Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on
Anti-terrorism
Issue 10 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, December 6, 2010
The Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism met this day at 1 p.m. to examine matters relating to anti-terrorism.
Senator Hugh Segal (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Colleagues, I want to start on time, as we always do. This is the eleventh meeting of the Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism of the Third Session of the Fortieth Parliament of Canada.
As we await legislation from the House of Commons, we continue our inquiry into the changing nature of the terrorist threat in Canada. Today we are meeting with two American specialists. One is here in our meeting room and the other is joining us by videoconference from Norway.
In Norway, we have Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo and a Fellow at the New York University Centre on Law and Security. He previously held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, and at Harvard and Princeton Universities. He specializes in the study of violent Islamism. He speaks Arabic and has conducted field work in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and many other Middle Eastern countries. He is the author of Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979, and is the co-author of Al Qaeda: In Its Own Words.
We thank you for making yourself available despite having the flu. We appreciate your support and involvement today very much.
With us here in Ottawa is Brian Michael Jenkins. He is the Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND, Research and Development, Corporation and Director of the National University Transportation Centre at the Mineta Transportation Institute. He is the author of Will Terrorists Go Nuclear and of several RAND Corporation monographs including Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves and two RAND reports on al Qaeda. He is a decorated combat veteran and received the Department of the Army's highest award for his service in Vietnam on behalf of the United States. He has served as Adviser to the National Commission on Terrorism. At the Mineta Transportation Institute he directs continuing research on protecting surface transportation against terrorist attacks.
I know that both our guests have opening statements. I will ask Brian Jenkins to begin with his, and then we will move to our colleague in Norway. Following that, we will proceed to questions from the members of the committee.
Brian Jenkins, Senior Advisor, RAND Corporation: Chair, Senator Joyal and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to testify. I provided you earlier with a written submission. Let me take a couple of moments here to underscore some of its major points.
As I indicated in that paper, an overall assessment of al Qaeda-inspired terrorism is not easy. Al Qaeda is many things: the author of an ideology, the centre of a universe of like-minded fanatics and the instigator of a global terrorist campaign. Al Qaeda runs a communications operation, it is a component and contributor to a number of ongoing armed conflicts and it has become the conveyor for individual discontents and for radicalizing young men and women and turning them to its notion of jihad.
We have to analyze al Qaeda in each one of these dimensions and fronts for an idea of the overall picture. Remarkably, years after 9/11, there are still many differences of opinion among the analysts themselves on a number of essential issues. Take, for example, the role played by al Qaeda's central leadership. Some people view them now as nothing more than talking heads who can only exhort others to violence. However, we have evidence of connectivity and of involvement by central leadership in a number of the recent plots.
Some people regard the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism as still a relatively feeble response to al Qaeda's efforts to recruit people internationally. Others see it as a growing threat.
Al Qaeda today in 2010 differs significantly from al Qaeda in 2001. In 2001, it was a very small army — it has always been a very small army. At the centre of a series of relationships, its leadership was protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It ran easily accessible training camps, which it used to develop relationships with a number of groups around the world. Those relationships gave it a great deal of strength. Its terrorist operations were primarily centrally planned and directed.
In recent years, we have made undeniable progress in degrading al Qaeda's operational capabilities as a consequence of unprecedented cooperation among the intelligence services and law enforcement organizations of the world. The operational environment for al Qaeda is a lot more dangerous for it now than it was years ago. They have lost their centralized training camps. The top leadership has survived, but a number of the second- and third-tier leaders have been removed, and that is precious talent that is hard to replace. It has shown up clearly in that they are experiencing quality control problems.
As a consequence, al Qaeda's threat today is much more decentralized than it was before. It is much more dependent on al Qaeda's central relationships with local affiliates in Yemen, North Africa, Iraq and Pakistan. Additionally, al Qaeda has relationships with a number of nearby allies, including the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
These organizations have their own political and military agendas but nonetheless increasingly have adopted al Qaeda's view of global struggle. While some analysts see this dependency as a source of al Qaeda weakness, we are seeing at the same time a greater co-mingling of these individuals in these various groups in the training cramps and in some of the operations. Therefore, this co-mingling could prove to be a source of strength, or at least a guarantee of long-term survival.
Al Qaeda has always been about building an army of believers. They believe that communications is 90 per cent of the effort, and their communications have improved significantly in quantity and quality over the years. There are now thousands of websites devoted to these beliefs, such as chat rooms and things of this sort, where they are widely discussed.
Beneath the al Qaeda top leadership, there are second and third tiers of communicators. I think we have to regard these communicators as "retail outlets" for their ideology; in a sense these tiers are a marketing operation. Thus far, fortunately, the response has not been significant and has not provoked the global uprising or global intifada that some of the jihadists themselves talk about.
Nonetheless, their determination remains undiminished. Their local affiliates have been able to continue the struggle in Iraq; in Yemen, especially, which is becoming an important centre itself; and in Afghanistan. Despite possible improvements in the situation this year, as opposed to 2009, the long-term trajectory is still not clear; and probably we will not know that for a year or two.
That is how things look from our perspective. Obviously, they have a different view of their situation, not simply because they are on the other side but because their world view, mindset, notion of warfare and belief system are fundamentally different from ours. We have to understand that view to understand how they look at the system.
They see unending infidel aggression against Islam and believe that Islam is in mortal danger; and that this aggression will continue unless checked by armed resistance, which they see as the duty of every single believer. They believe that participation is required to demonstrate conviction, prowess and worthiness before God, and that those who do not answer the summons will be judged on Judgment Day.
Their struggle is process-oriented, as opposed to progress-oriented in that participation brings its rewards. It is ultimately God who remains the strategist and who will decide the outcome of the ultimate contest.
They do not think as we do in terms of a sequential strategy. We are pragmatists in the West, and we believe in landing on the beaches and marching across rivers to liberate the capital. They do not have that sense of sequence. To them, this struggle is a global enterprise; the battlefield is everywhere. There are no front lines, home fronts, and distinctions between combatants and civilians. Attacks must take place everywhere. On the basis of that mindset, they can see themselves clearly as being on the right path.
A briefing to Osama bin Laden might argue: We have survived the infidels' mightiest blows; we remain determined; we continue to communicate and recruit; our fronts are active in many parts of the world; we have declared the first caliphate in Iraq since its abolition by Turkey in 1924; we have checked the ambitions of crusader France in North Africa; and we are doing well in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They will also argue that, by their attacks, they are bankrupting the West with its increasing investments in security. Indeed, they will claim credit for the economic crisis, not that they directly caused it, but that it is God's punishment of the West for its materialism and lack of spiritualism. They make no distinction between their own efforts and those of God, so long as they are aligned with God.
With greater decentralization and less accessibility to the training camps, they have emphasized recently a do-it-yourself ethic. They cannot bring the recruits to the camps so they exhort them to do whatever they can wherever they are. This emphasis has made homegrown terrorism a more important component of their struggle. They have learned that they can achieve disproportionate effects with attacks in the home land, as opposed to on distant battle fronts. They will argue that even foiled attempts have great value, because those in the West have come to expect unrealistically 100-per-cent security.
Nonetheless, the number of would-be warriors responding to this call remains relatively small. I have not studied the situation in Canada in detail but, on the basis of an analysis of what has happened in the United States between 2001 and 2009, out of a population of several million Muslim Americans, a total of 125 persons have been arrested in those years for either providing assistance to terrorist groups or for plotting terrorist attacks on behalf of al Qaeda or other allied groups' ideology.
Al Qaeda is a diverse group that represents many different diasporas. The ages range from teenager to a man in his 70s, but the median age is the late 20s — a little bit older than the average criminal offender in the United States. Education levels range from dropout to advanced university. Some have experiences that make them dangerous, including military service, training in terrorist training camps or criminal records for armed robberies and other offences of that sort. Most are self-radicalized, as opposed to recruited in the classic sense of the term. Many of them began their journeys on the Internet, which is increasingly important. Fortunately, most of their plots have been amateurish, but that does not mean they are not dangerous. There is not a great distance between a bunch of hotheads banging on the table and a dangerous, lethal terrorist attack. The difference in many cases is simply one determined, reasonably competent individual.
With that, the prognosis is that, while al Qaeda may morph and it clearly has problems, this struggle will continue for many years. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. I call on Dr. Hegghammer to present from Norway.
Thomas Hegghammer, Research Fellow, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment: Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to testify. It truly is a great honour. My testimony addresses three main issues: first, the status of the global jihadi movement; second, the Western threat environment; and third, the jihadi Internet.
Before I begin, I want to eliminate any potential confusion regarding the nature of my work. I do not work and have never worked in an intelligence service. I am an academic who works with non-classified material. I obtain my data from jihadi websites, interviews in the field and a wide range of secondary sources. This means that my insight into the world of intelligence is limited.
I will start with the big picture — the state of the global jihadi movement today. By "global jihadi movement," I mean the conglomerate of Islamist actors who support a transnational, violent campaign against the West. The movement has three main components: al Qaeda central in the tribal areas of Pakistan; al Qaeda's regional affiliates in Yemen, Iraq and Algeria; and independent sympathizers.
