Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on the
Anti-terrorism Act
Issue 4 - Evidence - Morning meeting
OTTAWA, Monday, March 14, 2005
[English]
The Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism Act met this day at 10:35 a.m. to undertake a comprehensive review of the provisions and operations of the Anti-terrorism Act, (S.C. 2001, c.41).
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
The Chairman: Senators, I would like to call this meeting to order this morning.
This is the seventh meeting of the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-terrorism Act with witnesses. For our viewers, I will explain the purpose of this committee.
In October 2001, as a direct response to the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania, and at the request of the United Nations, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-36, the Anti- terrorism Act. Given the urgency of the situation, Parliament was asked to expedite our study of the legislation and we agreed. The deadline for the passage of that bill was mid-December of 2001. However, concerns were expressed that it was difficult to thoroughly assess the potential impact of this legislation in such a short time. For that reason, it was agreed that three years later, Parliament would be asked to examine the provisions of the act and its impact on Canadians with the benefit of hindsight, and in a less emotionally charged situation for the public.
The work of the special committee represents the Senate's efforts to fulfill that obligation. When we have completed the study, we will make a report to the Senate that will outline any issue that we believe should be readdressed and allow the results of our work to be available to the government and to the Canadian public. I should say that our House of Commons is undertaking a similar process.
So far, the committee has met with the Honourable Anne McLellan, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness; the Honourable Irwin Cotler, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General for Canada; and Jim Judd, the Director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
We now begin two full days of hearings where we will learn about and discuss the threat environment within which the Anti-terrorism Act is expected to operate, as well as hear from individual legal experts.
This morning, we welcome, and are very fortunate to have with us, Mr. Thomas Hegghammer, who is joining us by video-conferencing from Norway. Mr. Hegghammer is a Senior Analyst in the Transnational Radical Islamism Project at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. He has been kind enough to agree to be with us until 12:30 p.m. I would ask all of you to continue your efforts to keep both questions and answers concise to ensure that all members have an opportunity to ask questions and our guest the opportunity to give as full and helpful answers as he can.
On that note, I will ask Mr. Hegghammer to say a few words to us. Welcome, sir.
Mr. Thomas Hegghammer, Senior Analyst, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment: My institute and I are very honoured to be asked to testify to your committee. We are grateful for that recognition and I will try to do my best this morning to help your work.
I have been asked by my institute to clarify initially that everything I say this morning reflects my personal opinions and not the views of either the Norwegian government or my institute.
I was told in preparation for this meeting that I would be given five or ten minutes to address the committee and to present myself. I will use those five minutes to speak a little about where I work and what kind of work I do, so that you have a better idea as to what you can get out of me.
I am a senior analyst at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. The FFI, which is the Norwegian acronym for the institute that I am the most familiar with, is quite large, with about 400 researchers. The vast majority are involved in technological research. Most people at FFI are involved in developing equipment and materiel for the Norwegian military.
The second main task of FFI is to conduct research that will be used for long-term defence planning, which is where my research project fits in. I am part of a unit that investigates or conducts research on long-term developments in the threat environment. Our assessments and reports are used for long-term defence planning to ensure that the chosen structures and developed materiel are adequate for the threat environment in which they are designed to operate.
I would like to stress that my work in the research project is of an academic nature. FFI is not an intelligence institution. The work that my three colleagues and I do is primarily academic. Obviously I cannot comment in detail on the nature of our relationship with intelligence services in Norway or abroad on an open telephone line, but I can say that our interaction with intelligence agencies is very limited. This serves a double purpose. One is to ensure our academic independence and the other is to ensure that sensitive information does not get out. The intent of the institute and our research project is to provide the Norwegian defence ministry with access to people who can freely interact with other academics and carry out normal academic fieldwork in the Middle East and elsewhere without the worry of leaked information.
