Toronto 18 may have been shock for Canada, but it was not harbinger of a path to ruin: Gurski

2016/06/14 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski’s reflections on what we learned from the Toronto 18:

The event was a seminal one for me as a CSIS analyst and I’d like to reflect on what this meant then as well as what is means now. Much has happened in the intervening decade and much of that has been good in Canada. Firstly, the Toronto 18 investigation proved—or rather should have proven—to skeptical Canadians that terrorism was real and not just something that happened ‘”over there.” Truth be told, there were significant doubts about the real nature of the threat in June 2006 and whether this cell was that dangerous: many believed that CSIS and the RCMP had exaggerated the plot. I am happy to say that 10 years later most Canadians accept the fact that we have terrorists in our midst. This turnaround in public opinion may have had a lot to do with the attack on the National War Memorial and Parliament on Oct. 22, 2014, but in any event it is a step forward in our collective understanding and acceptance of the issue.

Secondly, the RCMP advised Muslim leaders of the impending takedown just before it took place to allow them to prepare their communities for the news. This was an outstanding decision at the time and the relationship between Canadian government officials and these communities has only gotten better since then (albeit with an unfortunate downturn at the end of the Harper years). All this shows that we do things differently in Canada and I know that many countries have sought our input as they seek to learn from our model. Are we perfect? No, but we are in a much better position than most Western countries on this issue.

Thirdly, the case demonstrated clearly that a group of Canadian Muslims can radicalize to violence entirely at home with no significant foreign input. This was not an al-Qaeda-led or—directed plot (Islamic State did not exist back then) but rather a terrorist act planned based on what is known as the al-Qaeda (or single) narrative—the notion that the West was at war with Islam and that “true” Muslims (self-defined) had to fight to defend the faith. The Toronto 18 sought to punish Canada and Canadians for their decision to send soldiers to Afghanistan back in 2001. In an era where we obsess about IS and their involvement in organizing attacks abroad, it is important to remember that most plots in the West are homegrown.

Fourthly, the case showed that CSIS and the RCMP could work hand in glove to successfully stop a terrorist act from occurring. The investigation started with CSIS and was handed over to the Mounties when it was clear a criminal act was being planned. CSIS sources became RCMP agents (not always an easy thing to do) more or less seamlessly and a serious terrorist attack was averted. There is little doubt that the CSIS-RCMP relationship has had its ups and downs but the two do work together well and Canadians are safer as a result.

Lastly, despite more foiled plots and two successful ones in the interim, Canada remains in a good position when it comes to homegrown terrorism. We are not in the same league as France or Belgium or the U.K., or even the U.S. Our government has done a much better job at understanding the threat and putting measures into place, both soft and hard, to deal with it. We had the five-year $10-million Kanishka research project which, although many thought it under-delivered (I am among that group), set the stage for a more robust and more mature academic environment to look at terrorism where none existed before. Public Safety Canada’s Citizen Engagement branch developed a community outreach program that was the envy of all our allies and the creation of the new Office of the Coordinator for Counter Radicalization and Community Outreach will hopefully enhance this effort. There is more work to be done but these are all enviable achievements.

The Toronto 18 may have been a shock to the system for Canada, but it was not the harbinger of a path to ruin. We are still a relatively safe country and while we must remain vigilant and ensure that our security and law enforcement agencies enjoy the necessary resourcing and public trust, we will likely remain so.

Source: Toronto 18 may have been shock for Canada, but it was not harbinger of a path to ruin |

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

Federal study disputes claim diaspora communities breed extremists

2016/06/06 Leave a comment

The latest study showing that diaspora communities largely play an integrating role, similar to the Mosaic Institute study on imported conflicts (see Unpacking conflict: “We don’t import conflict. But we do import trauma.”):

Canada’s immigrant communities are not breeding grounds for terrorists, as some would argue, but should be enlisted to reduce any violent radicalization in their midst, says a newly released report.

The research, ordered by the Harper government in 2014, appears to repudiate Conservative measures that alienated Muslim communities in the months before last year’s election.