The general consensus is that the jihadi movement is weaker today than it was five years ago, when I last testified. Indicators of this include, the failure of al Qaeda to mount successful major attacks since 2005; the inability of al Qaeda central to grow in size above the low hundreds; the decline of al Qaeda in Iraq and its demise in Saudi Arabia; declining popular support in the Muslim world for al Qaeda; and increasing ideological infighting within the movement. The decline has multiple causes, the most important of which is the pressure from Western and local security services. Another factor has been the Muslim collateral damage caused by al Qaeda's attacks in the Muslim world. Yet another factor, I argue, is the decrease in the number of new symbols of Muslim suffering. I am thinking here of armed interventions in the Muslim world by non-Muslim powers, torture scandals and other political developments that give resonance to al Qaeda's narrative of a besieged Muslim nation.
However, the decline has not been linear, nor has it affected all parts of the movement equally. For its part, al Qaeda central appears to have consolidated in the past three to four years. As for al Qaeda in Yemen, it has grown a lot stronger since 2006 and has begun attacking America directly.
Then we have the fact that of the groups that used to have primarily a local agenda, notably in Algeria and Pakistan, some of them have begun to attack Western targets more frequently and systematically. As far as independent sympathizers are concerned, it is obviously difficult to estimate their number, but we can certainly speak of an ethnic diversification of this al Qaeda support base. We see growing al Qaeda support in ethnic groups that were previously absent in the movement, notably in West Africa and East Africa, in South Asia and in the Turkic world.
Let me move now to the Western threat environment. Western countries today face a two-pronged threat from the jihadi movement — an organized one from al Qaeda and its affiliates, and an unorganized one from homegrown cells. I stress that the two phenomena coexist. There has been a recent academic debate over whether terrorism today is leader-led or leader-less. I think this is a futile debate because it is not one or the other, but both at the same time.
The organized threat, especially the one emanating from the tribal areas of Pakistan, must be taken very seriously. Al Qaeda central is still plotting. It still has experienced bomb makers; it still trains operatives in small safe houses; and it still has a small but steady supply of recruits coming in from abroad. Moreover, al Qaeda central is not alone in the tribal areas. FATA-based groups other than al Qaeda — in particular, the Pakistani branch of the Taliban and various Turkic jihadi factions — are becoming increasingly involved in transnational plots.
There is also an organized threat coming from Yemen, where the group al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula has gone global since 2009. As far as other al Qaeda affiliates are concerned — in Iraq, in Algeria and elsewhere — these affiliates currently seem either unable or unwilling to attack in the West. I think this may well change, so there is every reason to remain vigilant about groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Islamic state of Iraq and al-Shabab in Somalia.
The second type of threat comes from so-called homegrown militants; that is, Muslims in the West who prepare violent attacks without having trained abroad or having been in contact with established organizations. Such activists pose a great challenge because they are much less likely to appear on the radar of intelligence agencies prior to attacking. There is no question that this phenomenon has grown since the early 2000s, although here as well, I do not think the evolution has been linear. I also think the relative increase seems to have been much greater in North America than in Europe.
There are several factors that may account for the increase in homegrown terrorism. Most important is the Internet, which has made al Qaeda propaganda available to an increasingly large audience. Another important factor is the growing constraints on foreign fighter activism. In the past, people radicalized but they were able to go abroad and join major battle fronts — for example, in Bosnia, Afghanistan or Iraq. Today it is somewhat harder to join those fronts, so some people act at home instead.
I also want to stress that the homegrown threat has some inherent limitations. For a start, independent militants generally cause less damage because they have not had paramilitary or terrorist training.
Second, I would argue that there is no such thing as completely self-radicalized activists. All homegrown militants communicate with other humans at some stage in their radicalization process, even if it is only on the Internet or with a very small group of friends. This has important implications for intelligence because it means that they are not impossible to detect.
Third, and this is a very important point, ideology constrains the use of terrorist tactics in the West. There is a tendency to conflate two phenomena in the world of Islamist radicalization in the West — foreign fighter activism on the one hand and international terrorism on the other.
I would argue that the vast majority of activists who are at an early or intermediate stage of radicalization prefer foreign fighter activism — that is, going abroad to fight semi-conventionally in a war zone — to international terrorism. This is because it is theologically much less controversial. This means that the number of activists who are willing to move straight to terrorism at home without attempting to go abroad first is very small indeed.
Let me conclude with a few remarks on the jihadi Internet. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Internet for the jihadi movement in general, and for militants in the West in particular. Virtually all jihadi propaganda today is digital, and virtually all militants access jihadi websites at some point in their careers.
There are several online developments that give particular reason to worry. First is the growth of high-quality audiovisual propaganda. Such material presumably has greater mobilizing power than texts because it solicits emotions more easily and directly than do texts. Second is the spread of propaganda in languages other than Arabic. Statements by top al Qaeda leaders today are typically translated into English, French, German, Urdu and sometimes other languages as well within weeks of their release. Third, and perhaps most worrying, is the increasing availability of jihadi propaganda on mainstream media platforms such as YouTube. This is very dangerous because it dramatically lowers the barrier for accessing radical material. While access to regular jihadi websites involves self-selection, meaning that most people who access them are interested in that sort of material in the first place, YouTube presents jihadi videos to people who may not have initially sought them. It has a "suggest" function, which means that if someone searches for more moderate Islamic content, they may get suggestions for watching more radical material. I think this is very dangerous.
I think, overall, that if left unaddressed, all of these developments are likely to boost recruitment to Islamist militancy in the West. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: If there were a young person in Canada who had been radicalized to the point of looking to engage in some supportive Islamist extreme direct action of a violent nature, where would he go now? Based on your assessment of both the digital presence and the networks as they exist, where would he go to get technical and other support for the purpose of getting organized in that direction?
I am interested in the perspective of both our guests on that issue if they are able to help in that context.
Mr. Jenkins: The first point of entry again would be the Internet to seek out both reinforcement and direction for the actions that they are thinking about, and possibly being directed to one of the sites that may begin to engage the person individually; that is, not simply going to a website and looking at the material but attempting to contact individuals who then become interlocutors and provide resonance to their own discontent.
I agree with Dr. Hegghammer that their preference would be to join one of the jihaddist fronts abroad. However, unable to do that, they move up from inspiration and look for actual sources of instruction; that is to say, if they cannot perceive themselves going to somewhere like Pakistan or Somalia, they go to an online source, such as Inspire, a jihaddist publication, to look for bomb making or other technical instruction and to talk with others to see if they can do it.
Some have gone abroad and have been arrested either there or on their way. We have examples of individuals who have gone through the process without the intervening trip in an attempt to finding training out of the country. That would be roughly their trajectory.
Mr. Hegghammer: If we assume that this person has acquired the motivation to attack in Canada, and if we exclude the issue of the likelihood of people acquiring that motivation, there are basically two ways in which one can acquire that capability. One is by searching out instruction manuals or instructional videos online. An enormous amount of such material is available online that shows the beginner in great detail how to create bombs and other lethal devices.
The other option is to try to go abroad to gain combat experience or training in a camp. This second option requires having someone in a social network who can provide advice on how to get there. That person can be someone in that person's close group of friends, which might consist of other radicalized individuals. It might be someone in a wider network who has been to a jihad front several years ago who can provide pointers or who has the email address of someone in the field to whom the candidate can be introduced, and so on.
The two basic options are Internet instruction manuals, and camps and battle fronts abroad.
Senator Joyal: Welcome, witnesses.
The title of Mr. Jenkins' book is Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? WikiLeaks today published a list of strategic infrastructure, infrastructure that seems to be more at risk or will create more damage.
Dr. Hegghammer, you referred to the Internet as being the prime source of information. Do you think that the information published by WikiLeaks today in terms of the sensitivity of infrastructure and other information that could suggest malevolent initiatives or plans to those who are looking for such things will endanger the safety of the Western world to a greater degree than it was before?
Mr. Jenkins: I am not sure that WikiLeaks will provide information that would-be jihadists do not already have. Some of the revelations about attitudes of Arab governments might confirm some of their suspicions that these leaders are corrupt, double-dealing and betraying. It complicates diplomacy in terms of dealing with these groups and creating the networks.
As I mentioned previously, much of our progress has been made as a consequence of extraordinary cooperation among intelligence services. Despite apparent political differences, the cooperation at the working level has been extraordinary. For that cooperation to work, the work must be carried out in a discreet way, that is to say, governments that cannot comfortably be seen to be doing so are cooperating with one another. To the extent that WikiLeaks complicates that cooperation, it will have a damaging effect.
As to whether WikiLeaks provides any specific, concrete information about vulnerabilities or structures, perhaps so, but not in what I have seen. However, there are hundreds of thousands of documents.
Senator Joyal: I am referring to the new documents that were released today.
Mr. Jenkins: I have not seen the list today, I am sorry, so I am at a disadvantage.
The Chair: My colleague is asking about a list that has been put into the public domain of all the sites that various officials allegedly view as strategically the most seminal and problematic.
Mr. Jenkins: Even if they could know or surmise much of this information themselves, having it out in the open does increase danger. Moreover, it provides, in a sense, a justification for going after some of these targets. As I said, I have not seen this information, so I am at a disadvantage, but if specific things were mentioned that they did not already know about, they could now feel justified in going after them. Overall, the result is negative and unhelpful.
