous.”

Yet critics call this city’s soft-handed approach just that — dangerous. And the effort here is fast becoming a pawn in the much larger debate raging across Europe over Islam and the nature of extremism. More and louder voices here are clamoring for new laws that could not only charge returnees with treason but also set curbs on immigration from Muslim countries and on Islamic traditions such as religious circumcision.

In a country that vividly remembers the violent backlash in the Muslim world after a Danish newspaper published cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad in 2006, many here want Aarhus to crack down on — not cajole — extremists.

“They are being much too soft [in Aarhus], and they fail to see the problem,” said Marie Krarup, an influential member of Parliament from the Danish People’s Party, the country’s third-largest political force. “The problem is Islam. Islam itself is radical. You cannot integrate a great number of Muslims into a Christian country.”

Aarhus is treating its returning religious fighters like wayward youths rather than terrorism suspects because that’s the way most of them started out.

The majority were young men like Talha, between 16 and 28, including several former criminals and gang members who had recently found what they began to call “true Islam.” Most of them came from moderate Muslim homes and, quite often, were the children of divorced parents. And most lived in the Gellerupparken ghetto.

A densely packed warren of mid-rise public housing blocks, Gellerupparken is home to immigrants and their families who arrived in the waves of Muslim migration that began in the 1960s. Unemployment — especially among youths — is far higher than the city average. At one point, crime was so bad that even ambulances needed police escorts. It made a perfect breeding ground for angry young men at risk of becoming militants.

On a quest to change that, the city is in the midst of a major overhaul of the ghetto. Better housing could improve conditions and lure more ethnic Danes, contributing to integration. New thoroughfares and roads, meanwhile, would link it more closely to the rest of the city.

Context in Canada is different with many radicalized coming from middle class backgrounds and appearing relatively well-integrated in their early adulthood but programs for re-integration of returning fighters, when there is not sufficient evidence to prosecute, should be part of the “toolkit.”

Denmark tries a soft-handed approach to returned Islamist fighters, sending them to therapy, not jail

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The menace next door: a dumb America – Paul Wells

2014/10/20 1 Comment

Paul Wells takes down Garrett Graff’s supposedly serious piece on the risk of terrorism from Canada:

Well … yeah. Look, one day maybe some terrorists will tire of travelling from Miami to Boston to Dearborn to the suburbs of Minneapolis as easily as anyone else travels in a free country, and they’ll decide to live dangerously by adding an international border to their itinerary. Flying from the Middle East to O’Hare is so boring. I think I’ll fly into Toronto, rent a car with traceable ID, sit on my ass in traffic at the Bluewater Bridge for an hour, then hand my passport to armed guys while my escape routes forward and back are blocked. Allahu akbar! And until that day happens, Homeland Security assets will be far more rationally allocated along the Mexican border than against returning weekenders from Minnesota, because in the real world there are a thousand ways and reasons to die, even if that harshes Garrett M. Graff’s weekend thinkpiece buzz.

Somebody clean up this mess. If you’re interested, here’s Luiza interviewing somebody with something intelligent to say about border security.

Of course, one of the recurring nightmares for the Canadian government and security officials is just that, hence all the measures being taken to reduce the risk.

The menace next door: a dumb America.

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ISIS threat could mute objections to expanded anti-terror laws, critics fear – Politics – CBC News

2014/10/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see if the Bill is narrowly focussed on the stated gaps or whether, as is often its want, the Government over-reaches to the point of provoking opposition.

The oversight issue is critical as more powers are provided. We have seen the risks of lack of oversight in the US, with the CIA essentially spying on Congress among other things:

Independent MP Brent Rathgeber agrees that the current international crisis and threat of homegrown terror “will provide cover for the government to expand the roles of CSEC and CSIS, and what they share with the Five Eyes.”

The Five Eyes is the collective name for Canada and its intelligence-sharing allies — the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Rathgeber stressed some of those powers may very well be necessary, “given that the ISIS threat must be taken seriously.”

The issue, he said, is to balance those national security concerns with privacy rights.”

