The Path to Terrorism: the Islamic State and Its Recruitment Strategies

University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Honors Scholar Theses Honors Scholar Program Spring 5-1-2018 The aP th to Terrorism: The slI amic State and Its Recruitment Strategies Laura Turner [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses Part of the International Relations Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, and the Terrorism Studies Commons Recommended Citation Turner, Laura, "The aP th to Terrorism: The slI amic State and Its Recruitment Strategies" (2018). Honors Scholar Theses. 585. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/585 1 The University of Connecticut The Path to Terrorism: The Islamic State and Its Recruitment Strategies Laura Turner Honors Senior Thesis Advisor: Professor Jeremy Pressman Individualized & Interdisciplinary Studies Program 19 April 2018 2 Introduction 13,488 terrorist attacks occurred around the world in 2016.i 1,468 of these, or 10.9%, were perpetrated by the Islamic State.1 The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is an extremely violent Islamist terrorist organization that follows Salafism, a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam. The group’s ultimate goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate, or a state governed by Islamic law. ISIS is rooted in Abu Musad al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq, a militant organization so extreme and violent that even Al Qaeda’s leadership criticized its methods and eventually renounced connections with the group. When Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006, Abu Ayyub al Masri became the leader of the group and renamed it the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi succeeded Masri upon his death in 2010. As ISI began expanding into Syria, it took on the name the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In 2014, Baghdadi announced the establishment of a worldwide caliphate with himself as the Caliph, or leader. With this declaration, the group adopted the name the Islamic State, viewing the name ISIS as too geographically limiting in its reference to Iraq and Syria, though the acronym ISIS is still commonly used globally.2 The Islamic State subscribes to a Salafist ideology, a brand of Sunni Islam that advocates a return to true Islam, a crucial condition of which is the purification of Islam of Western influence. Many Salafists also view other types of Muslims, including Shias and Sufis, as “deviant” and impure.3 Though a majority of the world’s Salafists are nonviolent, ISIS has used i Terrorism is defined by the Global Terrorism Database as “the intentional act of violence or threat of violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.” The database includes international, transnational, and domestic terror attacks. 3 this theology to justify violence against other non-Salafi Muslims, particularly Shias, and the West.4 The group uses “unparalleled levels of violence and brutality” in an attempt to achieve its goal of purifying Islam and restoring an Islamic Caliphate.5 At its height, the group controlled vast amounts of Iraqi and Syrian territory, an area encompassing an estimated 10 million people, although in the past year it has experienced major losses.6 ISIS has been able to recruit large numbers of individuals to join its cause, many of whom are foreign fighters, or individuals recruited from other nations to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In 2015, the Soufan Group, a security intelligence services company, estimated that between 27,000-31,000 people travelled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and other violent extremist groups (including IS affiliates) in the region.7 A senior official in the FBI, Michael Steinbach has asserted that “no group has been as successful at drawing people into its message as ISIL”, and Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, agrees that ISIS “operates the most sophisticated propaganda machine of any terrorist organization.”8 The Islamic State has proven to be one of the most effective terrorist groups at recruiting new members that exists. Why is the Islamic State so appealing? What has made this group so effective at recruitment? What methods does it employ to recruit so many individuals? This paper answers these questions by examining three explanations of recruitment commonly referenced in the current literature: strategic targeting, online recruitment, and kinship recruitment. These were analyzed through case studies of ISIS fighters. This analysis revealed that both strategic targeting and kinship recruitment are strong explanations of the methods ISIS employs to recruit new fighters. 11 of the 12 individuals studied were particularly vulnerable in one way or another to radicalization and recruitment by the Islamic State, which supports the idea that strategic targeting is a strong explanation of how ISIS attracts new members. 10 of 12 4 of the individuals had kinship connections, which indicates that kinship recruitment is a valid explanation as well. Online recruitment applied to only 5 of the 12 individuals, suggesting that this is a moderately valid explanation of the Islamic State’s strategies of recruitment. This paper is comprised of several sections. The first describes the methodology used in this study and details each of the three explanations that were studied: strategic targeting, online recruitment, and kinship recruitment. A case-study design was used to analyze the ability of these methods to explain the Islamic State’s recruitment strategies. The cases of 12 individuals are described and analyzed through the lens of each of the three explanations in the second section of the paper. In the third section, the findings from this analysis are detailed. In the final section, the conclusion provides a brief summary of the study and presents several policy implications of and potential solutions to the issue of the Islamic State’s recruitment. Methods and Explanations This study is based on case studies of individual fighters. In these case studies, I look at three explanations that are common in the existing literature on ISIS’ recruitment strategies: strategic targeting, online recruitment, and kinship recruitment. Strategic targeting involves capitalizing on individual’s vulnerabilities. Angela Gendron, a Senior and Research Fellow at a variety of institutions including the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, has written extensively on how ISIS targets specific individuals who fit certain categories, including youth, those who are socially isolated, and those experiencing a crisis of identity. Syed Mansoob Murshed, a Professor of the Economics of Conflict and Peace at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, and Sara Pavan, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, discuss the role that politics and socio-economic inequality play in radicalizing 5 individuals. Online recruitment, on which much has been written by Imran Awan, Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, involves the use of the internet by a terrorist organization to spread its propaganda to massive numbers of people across the world. Both of Shiraz University in Iran, Khalil Sardarnia and Rasoul Safizadeh’s study of ISIS’ use of the internet is a key work in this field as well. Finally, the role of kinship in the recruitment of people to join terrorist organizations has been expounded upon thoroughly in relation to a variety of terrorist groups. Rukmini Callimachi, a New York Times journalist, has investigated the influence of kinship on pairs of siblings who have joined Islamist terrorist organizations, including ISIS. Thomas Neer, a senior associate at the Soufan Group who focuses on violent extremism, and Mary Ellen O’Toole, the FBI’s leading expert on psychopathy, have looked at how kinship influences foreign fighters, as well as at the use of the internet and exploitation of vulnerabilities to recruit individuals. In the following section of the paper, these three explanations are detailed and then operationalized in order to determine how well they explain ISIS’ recruitment methods. A set of yes-or-no questions was devised to more narrowly define each explanation and facilitate the analysis of nine case studies. This enables each explanation to be quantified and thus easily compared. Methodology This paper employs a case-study method to evaluate three explanations of the Islamic State’s recruitment strategies through an examination of individuals who became members of the group. The lack of a public database of all foreign fighters necessitates a case-study analysis of a select number of individuals on whom information is available. These individual cases were chosen mainly from newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal due to 6 a lack of published scholarly articles on specific members of ISIS. After a review of the existing literature on the Islamic State’s recruitment, three methods that are commonly used to explain ISIS’ recruitment were chosen to be more deeply examined in this paper. The cases of six individuals and three pairs of siblings were analyzed using these methods to determine whether they are accurate explanations of the Islamic State’s recruitment. It must be noted that these explanations are not mutually exclusive; each may relate to one another. For example, several individuals met their boyfriends or husbands online and were radicalized through these men, which constitutes both online and kinship recruitment. In addition, the second and third explanations, online and kinship recruitment, are tools through which the Islamic State exploits people’s vulnerabilities detailed in the first explanation, strategic targeting. Explanation 1: Strategic Targeting The first common explanation of ISIS’ recruitment methods is strategic targeting. The Islamic State carefully selects individuals who are susceptible to radicalization and exploits their vulnerabilities to recruit new members.

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