The Challenges of Homegrown Radicalisation to the Alliance Thanks - PDF document

The Challenges of Homegrown Radicalisation to the Alliance Thanks for the invitation. My name is Raffaello Pantucci and I am Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. I have written a book on the history of jihadism in the UK, authored a number of policy papers and peer reviewed articles on jihadist threats, as well as numerous media articles, and have served as an advisor to a number of Alliance governments in various capacities looking at threats related to violent Islamist terrorism. Am going to focus today on the homegrown terrorist threat from violent Islamist movements like ISIS or al Qaeda to the west in particular. This may be strange to an institution like NATO which is focused very much on foreign threats, but the thread is that homegrown is almost invariably linked with abroad. While we may be seeing a growing detachment of the directed threat between what is going on in faraway countries and what we are seeing happen at home, the activity at home does not happen in a vacuum and is responsive to what is going on abroad. Events abroad will enhance the threat at home – for example, it is very difficult to predict how current events in Gaza will enhance the threat at home. What does this mean? And what does this mean for NATO? I will offer a presentation in three parts – first, an analysis of how the threat picture is evolving at home and abroad; second, some thoughts on what needs to be done to deal with these problems; and third, where NATO in particular might fit into this picture. First – we need to understand how the threat picture is evolving. At home: we continue to see radicalised young men and women seeking to take up arms against their native countries. Some seek to travel to foreign battlefields. Others stay home and launch attacks. The motivations for why these people join are for the most part quite broad and drawing on many different deeply personal motivations. WHO? The broad trends in who joins has not changed that much over time. In the main the constituency involved is young men, but what we have seen is a growth in the very young making active choices to be involved in terrorist plots, women and girls, and the phenomenon of adults actively radicalising youth in their care – either their own children in some cases, or others children over whom they have responsibility. Recent cases in Italy and the UK pointed to this particular sort of activity. WHAT MOTIVATES THEM? The rationale for why people participate in such radical activity is complicated. Repeated studies and surveys show a multiplicity of different reasons. A general perception or sense of injustice in the world provides the driving ideological motivation: an injustice about which

nothing is being done which the individual needs to go and do something about. This injustice is usually seen in the Muslim world, and is framed within a broader context of a clash of civilizations that is going on across our planet. We, the west, are standing idly by while oppressive regimes in the Muslim world abuse their people or care little while Muslims are dying in far flung corners of the world. You then have to dig down into individual motivations which are even harder to pry apart. Some are drawn by the millenarian narratives that groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda espouse. They truly believe what these groups are saying, and believe they are playing a part in a bigger picture building towards God’s greater glory. Some are motivated to participate in ISIS state-building activity – they see a perfect world being created and want to go and participate in it. Others are motivated by the thrill of going to a battlefield or participating in clandestine activity. Others are following relations, close friends or local leaders. Others are criminally inclined and see the terrorist group as offering them a useful cover to continue their activity. Others become involved because they meet others who are active and they are intrigued – had they never encountered the radicalised individuals they would never have been motivated to participate. In many ways one could say there are as many motivations as there are people. This is what makes it so hard to developed a uniform tailored response – there is no single motivation and sometimes across regions there are clashes in motivations. For example, those I have listed so far are for the most part drawn from mine and others research looking at the phenomenon in the west. RUSI recently undertook some research looking at the phenomenon of radicalisation amongst Central Asian labour migrants and found that monetary incentives for going to participate were a real issue. WHAT ARE THEY DOING? Going to fight – this is the aspect which has transfixed our collective attention for the past few years. The battlefield in Syria and Iraq turned what had been a fringe phenomenon into an almost mainstream activity that drew in young idealists from around the world. The numbers attracted to Syria and Iraq eclipsed previous conflicts. The ease with which people could get to the battlefield and the low threshold for entry into a group like ISIS meant that what previously was quite challenging became very easy. However, it is important to also note that this is a phenomenon which is way down – while there is still some evidence of some individuals seeking to get to Syria and Iraq, there are others seeking other battlefields (Libya, Southeast Asia most prominently, but also places like Egypt or the Horn of Africa), the numbers have fallen precipitously. Coming home – the bigger concern at the moment is the fear that some of those might be coming back home. Having been indoctrinated and joined ISIS or al Qaeda on the battlefield, they might now be sent back home with murderous intent. And while we have seen this – the Paris attacks of November 2015 being the most prominent example, the reality is that this has not emerged to the degree that might have been expected. Similarly, the flow of people back has not been as expected. Some of the women and children have sought to come home, and there has been a trickle back, but at the same time

Attempting terror attacks – directed back, yes, but limited. More instigated, inspired, self- starting with at best loose connections to organized groups. Previous waves of plotting had clear links to groups and networks – and this remains an issue, but the nature of these links has changed. The sort of plotting we saw on September 11, the London or Madrid bombings, or even the Paris attack on the Bataclan, is far less observable that what we saw in the past. Looking at the UK context alone, we are seeing many more plots now that we have in the past – both in terms of actual attempted plots or prevented ones. Of course consideration needs to be borne in mind about the fact that our security services are now looking for more plots and have more resources. This will of course have an impact on the volume that they find. In addition, the nature of the terrorist plotting we see now is so broad and simple, it means authorities find themselves having to disrupt things at an ever earlier moment. If all you need is a knife and car, both tools most of us have in their daily lives, the trip wires that authorities are looking for to disrupt plots become much harder to look out for. Similarly, what constitutes a target has gone from being very obvious, to becoming much broader and more random. Isolated individuals and large crowds at all sorts of random events. This means authorities will pounce earlier. This means that it can sometimes be hard to discern a specific plot from a set of arrests. It also means disrupted plots can show up as different forms of criminal activity as the plot itself is not easily presentable in court. What are the plots we are seeing though? Broadly four primary threats that shape the terrorist activity we see at the moment: 1. Directed plots – this is the biggest concern. Repeated studies have shown how terrorist plots that are directed by individuals who have attended training camps or received specific instructions in person are more menacing than other forms of plotting. This is security services big concern. Big plots coordinated with multiple trained actors. 2. Instigated – this is the next step along in this which is something that has been supercharged by the nature of how we all communicate these days. People form relationships online which to the individual are as intense and real as off-line relationships. This has been used by terrorist plotters to direct attacks remotely to some success. A few prominent individuals in Europe were central to this activity and can be directly linked to numerous plots around the world – Rachid Kassim in the Francophone world or Junaid Hussain in the English-speaking one. Through the use of multiple communications platforms they manipulate and persuade people to try to launch attacks at home. What is key here is the zero cost to the terrorist group – this is something they can do with little to no effort and can result in plots that cause death and enhance group prestige and power. It does not, however, as strategic as was once considered. 3. Inspired – this is the next level along where we have isolated individuals or small cells latching on to an ideology and choosing to do something in advance of it without receiving any specific direction or instruction. In this category we see individuals who are mentally unbalanced, or individuals who have no particular clear link to a network. Often, these are people attracted by the loud and public noise that we see around ISIS or al Qaeda activity as a way of affiliating themselves to a public