Threat and Response Management

Tuan

Irreplaceable Intelligencer
The following is a direct quote from a brief report titled "ISIS Continues to Agitate for European Attacks: Is Germany Next?", by International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, founders Yayla, Ahmet S. & Speckhard, Anne (March 30, 2016):
“ISIS has issued a statement on the Brussels attacks sharing the pictures of two perpetrators of the Brussels airport attacks, Brothers Khalid El Bakraoui, on the left, and Ibrahim El Bakraoui on the right as reported by Raqqa is Silently being Slaughtered.

ISIS claimed in its An-Naba' Newsletter that their Brussels military campaign was successfully executed. In the newsletter, they praised their fighters’ efforts and how bravely they completed their mission to attack against the heart of Europe. They referred to the Brussels attacks as their “Brussels military campaign.”

They also challenged the West with the following statements (roughly translated):

“ISIS soldiers are from now on from the countries we are attacking. Why? Because it is easier for us to carry out those attacks simply because they know the terrain, culture, language and basically all the necessary information regarding that country.”

“Those attacks also show to the whole world how the European countries’ intelligence is weak and incompetent. WHY? Look we can easily carry the explosives and the weapons at the heart of the airport without any problems. According to us, it is more important for us to scare the Europeans rather than killing them in large quantities. These Brussels attacks proved to the whole world that we can attack anytime and anywhere we would like to.”

“We have many fighters in Europe on hold, so we can carry out simultaneous attacks as we wish in different locations.”
“We can very easily carry out our operations against the European intelligence agencies without any difficulties and you will continue to see that.”

“Oh our brothers, as you can see we can strike their capitals, their propaganda is a complete lie. Look we struck them at their heart, in the middle of Brussels, by only using light weapons and explosives. This alone proves you how vulnerable they are and that they are not winning against us.”

The biggest question is how we are going to prevent the next terrorist attack? How long this mayhem is going to continue? What is the end game? Do you see the bigger picture and root causes of this “new world chaos” rather than a “new world order”?

Well, this is what I consider the bottom line and end game for this political vis-à-vis socioeconomic dilemma.

My name is Kagusthan Ariaratnam and I am an undergraduate student at the University of Ottawa. For the record, my wife Zufishan Malik, a graduate from McGill University and I have established an Ottawa, Ontario based independent and nonprofit think tank. It is provisionally titled "The 05 File Foundation". Its vision and mission is to bring about world peace by the "STATE OF GLOBAL DETERRENCE". Its ultimate goal is "ONE WORLD" by ensuring geostrategic-***-borderless global village for the modern citizens of the world. Its motto is "Irreplaceable Intelligence". To give you an idea regarding our planning, preparing and executing counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and counter-radicalization are the subjects we are focused on.

As combating terrorism is increasingly becoming complex and involves different dynamics, we have created this group on November 23, 2015 in the wake of the Paris attack to engage the public to debate about how to approach the phenomena anew and to rethink strategy. While counterterrorism is most often linked with the exercise of "hard power", which includes intelligence, law, policing, and military power, it must gradually make use of "soft power" that consists of political, social, cultural and economic control, together with broader policy initiatives dealing with the environment, development, critical infrastructure, migration, and humanitarian intervention, in which a nation's civil society plays a vital role. That's why Professor Joseph Nye, who coined the term "soft power”, wrote that a viable civil society would help mitigate violence. As Nye concluded, a great nation's interests in world politics can be better achieved through the use of "smart power", a combination of both soft and hard power!

So why we need ONE WORLD solution?

Let me quote from my first year sociology class book, “Exploring Sociology - A Canadian Perspective” by Bruce Ravelli and Michelle Webber:

“Understanding the historical footprint of sociology is important, as is an appreciation of the contributions of Canadian scholars. However, it is equally, if not more, important to look beyond our own Western boundaries and consider the dynamic forces of globalization , a process involving the production, distribution, and consumption of technological, political, economic, and sociocultural goods and services on a global basis (Hedley, 2002). Globalization is discussed in more detail in Chapter 19 , but suffice it to say that our world today is increasingly interconnected and intermingled. As news events are presented in real time around the globe (e.g., terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center), we realize that the world feels as if it is becoming a much smaller place.

Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan is recognized for coining the term global village in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962). 2 He used the phrase to describe how media collapse space and time and enable people everywhere to interact and experience life on a global scale. In effect, technology has shrunk the globe to the size of a village where we perceive a closeness that transcends the traditional boundaries of time and space. This discussion certainly relates to one of our questions at the beginning of the chapter, as it appears that communication technologies have in fact changed how we perceive and understand each other.

However, there is much more to a global perspective than simply an analysis of technology. Globalization also implies a realization of the primacy of capitalism as a defining feature of the global economy. Just as we investigated your identity as being defined by your socioeconomic class, gender, etc., as a sociologist you need to realize that Canadians have been taught to assume that capitalism is by default the only economic system possible. While it is hard to argue that another economic strategy can rival the dominance of capitalism, using your sociological imagination and seeing the strange in the familiar means asking whether capitalism is the right option or the only one available. Capitalism has enabled a great deal of wealth to be produced around the world; however, for many the concern is where that wealth has ended up.

As the map in Figure 1.1 demonstrates, much of the world’s wealth is held in the Global North and the world’s poverty in the Global South (Shah, 2009a). In fact, of the roughly 6 billion people alive today, only 1 billion live in developed countries. The remaining 5 billion live in developing countries, where many survive on less than a dollar a day. We must realize that poverty is not just lack of money but also lack of basic nutrition, health care, education, freedom, and personal autonomy. Poverty, then, is about being invisible, having no voice, and feeling powerless to improve your life or the lives of your loved ones (World Bank Group, 2010). To some extent, McLuhan was right in perceiving that everyone today is linked through such factors as international trade and migration, yet clearly our relationships are not equal. The world is out of balance: the 1 billion who live in developed countries control 80 percent of global resources. This leaves the other 5 billion people to try to survive on the remaining 20 percent. Is this fair? Is it justifiable?

Sociology studies how and why human beings interact and by doing so attempts to understand how to confront social issues such as poverty. Sociology is unique in that it can investigate human phenomena from local, individual realities to global, collective consciousness.”

Well, currently our initiatives are mainly focused on social media but we have to take it to another level thus looking for volunteers with innovative and creative ideas from around the world. If you think you can contribute to this project leave your comments here. Thank you!

For more info about me please refer my profile and facebook page below:

https://about.me/kagusthanariaratnam
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1673073239603268/
 
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Your posting is intelligent, well thought -out, makes perfect sense and it is totally not happening. Your argument has been made in several past wars that it would be less expensive, in money at least, to buy off the enemy population, rather than trying to kill them. I'm sure the cost to kill one ISIL fighter must be enough to buy a house; to buy several houses, In Beverly Hills California!
But it won't happen for a variety of reasons.
In Iraq and Afghanistan the West, principally the U.S., has pumped massive quantities of money and material aid. Very little of it has done much good in tamping down the fighting. Why? because it went into the wrong pockets. It was given to people who put, family, tribe, religion, personal interest above country.
Putting money into those two countries simply raised the bar for corruption.
The Russians in Syria were more realistic about this than the West. Kill'em and move on. That sounds barbaric, but the U.S. has been at war for fifteen years, and is in no mood anymore for "hearts and minds" nonsense.
 
All we can hope is that there would be a shift in United States' strategy after the presidential election. Whoever win the election is going to be the much awaited "Leader of the Free World" and thus the world is eagerly waiting for a visionary....:|
 
I don't know what kind of response one could expect, no matter who is elected. Negotiation?
With who and about what? Most of the terrorist groups have non-negotiable demands that the U.S. will never agree to.
As far as economic support to countries in the region; most Americans know that all the money in the world will not buy friendship or loyalty. Even Israel, a country whose economy is totally dependent on the U.S. can't be made to keep agreements signed by previous Israeli governments, so it's hard to see what leverage the U.S. could have over any of the others.
The Middle East only has one thing that the U.S. and the West wants and that is oil. All policy decisions are based on that fact.
 