The authors examined four diaspora communities in Canada — Afghan, Somali, Syrian and Tamil — and found them to be willing allies for rooting out extremism among their often young and isolated members.

“More resilient diaspora communities represent the best line of defence against violent extremism,” says the March 30 report, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act.

“Diasporas are not a threat, as some of the mainstream discourse on counterterrorism has often implied, but rather Canada’s most valued asset in the fight against terrorism.”

The authors found a mutual distrust between these communities and security agencies, driven partly by news media and academics who have “framed diaspora communities as partly complicit in terrorist activity, a source of threat for host countries like Canada.”

“It has fostered suspicion and even discrimination against certain diaspora groups.”

The research says security agencies such as the RCMP and CSIS need to build trust, especially among Muslim groups in Canada who can often alert police to potential terror activity.

“Dispelling Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination should be a centrepiece of any community engagement strategy surrounding anti-radicalization, as it has fuelled distrust of the state and wider Canadian society in Muslim diaspora communities.”

Helps restore balance

The $180,000 study for Public Safety Canada was carried out over a year by the Kitchener, Ont.-based Security Governance Group, a private consultant firm.

Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst Phil Gurski, a specialist in homegrown radicalization, applauded the findings, saying they can help restore the balance between “hard security” — surveillance, arrests and charges — and “soft security,” or building trust within ethnic communities.

“We had the balance fairly good a couple of years ago, and then some unfortunate things happened towards the end of the Harper government that kind of maligned the trust we had built with communities and put us back a few steps,” Gurski said in an interview.

Among those setbacks was the government’s removal of Hussein Hamdani in April 2015 from the Cross Cultural Roundtable on National Security, after a Quebec blogger alleged Hamdani harboured terrorist sympathies.

The removal resulting from “baseless allegations” was “the biggest blow to the government’s relationship with the Muslim community,” said Gurski, who was Hamdani’s colleague and friend. “It had a chilling effect.”

The incident was followed by last summer’s niqab controversy, in which the Harper government pressed to have Muslim women remove their face covering at citizenship ceremonies, and the Oct. 2 announcement by Conservatives Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander of a “barbaric cultural practices tip line,” allowing citizens to call RCMP anonymously with allegations about their neighbours.

Not too late

Gurski, who was a CSIS officer from 2001 to 2013 and then with Public Safety until retirement last year, said it’s not too late to rebuild trust.

“The communities are willing to play ball again, despite the disappointments they had toward the end of the Harper government,” he said.

Sara Thompson, who teaches criminology at Toronto’s Ryerson University, said the report’s findings parallel her own work with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.

“Our findings are remarkably consistent: on the whole the communities under examination should not be viewed as ‘suspect’ but rather as important allies in efforts to prevent radicalization,” she said.

“Community-based tripwires are often activated via a concept known as ‘leakage’ — the tendency among radicalized individuals to broadcast their views and intentions to commit violent acts in advance, typically to friends, family, acquaintances and/or community members.”

Source: Federal study disputes claim diaspora communities breed extremists – Politics – CBC News

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Sikh nationalist movement attempts to shed violent past

2016/06/06 Leave a comment

Interesting:

Advocates for an independent Sikh homeland say they’re looking to the future and pushing for a referendum in India within four years, but the Khalistan movement has been hit by a familiar controversy – an alleged link to extremist violence.

Hardeep Nijjar, a B.C. man who has collected signatures to have anti-Sikh violence in India in the 1980s recognized as genocide, was accused in an Indian newspaper report this week of running a “terror camp” east of Vancouver. Mr. Nijjar was also alleged to be the operational head of a group known as the Khalistan Terror Force and said to be linked to a 2007 attack on a cinema that killed six people. He denied wrongdoing and sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in which he said he has never supported violence.

Sikhs for Justice, a non-profit organization with headquarters in Toronto and New York for which Mr. Nijjar has volunteered, rushed to his defence and accused the Indian government of trying to discredit the push for Sikh self-determination.

