The terrorism
In the 15 years since the Twin Towers fell, an entire generation has come of age in a world of terrorism. To launch her Atkinson Fellowship series, Star national security reporter Michelle Shephard examines the paths of young people who have been radicalized, showing how changing technology, changing tactics and failed fixes mean it’s time for Canada and the world to rethink how we respond to terror,
A friend of mine, a very smart friend who lives with her husband and daughter east of Toronto, told me she wanted to build a bunker to protect her family from Daesh, the group that likes to call itself the “Islamic State.”
She was teasing, sort of. Teasing about building the bunker. The fear part was real.
Telling her that she is at greater risk in Canada riding her bike or being hit by lightning would bring little comfort.
Terrorism makes us feel helpless. It is random, striking soccer stadiums, nightclubs, airports, grocery stores, mosques and office Christmas parties. It is overwhelming: front-page news, campaign fodder, talk shows, Paris, Beirut, Istanbul, Tunis, San Bernardino, Brussels. Which, of course, is the point of terrorism. As this year’s Atkinson Fellow, I have spent the past eight months investigating the rise of Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL. In the coming months, I will write about the group, looking both backward and forward, with stories from home and abroad.
Most especially, I will focus on Daesh’s foreign members, those who are a part of “Generation 9/11,” between the ages of 16 to 28 and who grew up in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The majority of Daesh’s estimated 30,000 foreign members, including about100 Canadians, belong to this demographic.
Security services have warned that trained fighters could return to their homes and strike, as has happened in Europe. Or that Daesh’s propaganda would be enough to inspire a co-ordinated attack by “homegrown” members. Canada is vulnerable to both.
But Canadians are also at risk if we introduce policies that not only fail to address the problem of foreign fighters, but punish the innocent and drive a new generation toward Daesh or whatever group may follow. Politicians may win points and score headlines with tough talk of war, or banning Muslims or the niqab, but that is exactly what Daesh wants. It gives them status as a legitimate army and helps with their narrative that the West is at war with all Muslims.
Daesh is unique among violent extremist groups because of the sheer number of their foreign fighters and their occupation of a huge area in Syria and Iraq. But their mission is terrorism 101: Polarize, provoke panic and destabilize, force governments to take swift vengeful actions, and exploit these actions to win followers.
Vengeance and fear followed 9/11 and the mistakes made then haunt us today. The Iraq War gave rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq, Daesh’s predecessor. Sanctioning torture and indefinite detention allowed Al Qaeda to propagate the view that the West does not practise what it preaches. Generation 9/11 grew up with Muslims being regarded with suspicion and with free speech and privacy under threat.
These factors did not create Daesh, but they contributed to it; it is no coincidence that the group parades hostages in orange jumpsuits that symbolize Guantanamo Bay.
To its young members Daesh is not a terrorist group but a revolutionary movement. They support an ideology. Crushing that cannot be done with tougher laws or military action alone.
Terrorism has been my beat since Sept. 11, 2001. That night I stood among the ruins of New York’s World Trade Center, a 29-yearold crime reporter not much older than members of Generation 9/11 are today. I have never forgotten the sense of terrifying vulnerability — remembering the faces on the “Have You Seen?” posters that lined Manhattan’s streets still brings me to tears.
Since then, I have written about the many faces of terrorism and its victims: Anders Behring Breivik, the anti-immigrant terrorist in Norway who slaughtered kids at a summer camp; corrupt Somali warlords and clamouring American politicians whose actions helped nurture East Africa’s Al Qaeda group, Al Shabab; Yemeni children who became the “collateral damage” of drone strikes and their families who sought revenge; jailers who tortured prisoners in Syria or Guantanamo; preacher Anwar al Awlaki, who inspired dozens of attackers; and refugees without hope, trapped in camps in Turkey, Pakistan and Kenya.
There have been disadvantages being a foreign correspondent based in Toronto when it comes to breaking news. But since terrorism is a global problem — not confined to one country or region — there have been advantages too. Coming home after each story helped me understand the mindset here and how policies are often drafted in the echo chamber of our capital cities.