My personal fields of interest and main academic focus are radical Islamism in general. However, I have two main areas of specialization. The first one is ideological developments within the radical Islamist movement. It is in the context of this work that I study activities on the Internet very carefully. This is the background for our discovery of the document related to the Madrid massacre, which is one of the reasons I am speaking to you today. My other main area of specialization is radical Islamism in Saudi Arabia, which is the topic of my doctorate thesis that I am about to finish. I am writing it under the supervision of Professor Gilles Capelle, who teaches political Islamism and whose name some of you may have heard before. In the context of this work, I carry out fieldwork within Saudi Arabia and interviews with people on the ground in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf. I have carried out sensitive interviews with people who have formerly been part of radical Islamist circles but have since left.
I have two main sources for my assessments. One is the Internet and the ideological treatises circulated therein. The other is the fieldwork that I carry out like any other academic researcher in the Middle East. With that I would like to take senators' questions in respect of my work.
Senator Kinsella: Mr. Hegghammer, my first question is based on your field research as well as your Internet analyses. What concerns have you seen that may be specific to Canada?
Mr. Hegghammer: Senator, I spend about one to three hours each day looking at discussion forums for radical Islamists. I also spend a great deal of my time reading those circulating texts. I have to admit that I rarely come across mentions of Canada. I would say that Canada is mentioned as rarely as some peripheral European countries. The countries spoken of most often in hostile terms are the United States, Britain and, to some extent, Italy, Spain and Russia, and to a lesser extent France and Germany. Many other countries, including Canada and Norway, have been mentioned in statements from time to time by leading radical Islamist ideologues, including bin Laden and, in particular, al-Zarqawi . I cannot say that Canada is featuring prominently as an enemy country in the radical Islamist forums that I look at on a daily basis. Having said this, Canada is seen as part of what radical Islamists call the ``Jewish crusader alliance'', a broader Western coalition of countries that are seeking to ``annihilate Muslims and conquer Muslim lands,'' as they say. Canada and Norway cannot escape this membership label of the so-called Jewish crusader alliance, which is why we have been mentioned a couple of times in these declarations of radical Islamists. I cannot say that Canada is a prominent subject of conversation in these radical Islamist web forums.
Senator Kinsella: I would like to ask you about the relationship between anti-terrorism legislation in Norway and the work of your FFI. In particular, when you do your Internet work, do you have access to emails; do you have the legislative authority to look at emails?
Mr. Hegghammer: No, we do not have access to any information that has been collected as intelligence by the police or the military. I do not have access to email correspondence, transcripts of phone conversations or that kind of thing. What I am basing my assessment and my statements on are the regular, long-term observations of websites, discussion forums and texts that are openly available on the Internet from anywhere.
Senator Kinsella: Do you have full academic freedom in the way you wish to undertake your research?
Mr. Hegghammer: I would say so, yes. That is part of the reason why the Norwegian ministry of defence has decided to have an academic branch of the security policy community that is at least partly isolated from the intelligence community. In many ways, the FFI is similar to Rand in the United States in that respect.
Senator Fraser: Could you tell me whether, on the basis of your observations from both your Internet work and your fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, you think the strength of the particular terrorist movement that you are talking about is growing, diminishing or stable? What trend do you see there?
Mr. Hegghammer: To draw a broad picture is quite difficult, given the complex reality that radical Islamist terrorism represents. However, I think one can start with going back to the autumn of 2001, when the U.S.-led coalition went into Afghanistan and eradicated Osama bin Laden's training camps, denying bin Laden and al Qaeda access to a territory. Since that time, what one might call a global jihad movement has undergone several important changes, the most important being that it has lost its physical meeting place that it had in Afghanistan.
I think it has made global coordination of terrorist attacks more difficult. It has made communications between various elements of the movement and the organization much more difficult. This has led to a certain fragmentation of what was previously a more unified movement. My view is that the movement has fragmented somewhat along two lines; one is the ideological type of line and the other one is geographical.
One of the most important things that Osama bin Laden did was to unify Islamist movements across the Islamic world, with different agendas, groups and movements coming from different political conflicts, and to rally them under a common banner. The various movements came from different places, from different political conflicts and had different ideological inclinations.
