Uneasy time requires smart thinking
There is no doubt that the rise of Daesh, which claims to be
the new vanguard of the global jihadist movement, and the establishment of its
caliphate in Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014 represents a turning point in
the evolution of global terrorism.
No time in recent history before has there been an outfit
that has been so successful to confuse so many in such a short time. Daesh
claims to be Islamic and a caliphate under its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Its
flag even has the Islamic emblem – the testimony of faith. Thanks to the
internet and its smart propagators, Daesh has been able to relay its messages
throughout the world and gravitate many to its causes! Thousands flocked to its
causes, some even joining the so-called caliphate from Europe, let alone from
its neighboring countries with significant Muslim population. The imperative
for the migration, or hijrah, to the caliphate was provided by al-Baghdadi’s
proclamation in 2014 in which he reportedly said that ‘there is no life without
jihad and there is no jihad without hijrah’ and moreover that ‘this life of
jihad is not possible until you pack and move to the Khilafah [caliphate]’.
Baghdadi’s was an unprecedented call in this century. Thanks
also to the quick wins in the battle fields in Iraq and Syria in its early
years, Daesh could attract thousands of young people –male and female, hailing
from many countries – to make the journey to join its ranks and take part in
the consolidation and expansion of a project with global scope!
The call had an extraordinary impact on Western Europe: we
are told that of the nearly 30,000 foreign fighters (FFs) that have travelled
to the Middle East to join various organizations active in the region, including
the Daesh, some 5,000 hail from Western European countries. No previous mobilization,
whether linked to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, or the
genocidal campaigns against the Bosnian Muslims (by Christian Orthodox
Serbians) and against the Chechen Muslims by the Russians in Chechnya in the
1990s, or the western war in Iraq in the 2000s, had had such a wide
repercussion among young European Muslims. Of these FFs, some 10%, nearly 550,
are women.
Elcano Royal Institute, established
under the honorary presidency of the Prince of Asturias on 2 December 2001 as a
forum for analysis and debate on international affairs and particularly on
Spain’s international relations, has recently completed an analysis
that looks at the women who are recruited to join DAESH in Spain: who they
are, how they were radicalized and what their motivations and functions are
within the groups, cells and networks in which they ultimately become involved.
Terrorist groups (e.g., Tamil Tigers) have historically
recruited women for a plethora of reasons. The use of women in operational
activities of a suicidal nature has proved to be a win-win strategy for the
organizations, providing they are not arrested before achieving their goals:
first it has been calculated that they are capable of causing up to four times
as many victims as their male counterparts, given their greater ability to pass
undetected, and secondly they attract much greater media coverage, owing both
to their novelty (men are traditionally over-represented in terrorist organizations),
and to the shock that is still felt upon seeing a woman commit violent acts,
when they have traditionally and culturally been associated with peaceful
values.
In the Spanish case, per the latest official figures, of the
208 individuals with Spanish nationality and/or residence in Spain that have
decided to travel to the ‘caliphate’ since 2013, some 10% (21) are female. Additionally,
another 23 women have been arrested and arraigned before the Audiencia Nacional
within Spanish territory for their involvement in activities linked to Daesh.
The average age of the women covered by this study is 24, seven years less than
the average age of the men arrested for the same crimes: 31.3 years at the time
of their arrest. Almost three quarters of the women (73.3%) were aged between
19 and 28 when arrested. Less than a
half, some 45%, are women who were single at the time of their arrest.
As to the nationality of the women arrested in Spain for
connections to Daesh, in more than six out of every 10 cases (60.9%) they were
Spanish – more than half, 56.5%, were born in Spanish national territory. Of
women with Spanish nationality, 65.2% were resident in Spain and the offspring
of immigrants, born essentially in the autonomous cities of Melilla (36.2%) and
Ceuta (27.4%). Another notable feature of the female contingent is that 13% are
converts, lacking any manner of Muslim family, cultural or religious
background, but who decided at a certain moment to adopt this faith as their
own. It is a percentage similar to that observed among the men (11.1%).
The Elcano analysis also shows that the women arrested in
Spain were better educated than their male counterparts: none of the arrested
women were illiterate or lacking any type of compulsory education, which is
however the case with 8.8% of the male detainees. 87.5% of the women –compared
with 25.7% of the men – had obtained secondary education, and 6.3% had
completed higher education. In fact, according to the available data, 26.7% of
the women were students at the time of their arrest, as opposed to 4.8% of the
men, although this variable could be affected by the fact that the women are
generally younger than the men. Another striking feature of the arrested women
is the number who were unemployed, 33.3% of the total, 10 percentage points
greater than the figure for unemployed men. In both cases, those in work were
predominantly employed in the services sector.
