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Recruitment and Perceptions of Death
Abstract
Although many jihadists have been exposed to easily accessible jihadist online propaganda, recruiters are often a key factor in the radicalization process. What recruiters do, however, is often unclear. This chapter analyzes how charismatic recruiters skillfully utilize cognitive openings and strengthen cognitive dissonance to create a motivation for jihad. It lays out the different steps that recruiters use to affect potential recruits’ beliefs, feelings, and behavior, especially in the Scandinavian context. Since death, violence, and stories of the Doomsday are exciting topics when young men listen to a charismatic recruiter, the chapter also explains how their perceptions of death will eventually vary as they travel to the battlefield and take part in the fighting.
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The long-term survival of terrorist organizations relies on their ability to attract new members and maintain an ongoing terrorist recruitment cycle. The numbers of terrorist organization members may decrease due to counterterrorism operations or defections, forcing the leaders of those groups to seek new members. Preventing terrorist recruitment is one of the most effective and least lethal methods of countering terrorism, and yet it is often overlooked by those combating terrorism. Western governments did not stop Al-Qaeda from recouping its losses, even after it suffered devastating losses in the months following the 9/11 attacks. The fact is that Al-Qaeda had only around 400 armed members at the time of 9/11, as opposed to thousands of affiliated members in 2019. Although the recruitment strategies of different organizations may vary, they follow a similar historical pattern. All recruiters must first identify qualified candidates, then establish secure connections, build rapport, indoctrinate them, and slowly pull them into an organization. ISIS proved that this process could be fast-forwarded through online propaganda and social media. Preventing recruitment in the first place can be the most fruitful, and maybe also least expensive, method used to counter terrorism. Successfully short-circuiting the recruitment cycle may save thousands of lives of prospective recruits and many more lives by thwarting future attacks. This chapter aims to present a holistic and comprehensive road map for interrupting and preventing terrorist recruitment by identifying relevant societal factors and triggers that recruiters use to find and control their subjects.
https://icct.nl/app/uploads/2021/01/Handbook-Ch-13-Yayla-final.pdf
This Research Paper explores how militant Islamists use propaganda to appeal to and radicalise supporters. It offers an alternative to the view that ideology is the key to understanding and countering the appeal of militant Islamism. Drawing on studies from the behavioural and social sciences, it analyses how strategies of meaning, credibility and behavioural change are deployed in militant Islamist propaganda citing a range of primary source materials – from the speeches and writings of charismatic figures like Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki to messages released by the likes of al Qaeda, its affiliates and so-called “Islamic State”. This study particularly focuses on how such messaging leverages psychosocial forces and strategic factors to: (i.) provide its supporters with a system of meaning that shapes how they perceive the world, (ii.) demonstrate that it is a credible source of information and authority, and, (iii.) deploy pertinent behavioural levers designed to compel its audiences to legitimise and engage in violence. This Research Paper concludes by outlining some crucial lessons for understanding both the siren call of militant Islamist propaganda and counterterrorism strategic communications design.
The academic literature is divided with regard to whether terrorist recruits are dangerous masterminds, “malevolently creative,” and capable of perpetrating well planned mass casualty attacks in the heart of European capitals. Or whether they are imbeciles, incapable of carrying out the most basic tasks, who mostly end up blowing themselves up by accident. This duality about the capabilities of terrorists is reflected in analyses of terrorist incidents. In fact, both depictions of terrorist recruits are accurate. Acuity and professionalism are not movement dependent (the same group may attract a variety of recruits) and might, instead, reflect a recruitment cycle that terrorist groups experience - one which alternates between labor-intensive, and expertise-intensive periods of recruitment. The phases may shift because of external pressures (periods of territorial expansion/contraction) and opportunities (need for better quality recruits) with associated shifts in how groups use propaganda to attract a different quality of recruit during different periods of time. A possible first step towards hindering terrorist recruitment is to better understand the ways in which terrorist organizations work – where and when they recruit, whom they target, and the different propaganda messages used for selective/targeted recruitment. A clearer picture of the process could provide opportunities to counter a group's appeal, replenish their ranks, and inoculate vulnerable populations against recruitment. Case studies of three different terrorist organizations (Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the IRA) presented here posit that there exists a terrorism “recruitment cycle” that alternates between labor and expertise focus, uses different recruitment strategies and different propaganda messaging depending on this cycle.