You could say that the Egyptian radical Islamists had more of a socio-revolutionary approach. They wanted to change the face of the state in Egypt. Others came from a more ethnic-separatist type of conflict, in which they sought to liberate a specific territory from what they saw as foreign occupation. These, in my view, reflect quite important ideological differences.
Since 2001, some of these ideological differences have started to reappear. You can say, for example, that some of the terrorist activity going on in Iraq at the moment has a different ideological character from that which we are seeing in Saudi Arabia — which is again different from that which we are seeing in Europe.
In addition to these ideological dividing lines, there is a geographical or ethnic fragmentation as well. What used to be a more unified al Qaeda movement has now fragmented into five or six geographical clusters, five or six subgroups. There is the European or North African cluster; there is the Iraqi cluster; there is the Saudi or the Gulf cluster; there is the Afghan or Pakistani cluster; and then there is the South Asian cluster.
These ``new'' al Qaedas, as you might call them, operate under such different environments — political, military, practical and cultural — that they are going in slightly different directions. This overall process of fragmentation is one of the most important processes in the radical Islamist threat environment at the moment.
I hope that answered part of your question.
Senator Fraser: I do not think I heard you mention a North American cluster. Did I miss something, or is there a message there that we should be paying attention to?
Mr. Hegghammer: My view, and I think other analysts and researchers share it, is that North America does not have the same kind of indigenous radical Islamist environment as these other areas that I mentioned. There is a huge difference between the Islamist communities in North America and those in Europe, for example, in terms of ethnic composition, links with political movements in the Middle East and elsewhere, and in relation to the level of scrutiny that they are under. I think it is fair to say that the indigenous radical Islamist community in North America is rather weak.
Having said this, I must stress that I have not worked specifically on radical Islamism in North America, nor do I have access to intelligence on what is going on in North America. I would also stress that, when I am saying that have you these five or six different fronts and North America is not included, that does not mean that radical Islamists do not have the intention to attack North American targets abroad or in North America itself. As you are certainly aware, the United States remains the greatest enemy to all of the radical Islamist organizations that operate today. Their rooting or foothold in North America is much weaker than it is in Europe, for example.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: Mr. Hegghammer, in our review of our anti-terrorism legislation, we are naturally interested in determining what other countries have done to cope with the same global challenge. Naturally, we all followed with interest the Home Secretary's legislation that was passed last week, not without a great deal of controversy, by the British Parliament. The Patriot Act has clauses that are set to expire this year, so there will be quite a bit of debate over those before too long. Can you tell us if Norway passed special legislation following 9/11, or has it found that the legislation already on the books was adequate to cope with what we are dealing with?
Mr. Hegghammer: Norway did change its legislation slightly in the aftermath of 9/11. There were no major changes to our legislation, at least not on the same scale as we have seen in the United States or in what was recently passed in the U.K. The modifications that were brought in were minor, I would say.
The public debate surrounding the legislation was not very significant. There was a broad consensus that the legal tools had to be adjusted somewhat to address the threat environment that had become apparent to all. There have not been significant calls for larger changes to the legislation, perhaps because Norway has not been the victim of any significant terrorist attacks or plots.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: Does that mean that Norway feels that it is exempt or is not on the list of al Qaeda or others? What you just said sounds somewhat complacent, that Norway does not feel threatened, and therefore may have to wait for something to happen before reacting. I hope I am wrong in that assessment.
Mr. Hegghammer: Norwegian authorities certainly take the threat seriously. Also, a significant amount has been invested in improving intelligence, security and cooperation with foreign allies. Norway's participation in the operations in Afghanistan and partial participation in what is going on in Iraq have proven that Norwegian authorities are taking this seriously.
In my remark about why there has been no public debate, I was simply trying to come up with a hypothesis as to why it has not really emerged. It does not reflect the view of policy-makers in Norway, the people in the academic community or in the intelligence community.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: Thank you for that clarification. I have another topic to bring up with you, but I will do that on the second round.