Lastly, the Elcano analysis also point out that at the time
of their arrest for activities related to Daesh none of the women had criminal
records, whether for crimes related to terrorism or for ordinary infractions,
something that by contrast is distinctly common among men, not only in Spain
but elsewhere in Western Europe.
As the above statistics show, what Spain faced is a home-grown
phenomenon. Many of the women who were radicalized or inclined to join Daesh
were influenced by what they saw and read in the Internet. Some 61.5% women
were inclined to join Daesh for reasons of an emotional or affective nature,
including the promise of getting married to a fighter in the field, with whom
they typically fell in love over the internet, or whose partner persuaded the
women to become involved with them. Their intention was not so much to wage
‘jihad at home’ as to travel to the territory occupied by Daesh to join the
project of the ‘caliphate’ under construction, but without getting involved in
fighting. This also emerges from the fact that none of the women performed
functions of an operational nature, nor had they been trained physically or in
the use of weapons or explosives. In the case of the men, willingness to become
involved as FFs predominated.
Other functions performed by the women arrested in Spain
include recruiting and radicalizing other women (accounting for 45.5%) and
spreading propaganda over social media and the internet (22.7%).
The women who have been arrested and arraigned before the Audiencia
Nacional for their radical activities tend to be young and free of family
responsibilities. While none of the young women was illiterate, the majority
had only managed to complete secondary education and were indeed occupied as
students –with various degrees of success– at the time of their arrest. A third
of them were unemployed. None of the women had criminal records for terrorist
crimes or any other sort of infraction, and therefore at the time of embarking
upon investigations they were unknown to the police and judicial authorities.
In the Spanish case the involvement of women in Daesh is
mainly related to the promise of a life in the ‘caliphate’, of an FF whom they
hope to marry, or to the frustration of not being able to lead a life in
keeping with their expectations in their place of residence. It is, however, a
complex process in which other factors of various kinds play a part.
The Elcano analysis, like many other western analyses, however,
fail to recommend prudent countermeasures or solutions required to tackle the
home-grown nature of radicalization of its people. What should the western
governments and societies do to save its young men/women from embracing toxic
ideologies of nihilistic groups like the Daesh (or the so-called
ISIS)? Even if they succeed in stopping the migration of the radicalized youth
to Deash-held territories can they stop them from the process of self-radicalization
or committing nihilistic acts inside the respective country where they live?
It is the economics, stupid, that often dictates how
things end up. If these radicalized Muslims, converted or born, were employed
and felt integrated in western Europe, in my opinion their embrace of nihilistic
ideology would have disappeared very significantly. And yet, in places like
France, even a 3rd generation French-born Muslim of North African descent often
cannot find a decent job. [Discrimination against the people of north-African
heritage is so high that it is simply mind-boggling for a country that gave the
western notion of equality, liberty and fraternity! That is the rotting, ugly
reality in Le Pen's France! The French society, rather than integrating
children and grand-children of those African immigrants, has created ghettos for
them where they feel abandoned or ignored. The feeling of abandonment has led some
to find alternative meanings of their very existence, sometimes embracing
suicidal and anarchist ways.]
Instead of improving their social and economic conditions
these western governments have spent money on policing and spying or embedding snitches
for these ‘racial others’. Since 9/11 they have created a troop of informants (mostly
from immigrants who had prior problems with the law) to spy upon and harass mostly
the law-abiding decent Muslims who pray in the mosques. As studies after
studies have shown most of the radicalized Muslims had little or no connection
with mosques; they were self-radicalized via internet. All those government
programs and money were ill-spent while danger came from others that were not
in the radar screen.
A major problem with the Internet is that it is almost
impossible to keep it inaccessible in a free society, esp. in this age of
information superhighways. However, its deadly effect can be curtailed somewhat
through good education and trust-building measures within a society where
everyone feels valued despite being different racially or religiously. Failing on
this major task would leave anyone who feels dissatisfied and angry, esp. a
naïve or ill-educated/informed person, vulnerable to the toxic messages of the extremists
– be they the far right, far left, secular, religious or fascists. The latter are
promising many of the things that are denied to these confused youths or adults
who see a glorious end to their otherwise worthless life.
Unless such serious issues are tackled with meaningful
solutions we may never see the end of nihilistic attacks in the West. That is
the billion, or who knows trillion, dollar question that our politicians need
to answer.
Successful polities will be those who would understand
this reality and be willing to embrace diversity as a source of strength by
integrating all and giving them opportunities to better themselves and thereby
the very society that they adopted or are willing to adopt. That means
integration and not imposed assimilation, and surely not alienation. Something
to ponder about!
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