This Washington Post article speaks for itself, please read it with an open mind!

This might be the most controversial theory for what’s behind the rise of ISIS

A year after his 700-page opus "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" stormed to the top of America's best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles.

The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality.

Piketty writes that the Middle East's political and social system has been made fragile by the high concentration of oil wealth into a few countries with relatively little population. If you look at the region between Egypt and Iran — which includes Syria — you find several oil monarchies controlling between 60 and 70 percent of wealth, while housing just a bit more than 10 percent of the 300 million people living in that area. (Piketty does not specify which countries he's talking about, but judging from a study he co-authored last year on Middle East inequality, it appears he means Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. By his numbers, they accounted for 16 percent of the region's population in 2012 and almost 60 percent of its gross domestic product.)

This concentration of so much wealth in countries with so small a share of the population, he says, makes the region "the most unequal on the planet."

Within those monarchies, he continues, a small slice of people controls most of the wealth, while a large — including women and refugees — are kept in a state of "semi-slavery." Those economic conditions, he says, have become justifications for jihadists, along with the casualties of a series of wars in the region perpetuated by Western powers.

His list starts with the first Gulf War, which he says resulted in allied forces returning oil "to the emirs." Though he does not spend much space connecting those ideas, the clear implication is that economic deprivation and the horrors of wars that benefited only a select few of the region's residents have, mixed together, become what he calls a "powder keg" for terrorism across the region.

Piketty is particularly scathing when he blames the inequality of the region, and the persistence of oil monarchies that perpetuate it, on the West: "These are the regimes that are militarily and politically supported by Western powers, all too happy to get some crumbs to fund their [soccer] clubs or sell some weapons. No wonder our lessons in social justice and democracy find little welcome among Middle Eastern youth."

Terrorism that is rooted in inequality, Piketty continues, is best combated economically.

To gain credibility with those who do not share in the region's wealth, Western countries should demonstrate that they are more concerned with the social development of the region than they are with their own financial interests and relationships with ruling families. The way to do this, he says, is to ensure that Middle eastern oil money funds "regional development," including far more education.

He concludes by looking inward, at France, decrying its discrimination in the hiring of immigrants and the high unemployment levels among those populations. He says Europe must turn away from "austerity" and reinvigorate its model of integration and job creation, and notes that the continent accepted a net 1 million immigrants per year before the financial crisis.

The argument has not gained much notice in the United States thus far. It rests on some controversial principles, not the least of which is the question of how unequal the Middle East is compared to the rest of the world — a problem rooted in the region's poor quality of economic statistics. In his paper last year, Piketty and a co-author concluded inequality was in fact quite high.

"Under plausible assumptions," the paper states in its abstract, "the top 10% income share (for the Middle East) could be well over 60%, and the top 1% share might exceed 25% (vs. 20% in the United States, 11% in Western Europe, and 17% in South Africa)."

Those would, indeed, be jarring levels. They are the high end of the scenarios Piketty lays out in the paper. Whether they are a root cause of the Islamic State is a debate that is very likely just beginning.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-to-blame-for-the-rise-of-the-islamic-state/
 
Good article. Thank you. We have income inequality everywhere. In the U.S. it is growing. Maybe something can be done about it, maybe not.
 
I think it is a dangerously misleading article as it leaves a very short leap to "the poor are potential ISIS operatives" and that divides nations.

While income inequality may push a few iinto the ISIS camp there are a myriad of causes for the rise of ISIS spanning hundreds of years all that article does is divert us from facing and recitifying our mistakes sooner.

There is no doubt that income inequality needs to be addressed as part of an over all plan to reduce issues driving recruitment to crime and terrorism in general I highly doubt any one joining ISIS is doing so to address that issue.
 
MontyB, can you list, in your opinion, what are the causes that make Muslim and non-Muslim youth join ISIS.

I believe, Muslims from all over the world join ISIS mainly due to relative socioeconomic deprivation.

Muslims in the western countries, on the other hand, struggle with identity issues and the majority white culture is hostile to the Islamic culture in those countries so they try to search for their belonging and join the extremists like ISIS.