Mr. Hegghammer: I have not seen these particular documents either. However, there is already much information available on the Internet, and generally the problem for prospective terrorists is not lack of knowledge of where critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants is located. The problem is reaching them with a weapon, and there are only two ways to do that. One is finding a weapon or a charge that is powerful enough to breach the target. For example, when al Qaeda was planning the 9/11 operations, they allegedly considered flying an airplane into a nuclear reactor but decided against it. That is an example of a weapon powerful enough to penetrate. The other option is to find a sympathizer who can open gates and doors for you to get closer to the target.
Again, I have not seen the information in the WikiLeaks documents, but knowing where a facility is and what is in there does not necessarily help executing the attack. The jihadists are already able to find out information about that using Google Earth and other things.
Senator Joyal: Let us stay on WikiLeaks because both of you seem to place emphasis on upcoming threats. You have identified how potential jihadists may be involved in action besides the idea of being sympathizers in terms of convictions or ideals. However, you have been rather silent on how we could or should fight back considering that this is where there lies the largest potential recruitment possibilities for new home grown terrorists.
Mr. Jenkins: First, we must distinguish between what dimensions of the threat we are dealing with. However, if we are talking about the home grown threat, I would start off with a conservative principle, namely, do no greater harm. I tend to be somewhat skeptical of elaborate federal programs — and, I am speaking about the United States now, not about Canada — aimed at dealing with the possibility of radicalization.
From my own perspective, the basic values that we have in our society are democracy and our sense of community. The opportunities that we have for people in our society provide, in themselves, a good defence. I am happy to see that there have been so few members of the American Muslim community; we are talking about a miniscule fraction of individuals who have gone down this path. I would be careful of programs that might create suspicion and resentment in those communities.
In many cases, the early interventions in a radicalization process are coming from within that community itself. The first people who will know about whether a young man or a young woman is going down a dangerous path will be family and close relatives and they will intervene. We have a number of examples where, when they have not been able to dissuade those individuals from taking a certain course of action, they have gone to the authorities themselves — that is, as long as there is that bond of trust — and they have invited the authorities to intervene. We have benefited from that. Therefore, one wants to be careful not to create a set of mechanisms that will distinguish one portion of our population. I say that not as someone who worries about being politically correct — I am not politically correct one bit — but as a ferocious pragmatist as to what works.
I also say, as a pragmatist, that we depend on domestic intelligence collection. That is always a sensitive topic in any democracy. We do not like the idea of domestic spies, but many of these plots have been interrupted because of the work of domestic intelligence. One can argue that had those plots not been interrupted and had there been higher levels of violence as a consequence of jihadist acts, we would have even greater tensions and suspicions in our society and reactions against those communities. Therefore, I think that intelligence serves both sides in this sense. I am very much in favour of domestic intelligence collection, obviously with appropriate rules and oversight.
In our system in the United States, which differs somewhat in terms of law enforcement from yours, that intelligence can be carried out either by federal agencies or by local authorities. In many cases, local authorities with close relationships with the local community are in a good position to develop those relationships and get that intelligence.
Intelligence, a sustaining of basic values and a great deal of skepticism about programs that stigmatize or isolate any particular portion of the community would be the principles that I would abide by.
Mr. Hegghammer: I do not wish to add much. I prefer not to go into detail on this because counter terrorism is a science of its own and it is not my science. I study the groups, how they work and what they think. I do not feel qualified to go into details on how the threat should be dealt with because it is a debate that must be addressed in some detail as to which specific intelligence collection methods will be used. Involved in that debate is a lot of politics, which is another reason for me not to get into that debate. However, I would certainly subscribe to the principles that Mr. Jenkins just outlined.
Senator Jaffer: Mr. Hegghammer, you spoke about growing al Qaeda support in ethnic groups and you talked about West Africa and East Africa. I want a clarification of what you mean by ethnic groups in West Africa or East Africa or South Asia.
Mr. Hegghammer: Basically, I mean non-Arab ethnic groups. In the past, let us say until the mid-2000s, virtually all anti-Western militancy was carried out by Arabs. In Europe, for example, it was predominantly individuals of North African descent. We saw that individuals residing in the Middle East, and so on, frequented most of the anti-Western jihadi websites. We now see that the plots that are foiled in the West include more non-Arabs. We also see that anti-Western jihadi ideology is being propagated in other parts of the world than just the Middle East or in the Arab diaspora in the West.
I mentioned these specific regions because there are specific reports and evidence supporting this claim. Several reporters have spoken about increasing anti-Western rhetoric in several communities or even mosques in Nigeria. There are groups in Pakistan that have gone more anti-Western in the past few years. In East Africa, the al Shabaab movement has an anti-Western rhetoric, if not quite an anti-Western behaviour yet. I mentioned Turkic peoples, and not only people from Turkey but also from Uzbekistan or the Xinjiang province in China. The past few years have seen several plots in Europe where individuals from these ethnic groups have participated in some way or other.
Senator Jaffer: I have listened carefully to both of you, and we have heard from other presenters as well. My big concern is "homegrown." I will talk about Canada because that is the only place I have experience. In a free, fair society, why do people become radicalized? There are democratic processes by which they can change people's ideas, so why do they become attracted to this radicalization? What is the hook?
Mr. Jenkins: You have to look at the individuals. The numbers are so small that we cannot talk about demographics or a political class. One thing that became apparent in looking at those who not only became radicalized but also recruited themselves to terrorism in the United States was the extremely small numbers, and, beyond that, the diversity. You have to go down to the individual level. This particular individual was not happy about this particular thing; another individual was in a moment of crisis in her life; another was in prison; and another was following a life of crime. It is due to the strength of our democratic open systems that there are not greater numbers. There was no evidence whatsoever of an underground, a vast army of sleepers or a large support structure. These responses were one-off. In fact, of the 46 cases in the United States between 2001 and 2006, half of them involved a single individual. We have a good idea of the radicalization process. We cannot predict who will be radicalized because radicalization is highly individual.
The danger we have is that because of the availability of this ideology, especially on the Internet, as Dr. Hegghammer correctly points out, the ideology itself increasingly becomes the conveyor for all individual discontents. If someone is unhappy with his or her condition in life and leaning toward violence, then this ideology will provide reinforcement and direction, and transform that individual discontent into terrorist action.
The answer to your question is that it is individual; it is not necessarily a group thing. Yes, there are veins of resentment and a handful of extremist and hotheads.
Senator Furey: Are you saying, then, Mr. Jenkins, that individuals come to this radicalization more out of a sense of involvement than any sense of religious fervour or anything like that?
Mr. Jenkins: I am not recognized in the field of remote psychoanalysis, so I cannot tell you what people believe inside their souls.
There is a religious component, and I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of their expression, but it is not the religion itself that takes one down the path toward terrorist action. It is another set of internal motives.
The ideology of an al Qaeda, which draws from and builds upon a religious expression, provides legitimacy for that expression, but I do not see the religion as being the fundamental driver by itself. It is an ideology on top of that expression.
People sometimes ask whether it is an ideology or a religion. In the jihadist circles, no distinctions are made between the two. Political ideology and religion are of a single piece. I am sure Dr. Hegghammer has a view on that as well.
Mr. Hegghammer: The "why" question has two dimensions. We can ask about the objective or real causes of radicalization, and they may be complex and, ultimately, difficult if not impossible to uncover. All kinds of underlying structural factors or approximate factors push or pull a person to this sort of activism.
The other dimension to the question is the declared motivations for doing it. If you ask these people why on earth they sacrificed a future for this activism, in 90 per cent of the cases they will answer that it is to help other Muslims.
The key to understanding the motivation I mention here is the victim narrative that al Qaeda and other related movements propagate. It is a narrative and a world view in which all Muslims are one people, and this people is being systematically persecuted and oppressed by a broad alliance of non-Muslim power stretching from the U.S. in the West to China in the East. All these non-Muslim powers are oppressing and attacking Muslims around the world. This victim narrative and sense of solidarity with what they see as suffering Muslims abroad are the predominant declared motivations for these people.
To put it simply, it is much less about out-group hatred than in-group love or solidarity. It is about retribution for perceived suffering and not so much about unprovoked aggression.
Senator Jaffer: Both of you have spoken about the Internet, and I work with many young people and often talk to them about some of the things you have spoken about. If al Qaeda and those groups can use the Internet, have you two given thought to how we can use the Internet to reach these young people? I feel that we are not making as much use of the Internet to explain to these people different ways of making change in a democratic society.
Mr. Hegghammer: Again, there are two ways of thinking about the online strategy. As far as a positive strategy of presenting an alternative, we do not need to do anything. The alternative is already there. It is presented by the world around these people. It is presented by the mainstream media, by the schools they attend and by the extended network they frequent. The alternative is there. I do not think there is an effective or credible way to educate the frustrated young Muslim in democracy. However, I do think there are things we can do to mitigate the negative effect of jihadi propaganda. One very easy step is to do something about the availability of jihadi propaganda on mainstream platforms so that people are not exposed to this material unwittingly. An easy step would be to reintroduce the self-selection criterion for jihadi websites.
The Chair: I am sorry, Dr. Hegghammer, could you help us understand what that last sentence meant?
