By Sally Neighbour | August 08
A SOCCER-PLAYING labourer and father of four whose friends say he was "like an Aussie boy".
A 22-year-old described as "a smart kid" and "a good student". A boilermaker who complained of having to work round the clock to feed his family. These otherwise nondescript Australians are among the latest recruits to the global terrorist movement, according to evidence tendered in the Melbourne Magistrates Court after this week's terrorism arrests. The perplexing question is: Why?
How does a seemingly ordinary young man come to embrace violent extremism? Its corollary, the question that confounds counter-terrorism experts worldwide, is: how can we stop them?
The rapidly morphing nature of global terrorism demands an evolving response. Since 9/11, Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida has diminished but its ideology has flourished, spawning hundreds of like-minded groups and cells across the world.
US terrorism specialist Marc Sageman describes this new phenomenon as a "violent Islamist born-again social movement" straddling the globe.
Its fragmented and anarchic nature makes it arguably a bigger threat than al-Qa'ida, according to Britain's Strategy for Countering International Terrorism, unveiled in March this year. Unlike the once highly centralised al-Qa'ida, the new grassroots terrorism cannot be fought with border protection measures or military strikes, but must be tackled at its roots.
This reality has spawned a new buzzword in the anti-terrorism fraternity: counter-radicalisation. Its aim, in Sageman's words, is to "stop the process of radicalisation before it reaches its violent end".
The concept is sure to be a central theme of the Rudd government's white paper on counter-terrorism later this year. Its release has been long awaited by critics such as Anthony Bergin of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who has been calling for such a strategy for two years. "Despite the rhetoric, what has this government actually invested in this area? My sense is pretty little," Bergin says.
But for all the hype surrounding the concept, like many handy catchphrases, counter-radicalisation is easier said than done. Radicalisation itself is a complex process; the job of countering it infinitely more so.
"Radicalisation happens in a number of different ways," says Nick O'Brien, former head of international counter-terrorism for the British Special Branch and now associate professor of terrorism studies at Charles Sturt University. "Some people are radicalised because of foreign policy, (such as) Australian actions previously in Iraq and in Afghanistan, or because of Australia's allegiance to America. Other people are radicalised because of what happens to a relative, or what they read on the internet, or by the influence of a charismatic preacher. There is a whole mix that goes into why a person becomes radicalised, and it's probably different for each person."
Compounding the complexity of the challenge is the unfortunate fact that the hardcore militants who pose the greatest risk are almost certainly immune from any strategy that police and governments can devise.
Sageman, the pre-eminent expert on radicalisation theory, is a former CIA mujaheddin handler in Pakistan, now a psychologist and author of two books, Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad.
After studying 165 jihadists, Sageman is adamant that terrorists are not born but made. There is no psychological profile of a terrorist and Sageman believes "root causes" such as socioeconomic deprivation are overrated.
The most common factor in the making of a terrorist is alienation. Of the jihadists Sageman studied, he found that "a remarkable 78 per cent were cut off from their cultural and social origins". He concludes "this absence of connection is a necessary condition fora network of people to join the global jihad". Read more here....
Source: The Australian
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