Contrary to the Muslims in western countries joining the ISIS, the non Muslim westerners themselves join ISIS, particularly because of broken home background who tend to be detached from the society.

Here is yet another article:

You Can’t Understand Why People Join ISIS Without Understanding Relative Deprivation

The rise of ISIS and particularly the question of why young Muslims from all over the world join this entity have once again ignited a polarized and familiar debate. In one camp, there are those who believe ideology, culture and religion are the main drivers. Radical Islam, jihadism and the clash of civilizations are all integral parts of this camp’s narrative. The view that the real clash should be within Islam — between radicals and moderates — represents a more nuanced version of the same argument prioritizing ideological factors.

In the opposing camp, social and economic factors trump ideology and religion. Lack of education, unemployment, poverty and absence of upward mobility cause a growing sense of frustration and radicalization. According to this camp, the absence of socioeconomic opportunities matters much more than the clash of civilizations or the war of ideologies.

Both camps make valid points with major implications for policy makers but the key in understanding who joins ISIS is to go beyond simple socioeconomic factors or pure ideology. Instead, the concept of relative deprivation deserves more attention. Unlike absolute deprivation, relative deprivation is all about growing aspirations and expectations. The two camps can find common ground if they agree that ideology becomes much more important when socioeconomic aspirations are on the rise but somehow remain unfulfilled. The growing gap between expectations and opportunities leads to ideological radicalization.

“Those who are educated and with high ambitions but no real prospects for advancement are the ‘frustrated achievers’ increasingly tempted by radicalism.”

Last month, President Obama himself tried to find a middle ground between these two camps in his speech on countering violent extremism. He acknowledged the ideological and religious nature of the threat by emphasizing that groups like ISIS and al Qaeda portray themselves as holy warriors in defense of Islam. He was quick to add that America is at war with people who have perverted Islam and not with Islam itself. In doing so, the President echoed the view that the real ideological war should be between moderates and radicals within the same faith.

After addressing the ideological dimension of the threat, the President also defended the socioeconomic camp with the following words.

A second challenge we need to address are the grievances that terrorists exploit, including economic grievances. Poverty alone does not cause a person to become a terrorist, any more than poverty alone causes somebody to become a criminal. There are millions of people — billions of people — in the world who live in abject poverty and are focused on what they can do to build up their own lives and never embrace violent ideologies. Conversely, there are terrorists who’ve come from extraordinarily wealthy backgrounds, like Osama bin Laden.

What’s true, though, is that when millions of people — especially youth — are impoverished and have no hope for the future, when corruption inflicts daily humiliations on people, when there are no outlets by which people can express their concerns — resentments fester. The risk of instability and extremism grow. Where young people have no education, they are more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and radical ideas. Because it’s not tested against anything else, they’ve got nothing to weigh. And we’ve seen this across the Middle East and North Africa.
“The interconnected nature of the world thanks to information technology and globalization creates an acute awareness about opportunities elsewhere.”

It is certainly true that breeding grounds for radicalism and terrorist recruitment emerge not necessarily under conditions of abject poverty and deprivation but rather when negative social, economic, political and ideological trends converge. Dismissing the economic and social roots of radicalization on the grounds that most terrorists have middle-class backgrounds is simplistic and misleading. It is precisely when people develop high expectations, aspirations and hopes for upward mobility that we have to pay more attention to the potential for frustration, humiliation and ideological radicalization. There is a growing body of literature that refers to such individuals as “frustrated achievers.”

Relative deprivation is not primarily concerned with poverty or ignorance. Instead, the focus is on growing economic, social and political aspirations and the absence of opportunities to meet such heightened expectations. Those who are educated and with high ambitions but no real prospects for advancement are the “frustrated achievers” increasingly tempted by radicalism. Thus, it makes sense that Tunisia, which has a stronger middle class and education system than most of the Middle East, has disproportionately high numbers joining ISIS.