Mr. Hegghammer: Basically, when jihadi propaganda appears on YouTube, it reaches a much wider audience of people because people go on YouTube for all types of reasons, and they can stumble on jihadi propaganda by accident. The number of people who are exposed to material on the regular specialist jihadist website is much smaller because you have to be interested in that sort of material to access the site, and you have to know the link and the URL to get there. That limits the number of people who access it. Purging these mainstream platforms of jihadi propaganda is one basic step.
Senator Smith: I sense that you are a scholar in these matters. I am not an expert on the Quran, but we keep hearing scholars say there is no rationale and no basis for this type of thinking in the Quran. If this is so black and white, why would that reality, which you can confirm or not, not sink in on people?
The Chair: In other words, why would people be using Quranic sources to encourage violence if there is no encouragement of violence?
Mr. Jenkins: These are great questions and not easily answered. Let me try to deal with several at the same time.
First, the idea of a specifically counter-jihadist narrative is less appealing than the fact that we live in an open, democratic society, communications are free and there are thousands of other messages, so we do not necessarily have to craft a specific one to counter the jihadist. In fact, it is not our place to argue that they are evil. It would not have any effect anyway; it would lack credibility. I want to come back to a point on that because there are a couple of things we can do that make more sense.
The real thing in terms of the jihadist message, which I think is ultimately, in the long run, one that will fail, is not whether it is right or wrong or good or evil, but that it is largely irrelevant. I mentioned this in my written testimony. This idea of masculine glory and the narrative of victimhood does not do much for people around the world who are striving for political freedom, equality under the law, getting a good education, getting jobs and having a better life for their children. This is largely an irrelevant message. Therefore, even though many throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds may have deep resentment against the West, at the same time, the vast majority of those people regard al Qaeda's message as a message of crackpots.
The Chair: Mr. Jenkins, could I push back on that for a moment?
Mr. Jenkins: Yes, go ahead.
The Chair: You indicated that the jihadi belief at the core of al Qaeda activity is that the cause of any economic or social or opportunity dysfunction for the so-called Arab street or the ummah, the Muslim street, is the vile corruption of the Western materialist world and the imposition of that world on an Islamic community that would be doing far better without that imposition.
When you say the message is irrelevant, in the broad objective sense it may not be irrelevant, however, to a young teenage male — take the point advisably — who is angry about a number of things, such as his life, his parents, about not having a cell phone, whatever the issue may be, and who is then given a chance to express that anger in something other than a normative adolescent acting out, which all cultures face, but in a fashion that is now part of a larger mission. I think it was your own presentation that made that link.
We are trying to understand what are the counterfactual instruments available to address that link in a way that makes it absolutely abhorrent as it is now, where there is a vast majority of Islamic kids, here at home, who would never be interested in that type of activity. The risk we face is not the hundreds, it is the one or two, or in Toronto the 18, who are deemed to have been planning something that would have been quite serious.
Mr. Jenkins: Immediately after 9/11, the strategy of the West was primarily an operational strategy; that is, without a clear idea of how many more 9/11 conspiracies were on the way. There was a desperate effort to close down the training camps, to put al Qaeda on the run and to break their operational capabilities. It was a pounding of operational capabilities.
In the first years, there was not a lot of thought given to, let us say, a front-end strategy; that is, how is it that people get swept up in this and get at that point where we are trying to pound our operational capabilities. Quite frankly, there was not a lot of thought given to the back-end strategy either, and that is once these people have been apprehended, what is it that we want to do with them? Do we want to bring them to justice as if they were ordinary criminals? Do we want to interrogate them? Do we want to throw them in a dungeon for the duration of this struggle, however many decades or centuries that may be? We did not have front- and back-end strategies. It is late.
The questions you are asking are excellent ones about what can be front-end strategies and what can be the back-end strategies, assuming there is some consensus that we have managed to degrade their operational capabilities. How do we go after the recruiting? As I say, for many people, whatever their message, it is not gaining a great deal of traction.
What is gaining traction among those young men you are talking about who are upset for a variety of reasons is you look at the specific appeals, which are not exclusively on the basis of religion or belief. Words like "humiliation," "honour" and "glory as warriors" appeal to young men. Those words attract recruits.
I have always argued the following: It might be interesting to enlist as communicators those who have either dropped out or gone through the system and decided that jihadism as defined by al Qaeda is not so hot. A number of books have been written and interviews have been given by people who have gone down that path and said, "This is a stupid idea." One stunning book was written in Arabic and translated into French — but sadly never into English — by a former extremist. It had the marvellous title, Life Is Better than Paradise. He went through his personal experiences of how, in his own mind, he had been brainwashed into this path.
We engaged in this type of work during the Cold War with some effect. Why are we not taking publications like that, or making the videos for YouTube? Pardon the street language, but they essentially have the message, "jihad sucks." As a path, jihad is a self-destructive, ruinous path. Why do we not play with that?
Let us have former jihadists arguing with future recruits. It cannot be us; we have no credibility. Mr. Hegghammer and I can argue the ideology all day. However, we carry no weight among the community of young men who are possible recruits.
The Chair: Dr. Hegghammer, would you care to add to that particular issue?
Mr. Hegghammer: Thank you. I wanted to address a couple of points that were mentioned in the discussion. Regarding the role of Quranic verses and orthodoxy, these activists get around these theological imperatives that circumscribe violence by rejecting authority. The jihadi propaganda dismisses religious clerics and religious authorities as traitors who have sold out to the infidels. Therefore, they do not need to listen to their advice and they can take these often-vague Quranic verses out of context and turn them into something that justifies their activities.
Emotion is the other mechanism that brings people to this sort of thing. Mr. Jenkins mentioned the attraction or the glory of being a strong and honourable fighter. Emotions have been understudied or underestimated in this whole field of study. People tend to examine ideology as basically dry text on a piece of paper. In reality, people radicalize by watching videos and going through these sorts of ritual-like settings in groups. It is a process in which emotions play at least as large a role as the intellect, if you will.
The major point here is that the Internet is crucial for both of these mechanisms. The Internet spreads propaganda about religious authorities being unreliable, and it also spreads these videos that solicit emotion and creates this emotional pull towards activism.
The key thing that we can do to limit this phenomenon in the West is to limit the spread of this material on the Internet.
The Chair: Before I go to Senator Marshall, I will file with both our guests a question they can perhaps address later on.
With respect to what is on the Internet, with particular reference to YouTube and other references that Dr. Hegghammer has made, are we to conclude that the Chinese style, which in its starkest terms is censorship of the Internet, is an appropriate instrument to consider here? If not, are we to conclude that more explicit classification is required, so that people do not come upon things by accident? That issue is more a technological issue than a legislative issue. Is that something one should consider in working with the major search engines, as governments on occasion do and have done, relative to issues like child pornography?
That point raises the third part of that question: Should we legislate more explicitly about what is allowed on the Internet rather than focus on censorship, so that the carrier who might host the sorts of sites referenced by our witnesses has the responsibility for keeping those sorts of things from some form of universal access?
I will leave those questions with you while we turn to other members.
Senator Marshall: Thank you, Mr. Hegghammer and Mr. Jenkins, for being here today.
Do you think the threat of terrorism is greater or lesser than it was five to ten years ago? In listening to your remarks and reading some of the material you have provided, I have the impression that you think the terrorism threat is less than it was 10 years ago. I find that view difficult to reconcile in terms of what we are discussing here today with regard to nuclear terrorism, use of the Internet and things of that nature. Can you comment?
The Chair: Dr. Hegghammer, can you start on that question?
Mr. Hegghammer: I want to clarify that my time frame was five years in that I was saying that the jihadi movement is weaker today than it was five years ago. I see the jihadi movement as having reached its peak in the mid 2000s. If we go back another five years and compare it with the situation from ten years ago, I think it is fair to say that the terrorism threat to the West from Islamist groups is higher today than ten years ago. That is a fair assessment.
Senator Marshall: However, it is not as high as it was five years ago; is that what you are saying?
Mr. Hegghammer: That is right.
Senator Marshall: Do you think we are in a lull and that we might peak again sometime in the future?
I am sure many people will agree with me that the threat is higher now than it ever was, or perhaps it is only because we are more knowledgeable. However, it seems like we are on the brink, waiting for something to happen. Why do people feel like the threat of terrorism is the highest it has ever been?
Mr. Hegghammer: Personally, I do not know for sure. There are others who might be able to answer that question better. However, my amateur answer is that it has a lot to do with the media and the way things are reported, and the fact that a lot more is reported today than in the past. A foiled or failed plot today receives as much attention as a successful one in the early 2000s. The bar of success has been lowered for al Qaeda, sure, but it is also because the bar of reporting has been lowered by the media.
Having said that, obviously plotting is happening and a lot of attacks would have taken place had it not been for the great efforts of intelligence services worldwide. The bottom line is that we have to look at the facts on the ground and the number of successful attacks, of which there have been few in the past five years.
Senator Marshall: Mr. Jenkins, do you have any comment on that question?
Mr. Jenkins: First, let us understand the difference between terrorism and terror. Terrorism is a set of violent actions carried out by terrorists to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. Terror is the consequence of those actions.
These two can operate somewhat independently; that is, there can be relatively modest levels of terrorism but high levels of terror. It depends a great deal on people's perceptions, and that is what makes judging this situation so difficult.