How closely do your intelligence services work with your neighbours and all of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter? There is a question here as to whether there is enough coordination and exchange of information, even the most highly confidential, to help all of us together cope with terrorism. Is it a problem in Norway and elsewhere around you that cooperation is not as close as it should be?
Mr. Hegghammer: First, I wish to clarify whether my statements are being published. Is the transcription of this hearing being published?
Senator Lynch-Staunton: It is on the record. Should I stop now, then?
Mr. Hegghammer: I have very little knowledge of the intelligence world because I have not worked in that myself. I do not know to what extent or how well Norwegian services are cooperating with others. All I can say is that one of my few encounters with the intelligence community came in connection with our discovery of the document that could be related to the Madrid bombings, which you may have heard about. In that connection, we were in contact with Norwegian intelligence and with Spanish intelligence. My impression was that the level of cooperation prior to this discovery had been suboptimal. Perhaps the degree of exchange of information could have been better. That is perhaps my one pleasant experience with this particular topic.
On a general note, I can only stress the importance of intelligence sharing and intelligence cooperation. I personally see good-quality intelligence as our best means to protect civil liberties, to ensure that decisions are not made and legislation is not passed based on arbitrary or politically motivated assessments. Intelligence sharing and intelligence brainstorming across and between intelligence communities in various countries is of utmost importance to improve the overall quality of the intelligence that is used to combat terrorism.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: Thank you for that, and I look forward to questioning in the second round.
Senator Smith: I have three questions, but I do not think they are too long. Thank you very much, professor, for both your time and your cooperation. It is appreciated. I have fond memories of Norway, but I will not talk about them today.
First, I have a curiosity. You mentioned five or six groupings, and then you named five, all of which seemed very logical to me. I understand your response to Senator Fraser about indigenous movements, but would the sixth one have been south of Egypt but yet in Africa, the Sudan, Somalia, or some of those adjacent countries? I wondered about the sub-Sahara and West Africa, places such as Northern Nigeria. Which was the sixth one you have thought about?
Mr. Hegghammer: The sixth was the central leadership of the old al Quaeda movement.
Senator Smith: That is not particularly geographical.
Mr. Hegghammer: That is correct. In this hypothesis or this analysis, which is shared by others, I am not sure to what extent the global jihadist network in Pakistan is an integral part of or separate from the old al Qaeda leadership of Osama bin Laden and his innermost circle. That would be the sixth one, if they are a separate unit.
Senator Smith: When you use the phrase ``radical Islamist,'' what is the criterion to be in that group? Does one have to be propagating criminal and terrorist activity? How do you define that term?
Mr. Hegghammer: My main criterion is violence. When I say ``radical groups,'' I mean groups that advocate or use violence.
Senator Smith: That is what I thought. I just wanted to clarify that.
My last question is with regard to your references to the Internet. You said that you got most of your information off the Internet. Unlike my children, I am not an expert on the Internet. My use of it is limited. Do those who propagate violence and terror seem to have any constraints in getting out their message on the various Internet networks? How do you assess their ability to preach violence and terrorism via the Internet?
Mr. Hegghammer: The Internet is one of the most important factors or meeting places for radical Islamist groups and sympathizers today. In many ways, the Internet has replaced Afghanistan as a meeting place, as a place for instruction and ideological debate. Also, since 2001, technological advances have continued at a high pace and have increased the bandwidth of Internet connections. Digital cameras and video cameras are more accessible, thus making the Internet an even more attractive means for radical Islamist groups to spread their propaganda.
I could say much more about the Internet and the way it is used by radical Islamist groups. I do not know if you want me to go on with that right now.
Senator Smith: I have another question related to this subject. Do you have a sense that terrorists use the Internet to distribute instructions in code to their followers? I am sure the CIA pours over every word of some of this. Do you have a sense or feel as to whether instructions are issued through codes in Internet messaging?