Similar dynamics of relative deprivation are at play in Europe, where significant portions of Muslim populations are young, frustrated, relatively educated, unemployed and uprooted from any sense of belonging. A small country like Belgium — with serious national identity, unemployment and Muslim integration problems — provides a perfect example of a toxic breeding ground where, like Tunisia, a disproportionately high number of ISIS recruits have emerged.

“Geographic proximity to Europe, a sense of historical rivalry and constant comparisons of achievements contribute to a sense of relative deprivation.”

The interconnected nature of the world thanks to information technology and globalization creates an acute awareness about opportunities elsewhere. Deprivation is no longer an absolute, isolated phenomenon — it’s relative. Rising inequality and growing awareness about such inequality go hand in hand. The scale of frustration is compounded by a demographic explosion, weak state capacity, growing expectations and diminishing opportunities in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

The religion of Islam adds an additional layer of complexity to relative deprivation. In a sense, Islam as a civilization is a frustrated achiever. Islam has created a great civilization that once surpassed the West in terms of its scientific, artistic, economic and military achievements. Today, however, the Islamic world collectively shares a sense of frustration and humiliation because it has little to boast in terms of economic, political and cultural success.

Yet, Islam still has high expectations and aspirations fueled by past accomplishments. Millions of Muslims share these mixed feelings of pride and shame. Geographic proximity to Europe, a sense of historical rivalry and constant comparisons in terms of achievements contribute to a sense of relative deprivation.

“In a sense, Islam as a civilization is a frustrated achiever.”

A strategy to stymie ISIS recruitment must address the lack of opportunity for frustrated achievers — particularly of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria — and the integration problems of Muslims in Europe. At the ideological level, the debate should be within Islam and not misconstrued as a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. To that end, it would certainly help to increase the online and social media visibility of moderate and reformist Islamic theologians that counter the extremist interpretation of Islam.

All these ideological, economic, political and psychological factors need to be taken into consideration in analyzing who joins ISIS. Unlike al Qaeda, ISIS claims to have created a state where the caliphate is reborn. More than a terrorist organization, it is an extremist movement and a pseudo-state in search of citizens. Understanding the complexity of relative deprivation — without exclusively focusing on ideology or economics, but the intersection of the two — is a first step in fighting the appeal of ISIS for thousands of frustrated achievers in the Arab world, Europe and beyond.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amer-tapaenar-/isis-relative-deprivation_b_6912460.html
 
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yet another voice.....I can post hundreds of articles arguing my case, but what's the point?

DON’T DISMISS POVERTY’S ROLE IN TERRORISM QUITE YET

With the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris earlier this month, pundits are again questioning a commonly-cited motive for radicalization. Media leaders are outright dismissing the possible role poverty plays in terrorism. On Hardball, Chris Matthews stated, “The world is filled with hundreds and hundreds of millions of poor people who have no prospects at all, but they don’t go around killing people. India is packed with poor people and they don’t go around killing people. Africa the same. These are killers.” The Wall Street Journal opined, “Wednesday’s attack also demonstrates again that violent Islam isn’t a reaction to poverty or Western policies in the Middle East. It is an ideological challenge to Western civilization and principles, including a free press and religious pluralism.”

Are the commentators right to dismiss poverty as a cause of terrorism? Policymakers, for their part, have shown a consistent tendency to name poverty as a primary motivation for terrorist acts. For example, in remarks made after a meeting with the Vatican’s Secretary of State in 2014, John Kerry declared, “We have a huge common interest in dealing with this issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism or even the root cause of the disenfranchisement of millions of people on this planet.”

Scholars, however, have often come to opposite conclusions. A 2006 study on terrorism for 96 countries between 1986 and 2002 found no link between its economic measures and terrorism. In 2002, Alan Krueger, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, and Jitka Malecková, an associate professor at the Institute for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Charles University, made the argument in The New Republic against poverty’s role in terrorism with a wide-ranging presentation of evidence including evidence gathered from Hezbollah and Hamas suggesting that upper class and more educated individuals are slightly over-represented in among terrorists because terror groups actively select for those individuals from large populations of potential recruits.'