We are arguing that al Qaeda today versus five years ago, even compared to where they were 10 years ago, does not have the operational capabilities and capacity for ambitious, strategic operations like that of 9/11, as far as we know. They would not be able to do that.
We are still living in the shadow of 9/11. Al Qaeda has the ability to create and maintain an atmosphere of terror through these communications and constant threats of things that are about to happen, which are magnified by the media with a plot discovered here, another plot uncovered there, a failed attempt in Times Square or something planned in Ottawa. All of this creates an atmosphere of terror.
Putting aside the catastrophic attacks on 9/11, the statistics of terrorism show that in my country, the United States, we experienced more terrorism with more fatalities in the 1970s, than we have had since 9/11. We were running about 50 to 60 terrorist bombings per year in the 1970s in the United States. My goodness, if we had that now, the country would be in an extraordinary state. Al Qaeda has learned that a plot uncovered is just about as good as an attack that succeeds. With a threat here, a threat there and more threats on the Internet, they have us living in a state of alarm.
The Chair: They are counting on the feeding frenzy approach of the media to small and insignificant events.
Mr. Jenkins: With all due respect, sir, it is not just the media; it is the political leadership as well.
The Chair: Fair enough.
Mr. Jenkins: In the U.S., a terrorist failure becomes a battleground for a ferocious partisan engagement in our media-drenched society. The difference between today and the 1970s is that today we have news channels on air 24-7 and we have the Internet. In this media-drenched society, there is a constant message of fear and alarm from the terrorists, which, in some cases, is contributed to by the leaders in our capitals and is certainly magnified by the news media.
Senator Marshall: Do you not think that some of those threats are real? We talked earlier about nuclear terrorism and the Internet. Do you not think that those issues are real and that, given what happened five or 10 years ago, the threat of terrorism is higher?
Mr. Jenkins: Senator, of course the threats are real. There is no question about it because we live in dangerous world. At the same time, we ought not to have any nostalgia about the distant past. I used to have arguments with my father, may he rest in peace. He would say, "Brian, you work on this topic of terrorism; this is such a dreadful world we live in." I reminded him that he was a veteran of World War II and that in the first half of the 20th century, we killed 60 million to 70 million people in world wars. The death rate in wars was running at about 1 million per year during the 20th century. That number has reduced a great deal. We are not talking about living in a society without risks; it is how our society will respond to those risks. The risks in the world are not new. We lived with the Cold War. We lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation by the Soviet Union when it had tens of thousands of missiles pointed in this direction. That was much more serious than the threat posed by some terrorists for whom fabricating one crude device would be a reach. We are not talking about the absence of threat; but we are talking about how our societies react to that threat.
In our societies, we in the West have come to expect, even as risks have declined worldwide in many respects, an absolutely secure society without risk. That is not on.
Senator Duffy: I thank both witnesses for coming today to discuss this very important topic.
I will follow up a little on the WikiLeaks list leaked today, which has some dangerous specifics about places and people that were not known to the general public in advance.
The Chair: Senator Duffy, you know that both witnesses have said they have not been able to become familiar with that list.
Senator Duffy: Yes; however, Mr. Jenkins said earlier that he was concerned that kind of publication might make people targets. Is it possible to assess the potential for a copycat attack by other deranged people or other groups on defence contractors and others who have been outed as being critical of the United States.
Mr. Jenkins: There is no question that publishing the names of individuals who are in sensitive positions is not useful. Even though Dr. Hegghammer and I would agree that there is a tremendous amount of information available about targets and individuals on the Internet, the publication of a specific list does not have a positive effect because it can expose individuals to danger. There is no question about it. Had any of us been involved in anything, but not identified as so, and suddenly identified as involved in some type of sensitive, critical activity, it would pose a peril unquestionably.
Senator Duffy: Following up on the question of YouTube, is anything to be gained by a form of censorship, or will the young people interested in trying this out find their own way to get there? Are we deluding ourselves if we think it will be effective to put the responsibility on the communications companies for keeping these sites at bay?
Mr. Jenkins: I am very cautious about censorship, because I believe that if a handful of terrorists somewhere in the world force our society into censorship and making fundamental changes, they will win somehow and we will lose; and that is fundamental.
There is another pragmatic consideration: While the Internet is a source of inspiration and instruction for our terrorist foes, it is also a valuable resource for our intelligence services. Anyone who believes that they can visit these websites and interact with interlocutors in the al Qaeda orbit and not be noticed and monitored by others is a fool. We have seen a number of cases where plots have been uncovered because an individual took that overt step to visit such a site repeatedly, which made the person a subject of interest to the authorities.
It is a source of intelligence. We want to be careful we do not close off that source, as well. The question is one of both values and pragmatic consideration.
Mr. Hegghammer: I am not advocating Chinese-style censorship. I do not want to enter the censorship debate, but a wide range of different types of measures can be taken to limit the availability of this material on certain sites like YouTube.
I think that availability matters. A fundamental finding in behavioural economics, for example, is that availability increases consumption.
I hate to make analogies, but if marijuana becomes more available, more people will consume it. In the same way with jihadi propaganda, if it is made available to people who may not have thought of it in the first place, then a larger number of people will be exposed to it. If only 5 per cent of the people who see material act on it, increasing the total number of consumers will increase the number of people who act on it. I think availability matters, and I think that limiting this material to specialist jihadi websites where people have to self-select to access them is an important first step.
If I can go back to the discussion in the previous question on why we perceive the threat as greater today than eight or ten years ago, I will make the point that we are dealing with a classic case of what social scientists call a "reporting bias," which is that the things that are counted as terrorist attacks or plots today are not the same as the things that were counted as such in the early 2000s.
I am thinking particularly about foreign-fighter recruitment. If we look in detail at the homegrown plots in North America in the past 10 years, a substantial proportion of them are about people who planned to go abroad to join a guerrilla group somewhere in Somalia or elsewhere. If we were to include all the people who went from Europe to Iraq or other fronts in the early 2000s — or in the 1990s, for that matter — we would have an enormous list of terrorist plots from Europe in that age, and the statistics would look different.
We have to distinguish between different types of activity here. If we look at actual plots in the homeland, then I am not sure if even the number of plots has increased that significantly.
Senator Furey: I have one short question: When investigators are gathering evidence and they are aware of a plot, at what stage should they intervene? Does it make sense that a plot be allowed to ripen to the attack stage with the expectation that it will fail, for example?
Mr. Jenkins: In each one of these cases, each one of these plots as they are watched, that question is a fundamental one for the authorities.
Since 9/11, which represents a major shift here, the authorities — not only in the United States, but in Canada and Europe as well — have been under pressure to move upstream. The term that is used frequently in law enforcement circles is to make sure that things stay on the left hand side of the boom; that is, that we do not have to deal with the aftermath. This question makes this activity different from law enforcement activity.
In law enforcement activity, there is a crime, it is investigated and the perpetrators are identified and apprehended. In this particular case, there is much greater pressure to adopt a preventive mode — an intervention upstream, if you will.
The difficulty in prevention is in societies where this activity takes place as a law enforcement issue — not in some police state where people arrest people and do not have to worry about charging them with a crime — if the authorities move in too early, it makes prosecution of individuals extremely difficult. It can be argued easily in a defence that this plot was a thought; they had no intentions of carrying it out and they had no capabilities to carry it out.
All those defences are deployed anyway in the criminal trials of these individuals. Therefore, the authorities want to have enough information so that they can have a good chance at a successful prosecution, but not allow it to go out of control. Heaven forbid if they were monitoring some group, lost control of it and a terrorist incident took place; subsequently, they would be crucified.
The authorities have become more skilful at this monitoring over time. Where they have good control, they will allow the plotters to go ahead. They may even intervene and provide them with fake explosives and so on to show that the plotters are continuing with their plot. There are still defences against that, but the question raised is an argument and there is pressure not to wait but to intervene. Since we do not have preventive detention, for the most part, our legal systems are not built for that and this area is one of debate.
Senator Furey: In light of your early comments about terror versus terrorism, would it better, as a society, if we fine-tuned our conspiracy laws and shut this activity down quicker than we are doing now?
Mr. Jenkins: There is a utility in looking at conspiracy laws. Some countries have the ability to intervene earlier. I am talking about intervention within a legal framework; I am not talking about extra-legal interventions.
The Chair: As honourable senators will recall, we had a bill on suicide bombing before us in the Senate, not because acting after the suicide bomber was successful made much difference, but because conspiracy to plan a suicide bombing then would be a legitimate area of pursuit by our police and intelligence, as is the case with any conspiracy with respect to a criminal activity. I think that bill reflects part of what Senator Furey is addressing.
Mr. Jenkins: I am not an attorney and have no knowledge of specific Canadian law. In the United States, we have altered legislation to identify providing material support to terrorism as a crime in itself. The courts have chosen to interpret "material support" broadly to include communications and broad expressions of intent.
As I say, the ultimate auditors of this situation, of course, are juries and that is good. That is the way our system is supposed to work. I think the authorities have been allowed to become a bit more creative and aggressive in some of these areas, knowing that ultimately a jury will decide whether the authorities went too far — whether the evidence was there or whatever — but that ultimate audit is in place.