Mr. Hegghammer: I am glad you used the words ``sense or feel.'' My assessment would be based on that. I do not have the technical expertise to discover or decipher codes, if there are any. I do see, however, radical Islamists discussing means of communication on the Internet in the discussion fora. They are discussing ways to communicate safely. They are expressing a great concern for communication safety. They are taking great precautions to avoid disclosing their physical locations, for example, or such things as their connections or acquaintances. They never openly discuss any operational details or specific plots on these web fora.
My feeling is that the Internet is not primarily used for operational purposes. I do not have the impression that the Internet is being used extensively to plan and execute terrorist attacks, but I have to caution that there may be a dimension to this that I do not see.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Hegghammer, what general impact, in your view, has the Iraq war had on terrorism? How do you evaluate the impact of the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein on the terrorism movement around the world in the various clusters that you described earlier?
Mr. Hegghammer: The issue of the Iraq war is very important and complex. The Iraq war has been fiercely criticized both in North America and in Europe, of course, for perhaps undermining the overall war on terrorism that was started with Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. It has been argued by many intellectuals, politicians and experts that the invasion of Iraq has increased recruitment to radical Islamist circles and provided yet another motivational factor for radical Islamist groups.
There are two sides to the Iraq war. The Iraq war has worked in two different ways on the terrorism threat environment overall. The Iraq war probably did constitute a radicalizing factor for Islamic extremist circles, in that it came as a confirmation of all of the discourse and rhetoric that bin Laden and other Islamist ideologues had been preaching for many years; namely, that the U.S.-led West had imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. This has galvanized or reinforced the anti-Western stand in many communities.
In addition to this motivational side, the Iraq war has probably also added a more operational aspect; namely, that it has become an arena where radical Islamists from Iraq and many other parts of the Islamic world can come to gain combat experience and train in many of the makeshift terrorist training camps that I believe do exist in Iraq.
They can physically meet with radical Islamists from other parts of the world and form a new transnational Islamist network of the same kind, if not on the same scale, as the one that formed in Afghanistan, first in the 1980s and then in the latter half of the 1990s. That is the negative effect that the Iraq war has had.
There is another, I should say, perhaps positive side to the Iraq invasion that has rarely appeared, particularly in Europe, to date. One potentially positive consequence is that the Iraq war has become a new focal point for global Islamist groups. The Iraq war has actually undermined some of the other battlefronts that I mentioned to you: Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, so on and so forth. This new jihad in Iraq, which was forming in opposition to the U.S.-led presence there, introduced a debate in other parts of the world over whether one should stay and fight where one is, whether in Europe or Saudi Arabia or Southeast Asia, or whether one should go to Iraq and fight the Americans there. This became a very important debate because the Iraq theatre of operations was much more of a theologically safe bet than many of the other arenas for jihad that were available. The Iraqi jihad is a very important factor in understanding why the militants in Saudi Arabia have been severely weakened in the past year. There emerged a debate within the Saudi radical circles over whether one should fight the Saudi jihad or the Iraqi jihad. In the summer of last year, the debate ended in favour of going to Iraq. This has been an important factor in weakening the jihadist circles in Saudi Arabia, and we can see similar signs of discord and dispute within radical Islamist circles in Europe and elsewhere. From that perspective, one could say that the Iraq war has drained radical resources and zeal from other fronts to Iraq.
There is another possible positive consequence of the Iraq war that is being debated or talked about these days, namely, the kind of democratic impact that the construction of a new Iraq might have on the rest of the region. If the new Iraq can set off a wave of democratic reform in the Middle East, it would be a good thing in terms of weakening the international terrorist threat because it would mean that much of the political frustration and activism could be channelled into non-violent forms of expression.
There are both positive and negative sides to the Iraq war, but overall, at least in the short to mid-term, the Iraq war has increased the threat of Islamist terrorism to Western interests.
