Studies on radicalization & comments

[Bob's World]

Query:

Is one "radicalized" by the government that they believe is oppressing them; or are they radicalized by the organization that comes along and offers them an alternative to that oppression?

As I always say, the Pied Piper is a fairy tale. If the conditions (real or perceived) of poor governance do not exist, no amount of leadership or ideology is going gain much traction with the populace.

Personally, I find the whole concept of "deradicalization" just one more blame shifting tactic to soothe ourlselves that we are merely victims here. This is not helpful, and it will not work.

[bourbon]

Query:

Is one "radicalized" by the government that they believe is oppressing them; or are they radicalized by the organization that comes along and offers them an alternative to that oppression?

Sir, I would make a distinction between groups like Palestinians and Tamils that become suicide bombers and Muslims in the West who radicalize. This material is more applicable to the later. The Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki’s or Hamburg Cell’s are not oppressed by their governments. I believe the organization that comes along offers the Salafi Jihadist script, which they reach for to fill an internal psychological void.

As has been mentioned by others before, the book/film Fight Club illustrates this dynamic substituting Salafi Jihadism for a revolutionary-anarchist movement.

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives." - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

[Bob's World]

Sir, I would make a distinction between groups like Palestinians and Tamils that become suicide bombers and Muslims in the West who radicalize. This material is more applicable to the later. The Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki’s or Hamburg Cell’s are not oppressed by their governments. I believe the organization that comes along offers the Salafi Jihadist script, which they reach for to fill an internal psychological void.

As has been mentioned by others before, the book/film Fight Club illustrates this dynamic substituting Salafi Jihadism for a revolutionary-anarchist movement.

I think you are whistling past the cemetery if you take the position of holding western governments blameless; be it in regards to shaping and supporting despots down range; or in subtle policies at home that create perceptions of disrespect or injustice among some segment of your nation's own populace.

When you combine foreign policies that support oppressive regimes of a country elsewhere, that has provided a significant immigrant populace to your country at home, and that populace holds such perceptions; I would advise you that you are sitting on a powder keg of your own making.

To simply blame the messenger or the message that actually motivates members of that populace to action is naive and dangerous.

[Dayuhan]

I think you are whistling past the cemetery if you take the position of holding western governments blameless; be it in regards to shaping and supporting despots down range; or in subtle policies at home that create perceptions of disrespect or injustice among some segment of your nation's own populace.

When you combine foreign policies that support oppressive regimes of a country elsewhere, that has provided a significant immigrant populace to your country at home, and that populace holds such perceptions; I would advise you that you are sitting on a powder keg of your own making.

To simply blame the messenger or the message that actually motivates members of that populace to action is naive and dangerous.

Certainly if an insurgency is driven by resistance to Western-supported despotism one would be right to revisit the policy of supporting despots. We found ourselves in that position with a depressing regularity during the Cold War, but that paradigm is not necessarily applicable in every circumstance.

In Iraq and Afghanistan the "insurgencies" (using the term loosely) are not driven by resistance to Western-supported despotism but by a desire to take advantage of a power vacuum left when Western governments removed despots. The Western supported governments in both cases are widely perceived as ineffectual and vulnerable and likely to collapse as soon as Western support is withdrawn, leaving the prize open for whoever has the means to seize it. Western support is perceived (probably accurately) as being unsustainable over the long haul, so the "insurgents" try to erode that support and gain position to take power when it is withdrawn.

AQ, for its own part, may have had its roots in resistance to foreign-supported government and foreign occupation of Afghanistan, but the power in question was not Western. AQ's continuing campaign is based less on resistance to Western-supported despotism than on a desire to impose a despotism more conducive to AQ's goals.

It is in some quarters fashionable to attribute all that happens in the world (at least all that involves violence) to a response to Western actions. In some ways it would be lovely if this were true: if everything everyone did was a response to our actions, we could easily control the responses by modifying our own actions. The world, alas, is a bit more complicated than that, and the non-West is not simply a reflexive responder to Western stimuli. There are people out there with their own agendas and they have both the will and the capacity to proactively pursue those agendas, for their own purposes and quite apart from any knee-jerk response.