The Chair: Dr. Hegghammer, do you want to add to that answer?
Mr. Hegghammer: No, I do not have an opinion on this matter. The timing of the intervention is something that should be left to law enforcement professionals.
Senator Joyal: I would like to come back to Mr. Jenkins' statement that the most important issue is how our society reacts to a threat. In your opening remarks, you mentioned "unprecedented cooperation" as an important factor resulting from 9/11.
In which areas do you feel there should be improvement in terms of that team effort from states, especially from the Western world, to join forces to address the upcoming risks that still exist, according to your own answers?
Mr. Hegghammer: I am not able to answer that question in any particular detail.
Mr. Jenkins: Among the Western countries — and I include Japan, Singapore and nations like that — certainly the cooperation has been excellent, and that will probably continue. Improvements need to be made in terms of expanding that cooperation beyond the circle of traditional friends and alliances and engaging others whose cooperation has in some cases been problematic.
We have had excellent cooperation in intelligence with some of the Middle Eastern countries, while at the same time, as we know from what has been in the newspapers lately, there are complaints about the inability of those governments to shut down some of the financial flows that are going to some of these organizations.
Cooperation with some of our close allies in Southwest Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, again, as we know from public reports, have been fraught with friction regarding the degrees of cooperation and how people perceive the threat.
We will always have good cooperation among like-minded governments, but the challenge is to get beyond that. As I said, I believe we have made tremendous progress. You have to take a very long view on this, though. I have been at this for a while. Debates in international forums 30 or more years ago about what terrorism was, in fact, could not reach agreement on a definition of terrorism. We have moved along so much since then that, clearly, in terms of the corpus of international conventions that deal with this, practical cooperation among intelligence services and law enforcement has been excellent. There will always be difficulties. Sharing information for an intelligence service is an unnatural act; it will always be tough to do. We have problems of coordination within our own governments on these issues, so we cannot expect this to be easy. As I said, though, we have made extraordinary progress thus far.
Senator Duffy: Dr. Hegghammer, Norway has been known, ever since the Second World War, for its communications signals intelligence capability. Are you aware of current levels of cooperation, and do you see areas in that international grouping where there is a need for improvement?
Mr. Hegghammer: I honestly do not know anything about the nature or level of intelligence cooperation between Norway and other countries. To be perfectly honest, I did not even know that we were famous for our signals intelligence capability. I am simply not qualified or capable of answering that question.
The Chair: It sounds like a well-kept secret, for national security purposes, of course.
Senator Joyal: It may be among the 250,000 leaks in WikiLeaks.
I would like to return to your conclusion that the Internet is the greatest source of propaganda available because, as Dr. Hegghammer said, it offers information you are not seeking, or because it will provide you with information you are looking for, which is there somewhere, in some form.
I always thought representatives or interpreters of the Quran could be an important source of propaganda. These people could prepare or cultivate the mind of the person receptive to a discourse that advocates the afterlife after the sacrifice of one's own life, and so forth. We heard a great deal of this during the Iranian uprising in the late 1980s.
I am still puzzled about the extent to which this is also an important or continuing source of information that should be the object of attention. Perhaps I am totally caught up in the 1980s and the so-called Iranian revolution.
Mr. Jenkins: In looking at where people who have become radicalized got their start, in many cases, especially since 9/11, the mosque has not been the recruiting ground for terrorism. People who are looking to link with others do so off-site. In many cases, rightly or wrongly, they believe the mosques are under surveillance. In many cases, they believe the imams at the mosques are not sufficiently radical, and they believe that in many cases the mosque may be too public a venue for this type of activity. Certainly, the focal point for recruitment can be anywhere; it can be a bookshop, a meetinghouse, or anywhere where a handful of these people get together. It is not necessarily the mosque.
Let me come back to one question, if I may. We were talking earlier about WikiLeaks. Of course, one of the responses to having systems that allow us to share information more readily among all the departments of our own government in the United States led to this greater access to all information, which in fact quite possibly facilitated very junior people to draw down and to pass on tremendous amounts of information. On the one hand, sharing is a great idea; on the other hand, it does create new vulnerabilities. That is the nature of the technology.
Aside from the mosque, there is one issue that remains an issue. We were talking about this in terms of the Quran. Versions of the Quran are circulating, with distribution supported by some governments in many cases, which are modified versions that elevate jihad to a principle of faith, along with charity, the pilgrimage and other things it does not have, and define jihad not as a spiritual quest but as armed action. These modified versions are made available and are circulating in the prisons. Therefore, we have, in a sense, distorted versions of the Quran that are floating around, sometimes in great number.
The Chair: You think governments are financing these activities. Can you share with us any insight as to which governments they may be?
Mr. Jenkins: In the past, something called the Noble Quran was put out under the imprimatur of the religious leadership of Saudi Arabia. That imprimatur has subsequently been taken off of the title page, but the volume continues to circulate.
Senator Joyal: In your opinion, that activity is more damaging than the preaching of imams in mosques where, as you say, it is an easy task to obtain the information because they are all there, one can listen, draw one's own conclusions and follow up afterwards.
Mr. Jenkins: Yes.
Senator Joyal: One does not know who will react to the book that they distribute or circulate in a prison population or among a group of youths.
Mr. Jenkins: One does not. It is not for us here to be theologians and to go into interpretations of the Quran but if we look for justification for al Qaeda's jihadist ideology in the Quran, we cannot find it. It is not there.
We can find examples in the so-called Hadith about the early stories of the faith that began to spread centuries after the Quran itself, but that is a virtual tsunami of stories and second-, third- and fourth-hand things that circulate, and one can find almost anything there.
However, I think the important thing is that while there is no authenticity for al Qaeda's ideology in the Quran itself, the importance is that we ought not to be shy about challenging that ideology because we are apprehensive about entering the area of faith. In a sense, contrary to whatever their claims are, this ideology is still an ideology of violence, and we can address it as such without having to wring our hands too much that we are treading into the perilous areas of theology and religion.
As an aside, the questions you ask here are extraordinary. Operational questions, such as about al Qaeda's operations and things like that, are easy to answer. You are asking questions that ultimately are philosophical and that have political implications. Those questions are tough. Ultimately, Dr. Hegghammer and I can provide only personal views, but these are things that your own philosophical outlooks and ultimately, political decisions, will determine.
The Chair: Personal views of experts are of great value to us. Dr. Hegghammer, do you want to respond to that most recent question of Senator Joyal?
Mr. Hegghammer: I stress that mainstream Islam, or orthodoxy as a source of militancy, is overestimated. If places of worship or the Quran generated violence, then we would not see variation in violence over time and we would not see variation in mobilization geographically.
These texts have been around for over 1,000 years, and it is only in the past few years that we have seen the type of terrorism that we see today.
As far as mosques are concerned, to my knowledge, it is extremely rare that terrorist cells in the West today are formed and operationalized in mosques. It is true that social ties may be forged at an early stage in a mosque, just as they might be in any other location, but in the vast majority, if not all cases, people have acquired the motivation to use violence in the West outside of the mosque.
A typical sort of tripwire or a sign of danger is when a person who is pious leaves the mosque and starts praying at home with friends and so forth. This sign is a classic sign of potential radicalization.
There have been cases in the past, of course, of a small number of mosques, for instance in London and other places like the suburbs of Paris, where there have been fiery preachers. However, most of these mosques came under the control of much more moderate figures by the mid-2000s. I am not aware of any major mosques in the West today that serve as incubators of radicalism.
Senator Joyal: It is not the time for a commercial advertisement, but I want to exhibit your book to my colleagues, which is entitled Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? Of course, the author is Brian Michael Jenkins.
That title seems to assume another level of threat. By the title, you seem to imply that the next big shock of the Western world could be a nuclear catastrophe triggered by terrorism. Why did you title your book in that way? Is it to scare people so they run to read it? I am sorry to be negative, but this question gives you an opportunity to answer. Is it because you are strongly convinced that we are on a path where, sooner or later, we will face the greatest challenge of our time?
Mr. Jenkins: The title of the book comes from a monograph that I wrote with the same title in 1974. When this book came out 24 years later, it was simply revisiting the question.
Senator Joyal: Yes, but at the time we were in the Cold War, which was a different kind of situation.
Mr. Jenkins: We were concerned in the 1970s about the possibility that someone outside of a government program could acquire fissile material and make a nuclear device. This book took exactly the same title as an update of that view.
We know that a number of organizations, including al Qaeda, have expressed ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. Organizations have made attempts that we do know about to acquire fissile material. Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Zawahiri in their public statements have made reference to al Qaeda's quest for nuclear weapons, so we know it is on their minds; it is not new.
How do we interpret those statements? Fortunately, their capabilities are nowhere near their expressed ambitions. At this point, the debate about nuclear terrorism tends to become somewhat of a theological debate where, on the one hand there are the disbelievers who say, No, this cannot happen; terrorists cannot do it. Then there are the apocalypticians who say that it is not a matter of "if" but "when."
I would describe myself as a prudent agnostic. I make no predictions that it will happen, but I am not willing to take a lot of chances, and therefore all of these international efforts aimed at safeguarding and recovering fissile material, increasing security at nuclear facilities and preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons are, I think, well-founded. It is not a matter of knowing or predicting that something will happen; it is a matter of this being something with which we certainly do not want to take a chance.