...Before dismissing poverty out of hand, the pundits ought to show restraint and scholars should continue to update and reanalyze the data.

This wealth of scholarly evidence is certainly daunting for those who argue that poverty is a cause of terrorism. However, before dismissing poverty out of hand, the pundits ought to show restraint and scholars should continue to update and reanalyze the data.

Why should media critics and academics alike avoid a rush to judgment on poverty and terrorism? For one thing, some scholarly literature documents a relationship though not necessarily a causal one - between poverty and some terrorism. A 2011 study (notably disputed by Krueger and Malecková, among others) found a positive relationship between unemployment and right wing extremist crimes committed in Germany. A 1977 study of terrorist profiles which supported the conclusion that terrorists are generally middle or upper class noted that the Provisional Irish Republican Army constituted an exception both in terms of social class and educational attainment. The Basque terrorist group ETA provides another interesting example: Goldie Shabad and Francisco Ramo point out in the edited anthology Terrorism in Context that over time, membership in ETA grew among working class individuals while it declined among the upper classes.

These examples demonstrate a fundamental structural problem in method and approach. By treating terrorism as a single category that can be examined across multiple countries and decades rather than focusing on particular groups or individuals, we overlook patterns that exist in some but not all cases. Indeed, it is quite likely there are multiple routes into terrorism, some of which might involve poverty and some of which might not. When this data is aggregated, the poverty-related routes become less visible, but that does not mean they don’t exist. Where scholars are often careful to acknowledge this limitation, pundits have sidelined it in grand pronouncements that poverty does not cause terrorism.

Shifting our thinking on methods used to evaluate relationships between terrorism and poverty may well reveal new dimensions other potential explanations for terrorism, such as mental illness.

Shifting our thinking on methods used to evaluate relationships between terrorism and poverty may well reveal new dimensions other potential explanations for terrorism, such as mental illness. Recent studies have found that while terrorists involved in terrorist groups are not particularly likely to be mentally ill, those who act alone are far more likely than the general population to be mentally ill. One study found 40% of the 98 lone wolves it examined to have identifiable mental health issues compared to only 1.5% of the general population.

One size will never fit all. Searching for single-category, causal explanations for terrorism and dismissing correlated elements like poverty and mental illness as irrelevant is likely to obscure other patterns that could shed light on extremist behavior. Some Americans involved in terrorism have come from affluent backgrounds: Anwar Awlaki, the American cleric who took on a leadership role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was the son of a major Yemeni political figure and Zachary Chesser, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for trying to join Al Shabaab and threatening the creators of South Park over their depiction of Mohammed, was born to a well off family in the Virginia suburbs. On the other hand, American Somalis – 82 percent of whom live near or below the poverty line according to a 2008 Census Bureau study—are the source of the largest groups travelling to fight with jihadist groups abroad. The New York Times referred to the group of Minnesotans – most of whom were of Somali descent - that travelled to fight for Al Shabaab as “the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda.” Since that report, the same communities have wrestled with a new wave of individuals travelling to fight in Syria.

Community members on the ground contend that the economic situation explains the persistence of jihadist recruitment among Minnesota’s Somali community. Fartun Weli, a the founder of a nonprofit helping Somali women, told Voice of America that “Kids are being recruited. Yes, this is a fact. What are we going to do about it? We have to talk about the root causes that make Somali kids vulnerable… we have to make sure there are opportunities created for our community to exit poverty.”

This case calls for more study and disaggregation when looking at the potential role of poverty in causing terrorism. It is also important to consider that the argument that terrorists are often middle class and well educated because terrorist groups are capable of selecting their preferred operatives from a large pool of recruits depends on the context. Some groups, particularly well-developed groups have name recognition and screening mechanisms in place, but newer, less well-known outfits usually do not. Others may simply not be interested in screening their recruits or consider it a priority compared to gaining more manpower or the propaganda edge of a large and diverse fighting force.

Indeed, one of the primary characteristics of ISIS’ use of foreign fighters today is that they are not particularly selective about who they accept into their ranks. As Peter Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Political Violence put it, “The Islamic State is also less selective than a lot of other groups. If you come from the West, don't speak Arabic, you're not a particularly good fighter and don't have a particular skill, IS will probably still accept you.”