[Bob's World]

Certainly if an insurgency is driven by resistance to Western-supported despotism one would be right to revisit the policy of supporting despots. We found ourselves in that position with a depressing regularity during the Cold War, but that paradigm is not necessarily applicable in every circumstance.

In Iraq and Afghanistan the "insurgencies" (using the term loosely) are not driven by resistance to Western-supported despotism but by a desire to take advantage of a power vacuum left when Western governments removed despots. The Western supported governments in both cases are widely perceived as ineffectual and vulnerable and likely to collapse as soon as Western support is withdrawn, leaving the prize open for whoever has the means to seize it. Western support is perceived (probably accurately) as being unsustainable over the long haul, so the "insurgents" try to erode that support and gain position to take power when it is withdrawn.

AQ, for its own part, may have had its roots in resistance to foreign-supported government and foreign occupation of Afghanistan, but the power in question was not Western. AQ's continuing campaign is based less on resistance to Western-supported despotism than on a desire to impose a despotism more conducive to AQ's goals.

It is in some quarters fashionable to attribute all that happens in the world (at least all that involves violence) to a response to Western actions. In some ways it would be lovely if this were true: if everything everyone did was a response to our actions, we could easily control the responses by modifying our own actions. The world, alas, is a bit more complicated than that, and the non-West is not simply a reflexive responder to Western stimuli. There are people out there with their own agendas and they have both the will and the capacity to proactively pursue those agendas, for their own purposes and quite apart from any knee-jerk response.

First Afghanistan: There was an alliance of northern tribes in insurgency against the illegitimate Taliban government that was installed and supported by Pakistan. We went into that mix to get revenge against AQ and to wrest control of Afghanistan away from the Taliban with out, I assume, fully appreciating the role of Pakistan in their regime. The follow-on insurgency we are dealing with in Afghanistan now has nothing to do with GWOT, and has everything to do with the current Karzai regime that draws its legitimacy from the West/US; and the Taliban insurgency to challenge that; along with a general popular resistance against the western military presence in their country.

In Iraq there was no insurgency and no connection to GWOT. They just happened to be governed by a guy who pissed us off. The insurgency there was purely a response to our invasion.

This is the great irony, the two places we have sent our military to "defeat terrorism" in fact, have very little to do with the root cause of the political factors that gave rise to AQ and also that motivate many nationalist insurgents across the middle east (from places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria) to engage the West in acts of Terrorism.

Until we are ready to stop using GWOT as an excuse to attack the States that we don't approve of; and instead recognize that we are not being attacked by the populaces of our enemies, but are in fact being attacked by the populaces of our allies, we will not may true progress in defeating terrorsim.

This is the critical strategic point that we must address. The West supports a handful of the most oppressive regimes in the world across the Middle East, and it is the insurgent populaces of those countries that attack us; along with the relatives of those populaces who have migrated to western countries.

This is like a magicians trick. No one is seeing the real problem because we are all staring intently at the misdirection.

Yemen is the latest poster child for this. An oppressive despot being promised US aid to oppress and suppress the insurgent segment of his populace that dares to stand up to his autocratic rule all in the name of "GWOT" and because he is an ally. We can only expect more attacks on the west from this policy. We should be cracking down on the government of Yemen, not the populace of Yemen. Once we change our policies and refocus our military efforts accordingly the populaces of places like Yemen will find they don't need what AQ is selling; and they will also have little reason to feel that they must attack the US to be able to get out from under oppressive regimes at home.