Security agencies unchecked will grow both in times of imminent threat and in times of comparative security,” he told CBC News. “Therefore it is incumbent on civilian oversight and Parliament to provide checks and balances.”

Even so, he said he’s not expecting to see any increased oversight powers in the new bill — and “given the legitimate climate of fear, or at least concern,” he said, “the public will be complacent.”

By a twist of procedural timing, MPs may find themselves with an opportunity to debate greater oversight when a private members bill, sponsored by Liberal defence critic Joyce Murray, comes before the House this fall.

The bill would create a special parliamentary committee to monitor legislative, regulatory, policy and administrative framework for intelligence and national security in Canada, and review activities of all federal agencies, including CSIS.

Murray told CBC News she “has no problem in principle” with giving CSIS more leeway to keep track of suspected terrorists abroad.But shes not ready to give up on transparency and accountability.

“The absence of parliamentary oversight and review mechanism for our security agencies means an absence of accountability to the Canadian public.”

She’ll need to the support of the government to pass her bill, however, which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

“There is robust oversight of national security agencies in Canada,” Public Safety spokesman Jason Tamming told CBC News.

“We are always focused on protecting the rights of Canadians,” he said, adding the government appointed a former Ontario NDP MPP to the civilian oversight body in 2009.

“We don’t need to strike any new committees to create duplicative oversight.”

As to the last point, given the overall Government approach (e.g., cyberbullying bill which included increased surveillance powers), impossible to take seriously.

ISIS threat could mute objections to expanded anti-terror laws, critics fear – Politics – CBC News.

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Experts cautious about boost in powers for spy agency | Ottawa Citizen

2014/10/18 Leave a comment

Some initial reactions to the proposed changes to CSIS to allow it to counter extremism and terrorism. Seems like the informant issue may be more problematic than the “Five Eyes” sharing issue:

One measure would let CSIS work more closely with its allies in the “Five Eyes” spy network, which is made up of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. This would allow CSIS to obtain information from the others on Canadians fighting abroad with terror groups, and would allow it to help another Five Eyes country track its nationals working with terror groups in Canada.

A second measure would give CSIS informants the same anonymity that already exists for police sources, who are not subject to cross-examination and can have their identities hidden, even from trial judges.

“What we’re trying to do is give our sources a class privilege akin to that of law enforcement,” said Andy Ellis, CSIS’s assistant director of operations, citing a “chilling effect” on informants without such protections.

“They’re going to have to be fairly careful in how they draft this,” said Craig Forcese, associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa. “The devil’s in the details in terms of what’s in the bill.”

Both changes come as courts have slammed CSIS’s approach to investigations.

Last year, a federal court judge said Five Eyes warrants were being used as a back-door way to spy on Canadians, putting them at risk of being detained abroad.

“If you throw some info over the fence, the allies can do whatever they want,” said Forcese, expressing concern over cases like that of Maher Arar, a Syrian Canadian detained and deported to Syria while in the United States. Arar was tortured during his imprisonment in Syria but later completely exonerated in Canada from any links to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in May that CSIS informants already have sufficient protection, with their anonymity decided on a case-by-case basis.

Intelligence expert Wesley Wark served as an expert witness in that case, in which CSIS revealed one of its sources had failed lie-detector tests. He said not allowing informants to be cross-examined in secret trials would be “very problematic.”

“The court said informants need more protection, but not blanket protection. Why are they going to ignore that ruling and introduce something into legislation?” said Wark, adding that he’s never heard of a CSIS informant’s identity being publicly revealed since the agency’s creation in 1984.

Forcese said police informant anonymity has developed in case law — not through legislation — so enshrining it in legislation will require close constitutional scrutiny to make sure the right of a fair trial isn’t infringed.

Experts cautious about boost in powers for spy agency | Ottawa Citizen.

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Harper learning to separate Islam from terrorism: Siddiqui | Toronto Star

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

Signs of change noted by one of the harsher critics of the Harper Government, Haroon Siddiqui:

Harper himself avoids Canadian Muslims except for a selected few, such as the minority Ismailis. The prime minister and his Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney have pointedly courted those who’ve come to Canada fleeing persecution in Muslim lands — Christians and Ahmadis from Pakistan, Christians from Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, Bahais from Iran, etc. Some openly spit hatred at Muslims, yet are cosseted by the Harperites.