Some groups, for example Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, have even adopted open source methods publishing bombmaking instructions online to encourage attacks where they have difficulty inserting operatives with close ties to the organization. But in adopting such an open source leaderless strategy they surrender any ability to conduct screening.

None of this is to say that an affirmative case for the role of poverty in causing terrorism is clear. However, it is time for new studies on the subject and a move towards examinations of more specific threat actors using within-case variation and other methods capable of revealing how poverty might have different effects in different contexts. Assuming previous studies still explain the dynamics in the cases we face today could lead to blind spots allowing threats to mature unhindered.

https://www.newamerica.org/new-america/dont-dismiss-povertys-role-in-terrorism-quite-yet/
 
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MontyB, can you list, in your opinion, what are the causes that make Muslim and non-Muslim youth join ISIS.

I believe, Muslims from all over the world join ISIS mainly due to relative socioeconomic deprivation.

Muslims in the western countries, on the other hand, struggle with identity issues and the majority white culture is hostile to the Islamic culture in those countries so they try to search for their belonging and join the extremists like ISIS.

Contrary to the Muslims in western countries joining the ISIS, the non Muslim westerners themselves join ISIS, particularly because of broken home background who tend to be detached from the society.

Here is yet another article:

You Can’t Understand Why People Join ISIS Without Understanding Relative Deprivation



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amer-tapaenar-/isis-relative-deprivation_b_6912460.html

I cant list the reasons these clowns join ISIS as I doubt either of us will live long enough to write them all down but I would suggest that a couple of the main causes are the last 200 years of Western meddling in their affairs, the arrogant approach we have to lifestyles we don't agree with, the Israel/Palestine mess and the Wests continued support for that predatory bunch of parasites we let loose there in 1947 and the failure to understand the tribal and sectarian nature of the people in the region when arbitrarily drawing borders on a map.

2-300 years ago we created the cancer of colonialism in the region which continues today in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the more recent invasion of Iraq, we maintain and support some of the most corrupt and repressive regimes in the the region all for the sake of oil, I really don't think it is that hard to understand why radicalism rises in these situations.

Certainly the majority of those going from the West to join ISIS are poor but that is a consequence of the disenfranchisement we have created within the west and it has nothing to do with why ISIS exist it is just a red herring to draw attention away from continuing actions being carried out in our name, poverty is a precursor to the illness but it isn't the cause of the illness.
 
Funny you mentioned that colonialism led to this mayhem but I believe it all began with British imperialism. By the way, some 20 years ago I read this article titled "The Coming Anarchy" by Robert D Kaplan and think it is still relevant today...just check that out :-|

Let me explain how I view this CORE issue:

All the great powers of the world have got their own interest with their dubious foreign policy. As you may know the USA, Russia, China, and EU are some of the major powers playing their key role in the “New Great Game” in Central Asia where my motherland Sri Lanka is located in the epicentre of the strategic sea lanes of the world in the Indian Ocean where 90% of the world trade is being transported everyday including oil. For more read the book “A Time Bomb for Global Trade" by Michael Richardson.

This is now a revived “Great Game” in case if you haven’t already heard of this. Let me kindly state what I think of the highest echelons of intelligence of the world today and their “Strategic” Intelligence. As you may well be aware they are all players in a geostrategic struggle that has become increasingly intertwined with the War on Terror: The New "Great Game."

In this rerun of the first "Great Game," the nineteenth-century imperial rivalry between the British Empire and czarist Russia, powerful players once again position themselves to control the heart of the Eurasian landmass, left in a post-Soviet power vacuum. Today the United States has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the ever-present Russians, new regional powers such as China, India, Iran, Turkey, Poland, Georgia and Pakistan have entered the arena. Many authors and analysts view this new "Game" as centering on regional petroleum politics.