[Dayuhan]

First Afghanistan: There was an alliance of northern tribes in insurgency against the illegitimate Taliban government that was installed and supported by Pakistan. We went into that mix to get revenge against AQ and to wrest control of Afghanistan away from the Taliban with out, I assume, fully appreciating the role of Pakistan in their regime. The follow-on insurgency we are dealing with in Afghanistan now has nothing to do with GWOT, and has everything to do with the current Karzai regime that draws its legitimacy from the West/US; and the Taliban insurgency to challenge that; along with a general popular resistance against the western military presence in their country.

Largely agree, though "revenge against AQ" could also be stated as "disruption of State support for AQ and resulting safe haven". I'd also question whether the current conflict qualifies as "insurgency". An insurgency requires a government, and I'm not sure anybody other than us recognizes the Karzai assemblage as that.

In Iraq there was no insurgency and no connection to GWOT. They just happened to be governed by a guy who pissed us off. The insurgency there was purely a response to our invasion.

Agreed, though to an extent the "insurgency", especially in the early stages, could be viewed as less a resistance to a Government than as armed competition to fill the vacuum left by Saddam's removal.

This is the great irony, the two places we have sent our military to "defeat terrorism" in fact, have very little to do with the root cause of the political factors that gave rise to AQ and also that motivate many nationalist insurgents across the middle east (from places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria) to engage the West in acts of Terrorism.

I personally believe that the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to draw the US into punching the tar baby and initiating military actions that could be dragged into wars of attrition. That was not a response to US actions or policies, but a carefully calculated proactive gambit aiming to simultaneously reinforce the narrative of Western aggression against Muslims (a narrative that was at the time becoming rather weak) and engage the US in a military action that would exploit our rather notorious unwillingness to maintain expensive and unpleasant long term actions. If I'm right, we gave AQ an abundance of what they wanted.

This is the critical strategic point that we must address. The West supports a handful of the most oppressive regimes in the world across the Middle East, and it is the insurgent populaces of those countries that attack us; along with the relatives of those populaces who have migrated to western countries.

Where and when in this conflict have we been attacked by an insurgent populace resisting a Western-supported regime? AQ is not a populace, nor does it represent a populace. They have never managed to draw enough support from any populace anywhere to initiate an insurgency, though they have managed to successfully exploit insurgencies that they did not initiate.

Yemen is the latest poster child for this. An oppressive despot being promised US aid to oppress and suppress the insurgent segment of his populace that dares to stand up to his autocratic rule all in the name of "GWOT" and because he is an ally. We can only expect more attacks on the west from this policy. We should be cracking down on the government of Yemen, not the populace of Yemen. Once we change our policies and refocus our military efforts accordingly the populaces of places like Yemen will find they don't need what AQ is selling; and they will also have little reason to feel that they must attack the US to be able to get out from under oppressive regimes at home.

Have we the capacity to transform the Yemeni government into something functional? I suspect not. We could withdraw support and allow that government to collapse, but the immediate outcome would likely resemble what we see on the other side of the strait, which would benefit neither us nor the populace. My opinion of the Yemeni government is no higher than yours, but we've a rather limited list of options for action, and any or all of them could work out badly.

[Bob's World]

So, when in quick sand, struggle harder?

When in a rip current, swim faster?

When in a hole, dig deeper?

I prefer to subscribe to "If something isn't working, try something else." Coupled with the belief that usually when a guy thinks all his problems are someone elses fault, he is delusional.

Our current foreign policy is suffering from just such delusion. We are so sure of our goodness, our rightness, that we assume that any who dare to reject or resist what we offer or impose upon them to be "threats." They are either with us or against us, right?

I will completely agree that AQ has no populace. I repeat, AQ has no populace. They are a non-state political organization that is conducting a global unconventional warfare campaign. They target and leverage the insurgent populaces of other nations with common grievances to provide the manpower and funding to make their movement work.

You ask:

"Where and when in this conflict have we been attacked by an insurgent populace resisting a Western-supported regime? "

The first World Trade Center attack; the USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, 9/11; all of the foreign figher attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan; etc, etc, etc.