Senator Joyal: How much should we be concerned about a nuclear threat and biological terrorism? You have not mentioned that in your opening presentation. Is this something that you monitor in a specific way? I have in mind access to nuclear material in the old Soviet Union and, of course, the situation in North Korea and Iran now, with the on-and-off negotiations with the European countries over the specific use of the nuclear capacity in Iran, et cetera. How much should we be concerned about that? Is it more important than any other threat that we might be considering?
Mr. Hegghammer: You are right; the issue of nuclear terrorism deserves special attention. Even though it might seem a low-probability event, it is certainly an extremely high-consequence one. This is a topic on which I have not worked in detail. I have, however, seen many references to these kinds of weapons in the literature that I read, the literature that is being produced by the radical Islamists themselves. For many of them, these kinds of weapons certainly seem attractive, and many of them would not hesitate to use them if they had them. I cannot, however, say anything about the extent to which they have acquired or are acquiring that kind of material.
The Internet is becoming more and more of a database or a collective memory for terrorist tactics and strategies, and an important part of this tactical literature includes instructional material for the production of chemical and biological material. That kind of information, which basically explains, in very clear and simple terms, how to produce these kinds of substances is circulating widely on the Internet and can be found quite easily by anyone competent in Arabic and with an interest in these kinds of issues.
This will be another cause for concern; the possibility that terrorists might use these instruction manuals to produce substances themselves. This is a concern that adds to that of direct acquisition of ready-made products from elsewhere. I must stress that this is not my area of specialization in any way.
Senator Andreychuk: I wish to follow up on that. You have said your research is basically from the Internet and that this is the new methodology, as opposed to telephone linkages and so on. How do you assess what is a real threat, what is a real story, and what are just information pieces put out by all kinds of people? In other words, how do you verify what you take into account as real terrorist activity?
Mr. Hegghammer: That is a very important and extremely difficult question. I am not involved in tactical counterterrorism. I do not have to assess tactical information. I do not make decisions about whether the particular tactical intelligence is credible or not. I do not make the decisions concerning whether we should act upon information or not. Therefore, it is difficult for me to say anything about tactical information.
What I study is more of a strategic nature. I study documents and declarations that most often outline strategies for how to wage jihad in the mid-term to long-term future.
It is relatively easy to establish the veracity of a document, to see to what extent it is emanating from a well-known radical Islamist group, whether it is coming from a bored, 17-year-old in a suburb of Paris or whether it is another kind of fake.
If one has a certain experience with these kinds of texts and with that kind of language, one can make relatively certain assumptions about the reliability and veracity of a specific document. However, it is very difficult for me to link specific documents or outlines of strategies to specific acts on the ground. The number of times I have been able to link a document or a statement to an operation has been very limited indeed.
Perhaps the only two examples that I have come across in my research has been what I call the Madrid document, and the letter sent from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan — a letter which was intercepted by American intelligence in January 2004 and subsequently published.
In the Madrid document, as you may know, the author specifically recommends striking at Spanish targets around the time of the election, because in his view, this could spark political change and influence the election in a way positive to the resistance in Iraq. This document was written four or five months prior to the elections and so it may have been a forewarning of what was to come.
In the case of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi document, we find in there a lot of declarations from Zarqawi to the effect that he is looking for Americans to capture, to use these hostages for media purposes. This was written at the time when there had been no hostages taken in Iraq and these documents could have been seen as a forewarning of what was to come in April last year, because as you know this wave of kidnappings in Iraq started in early April 2004. These are prominent yet rare examples of that kind of concrete linkage between documents and acts on the ground.
Senator Andreychuk: You said there was terrorist activity within Europe. Have you seen any indication of future activity within Europe, the Middle East or the United States?
Mr. Hegghammer: The easier thing to say is that while there are many options those options can become part of the problem. There are a wide range of threats being issued, a wide range of strategies being proposed, and a wide range of documents that are produced that come up with the new way forward in these radical Islamist circles. They sometimes go in quite different directions. Therefore, it is very difficult to give a single clear answer to your question in that respect.