Having said that, this also looks at the history of how we have viewed the topic. Here again I will distinguish between nuclear terrorism and nuclear terror. Nuclear terrorism is about the frightening possibility that terrorists might acquire a nuclear capability. Nuclear terror is our apprehension of that event. Nuclear terrorism is about evidence, science and intelligence. Nuclear terror is driven by our imagination.
The history of nuclear terrorism is, fortunately, quite short. There has not been any. However, nuclear terror is deeply embedded in our society and popular culture, and I would assert that al Qaeda, through its skilful use of communications, has managed to become a virtual terrorist nuclear power without nuclear weapons; that is, they have managed to create the impression, express the ambition and make the threat, and this has enormous impact in the realm of terror.
Insofar as their capabilities, apart from having some discussions with Pakistani nuclear physicists, they have no fissile material that we know about. We know that in one particular instance they may have bought some things that they thought were components of nuclear weapons, which were in fact Volkswagen car parts. Therefore, they have been very naive in their program, but their communications about this is something different, and this is a lesson for us. Again, it is not necessarily about the actual capability, which is what we are talking about more broadly in terrorist operations; it is that in the day of the Internet, in the day of the mass media that we have today, you can create celebrity and you can create fear, you can create vast effects with very little substance.
The Chair: Dr. Hegghammer, did you want to engage on the question of the difference between terror and terrorism in this circumstance and how that affects the network linkages about which this committee is concerned?
Mr. Hegghammer: I do not have anything to add to that discussion, but on the issue of nuclear weapons, I have spent the past 10 years studying jihadi ideology, al Qaeda statements and so on, and I see no reason to doubt the intention. I think we have to assume that there are people in the jihadi movement who would not hesitate to use such weapons if they could put their hands on them. We have to work with that assumption.
Whether that affects the actual measures that we take is another matter. I do not see what more we could do to prevent this from happening. Already many measures are in place, and they are there for a number of very good reasons, including counter-terrorism.
Senator Jaffer: I want to go back to the issue of home-grown terrorists. What are the hooks? Why are they searching on the Internet and what are they searching for? Could our foreign policy be one reason why people start to look at other ways of dealing with anger?
The Chair: Both witnesses have referred to the role of perceived foreign policy, slights and risks to the Islamic community as relevant to this terrorist concern, so I would be interested in your responses to Senator Jaffer's question.
Mr. Hegghammer: This is a very important question. Surrounding the debate around al Qaeda for a number of years has been whether our own policies create this terrorism, whether the jihadists are simply responding to an objective grievance that we created. The debate tends to put people on the right against people on the left.
There is a middle ground. Yes, policies can affect recruitment in the sense that they are one of the factors that make the symbols of Muslim suffering more available. It is a factor, but it is far from the only one. There is no linear relationship between the objective number of Muslim casualties that Western countries cause and the violence that comes back in return.
I will stress two factors that distort this linearity. One is media. Even the smallest event, the smallest development, can be magnified by jihadi propagandists on the Internet and made into a very powerful symbol of suffering. Now that digital cameras are so much more available, the slightest misstep or poor judgment by an American soldier in the field can be captured on camera and become a major symbol of suffering and boost recruitment. There are many cases of this happening.
The other factor that distorts this is that many of the objective policies that have affected recruitment in the past have not been of the West's making. There is a tendency to focus too much on the West, and America in particular, whereas if you look at al Qaeda's propaganda in the 1990s and early 2000s, most of the symbols of suffering that they were highlighting with the hope of recruiting people involved non-Western, non-Muslim states. It was about the Serbs in Bosnia, the Russians in Chechnya, Israeli actions in Palestine and so on. The production of these symbols of suffering is often outside of the control of Western countries.
Mr. Jenkins: Western policies do play a role in recruiting. I agree that it is not the sole component, but to the extent that those policies can be portrayed by al Qaeda as evidence of an assault on Islam, they do so. They have real effect. To give a couple of examples, there is no question that the invasion of Iraq breathed life into al Qaeda's recruiting efforts. It is interesting that the Western-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia, a historic enemy of the Somalis, not only gave new life to the local resistance movement but also led to some young Somali-Americans going to Somalia.
The Chair: Canadians did, as well.
Mr. Jenkins: Yes, Canadians did, also.
That recruiting led to one in particular: Omar Hammami, swathed in scarves and bandoliers, who now makes videos to appeal to young kids about the glories of battle. We have seen this recruiting have modest effect. It took a number of months, but we see a response to that recruiting.
Yes, these actions we take have an effect on recruiting. Presumably, we take these actions for reasons of national interest and foreign policy. The fact that they provoke the jihadists is unfortunate. We will not alter necessarily the foreign policies of the West to appease the jihadists, but they do have effect.
Senator Jaffer: Mr. Hegghammer, you were speaking in your presentation earlier about the tribal lands in Pakistan. I do some work there. All the work some of us do there is destroyed every time a drone attacks because it attacks families and makes it difficult. That attack leads to a hook. How do you deal with things like those attacks? How do you stop them? It is not the fault of Canadian foreign policy, but that does not matter. It is a foreign policy that brings people into radicalization.
Mr. Hegghammer: The drone debate is extremely complex and polarized. I would rather not go into it too deeply. However, there is considerable debate over the extent to which the problems the drones generate outweigh the benefits. If we look at the declared dissatisfaction with that in the Pakistani press, for example, there is no doubt that the attacks are inflaming popular opinion and they are deeply unpopular. This unpopularity does not mean necessarily that a larger number of people will take action against Western interests.
The problem is the existence of the dilemma of what matters more: the capability of al Qaeda central, or the motivations of the local population in the tribal areas. At the moment, I think the U.S. administration has decided that drone attacks are the least bad option, and that the capability of al Qaeda central matters more, or has the greater potential for causing damage in the West, than the people on the ground who innocently suffer from drone attacks.
It is difficult to measure objectively the link between the popular dissatisfaction in tribal areas and violence in the West, whereas we can prove clearly the links between the capability of al Qaeda central and attacks in the West.
Senator Tkachuk: I hear a lot about foreign policy. However, is this issue not about failed leadership in the countries where many of these recruits come from? Before 9/11, we were not invading Iraq. To me, that was sort of the epitome of attacks. I do not think it became better for them after that attack. The 9/11 campaign was their great big public relations campaign.
The Chair: Who is "they?"
Senator Tkachuk: I would say that was al Qaeda's high mark. Before that, we were not in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet in the 1990s, those people tried to bomb the towers in the 1990s and they failed. They ran the USS Cole. All those horrible things happened throughout the 1990s. As you say, it went all the way back. What was the foreign policy problem with al Qaeda throughout the 1990s?
Mr. Jenkins: There are two components to this question in al Qaeda's ideology: One is a world view, and the second is a practical exploitation of a situation. In terms of the world view, the objection al Qaeda raised in the 1990s, before 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, was the presence of infidel troops on holy ground in Saudi Arabia. That was from the first Gulf War. That presence was regarded as an affront to the faith — to religion itself — and was one of the first points they mentioned as being the cause for their violence.
The fact is, we had a group of individuals who came together to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. With the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, we had a number of veterans who could not return to the places they came from, such as Algeria or Egypt. They were not welcome. They had capabilities and were looking for a cause. I can be somewhat cynical about that situation and say that it was an army looking for a war. That is clearly what it was.
The practical part of attacking the U.S., which is inherent in the al Qaeda ideology, is that all these various struggles and movements that had long preceded 9/11 in Algeria, Kashmir, Afghanistan and elsewhere were engaged in a struggle against their own governments.
Al Qaeda's contribution to this struggle, ideologically, was to say, no, you should focus in on the single, distant enemy; do not squander and scatter all your activities against all these local governments; this is a global struggle against the infidels — the United States and its allies."
By achieving unity on that issue, it was able to overcome all the internecine conflicts that existed within these movements, and still exist. Al Qaeda, in the Arabian Peninsula, has gone increasingly global after the United States because it is the least common denominator that they can get agreement upon among the factions in Yemen.
Senator Tkachuk: I do not say it is uncomplicated, but all nutbars do this. If you read how Hitler started the Hitler Youth, the ideology of National Socialism and Nazism, what did he do? He did the same thing. It was built on envy, power and singling out an enemy. It did not matter who the enemy was. In his case, it was Jews: The reason you do not have anything is because they have everything; Germany is in trouble because of the rest of the world.
That is exactly what al Qaeda is doing. All these terrorist groups do the same thing. It is a matter of saying, You do not have, and you do not have because it is someone else's fault; therefore, we have to get rid of them, and so they recruit.
Part of the problem we have with al Qaeda and these terrorists is that we give them way too much credit. They are nothing but a bunch of bandits who use all the same psychological apparatus that all these terrible groups have used historically, whether the communists, the Nazis or the fascists; they all do the same thing and recruit the same way. Today it is easier for them to recruit because they have the Internet and do not have to send telegraphs. They have the whole world to recruit with.
We make them out to be more than they are which makes them more attractive. We should call them for what they are.