The authors hadn't intended to put themselves in danger but that's what happened as they interviewed an unprecedented thirty-two battle-hardened defectors about the gritty details of life inside ISIS. With unparalleled breadth, depth and access, ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate offers a compelling view of ISIS from men, women and teens now in hiding, having escaped the most brutal terrorist group in recent history. They were fighters and commanders, wives of fighters-living and dead, female enforcers, and Cubs of the Caliphate, including a child who volunteered and almost got sent as a suicide bomber at age thirteen. They discuss motivations for joining and defecting, and delve into news-making topics: coercing children to become suicide bombers; brides of ISIS and the brutal female morality police; Yazidi and Sunni sex slaves held in massive compounds where fighters use them at will; privilege bestowed on foreign fighters; prisoners kept for the sole purpose of beheading by new inductees. The defectors shared a startling array of photos and videos from personal cell phones and many are included in the digital version of this book. An unexpected subplot unfolded when Dr. Yayla found himself tailed by ISIS, and Dr. Speckhard barely missed two suicide attacks. But the authors are not deterred. As counter-terrorism experts with specialties in research psychology and law enforcement, they see ISIS as more than a terrorist group. ISIS is a brand that falsely sells dignity and purpose, justice and the restoration of glory-to vulnerable recruits-masterfully recruiting some 30,000 members online. It's the biggest influx of foreign fighters to a terrorist haven in history. Using the defectors own words, the authors intend to break the ISIS brand. They have videotaped these interviews to edit them into short clips, memes and tweets for an online counter-offensive. Speckhard and Yayla state that disillusioned ISIS defectors are the most influential tool for countering ISIS propaganda. The persuasive voices of these defectors and the resulting videos will soon invade ISIS chat rooms where their propaganda thrives. With over one thousand active investigations in the U.S. across all 50 states, discrediting ISIS ideology is essential to stopping it.
This study analyzes the creation of primary unit cohesion among the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers fighting the Islamic State in northern Iraq and among Hezbollah fighters active in Syria. For this comparative study, Kurdish soldiers were interviewed on three fronts outside Mosul, Erbil, and Kirkuk in February 2015 and May 2016, and Hezbollah fighters were interviewed in Lebanon in March 2016. In contrast to many studies’ depictions of unit cohesion as relating to shared experiences of training and battle, this study argues that the Kurdish soldiers also import into their units various ideas relating to Kurdish identity. These include ideas about nationalism and religion produced through discourses within the Kurdish military and society. However, Hezbollah seeks to minimize political damage in the multisectarian political context in Lebanon while conducting domestically contested military operations abroad. This has led to a downplaying of the sectarian aspects of the conflict, which could be imported from the Shia community to increase unit cohesion, and to an ideological framing of the conflict. The general ideas circulating in society and the political context therefore matter for the strategies that can be used to increase primary unit cohesion and soldiers’ fighting power.
This study analyzes the war against the Islamic State (IS), specifically on the front in northern Iraq, and the mental strategies that the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers use to maintain their combat motivation. For this field study, dozens of soldiers of various ranks were interviewed and observed on three fronts outside of Mosul, Erbil, and Kirkuk in February 2014. While some mental strategies are nearly universal, others depend on the characteristics of the fighting force and the threat that they face. The article identifies five distinct mental strategies for dealing with the stress of fighting the IS: simultaneous dehumanization and humanization of the enemy, seeing a larger cause, use of humor, religious identity, and martyrdom. The findings suggest that factors beyond primary group cohesion, on which much previous research has focused, can play an important role in increasing soldiers’ fighting power.