I could add also that one rarely knows the specific geographical situation of the person who is writing this kind of declaration or statement. Sometimes when it comes from a specific group, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group in Iraq or knows that it is coming from Iraq or when it comes from al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, one knows that it is coming from Saudi Arabia. There are a lot of other texts, statements and proposals where the provenance is less clear, so it is even more difficult to know whether the strategy is one that the operative elements of this movement will choose.
Senator Andreychuk: You are saying that if it comes from al-Zarqawi you know it comes from Iraq. How do you know that? Strategically, could it not be coming from anywhere in the world in the name of al-Zarqawi? Why would you assume that it originates in Iraq?
Mr. Hegghammer: So far I have not seen many examples of fakes in the sense of people signing under other people's names when they have no connection with that person.
It could be that I have not been critical enough, but when a document signed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and circulated as such in the forums I have to assume that it is real. When the document contains specific information about recent operations carried out in Iraq, and then published on a website connected with previous statements of the same kind from the same source, one has to make an overall assessment that it is likely that it is real and that it comes from Iraq.
One needs to be critical in one's assessment at any given time, as you rightly point out. There will also be an element of uncertainty in the world of the Internet because, as you say, things can be posted from pretty much anywhere.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: In your research into the whole issue of terrorism and your search for information, have you been able to establish a profile of a terrorist?
One witness told us last week that a terrorist is usually a male in the 18- to 35-year age group, but that does not answer my question: What makes a terrorist?
We do spend a lot of time on the effect of terrorism, but as far as I know, not much public information is available on the causes of terrorism. It would help us and give us a better idea if you could give us sources or any of your own impressions.
Is it in part, because there is an extreme hate of the West because of its interference in the Middle East for so many decades? Is it a hate of the Jews; something which is inborn and which is yet part of being brought up today? Is it because of the West's support of repressive regimes?
I am not trying to shift the blame; I am trying to find some rationale for these actions.
Mr. Hegghammer: You have put your finger on perhaps the most important question in all in this domain. The issue of the root causes of terrorism and the causes of recruitment into Muslim Islamist activity are extremely important research questions. One of the main problems on this topic is that terrorism in and of itself is not a very easily researchable object. Many academics agree with me that terrorism is primarily a means and a method. The underlying motivations that lead a person or a group to employ that method may be very different from one another. There are many different paths leading to the strategic choice of using terrorism.
The root causes of Islamist terrorism may be different from that of right-wing terrorism, for example, and recruitment into environmental terrorism may be different from that of left-wing terrorism.
The political and social substructure of the phenomena of the terrorism is so diverse and so varied that it is difficult to draw any clear conclusions as to the causes of terrorism.
I am able to comment on Islamist terrorism, which is my area of expertise.
The phenomenon is very complex, but in general terms, one can speak of three types of radical Islamist terrorism, the roots and origins of which we must analyze separately. One is what I call socio-revolutionary Islamist terrorism. That is Islamist groups that primarily fight for state power. These groups emanate from social protest movements and discontent with a particular regime. Another type is nationalist or separatist Islamist terrorism, which comes out of broader political movements that struggle for a particular territory, whether that is in Israel, Palestine, Chechnya, or elsewhere. A third type is the global jihad type, which is part of a broader anti-Western movement. The global jihadist groups do not fight for one particular state or particular territory. They fight to defend all Muslim territories at once. The origins and/or the motivations for joining such groups may be varied.
I would like to say a few words about what I consider the three main causes for the al Qaeda phenomenon, this global jihad phenomenon, which concerns us the most. There are the political realities such as the conflicts of interest in and around the Islamic world and the conflict in Palestine and the Western strong support for the Israeli position. There is the strong U.S. military presence in the gulf region, which de facto increased after the end of the Cold War, and increased significantly with the Iraq war. These political realities cause a lot of frustration and political activism among many Muslims.