Fifteen years ago, the world had been caught unaware. Two wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — were waged. New laws were enacted, there was an explosion in the study of CVE — countering violent extremism — and billions were spent trying to stop another attack. Al Qaeda was enemy No. 1. You are with us or with the terrorists, U.S. president George W. Bush famously said as he launched his “Global War On Terror.” Here we are again. President Barack Obama once called Daesh “a terrorist organization, pure and simple.” But it’s not that simple.
Why Canadians join terrorist groups is not a new question.
Ten years ago, we were shocked when members of the “Toronto18” were rounded up for plotting to blow up downtown and military targets, making headlines around the world. Eleven of those accused were convicted.
As comedian Jon Stewart joked after the June 2, 2006, arrests: “You hate Canada? That’s like saying, ‘I hate toast.’ ”
Some of those convicted said they were driven by their opposition to Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan. Some were simply restless. One wanted to get rich. Others were arrogant or insecure, or both. But mostly, they longed to belong and were consumed by the toxic combination of frustration and hubris.
Thursday is the 10-year anniversary of their arrests. The first story of this Atkinson series Sunday will look at what we learned — or didn’t — from that case.
In 2013, another terrorism story took me from Markham to Mogadishu, Somalia. University student Mahad Dhore had been accused as the mastermind of an Al Shabab massacre on a Mogadishu courthouse. When I arrived, the walls and windows of the courthouse were still being repaired and the wounded survivors told their stories from hospital beds.
Dhore left Canada in 2009 with little warning. He seemed typical enough for a university student — he worked at the local No Frills, loved his siblings, was the favourite of his “mama,” the elderly aunt who had brought him from Mogadishu when he was 9. Omar Hammami, an Alabama-born member of the Shabab — who was eventually assassinated by the group — told me in Twitter messages that Dhore was unremarkable. “Quiet, reserved.” He remembered Dhore would bring Hammami’s wife water when the pipes broke.
Dhore’s family was in denial. They said there had been no red flags; he was sometimes restless, saying he felt out of place in Canada and didn’t see a future. Those who study CVE call this a “cognitive opening,” a vulnerability ripe for exploitation.
Dhore was looking for something — a void that Al Shabab filled.
Videos and audio recordings released after his death feature Dhore encouraging others to fight. “I want to speak specifically to the brothers and sisters in the West. Brothers and sisters, make jihad in the cause of Allah, make hijrah (immigration) so you can come to jihad in the cause of Allah.” That is almost verbatim the script of dozens — if not hundreds — of videos, audio recordings, tweets and other messaging delivered by Daesh foreign fighters today.
To be clear, Daesh is not Al Qaeda 2.0. Nor is it to compare “homegrown” terrorist plots from a decade ago to those today. But
the motivations of those who join are similar and involve a different combination of factors.
There are social issues — feeling ostracized, or being lured by friends or family members. There are political factors — opposition to foreign policies or politicians that equate Muslims with terrorism. There are religious elements — those who use Islam to justify their actions. There are cultural issues common among secondgeneration immigrants. There are also many converts to Islam who use their newfound faith to reject a society that they believe has rejected them.
Yet with every case, there is a personal factor, that “cognitive opening.”
“We’re being challenged as academics with trying to draw a profile,” Hicham Tiflati, a Montreal researcher who has spent a decade interviewing Generation 9/11, told me. “You can draw trajectories, but I’m going to come up as a researcher and draw your attention to 10,000 other youth who have the same profile and didn’t get radicalized. That’s the challenge.”
It is hard to remember a world before Twitter and Facebook. On Sept. 11, 2001, people were glued to TVs, reading about the attacks in newspapers on the 12th. Encrypted social messaging services such as Telegram and Signal didn’t exist when the Toronto 18 forged their plot — their covert communication in online chat groups seems quaint in a world where anyone with a smart phone in Ajax can communicate privately with someone in Aleppo.
Generation 9/11 has grown up with the world at their fingertips — making them more aware of world events, even superficially, than generations before. When the Arab Spring demonstrations broke out in 2011, young people around the world watched and participated with their retweets and shares.
But they also watched dictators kill their own people. Daesh beheading videos may get the most media coverage, but there is equally shocking footage of children maimed and killed by barrel bombs dropped by the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. Those videos go viral, too.