Why and how do individuals residing in relatively peaceful and affluent Western societies come to embrace extremist ideologies that emanate from distant places? We summarize the most recent empirical literature on the causes and dynamics of radicalization, and evaluate the state of the art in the study of Islamist homegrown extremism in the West. We propose a theoretical synthesis based on four factors that come together to produce violent radicalization: personal and collective grievances, networks and interpersonal ties, political and religious ideologies, and enabling environments and support structures. We propose adopting a “puzzle” metaphor that represents a multifactor and contextualized approach to understanding how ordinary individuals transform into violent extremists. We concluded with three recommendations to strengthen the empirical foundations of radicalization studies.
The paper deals with the therapeutic potential of humor, emphasizing in particular its properties as a tool of cognitive therapy. The variety, commonness and pervasiveness of the claims about the beneficial effects of humor justify the need to examine these effects in view of modern findings. The first part is devoted to reviewing studies describing the contributions of humor to physical well-being, such as reducing pain, decreasing proneness to heart disease and enhancing immunological responses. The effects are positive but weak and may be considered as belonging to the background factors promoting physical health. The second part is devoted to reviewing studies describing the contributions of humor to psychological well-being, mainly its emotional effects, such as reducing tension and aggression or enhancing social feelings, and its cognitive effects, such as mental flexibility, shifting, playfulness, optimism and distancing. The next sections deal with reviewing the presumed clinical effects of humor, focusing on the processes through which it has been claimed to contribute to facilitating individual and group psychotherapy. The clinical effects depend upon integrating humor into the overall therapy. In the last section an attempt is made to present a cognitive model which, by showing how humor coalesces the emotional and cognitive effects, may account for the diverse curative effects of humor.
For decades, a new type of terrorism has been quietly gathering ranks in the world. America's ability to remain oblivious to these new movements ended on September 11, 2001. The Islamist fanatics in the global Salafi jihad (the violent, revivalist social movement of which al Qaeda is a part) target the West, but their operations mercilessly slaughter thousands of people of all races and religions throughout the world. Marc Sageman challenges conventional wisdom about terrorism, observing that the key to mounting an effective defense against future attacks is a thorough understanding of the networks that allow these new terrorists to proliferate. Based on intensive study of biographical data on 172 participants in the jihad, Understanding Terror Networks gives us the first social explanation of the global wave of activity. Sageman traces its roots in Egypt, gestation in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war, exile in the Sudan, and growth of branches worldwide, including detailed accounts of life within the Hamburg and Montreal cells that planned attacks on the United States. U.S. government strategies to combat the jihad are based on the traditional reasons an individual was thought to turn to terrorism: poverty, trauma, madness, and ignorance. Sageman refutes all these notions, showing that, for the vast majority of the mujahedin, social bonds predated ideological commitment, and it was these social networks that inspired alienated young Muslims to join the jihad. These men, isolated from the rest of society, were transformed into fanatics yearning for martyrdom and eager to kill. The tight bonds of family and friendship, paradoxically enhanced by the tenuous links between the cell groups (making it difficult for authorities to trace connections), contributed to the jihad movement's flexibility and longevity. And although Sageman's systematic analysis highlights the crucial role the networks played in the terrorists' success, he states unequivocally that the level of commitment and choice to embrace violence were entirely their own. Understanding Terror Networks combines Sageman's scrutiny of sources, personal acquaintance with Islamic fundamentalists, deep appreciation of history, and effective application of network theory, modeling, and forensic psychology. Sageman's unique research allows him to go beyond available academic studies, which are light on facts, and journalistic narratives, which are devoid of theory. The result is a profound contribution to our understanding of the perpetrators of 9/11 that has practical implications for the war on terror. Copyright
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