To make matters worse, the despotic governments that these insurgencies are struggling to affect now come to the US with hat in hand as great allies, and ask for money and weapons to use against their own people in the name of "combatting terrorism;" and we laud them as great allies...

We are being played, and we allow ourselves to be played because we fear the economic impact that breaking relations with these countries could cause to our economy. Ironic. Supporting them has trashed our economy even worse that what we feared would happen if we did not support them.

What I fear more than terrorism; what I fear more than the economic disruption that could come from damaged relations with Saudi Arabia, et. al; what I fear as we pursue these fear-driven policies; is that we are doing irrepairable damage to the reputation of the United States of America. That we standing up more for those who oppress more than for those who are oppressed. That we are becoming far less the country we see ourselves as, and becoming the type of country that we have always stood against.

It is time to face our fears and to get our country back on track; and no amount of military effort against the populaces of others will get us anywhere but deeper into the darkness that we fear.

As to having the capacity to "fix" Yemen. Not our job. We don't need to fix these guys, we need to give them some tough love and stop supporting their destructive behavior and demand that they either begin addressing the concerns of their popualces with our help, or ignore them and deal with the results on their own.

The "Good Cold Warriors" in DC think they have this figured out, but they are destroying us by clinging to relationships and methods that just don't bear up to the current age. We must evolve if we want to prevail.

[Bill Moore]

We refuse to convert to Islam as a nation (or in the West), and we refuse to implement Shari'a law, and we refuse to suppress our women, and we refuse to do a lot of things that we simply think our wrong headed ideas/beliefs.

John Smith is a loser (and it's obviously our fault) sitting in bumfudge, NY looking for meaning in life, and then he finds it finds on Anwar Awlaki's website and starts a dialouge with him, maybe attends a mosque that is relatively close. Ah he has found meaning and happiness now, and has decided to take his self actualization a step further by attempting a terrorist attack in a crowded mall over the weekend. He now knows if he dies conducting Jihad against the evil government that oppressed him all these years he'll get to go to paradise. I'm not how that is our fault due to our foreign policy, but apparently it is.

Most "terrorists" come from middle class or upper class families (fact), most terrorists have education beyond high school (fact), most terrorists come from secular or non-practicing families (fact).

Our approach to challenging terrorism? Economic development, build schools, and focus on secular education? I'm sure this is completely logical and a good use of our tax dollars, but I don't see it, maybe you can help me contect the dots?

The reality is there are narratives and ideologies that simply incompatible in the real world outside of academia. More education and economic development will not change their minds, the issue is neither, it is their beliefs. Obviously not every Muslim, nor even most, embrace the views of the extremists that desire to murder civilians to achieve their goals. Something about the radicalization process pushed them off the fence. They may have been sitting on the fence because of their perceptions of oppressive governments, etc., but there was a process that pulled them into the ranks of terrorism (not talking insurgents, although the two are frequently confused in SWJ). It is worth continuing to see is we can lessen that calling, and for those affected by the radical narrative, at least offer another view that may at a minimum put them back on the fence again. I readily admit most programs to date have been terrible failures.

However, it is time we move beyond the liberal self imposed view that we're too blame for a few men attacking the U.S. and murdering thousands of civilians, or attacking the public transportation systems in England and Spain and murdering hundreds of innocents. The blame is a belief system that is NOT compatible with the modern world.

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to CLS alert (a consistently good daily news alert on CT issues) for an article in The Salon: 'The Muslim "radicalization" myth: Debunked. What Peter King missed this week: How the government should actually fight homegrown terrorism'.

Which summarises a longer report by the Brennan Centre and ends with:

If we're going to talk about radicalization, let's look at the evidence that's out there. Let's not rely on stereotypes or preconceived notions about what radicalization is and who is susceptible to becoming a terrorist. The empirical evidence that is available so far is directly in contradiction to the theories that have been put forward by the FBI and the NYPD. So we want to make sure that those theories -- that are unfounded and contradicted by the social science evidence -- are not being used to influence policy.