Contrast this with Barack Obama and David Cameron of Britain who do extensive outreach to Muslims, at home and abroad.

And unlike Obama who speaks knowledgeably and confidently about how terrorism violates Islamic principles, Harper has been clumsy, speaking instead of “Islamic terrorism.”

But he is learning.

Last month in opening the Aga Khan Museum, he said:“The Aga Khan has devoted an extraordinary amount of time, toil and resources to the ideals of Islamic culture and history. In doing so, His Highness has greatly contributed to demystifying Islam, throughout the world, by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism. This is a vision of Islam of which all Canadians can be proud especially when a contrary and violent distortion of that vision so regularly dominates the news.”

A few days later, speaking in New York, Harper went against the holy grail of Islamophobes, that terrorism emanates mostly from mosques. Speaking of radicalized youth, he said:

“Our experience in Canada has been that their connection to the Muslim community is often extremely tangential. A surprising number of these people have no background in Islam whatsoever. They’re individuals who for whatever reason drift to these kinds of causes. Even those with backgrounds in Islam, they’re often people who are not participants in mosques . . . They’re off on kind of a radical, political fringe.

“Our security and intelligence people would tell you that a good relationship with our Muslim community has actually really helped to identify a lot of these threats before they become much more serious.”

Harper learning to separate Islam from terrorism: Siddiqui | Toronto Star.

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How the world is dealing with the militant threat

2014/10/15 Leave a comment

Good reporting on radicalization in Belgium (the country with the dubious honour of the highest number of “terror tourists” per capita among Western countries) and the current trial of those accused of recruiting them:

For some of the members of Sharia4Belgium, their journey to Syria did not go as planned. Mr. Bontinck, for instance, has maintained that he did not take part in any fighting, which earned him the mistrust of his comrades. He was imprisoned at various points by the al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front and the Islamic State and has co-operated with Belgian authorities since his return to the country.

Family members of some of those still in Syria have attended the start of the trial looking for answers and, in some cases, accountability. The mother of one young woman who went to Syria was removed from the courtroom after she began shouting and trying to approach Mr. Belkacem, Le Soir reported.

Some experts caution that prosecutors could find it difficult to prove charges against returned fighters, particularly where they concern the activities of the defendants overseas. “The courts will not take Twitter feeds as sufficient evidence of what they have done,” said Jytte Klausen, a professor at Brandeis University outside of Boston and founder of the Western Jihadism Project, on a conference call earlier this week.

Still, others said the high-profile case is a chance for the Belgian authorities to send a message. “I am quite sure that they want to set an example for the guys who are in Syria or who want to fight in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent historian who tracks Belgian jihadis. “I do believe there will be convictions.”

How the world is dealing with the militant threat – The Globe and Mail.

Along with a good summary of how some countries are handling the issue:

 A look at how countries are battling terror networks 

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Salman Rushdie condemns hate-filled rhetoric of Islamic fanaticism

2014/10/14 Leave a comment

Salman Rushdie on Islamic fanaticism:

 “A word I dislike greatly, Islamophobia, has been coined to discredit those who point at these excesses, by labelling them as bigots. But in the first place, if I don’t like your ideas, it must be acceptable for me to say so, just as it is acceptable for you to say that you don’t like mine. Ideas cannot be ring-fenced just because they claim to have this or that fictional sky god on their side.

“And in the second place, its important to remember that most of those who suffer under the yoke of the new Islamic fanaticism are other Muslims…

“It is right to feel phobia towards such matters. As several commentators have said, what is being killed in Iraq is not just human beings, but a whole culture. To feel aversion towards such a force is not bigotry. It is the only possible response to the horror of events.

“I can’t, as a citizen, avoid speaking of the horror of the world in this new age of religious mayhem, and of the language that conjures it up and justifies it, so that young men, including young Britons, led towards acts of extreme bestiality, believe themselves to be fighting a just war.”

