Virtual Sanctuaries and Auto-radicalisation

Let’s kick off with this:

Andrew Exum, ‘No Place to Hide‘, New Republic, 31 March 2009 – on the new Obama AfPak strategy:

The White House strategy, though, betrays an obsession with physical space at the expense of virtual space. This fixation very much reflects a generational divide among the scholars and policy-makers who focus on terrorism. Younger scholars such as Will McCants (now at the Department of Defense) and Thomas Hegghammer–in addition to being much more likely to actually be able to speak and read the relevant languages (Arabic and Urdu)–are “digital natives” rather than “digital immigrants” (to use the labels preferred by the counter-insurgency scholar Thomas Rid): They do not need to have the explosive potential of the internet explained to them, and McCants and Hegghammer especially have individually spent hundreds of hours on the more popular jihadi chatrooms to gather data about the debates and spread of information that is taking place in the virtual world.

This is not to say that physical safe havens do not matter. They do–a lot. But they are not the “be all, end all” of an effective counter-terror strategy. The policy-makers who crafted the White House strategy largely belong to the generation that cut its teeth in the Clinton White House, when physical havens were in fact the only havens that mattered. But as Europe’s experience has shown us, this thinking is outdated; we shouldn’t wait until we are attacked by homegrown or internet-coordinated terrorists to adopt an appropriately far-reaching strategy.

Andrew’s right, although the digital native/immigrant dichotomy is actually the formulation of educationalist Marc Prensky (not that Andrew says Thomas Rid invented these terms). I’ve detected a rather insidious tendency amongst the security establishment to parse the virtual/physical relationship clumsily, many people preferring to focus on one at the expense of the other. I refer readers to Mike Innes‘ edited volume Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens (Westport, CN & London: Praeger Security International, 2007) which is the best work yet on the notion of sanctuary, roughly equivalent to the ‘safe havens’ mentioned by Ex. In particular, chapter 9 addresses the idea of virtual sanctuaries, ‘Exploring the Role of Virtual Camps’ by Jarret Brachman and James Forest.

I’m reminded of a recent comment by Evan Kohlmann, with reference to the recent ICSR report I co-authored on online radicalisation. Interviewed by the Toronto Globe & Mail, Evan stated, “Anyone who argues that self-recruitment isn’t happening in a meaningful way on the Internet has their head stuck so deep in the sand, they can see China.” That’s not quite what we said, Evan. I’m not sure Evan actually read the report – he’s a pretty industrious type, so he probably has – but that comment misrepresents what we wrote. Our thesis was that self-recruitment purely on the internet, without reference or contact with people in the physical world, is still the exception rather than the rule. Obviously, reports like the recent RSIS-ASPI publication, Countering Internet Radicalisation in Southeast Asia, put higher stock on the role of the internet in self-radicalisation. Interestingly though, and somewhat countering the criticisms of Pauline Hope Cheong at COMOPS Journal last week, who wrote,

Disagreement in the two reports reflects uncertainty about the role of the Internet.  It is envisaged as the main culprit in one approach, and as an accomplice in another.  The difference is important, because which view we accept has real implications for policy.

Clearly it is still difficult to pinpoint exactly when radicalization occurs and  what sources contribute the most to the conversion process.   The link between  personal uptake of online propaganda and violent action is tough to establish because we still have too narrow a view of how any why technology supports radicalization.

Her’s is a more subtle reading of the two reports, but I put forward these two passages as an exercise in ‘compare and contrast’:

RSIS-ASPI: The internet isn’t likely to fully replace personal interaction in recruitment, which still involves social group dynamics. Virtual self‑recruitment won’t be common … most experts now believe that internet-supported recruitment will grow in significance, even if recruitment solely via the internet continues to be the exception.

ICSR: Self-radicalisation and self-recruitment via the internet with little or no relation to the outside world rarely happens, and there is no reason to suppose that this situation will change in the near future … real-world social relationships continue to be pivotal.

Hmm, spot the difference? Me neither. Cheong actually makes some good points in her piece – which I will try and address in a future post – but this is not one of them. Anyway, this is just me suggesting a) that some people find it surprisingly difficult to conceptualise the relationships between the virtual and the real, and b) that some people should probably read things carefully before they comment on them.

So, self-radicalisation, auto-radicalisation, whatever, has been on my mind a lot recently. Yesterday, this article from last week appeared in my inbox:

James W. Jones, ‘Monitoring online chat is essential to disrupt terror recruitment‘, publicservice.co.uk, 26 March 2009. Jones is a professor of religion and clinical psychologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and is looking to relate the processes of religious conversion to extremist radicalisation:

While conversion often begins as a self-directed search, an encounter with another person or group is almost always a significant factor in the conversion process. Such interpersonal activity appears crucial to a religious conversion. An important contemporary question is: is this possible over the internet?

Clearly the internet is being used by terrorist groups to spread their message, relay tactical information, and publicise their causes. But can it be used to carry out the full radicalisation process from mild interest to full commitment?

Given the importance of the internet to contemporary terrorism, it is interesting that I could not find any studies of online conversions per se. A large body of research does demonstrate that online interaction generates a full ‘social world’ complete with passion, commitment, dependency, trust, a shared vision, and mutual responsibility, resulting in the formation of a new identity. And when people disengage from online groups, they go through much the same processes as when disengaging from face to face communities. Like conversions in general, joining a new social world online is usually the result of individual curiosity, interest, and a self-directed search. People are not simply, passively drawn in or seduced (or ‘brainwashed’) by online groups. Seekers take the initiative, explore, and consider online communities just as much as face to face communities. Here, too, joining is a choice. So the process of identifying with an online social world is quite parallel to the process of conversion to a new religious world, especially given the contemporary understanding of conversion as a process.

However there is an additional element as well. Research suggests that the anonymity of the internet impacts the dynamics of group formation there. Such anonymity may be disinhibiting and allow people to express more extreme and unpopular sentiments and experiment with more radical identities. The number of websites advocating violence and containing information on obtaining weapons and making bombs has grown; researchers report that many of these sites actively encourage members to act on their violent ideas. So we must take seriously the possibility that people convert to the jihad or militant Christian groups wholly online.

This is a pretty interesting thesis, and one that derives from a body of literature I’ve had little contact with, so I’m not really qualified to judge his argument, speculative though it is. A good friend of this blog – who has spent enough years hanging around the online jihad to know his onions – suggests that it is worth always bearing in mind the three things that are required to move a person from peace to violence: motive, association, and opportunity. Motive to become involved – the ‘search’ Jones describes; association with like-minded individuals – either online or physically; opportunity – to perform an act of violence or disruption. I’ve used this tripartite schema a lot to think about radicalisation. We probably wouldn’t even be talking about radicalisation if there were no opportunities to commit violent acts.

The fact that there are disagreements as to the role of the internet in self-radicalisation says two things. Firstly, that commentators and analysts are theorising on a sliding scale of the utility of the internet. Secondly, that the real processes are likely to also be on a sliding scale – there are as many pathways of radicalisation as there are individuals, although most of us would agree there are similarities that can be generalised from the cases we know.

Jones’ article is food for thought, and his point about people not being passive receivers of information is something I’ve been banging on about for ages.

Update: Ex corrects an editing oversight, and Thomas Hegghammer comments. Thomas finishes his post with the phrase, “at the end of the day the Internet is just the messenger.” Wise words.