Daesh knows how to use this outrage to promote their cause. Take last month’s bombing of Aleppo by Russian forces. One of Daesh’s Telegram channels, which pump out up to 100 posts a day, encouraged its followers to act: “Brothers and sisters, those of u who are on twitter right now can post under these hashtags #savealeppo and #aleppois Burning and tell the Muslims that no one is sincere to them except their own khilafah Islamic state.”
This strategy draws from a 2004 online manifesto called the Management of the Savagery, written by jihadist Abu Bakr Naji, and translated into English by Brookings Institution’s Will McCants. The document, which Daesh uses as its guide, advises: “Capture the rebelliousness of youth, their energy and idealism, and their readiness for self-sacrifice, while fools preach ‘moderation,’ security and avoidance of risk.”
This is why their use of “war porn” is successful. Researcher Javier Lesaca, a visiting scholar at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, looked at 845 Daesh audiovisual campaigns between January 2014 and September 2015. (That’s one video released every day for a year-and-a-half, distributed on the group’s social media outlets, which include more than 45,000 Twitter accounts.) He found that more than 15 per cent of Daesh videos are merely copies of video games, music videos and films — action hero scenes played in slow motion that are taken from American Sniper, or Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.
If you want excitement, Daesh promises to deliver. Soldiers and war correspondents understand the adrenalin rush of the front lines. They call it “getting your war on.” Daesh calls it jihad.
Daesh’s ability to offer everything right now significantly differentiates it from earlier groups. Travelling to war-torn Somalia to join the Shabab, or Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan is not easy, especially if you don’t know the language or have a shared culture.
But Daesh offers an all-inclusive package to Syria, Iraq or Libya, including an airport pickup, as long as you can get to Turkey, Lebanon or Tunisia. Foreigners are given the nicest houses, the best wives or husbands.
Daesh also promises a new life to run away to. This appeals to young women in numbers not seen before. They are drawn to Daesh’s propaganda of photos of children playing in parks and markets selling fresh produce.
They soon find out that this is not the reality — but once you’re there, it is hard to get out.
When Parliament Hill was attacked on Oct. 22, 2014, I was in Ottawa, about 15 minutes away, filming a documentary. Those first few hours were confusing and devastating for friends and family of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, shot dead that morning by a disturbed 32-year-old man.
But Ottawa was not our 9/11, as some hastily suggested. When people started calling Ottawa a war zone on Twitter, I was standing behind police tape on Bank Street near Parliament Hill, watching two sweaty women emerge from Curves and ask a police officer what was going on.
The panic shows how quickly we can succumb to fear and lose perspective. Four months after the attacks, the government under Stephen Harper enacted an antiterror omnibus law. A Pew poll indicated 82 per cent of Canadians — a stunning majority — supported the bill, even though few understood its implications.
Privately, intelligence officials conceded that none of the new measures would have stopped the attack. Changes may be needed, but there was never an honest debate.
There are now broad definitions of what is considered terrorism. Free speech and political debate is curbed. And security services have unprecedented power to share information, even though the lengthy and costly Maher Arar commission recommended otherwise.
Under the new laws, I could be jailed for “distribution of terrorist propaganda” for this column, since it quotes from Dhore’s speech and Daesh’s Telegram channel.
The Liberal government is reviewing the Conservative laws they supported while in opposition, although with caveats.
They have also established the Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-Radicalization Coordinator, with a $35million budget stretched over the next five years, although it is unclear what that will involve.
The Atkinson Fellowship’s mandate is to examine public policies critical to Canadians. How Canada handles the threat of Daesh will define us as a nation and shape the next generation, just as post-9/11 policies impacted those who came of age in the last 15 years.
It is a time of relative calm on the national security front in Canada, thankfully, but that could change at any moment and drastically sway public opinion.
Understanding this threat needs context and perspective — because a bunker-mentality is exactly what Daesh wants.
“We’re being challenged as academics with trying to draw a profile. You can draw trajectories, but I’m going to come up as a researcher and draw your attention to 10,000 other youth who have the same profile and didn’t get radicalized. That’s the challenge.”
HICHAM TIFLATI A MONTREAL RESEARCHER WHO HAS SPENT A DECADE INTERVIEWING GENERATION 9/11