Link to The Salon article:http://www.salon.com/news/politics/w...tion_explained

Link to the Brennan Centre report:http://brennan.3cdn.net/3ff468de1211..._hwm6beu15.pdf

On my first, quick read I noted the emphasis on outwardly visible signs regarding the Muslim faith being taken as indicators of radicalisation; a good point IMHO and as Muslim police officers repeatedly have said to me rarely an indicator of political radicalisation.

Incidentally the Brennan Centre report is very critical of an earlier NYPD report, see posts 15 & 16 on this thread 'The Homegrown Threat':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3672

[davidbfpo]

A fairly standard article on the flight from Toronto, Canada of naturalised, if not born there Canadian-Somalis, except two women have fled:http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...ppeal-to-youth

One hopes that the two affected communities are in contact.

[marct]

Hi Bob,

Query:

Is one "radicalized" by the government that they believe is oppressing them; or are they radicalized by the organization that comes along and offers them an alternative to that oppression?

The answer to that question is "Yes" .

On a more serious level, we have a very nasty tendency in the West to want to assume mono-causal models since, if we can identify them, we can in theory gain some form of control over them. Personally, I'm part of that annoying emergentist camp.....

As I always say, the Pied Piper is a fairy tale. If the conditions (real or perceived) of poor governance do not exist, no amount of leadership or ideology is going gain much traction with the populace.

At any given point in time and space, I might agree with you but, at a general level, I have to disagree. Ideologies, actually grand narratives is a better term since "ideology" implies a secular worldview with a political focus and they are only a sub-set of the totality of grand narratives, can spread within a population without requiring either a Pied Piper or going kinetic. Once spread, however, they can act as an emergent base from which political change emerges and, as part of that emergence, brings moral entrepreneurs - your Pied Pipers - to popular attention. "Governance", good, bad or indifferent, may have nothing whatsoever to do with the spread of a grand narrative that will, latter on, act as the wellspring for latter political contests that may go kinetic.

Personally, I find the whole concept of "deradicalization" just one more blame shifting tactic to soothe ourlselves that we are merely victims here. This is not helpful, and it will not work.

Not in the materialist sense of immediately diminishing the pool of "radicals". Where it does, however, play a major part is in constructing and maintaining the, hmmm, the technical term would be "mana" or "spiritual power", of the opposing grand narrative. It allows for the process we could call "witnessing" to take place which, when we look at it at the population level, can be a pretty potent way to kill off key components of an opposing grand narrative.

Now, having said all that, I don't mean in any way to imply that they people setting up the deradicalization programs have a coherent theoretical model of what they are doing and why they are doing it, at least in the terms and sense that I see them. IMHO, this is just another example of the emergence of a process from a dynamic situation that is pretty much probable (BTW, I've seen and documented similar patterns in other areas).

Cheers,

Marc

[Dayuhan]

Query:

Is one "radicalized" by the government that they believe is oppressing them; or are they radicalized by the organization that comes along and offers them an alternative to that oppression?

As I always say, the Pied Piper is a fairy tale. If the conditions (real or perceived) of poor governance do not exist, no amount of leadership or ideology is going gain much traction with the populace.

Personally, I find the whole concept of "deradicalization" just one more blame shifting tactic to soothe ourlselves that we are merely victims here. This is not helpful, and it will not work.

In some environments yes, in others perhaps less so. In this case we're not talking about mass radicalization of a populace, but of disaffected individuals. Looking back at recent history we can see that these individual radicalizations generally have nothing to do with quality of governance. They're more likely to be driven by a combination of boredom, youthful energy with no immediate outlet, and in many cases generalized anger, often with "society" standing in for resentment toward parents and other immediate authority figuresd.

I'm not convinced that any level of quality governance will completely eliminate that fraction of a percent that comes out with a chip on the shoulder heavy enough to drive a turn to violence.