Mr. Jenkins: There is no question that these groups have exploited communications, but it is more than that. It is because of the vulnerabilities in our technologically dependent society that allow small groups to set a little device and bring down an airplane. It is because of the capacity that it affords their communications through the Internet. It is because of the increasing availability of weapons and knowhow — not intercontinental ballistic missiles but improvised explosive devices that can be learned about on the Internet. Because of all of the above, it is about power. Such "power" defined in its crudest sense is the capacity to kill, destroy, disrupt, create fear and alarm, oblige us to divert vast resources to security that this power has come down into the hands of smaller and smaller groups whose grievances it will not always be possible to satisfy.
To put it another way, the irreconcilables, the extremists and the lunatics that have existed throughout the history of mankind have become, in our age, an increasingly potent force to be reckoned with. How the hell we will deal with that in a democratic society and remain a democratic society is one of the major challenges we face in this century.
Senator Tkachuk: It is like going to a James Bond movie except there is no James Bond.
Senator Jaffer: Mr. Hegghammer I believe you did not answer my question.
Mr. Hegghammer: There is a tendency to view the motives of al Qaeda as inevitable. We forget that militant Islamist groups have existed for a long time and terrorist groups have existed for an even longer time. Today, we are dealing with a particular type of activism — terrorism against the West. This is a peculiar ideological phenomenon, which is neither inevitable nor completely contingent.
To explain the rise of al Qaeda and a movement that wants to attack the West, we have to go back to the 1990s and the victim narrative. It is true that the Afghan war in the 1980s was a cradle for this; the deployment of U.S. forces to Saudi Arabia in 1990 motivated bin Laden, and there were a few individuals who carried out attacks, for example on the World Trade Center. This movement did not grow and gain momentum until the very late 1990s. The World Trade Center bombing in 2001 was the work of a network that was at best peripheral to al Qaeda.
The flow of recruits to the al Qaeda camp, which is the only good measure for the growth of this movement, started to pick up in 1998-99 for specific reasons. Between 1998 and 2001, there was a series of prominent and powerful symbols of Muslim suffering. As a warm up, there were wars in Kosovo and Chechnya, as well as the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. The motivation of most al Qaeda recruits in the 1990s and the majority of 9/11 hijackers was to fight in Chechnya; so they went to Afghanistan for training. The rise of al Qaeda is linked to the fact that this rhetoric gained resonance and empirical credibility among more people. By 9/11 and the start of the War on Terror, this victim narrative already had a momentum. We added to it with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the issues surrounding Guantanamo, et cetera, which gave this rhetoric further credibility. If these things had not happened, I do not think this particular project of attacking the United States would have caught on with as many people as it has today.
Senator Jaffer: I have been reflecting on the de-radicalization of youth. I will talk about Canadian youth, not foreign youth. These are our children on our territory who become radicalized. I know that in Europe good steps have been taken to de-radicalize these youth. I would like to hear from both witnesses whether this has been successful and what we should do in Canada to bring youth and others who are radicalized back into our fold.
Mr. Hegghammer: I am afraid that I am not familiar enough with the details of the de-radicalization programs in Europe to answer that question well. However, I can say something about the de-radicalization programs in Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern countries, where they have had such initiatives.
Saudi Arabia has gained a great deal of media attention for its so-called de-radicalization program. They bring in imprisoned suspected or convicted militants and treat them in these special resorts. The main lesson to take away from that is that the theological reprogramming matters less than the social pressure exerted on these individuals. What works is bringing in the families and putting pressure on people and making them feel guilty for bringing their families to shame or the tribes to shame and offering them viable worldly alternatives.
The Saudi Arabian authorities emphasize the theological dimension of it. They crack the theological code of "jihadism" and reprogram them so they lose their motivation. It is much more about the social aspect and creating incentives and disincentives in the social sphere. There are take aways from that to the West as well.
Personally, I am skeptical of approaches that focus on theology and ideology in this way. I think any sort of de-radicalization program has to be based mainly on the social reintegration of individuals.
Mr. Jenkins: I agree with Dr. Hegghammer. This is a social issue, not a theological or even ideological issue. I would go further and say that the recruiting, insofar as we understand it, is highly individualistic. I am not sure this recruiting is as much a matter of a national program as it is a matter of families and friends of individuals. It is difficult to have national programs to prevent young men and women from joining street gangs, but local communities have worked together with the families and local social infrastructure to deal with this issue, and it is probably not much different in this regard.
More important than a national program is ensuring that local communities are aware of what is going on. We had, as I mentioned earlier, this apparent increase in recruiting young Somalians into al Shabaab. The authorities made an effort to go out and inform the local communities as to what was going on and the consequences of this activity. Once those communities recognized this activity was taking place, they have been more effective in dealing with it as a local community problem.
I do not believe in identifying specific groups or diasporas and making them subjects of particular programs, but rather it is a matter of local efforts and in many cases local policing. These efforts do not start out with, "We are here to preventing radicalization," but that the government is here to address the problems that are relevant to this community. In the course of those efforts, they develop the relationships and trust that are essential so that the community says, we have some problem here with some of these fellows, and we need help. That is the way to deal with it.
The Chair: There is a rich literature in psychology now dealing with young adolescent males generically, the anger overall and how that anger is being addressed.
Senator Duffy: I want to offer Mr. Jenkins an opportunity to restate for our television audience, people who may have turned in too late — the old broadcaster never dies.
The Chair: The old broadcaster being the senator and not Mr. Jenkins.
Senator Duffy: For those who have just tuned in, would you repeat the burden of your remarks earlier relating to the vast number of Muslims in Canada and the United States, in fact, in the Western world, and the positive role the vast majority of the members of this community or faith are playing in helping the authorities and helping all of us deal with this terrorism problem?
Mr. Jenkins: Let me restate it, because there is positive news here. Both Canada and the United States have benefited enormously from immigrant populations, and they have been successful in assimilating those immigrant populations and have provided the freedoms and opportunities for those communities. The fact that these ideologies, despite their tremendous efforts on the Internet and through these various means, are not getting traction in that community, apart from a mere handful of individuals here and there, is a credit to our societies, and we should take credit for that.
I do not know what the statistics are here in Canada, but, in the United States, in the past nine years, we have had a few over a hundred that have gone the route of jihad. We have several thousand young Muslim Americans serving in our military. In many cases when plots have been uncovered and acts of terrorism prevented, they have been prevented by the active intervention of those local communities. We have no way of counting how many interventions there were even before it came to that level, where a family, friends, an imam or whoever, intervened with a young person and said, This is a bad idea. We have a success here, and that is why I am cautious about tampering with that success.
Senator Smith: My question is more a comment that you might react to. I once had a conversation off the record with a prominent Middle East personality who was commenting on the ability of al Qaeda of raising money in the Saudi Peninsula. The view was that it did not have anything to do with any particular ideological interpretation of something in the Quran but rather the fact that they led a good life, had an awful lot of money and wanted to be left alone by these fanatics, and it was nothing more than that. Do you have any comment?
Mr. Jenkins: There is no question that, in any of these extremist groups, not only al Qaeda but others that have been active in the Middle East, contributions are a way of attempting to purchase immunity.
The Chair: Is that situation structurally different from firms anywhere in the world who, in dealing with a local crime boss of any affiliation or background, pay insurance money to ensure the integrity of their day-to-day operation? Is that situation, in your judgment, tactically or strategically different, or is the same thing going on, essentially?
Mr. Hegghammer: The waves of violence that have swept Saudi Arabia and other countries in the peninsula since 2003 shows that, if there were such a strategy, it did not work. I am generally a little skeptical about the protection-money hypothesis, if I may call it that.
This issue of fundraising has to be viewed in the context of old, established Islamic norms of charity. Charity is a pillar of Islam and something that all Muslims try to engage in. Societies on the peninsula happen to be wealthy and are able to give away a lot of cash.
Another important point in this context is that there is also a tendency to view the financing as directed from the top; as somehow partially or wholly government instigated. In most cases, financing is a private phenomenon instigated from below. It is small businessmen who give money to various charities, often, by the way, without knowing where exactly the money goes. The problem has been that there have been rotten apples within certain charities that have siphoned off money to terrorist groups. The donors may not have meant to support terrorist agencies.
As well, the type of operations we are thinking of here in the West are not particularly expensive. It is not clear that these operations require a lot of money. It is true that larger militias, such as the al Shabaab in Somalia, require a lot of money because they have many men under arms and they need a lot of resources, but for small-scale activities, the issue of funding is less critical.
I agree especially with the last point about the funds being required to run a terrorist organization. The jihadists boast now, as part of their strategy, that they can spend a few thousand dollars in an attack or attempted attack, thereby obliging us to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in defence against the recurrence of that attack, and they have made that approach an explicit part of their strategy. We saw that in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutalla with his bomb on Christmas day. We have one individual, one bomb that did not work, probably a few thousand dollars total investment, and the United States is deploying full body scanners at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Jihadists have recognized that situation, and they have said, This is a good return on investment for us; we can keep this going longer than you can afford to keep throwing down that kind of money. We have seen that fundamental shift recently.
The Chair: On behalf of all the members of the Special Senate Committee on Anti-Terrorism, I thank Brian Jenkins and Thomas Hegghammer in Oslo, where it is 9:40 at night. You have been remarkable in staying with us and answering our questions. We express our appreciation to our guests for the help they given us in our deliberations on this issue.
(The committee adjourned.)