The author said members of other religions have distorted language, but to a much lesser degree.

“It’s fair to say that more than one religion deserves scrutiny. Christian extremists in the United States today attack womens’ liberties and gay rights in language they claim comes from God. Hindu extremists in India today are launching an assault on free expression and trying, literally, to rewrite history, proposing the alteration of school textbooks to serve their narrow saffron dogmatism.

“But the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam, and much of it has its roots in the ideological language of blood and war emanating from the Salafist movement within Islam, globally backed by Saudi Arabia.

“For these ideologues, “modernity itself is the enemy, modernity with its language of liberty, for women as well as men, with its insistence of legitimacy in government rather than tyranny, and with its strong inclination towards secularism and away from religion.”

Strong yet much more focussed and nuanced than Maher or Harris.

Salman Rushdie condemns hate-filled rhetoric of Islamic fanaticism – Telegraph.

Fareed Zakaria echoes comments on Maher and Harris made by others on how counterproductive, in addition to being wrong, their comments are:

Harris should read Zachary Karabell’s book “Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation.” What he would discover is that there have been wars but also many centuries of peace. Islam has at times been at the cutting edge of modernity, but like today, it has also been the great laggard. As Karabell explained to me, “If you exclude the last 70 years or so, in general the Islamic world was more tolerant of minorities than the Christian world. That’s why there were more than a million Jews living in the Arab world until the early 1950s — nearly 200,000 in Iraq alone.”

If there were periods when the Islamic world was open, modern, tolerant and peaceful, this suggests that the problem is not in the religion’s essence and that things can change once more. So why is Maher making these comments? I understand that as a public intellectual he feels the need to speak what he sees as the unvarnished truth (though his “truth” is simplified and exaggerated). But surely there is another task for public intellectuals as well — to try to change the world for good.

Fareed Zakaria: Let’s be honest, Islam has a problem right now

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Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

Not out of character: denouncing something for political purposes while quietly carrying out some needed work:

According to a request for proposals posted online on Wednesday, Public Safety Canada is looking to carry out five research projects delving into such areas as the “psychology” of violent extremism, the role of the Internet in radicalization, and the extent to which women become involved in terror movements.

“We are funding research that is studying the participation of western extremist travellers in the conflict in Syria, how they communicate, how they travel. This research will give us the building blocks that we can use to develop better strategies to stop radicalization before it ever manifests itself,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney told the House of Commons public safety committee on Wednesday.

Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization.

CBC report on how the Government continues to emphasize enforcement, not prevention, in its public messaging (both are needed):

[Michael] Zekulin had hoped to hear details of a counter-radicalization strategy announced months ago by the RCMP. He didn’t get it.

“The whole counter-radicalization strategy is to prevent the next generation of fighters. We need to get into communities, recognize the threat at home because groups like ISIS are very sophisticated using social media to recruit to their cause.”

In fact, Canada is well behind other allies in developing a counter-radicalization strategy. Britain, the U.S. and Australia already have such plans in place.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says cooperation between his force and CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) has provided timely information that has led to successful arrests and prosecutions in recent years.

“We have about 63 active national security investigations on 90 individuals related to the travelling group — both people who intend to go or who have returned — so the pace and tempo of the operations is quite brisk,” he told the committee on Wednesday, adding “that it’s nothing Canadians need to be alarmed about.

“I think we are managing through our collective efforts our response that is appropriate to the nature of these suspected offences.”

Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director of CSIS, points out that while Canadian security agencies have increased their vigilance, Canadians still wind up in conflict zones.

“At the end of the day when they come back there’s a good chance they are deeply radicalized,” he told CBC News. “They are trained in weapons of war and they may hurt Canadians at home.”

For his part, Zekulin also worries that those radicals will become effective recruiters once they’ve returned. As fighters and as Canadians, he says, they have credibility and a story that can influence others in their community.

So while the federal government is sending jets to stop the spread of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an important battle over radicalized Canadians may also be taking shape here at home — a battle in which Ottawa may already have waited too long to intervene.

Has Ottawa been too slow to take on radicalized Canadians?

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