Let me quote an extract from Lutz Kleveman, who is the author of the book “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia”

“Since September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration has undertaken a massive military buildup in Central Asia, deploying thousands of US troops not only in Afghanistan but also in the newly independent republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. These first US combat troops on former Soviet territory have dramatically altered the geostrategic power equations in the region, with Washington trying to seal the cold war victory against Russia, contain Chinese influence and tighten the noose around Iran. Most important, however, the Bush Administration is using the "war on terror" to further American energy interests in Central Asia. The bad news is that this dramatic geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is likely to produce only more terrorists, jeopardizing America's prospects of defeating the forces responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The main spoils in today's Great Game are the Caspian energy reserves, principally oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 85 to 219 billion barrels of crude, worth up to $4 trillion. According to the US Energy Department, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 110 billion barrels, more than three times the US reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and British Petroleum have already invested more than $30 billion in new production facilities.

The aggressive US pursuit of oil interests in the Caspian did not start with the Bush Administration but during the Clinton years, with the Democratic President personally conducting oil and pipeline diplomacy with Caspian leaders. Despite Clinton's failure to reduce the Russian influence in the region decisively, American industry leaders were impressed. "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian," declared Dick Cheney in 1998 in a speech to oil industrialists in Washington. Cheney was then still CEO of the oil-services giant Halliburton. In May 2001 Cheney, now US Vice President, recommended in the Administration's seminal National Energy Policy report that "the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy," singling out the Caspian Basin as a "rapidly growing new area of supply." Keen to outdo Clinton's oil record, the Bush Administration took the new Great Game into its second round….”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/
 
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Funny you mentioned that colonialism led to this mayhem but I believe it all began with British imperialism. By the way, some 20 years ago I read this article titled "The Coming Anarchy" by Robert D Kaplan and think it is still relevant today...just check that out :-|

Let me explain how I view this CORE issue:

All the great powers of the world have got their own interest with their dubious foreign policy. As you may know the USA, Russia, China, and EU are some of the major powers playing their key role in the “New Great Game” in Central Asia where my motherland Sri Lanka is located in the epicentre of the strategic sea lanes of the world in the Indian Ocean where 90% of the world trade is being transported everyday including oil. For more read the book “A Time Bomb for Global Trade" by Michael Richardson.

This is now a revived “Great Game” in case if you haven’t already heard of this. Let me kindly state what I think of the highest echelons of intelligence of the world today and their “Strategic” Intelligence. As you may well be aware they are all players in a geostrategic struggle that has become increasingly intertwined with the War on Terror: The New "Great Game."

In this rerun of the first "Great Game," the nineteenth-century imperial rivalry between the British Empire and czarist Russia, powerful players once again position themselves to control the heart of the Eurasian landmass, left in a post-Soviet power vacuum. Today the United States has taken over the leading role from the British. Along with the ever-present Russians, new regional powers such as China, India, Iran, Turkey, Poland, Georgia and Pakistan have entered the arena. Many authors and analysts view this new "Game" as centering on regional petroleum politics.

Let me quote an extract from Lutz Kleveman, who is the author of the book “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia”



http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/


I don't disagree with too much of that as they are all playing their games with little interest in damage it is causing however I tend to believe that the mess in the Middle East begins with British and French colonialism, if you want to add African issues you can tack on almost every other tinpot European empire from the 17th to the 20th century (Belgium, Spain, Germany etc.), the sad thing is that with the end of of WW1 and the break up of the empires there was a chance to sort things out but unfortuantely at that point the Americans decided they wanted to be an undeclared empire and off we went again.

The end of WW2 gave us yet another chance to resolve these problems and once again we chose not to thanks to a contrived "cold war".

We are now dealing with 400 years worth of mistakes, lies, deciet, hunger for power and imperial ambition, were given two chances to fix it and simply replaced Kings with Presidents and carried on meddling in the affairs of people we believed inferior and justified it by telling ourselves they "need our direction".

The end result we are no longer fighting to bring peace as there is no chance of peace the region is so fractured and riddled with vested interests as such we are now pushed into fighting for our own survival and as the West slowly collapses financially we probably wont even win that battle.

I would suggest that if you want parallels the rise and fall of the Roman empire may provide all that you need.
 
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