Posted on 06/25/2015 6:33:35 PM PDT by markomalley
A report from the Centre for National Security in New York paints a surprisingly diverse portrait of the growing number of U.S. residents becoming foreign fighters for ISIL or plotting domestic attacks in its name.
But the report, released Thursday, also provides insight on the motivations driving youths in both Canada and the U.S. to engage in terrorist activities, and strategies to deter them, as the number of homegrown extremists in both countries continues to rise.
Since March 2014, a total of 56 people have been arrested and charged in U.S. federal court with supporting ISIL, and another three were killed by law enforcement authorities:
“What I find most surprising is how these last cases compare to the other 500 terrorism cases we’ve tracked over the last 14 years,” said Karen Greenberg, the director of the Centre for National Security based at Fordham Law School. “The biggest difference is the broad biographical details about each one of these individuals, many of whom are kids, in terms of their age, gender, the wide range of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, and that 80 per cent are American citizens — if we have a profiling mentality, we should get rid of it.”
Another big change has been the role of social media in recruiting and radicalizing youths into ISIL extremists. Forty-five of 56 cases — or 80 per cent — involved online communications sympathetic to ISIL or ISIL recruitment efforts through social media.
Coupled with feelings of alienation at home, the results are troubling.
“If we’re going to understand ISIS we’ll need to understand this as one slice of a turn toward violence in America that we need to pay attention to in a serious way,” Greenberg said.
Lorne Dawson, a professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo, is compiling similar data on Canadian cases of ISIL supporters, and says many of the conclusions drawn in the U.S. apply to Canada too, with regards to the presence of women, the diversity of backgrounds, the over-representation of recent converts to Islam (30 per cent of cases in the U.S.) and their age.
“Among foreign fighters, they are getting younger and younger — from their early 20s to teenagedom and in Canada we have numerous incidents of 15, 14, even 13-year olds,” said Dawson, who is also an expert with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.
He mentioned the 15-year-old arrested in Montreal in December for allegedly robbing a convenience store to finance his trip to the Middle East.
And both countries’ law enforcement agencies are also adapting their methods to the younger recruits.
For one, Greenberg says much more lenient sentences are being handed down in the U.S. With the exception of one 20-year sentence, the other three people sentenced since March 2014 have been given four to six years in jail. One youth was even held in a halfway house prior to sentencing — something unheard of with terrorism cases since 9/11.
Similarly, Dawson says the RCMP and local police have understood the importance of prevention, as opposed to detention, and are working with parents and community workers on programs to dissuade youths from becoming radicalized. Montreal’s hotline to signal potential cases and provide families with support is one such effort, Dawson said.
Unfortunately there is no national prevention program of the kind, or federal funding for it, Dawson said.
“The problem seems to be at the political, ideological level,” he said. “Prevention doesn’t seem to work with the tough-on-crime, law-and-order (agenda).”
Finally, of great concern to both countries is that as efforts to stop extremists from going abroad have intensified, the number of domestic plots has gone up.
The U.S. report attributes this to the increasing difficulty of travelling abroad, the inspiration of recent attacks in Texas, Paris and Boston, and the intention to attack police and members of the military.
For Dawson, it has to do with how youths are drawn to the so-called Caliphate, or Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, with a sense of purpose and adventure.
“The real desire is actually to go on this great adventure and be part of this Caliphate — that’s why we’re seeing an uptake in terrorism-related cases. If left with the choice of killing fellow Canadians or travelling to kill (Syrian President) Assad’s guys, one looks morally virtuous the other means overcoming significant moral inhibitions.”
But Dawson said if these youths are prevented from going abroad — and have had their passports confiscated, like Martin Couture-Rouleau and perhaps Michael Zihaf-Bibeau — they may become only verbal supporters of ISIL, or they may plot a domestic attack.
To download the report go to http://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/
” or they may plot a domestic attack.”
The “or” part is what to watch for.
4 out of 59 are Middle East? So are the rest Caucasian or African or what? Seems like an important detail left out.
Funny! We both had the exact same question.
Seems to be a lot of Somali transplants in the news in recent months.
Haven't downloaded the report, so I don't know what it says or not, but consider this:
Not long after 9/11 I had a career law enforcement guy tell me that the pathology at work in an Islamic terrorist is almost identical to what you find in people like the Columbine killers.
(from the report linked above)
A lot of our Somalis are now second generation born in the US radicals. We call them homegrown but its BS.
Wow! We sure couldn’t profile such a diverse group. I am curious about their religion though.
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