By Prakash Katoch
November 07, 2014
American writer-intellectual Gore Vidal once said, “The 'war on terrorism' is a war of ideas; and ideas cannot be bombed out of existence. The Bush-Blair partnership changed the word to 'terror', which made it sound a lot simpler, but actually made it more ambiguous - so vague that it could include anyone in the 'Axis of Evil': North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, anyone.” But the fact is that terrorism is the greatest threat to the world. Significantly, a study conducted at the University of Haifa, a public Research university in Israel in 2012 found that nearly 90 percent of organized terrorism on the internet takes place via social media. The study revealed that terror groups use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and internet forums to spread their messages and recruit members and that social media was enabling the terror organizations to take initiatives by making 'Friend' requests, uploading video clips, and the like. Concurrently, a UN report titled “The Use of Internet for terrorist purposes’’ revealed terrorist groups using Internet to recruit, finance, train and incite followers to commit acts of terrorism, as well as to spread propaganda and gather and disseminate information for terrorism. Like most social networking sites, Twitter prohibits activity if users publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others but the problem is that doesn't actively monitor the content in search of the above threats. Instead, it relies on users to report in case they notice violations to the rules. Terrorists can take advantage of social networking sites because they have applications like games that are normally developed by third parties and whenever you add an application, you are granting it access to your account.
While the world watches the growing US led coalition against the ISIS, the marginal effect of airstrikes is evident, as was the case during the US led GWOT against Al Qaeda and Taliban. In the case of the ISIS, we have a situation where some 31,500 plus ISIS cadres are mingled with a civil population of about eight million. The very first wave of air strikes taught the ISIS cadres to melt into the civilian population. In addition to the ‘no boots on ground’ policy US would also be inhibited from putting CIA operatives on ground because of the chain of public beheadings of westerners being showcased by the ISIS. To this end, the degree of destruction and degradation of ISIS is debatable. Establishing a new anti-Syrian army would take months, possibly years. No doubt the Peshmerga and Iraqi Kurds as witnessed are putting up tough resistance to the ISIS as witnessed in Idlib, Kobane etc but look at the multiplying figures of the ISIS. CIA had estimated their strength at 10,000 when Mosul fell. Now the estimates have gone up to 31,500, mostly courtesy recruitment through social media.
What has gone comparatively unnoticed is the private sector mobilization that has been affected in the US to fight the ISIS. While top-level meetings were underway in the US and under aegis of the UN how best to work out a plan to battle the ISIS, a significant non-governmental initiative was launched in New York to confront the growing threat from ‘extremist ideology’. Termed the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), it seeks to refute social media messaging, compile world’s biggest database of extremist networks. This is in sharp departure from the erstwhile US policy where the GWOT was launched against primarily Al Qaeda and later the Taliban. In current instance, while the new GWOT has been launched against the ISIS, concurrently the need to target exploitation of the internet and social media by ‘all’ terrorist organizations has been addressed. The non-governmental initiative has perhaps been taken because of the US NSA already heavily committed and more importantly its recent criticism for snooping globally under the ‘Prism’ program. Participation of the private sector is also essential because of the magnitude of the issues involved. CEP has been launched as a private sector organization that describes itself nonpartisan in its efforts to combat extremism. Its goals include compilation of the world’s most exhaustive database on extremist groups and their networks, and places unmasking the funding sources for ISIS high on its list of immediate priorities.
The urgency is obviously because of: unprecedented expansion of ISIS. ISIS ideology attracting western nationals - over 3000 US and EU nationals having reportedly joined; public beheading of US, British, French nationals by ISIS using westerner radicals executioners; British, Scottish and Canadian female jihadis joining ISIS and posting their photographs on social media; ideology spread attracting youth globally – recent UN reports state 15,000 youth from 80 countries have joined already; splinter groups of TTP and number of Wahabi-Salafi groups in Af-Pak region aligning with ISIS; possible continued funding of ISIS by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and others, and; ISIS continues to smuggle out and sell oil. Though the CEP is a non-governmental organization, it plans to work with governments including US government and will exploit the internet to, mobilize social media to counter extremist ideology by exposing the threat of extremists and mounting a global counter narrative. Specific to ISIS, it will also target financial support extended to the terrorist group, plus find out how the ISIS is managing to sell oil, identify which entities are buying oil from ISIS controlled wells to enable blocking these conduits. That terrorists will resort to alternate means like havala is well on the cards but that may not be the case always. Physical route of sale of oil can be blocked. In addition, extremist ideology spread and attracting volunteers can certainly be dampened.
India has been experiencing terrorist ideology spread through the social media, recent proof being some youth from Thane in Maharashtra having been lured by ISIS through the internet. A recent NIA probe shows IM cadres are tech savvy and have been using proxy servers and complex code to chat: exceptional knack for IT setting up email accounts that disappear if they not accessed in 24 hours, proxy servers to camouflage geographical location, encrypted files and complicated code language; use of US-based Yahoo Inc, Paltalk Inc, Sophidea Inc and Hurricane Electric, plus providers in Nepal, Canada and Ireland; IP address of Nimbuzz chat traced to Pakistan Telecom Company Ltd and others traced to France, Germany, Netherlands, Nepal and India. It is also well known that Riaz Bhatkal and his close aides run a hi-tech command centre in Karachi to communicate with terror cells in India and Nepal, and possibly even Maldives in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. America’s CEP will primarily target young people in communities across the globe vulnerable to extremist messaging and recruitment. The important point to note is that the private sector has not only a role, but a responsibility, and this is something which should be a national movement in India, not left merely to government organizations like the NTRO and NIA but to supplement their effort. It would be prudent to set up parallel organization in India involving the private sector on the lines of CEP and link both. That indeed would be a step forward in Indo-US cooperation in countering terrorism – an issue recently discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Obama.
The author is veteran Lt Gen of Indian Army. Views expressed are personal.
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