The incident highlighted the trouble the Khalistan movement has had shedding its violent reputation, particularly in Canada.

Khalistan proponents were linked to extremist violence in the 1980s, most notably the Air India bombings, which killed 329 people on an airliner and two baggage handlers in Tokyo in 1985. During the subsequent trial, the Crown alleged the bombings were carried out in response to the Indian government’s raid on the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, a year earlier.

Since the report involving Mr. Nijjar surfaced, the RCMP has said little about his case specifically, or about the Khalistan movement generally. But a former analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said the movement appears to have quieted down in recent years and Canadian law-enforcement agencies have shifted resources elsewhere, such as Islamist extremism.

When asked if the Khalistan movement in Canada will ever be able to move beyond its violent past, Jatinder Grewal, the director of international policy for Sikhs for Justice, said he believes so.

“This idea that India can frame this dialogue solely in the aspects of violence and terrorism is false,” Mr. Grewal, who lives in Toronto, said in an interview.

“The fact is this is a peaceful movement. We just want to hold a referendum.”

Mr. Grewal said Sikhs for Justice, which was founded in 2007, is aiming for a referendum to be held in 2020. He said his organization would like the vote to be open to residents in the northern state of Punjab – which has a Sikh majority and would become an independent state. Mr. Grewal said those who have origins in the state but have since moved elsewhere should also be able to vote.

…Phil Gurski, who worked as a strategic analyst in Canadian intelligence for more than 30 years, including 15 years with CSIS, said it’s unclear how big of a security threat the movement is at this point.

Mr. Gurski, who left CSIS in 2013 and is now the president of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, said there are undoubtedly fewer law-enforcement resources dedicated to Sikh extremism today than in the past.

“You put your resources where the greatest threat lies and as of today that threat lies with Islamist extremism,” he said in an interview. “It’s not rocket science that when you’re forced to deploy your resources in one direction, you’ve got to take them from somewhere else.”

Shinder Purewal, a political-science professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, said in an interview earlier this week that while the Khalistan movement in Canada has been linked to violence in the past, there have not been such incidents of late.

Source: Sikh nationalist movement attempts to shed violent past – The Globe and Mail

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Islam and terrorism: Gurski

2016/05/02 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski, citing the recent Environics Institute survey on Canadian Muslims, on how integration and participation in Canadian society highlights the “acceptance of the rules of the road in a democracy:’

And yet it would at the same time be difficult to maintain that these groups represent normative Islam.  A very small number of the world’s billion and half Muslims resort to terrorism, and even if we include those that support violence the resulting figure is still minimal.  It should therefore be obvious that Islam does not lead inevitably to terrorism.

Where then does Islam enter into the solution?  We need look no further than to our own country for the answer.  The recent Environics poll on Muslim Canadians provides some intriguing material.  Carried out a decade after the first such survey, the poll shows that a majority of Canadian Muslims feel that this country allows them to practice their faith freely, are proud Canadians, want their communities to integrate into the greater Canadian polity and, of greatest importance for this article, want to cooperate with government agencies to address radicalisation.  This last finding coincides with my experiences and exchanges with Muslim communities across Canada during my time with the federal government.  In addition, the spike in Muslim voting in the last federal election clearly demonstrated that Canadian Muslims engaged in the political process to effect change.  That is the hallmark of one’s acceptance of the rules of the road in a democracy.

The incidence of Islamist terrorism will unfortunately be with us for some time.  Whatever happens to Islamic State and others, the spectre of jihadism will find another body to invade and wreak havoc.  Combating terrorism will take many forms and involve many actors.  Some of the most crucial actors will be our fellow Muslim Canadians.  We have the advantage here that we can have this dialogue about religion: as I heard repeatedly in the UK, EU nations struggle with this topic.

In the end we in Canada will not solve terrorism on our own, but we can make a contribution.  Yes, a small number of Canadians will venture down the path of Islamist violent extremism, and others around the world will act in similar ways.  We cannot, however, allow the fringe to dictate our relationship with our co-citizens who make a real contribution to the success, and envy of many, that is Canada.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , ,

Is ‘counter-radicalization’ just another way of blaming all terrorism on Muslims? – iPolitics

2016/04/11 Leave a comment

Still in the denial stage: Monia Mazigh and Azeezah Kanji on counter-radicalization. Would be more helpful and useful to suggest or recommend better ways to engage Canadian Muslims and counter-radicalization strategies:

Which leads to the question: What exactly will Canada’s new Office of Counter-Radicalization be countering?

Few answers are to be found in the written output of Canadian security agencies: Their reports are opaque regarding the mythical connection between religious/ideological radicalization and “terrorism” — which seems to be assumed rather than proven. A 2011 CSIS study acknowledged that “the search for patterns and trends on radicalization remains elusive”, even while a report produced the very next year claimed, with surprising confidence, that “the Service has a solid grasp on this topic.”

Questionable as the concept of radicalization is, CSIS publications manage to cast a broad pall of suspicion on Muslims in Canada. “Islamist radicalization,” according to one (unsupported) CSIS assessment, can occur “just about anywhere … these people gather.”

open quote 761b1bCounter-radicalization programs in Western liberal democracies have largely been thinly-veiled exercises in targeting Muslims — even though non-Muslims have been responsible for the majority of political violence in both America and Europe.

Even Muslims’ dreams have been represented as a site of potentially dangerous activity – putting a strange new spin on the concept of “sleeper cells.” The generally overwhelming focus on Muslims is curious, given that CSIS’s own internal documents identify right-wing and white-supremacist violence as a greater threat than violence by Muslims (as described last year in the Toronto Star).

Source: Is ‘counter-radicalization’ just another way of blaming all terrorism on Muslims? – iPolitics

Phil Gurski’s similar and well-expressed take:

I have to admit I feel exasperated when I read things like this. Can we not get past these issues? Can we not at least agree on the following fundamental truths?

a) a small number of people will embrace radical ideologies

b) an even smaller number of these will plan acts of serious violence

c) a subset of b) will be Muslim

d) doing nothing is not an option.

What is so problematic about this? How can anyone who cares about Canada not see this as a priority? No, it is not our top priority and never will be, but that nevertheless does not mean we an ignore it.

I know that a number of serious missteps have been made (i.e. every time Donald Trump opens his mouth) and that the programmes that have been initiated have not been perfect (the UK’s PREVENT strategy comes in for some particularly scathing criticism). But I also know that there are some who seem to stop at complaining and don’t offer anything helpful in exchange. This is not going to help us solve this problem.

A few things need to happen. Governments have to work much more closely with communities, religious leaders, teachers, doctors. social workers, parents and anyone who is in a position to observe radicalisation at work and who wants to play a role in countering it. Communities need to get off their “woe is us” bandwagon, acknowledge there is a problem that needs fixing and stop denying reality. We all must figure out ways to move this dialogue beyond finger-pointing and acrimony.

If we don’t people are going to continue down the path to violent extremism, leaving behind traumatised families and broken communities, and others are going to die.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

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Where should we put Canada’s counter-radicalisation programme? Gurski

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski is right on this one. Better to have this outside of Public Safety. Canadian Heritage, now that the Multiculturalism Program is back, is likely the better home (Economic and Social Development, while another alternative, is simply too large a department to provide effective oversight).

However, that being said, given that it is in Minister Goodale’s mandate letter rather than Mme. Joly’s, I don’t see this happening.

And Public Safety has funded a number of good research projects under the Kanishka Project (named after the Air India coming of 1985):

This move represents a significant shift in Canada’s CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) approach from the purely hardline emphasis of the Harper government to a more inclusive and more comprehensive one under the new regime (note that the previous government did have a soft CVE aspect, and one in which I worked, but did not fund it adequately and actually undermined it with stupid comments by public officials).  As I have said before, we will always need the hardline tool, but we need to do more in early intervention and counter radicalisation.

One question remains: where should this new office reside?  When I still worked for the federal government it was housed within Public Safety Canada, split between the National Security Policy branch and Citizen Engagement.  In some ways, it should stay there if for no other reason that that department has experienced and capable staff who were part of the amazing success of the shortened efforts under Harper.

But in other, more important ways, it should be moved to another department.  Let me try to explain why.

Aside from getting a brand new start and being able to put the unfortunate mistakes of the previous government behind us, the biggest drawback to leaving Canada’s CVE strategy with Public Safety lies with the very nature of that ministry.  Public Safety Canada is the umbrella department for CSIS, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency.  All of these are staffed by dedicated and professional people but they have one underlying commonality: they are all enforcement/punitive agencies.  CVE needs to be seen as an opportunity to occur before people engage in activities that are the remit of CSIS and the RCMP in order to work.

We have seen in other places like the UK with its PREVENT programme that communities associate CVE with intelligence gathering and enforcement, whether or not that is what is happening.  Having a ministry responsible for the national spy and law enforcement agencies run CVE creates a stigma that can hamper even the best efforts.  If communities do not feel comfortable and have issues of trust with certain partners, they will not want to participate.

What if the government put the new office under the Heritage portfolio?  CVE is all about providing communities with the tools to foster Canadian citizenship and reject the empty and violent promises of groups like Islamic State. It is about being or becoming Canadian.  Another aspect is the debate over narratives.   I have long argued that we need to move away from “counter narratives” to “alternative narratives”.  Alternative narratives are an important part of CVE – what better place to locate them than within Heritage, the department that helps foster the Canadian narrative?  Our narrative is so superior to that of IS that if this were a boxing match the referee would have called the fight years ago.

Of course, those with lots of experience in CVE, especially the RCMP which has a longstanding and robust outreach programme, would be asked to lend its assistance and best practices.  Other partners could also contribute.  Canada is – or rather was – a world leader in CVE and many countries look to us for models on what to do.  We don’t need to reinvent it, we just need to tweak it to make it better.

At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter where the government decides to put CVE.  The important thing is that it cultivate good relations with the communities it hopes to work with, for the best answers to violent radicalisation and extremism are to be found there, not in a government policy brief.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

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Spy agencies see sharp rise in number of Canadians involved in terrorist activities abroad – The Globe and Mail

2016/02/25 Leave a comment

Not totally unsurprising that the numbers have increased, as well as our ability to detect:

Canada’s spy agencies have tracked 180 Canadians who are engaged with terrorist organizations abroad, while another 60 have returned home.

The latest figures mark a significant increase from the findings of the 2014 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada, which identified about 130 people involved in terror-related activities overseas, including 30 taking an active role with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and the Nusra Front in Syria.

“The total number of people overseas involved in threat-related activities – and I’m not just talking about Iraq and Syria – is probably around 180,” Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Michel Coulombe told The Globe and Mail after testifying before the House of Commons public safety committee. “In Iraq and Syria, we are probably talking close to 100.”

These people are involved in various activities, including direct combat, training, fundraising to support attacks, promoting radical views and planning terrorist violence.

Mr. Coulombe said about 60 suspected foreign fighters have returned to Canada, although he stressed the numbers keep changing almost daily.

Source: Spy agencies see sharp rise in number of Canadians involved in terrorist activities abroad – The Globe and Mail

Phil Gurski’s take on their testimony:

I think the most important message in all this is that despite a rise in those who pose a real terrorist threat, the number is still relatively low, and perhaps manageable – though I will of course leave it to CSIS and the RCMP to make that call – in comparison to other countries.  Our allies in Europe and the Middle East are facing threats that are orders of magnitude larger than ours.  We here in Canada remain more or less safe: that does not mean that the threat is not real and that we can start shaving money and resources from our security intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  Again, though, it is important to see the positive side of this.  Sorry for the repetition, but the terrorist scourge does not represent an existential threat to this country and most likely never will.  The glass is half full people.

The current terrorist threat environment in Canada

 

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Israel, Antisemitism and Terrorism: Gurski

2016/01/30 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski on Israel and the tendency to label any criticism as antisemitism (the former heads of Shin Bet, the interior intelligence agency, make similar points regarding the continued occupation in the documentary, The Gatekeepers):

There is no question that Israel faces significant security challenges in its dangerous neighbourhood (although I would stop short of calling those threats existential for the simple reason that Israel’s humongous technological superiority, not to mention its undisclosed nuclear arsenal, makes it more than a match for any state stupid enough to attack it) .  And Israel is, and should be, an ally of this country.  It is a vibrant, albeit unwieldy, democracy that serves as an all too rare example for the region.

On the other hand, it has been increasing settlement activity in the Occupied Territories for decades, a clear and flagrant violation of international law. It is beholden to fanatic religious zealots who are no different than the religious extremists we find elsewhere in the region. It has cracked down on freedom of association, but only for groups that are critical of the Israeli government.  All in all, some of what it does can be seen as kindling for the extremist fire.  No, terrorism does not spring solely from Israeli policies, but some of those policies are counterproductive.

Israel likes to complain that the world holds it up to a higher standard than that of its neighbours and that there are much more egregious actors who are a lot worse.  True, but as a democracy, and one that gets gazillions in subsidies from its main ally, the US, it has to put on its big boy pants and accept criticism. Without pouting and calling those that disagree with it Jew haters.

Israel has to acknowledge that its policies in the West Bank are inimical to its long term security and stop kowtowing to fundamentalist religious kooks.  We will work beside Israel to keep it safe and prosperous.  In exchange it has to accept sometimes harsh words.  Friends tell friends when they err.  Canada is Israel’s friend.  It’s time for the latter to listen.  Because it will hear more honest talk from Canada under the Trudeau government than it did under the previous one.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

Filed under Antisemitism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

Advise to the Liberal government on security oversight and countering violent extremism: Gurski

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski’s advice to the Liberal government on oversight and countering violent extremism:

a) whatever model is chosen it has to be a made in Canada one.  I see that the Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, is visiting some of our Allies to see how they do things.  This is a good start, but in the end we have to come up with our own solution. We can certainly learn, both the good and the bad, from what others have done.  Yet we have this Canadian tendency to defer to others (“let’s just do what the US is doing!”).  I saw it so many times when I worked for the federal government.  Maybe it’s good ol’ Canadian deference, I don’t know.  But it has to stop.  We have good people and good ideas too.

b) we need to build on what we already have started.  Especially on the CVE front, Public Safety Canada – specifically the Citizen Engagement section – had a wonderfully successful outreach programme in place that was paying off huge dividends before some – ahem, unfortunate – government-led incidents brought it to a standstill.  I know that there are community leaders across Canada who want to restart this.  Not only was it successful here but other countries had expressed interest in learning from ushow to do CVE.  Let us use this as our new jumping off point.

c) we need to inform Canadians.  Yes there are aspects to security intelligence that cannot be disclosed, but regular messaging from the government, and preferably from the heads of CSIS and the RCMP, will serve to keep Canadians in the loop on the nature of the threat we face and avoid the vacuum that currently exists and which is filled by those with little insight or knowledge of what is happening.

d) we need to hear from Canadians at all levels: federal, provincial, territorial, first nations, municipal and average Joes and Jills.  There are some amazing efforts currently in force at the city police level with respect to early intervention – Calgary Police’s Redirect programme and Toronto Police’s Focus Rexdale are but two examples – that are working and should be picked up on.  The solutions we need often begin locally so we need to bring in local, knowledgeable partners.  Let us also ask Canadians what they think.  Perhaps another public Parliamentary set of hearings is warranted.

There.  That’s my two-cents’ worth.  Have at ‘er.  At the end of the day we can do this and do this well.  We already have world class security intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Let’s match that when we create oversight and CVE capability.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

Filed under Radicalization, Security Tagged with ,

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

Filed under Radicalization, Refugees, Security Tagged with ,

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