The second reason that comes on top of the political realities is the filter with which the radical Islamists interpret these political realities. I am referring to the discourse and the ideology. One of the main causes of the global Islamic terrorism that we have seen in the past few years is the discourse that Osama bin Laden and some of his co-ideologues have been able to construct since the mid-1990s. That is, a discourse and ideology that was able to appeal to frustrated youth and politically motivated Muslims from a wide range of backgrounds and rally them under one banner.
The discourse consisted of several elements, one of which was the focus on the external enemy, the U.S. and the West, rather than the internal enemy that had been the main enemy for the radical Islamists up until that time. It included repeating the many places around the world where Muslims were involved in conflict and presented the view that they were victims of persecution. To understand the origin of this phenomenon one must understand this discourse and ideology.
A third key factor is the training camps in Afghanistan. The importance of these training camps really cannot be underestimated; the training camps in Afghanistan enabled al Qaeda to make operational the political mobilization and created the frustration that has been mustered through bin Laden's discourse. In the training camps, recruits were socialized into violence and they built close relationships with each other; this resulted in the success of long-distance terrorist operations.
It is not a coincidence that in Europe every discovered terrorism plot since 2000 has involved at least one person that trained in Afghanistan. The process of brutalization that took place in these training camps in Afghanistan, and that is taking place in Iraq, are key reasons for the kind of terrorism that we see today.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: This has been a valuable contribution. I am only sorry that we do not have time to continue this particular discussion. I thank you for spending as much time with as you did because it was most appreciated and helpful.
Senator Fraser: Mr. Hegghammer, I would like to continue with the matter of recruitment. I assume that the Internet is a tool for recruitment, to some extent. Is it an effective tool? To what extent is it utilized as such a tool? Should we worry about it? Is there something we can do about it?
Mr. Hegghammer: Yes, I think the Internet is an extremely important factor to the recruitment efforts of radical Islamist groups, and that is because of the amount of radical literature that is available on the Internet. A young Muslim may find all kinds of religious rulings on the Internet and texts that appear to be Islamic that legitimize any specific political position or military tactic that he may choose to use.
Why do young Muslims seek information and religious guidance on the Internet? In many cases, it is because they do not find the answers they seek in the mosques or any other forums where Muslims would usually seek religious guidance.
There has been great focus in the West on bringing moderation into the mosques; and imams do not speak about politics. If they do speak about politics, it is in a moderate way, as we like to see. I say this from talking to people who are involved in community relations and spend a great deal of time in mosques, in Britain in particular. In practice, imams in Britain and Norway, and in most other countries in the West, are afraid to speak about politics, no matter the moderate level of discourse or line they might take. They think that a political discussion might lead to their coming to the attention of security services or journalists. In many cases, political debates no longer take place in the mosques so young Muslims do not have an opportunity to discuss the topics that interest them.
Without the religious guidance found in the mosques where do they go? They go to informal study circles generally confined to the suburbs in the large cities in Europe. People set up independent private study groups in their own studios or apartments. They surf the Internet to find guidance on those issues that concern them the most. The Internet has become an important radicalizing factor for young Muslims across the world, including the West.
I am not sure that I have the complete answer to deal with this issue. The difficulty is in striking a balance between leaving the Internet openly available to all so as to not infringe on people's civil liberties by monitoring every step they might take online and knowing who is visiting the most radical Islamist sites. This balance is extremely difficult to strike. Added to problem is the technological difficulty of monitoring and keeping track of who is posting things on the Internet and who is reading it.
Over all, I think the best thing we can do is channel some of the radical Islamist sites into a manageable number of sites to gain a better overview of what is happening. The problem with trying to shut down radical sites is that the problem will simply spread because you would decentralize it such that you would end up with many small, intimate sites on obscure addresses all over the place that would be even more difficult to monitor. The best solution is to channel these sites into a more manageable number to obtain a better idea of they are saying. It is important to read these online discussions because they reflect, to a large extent, the thinking of young radicalized Muslims, their frustrations, their view of the world and, perhaps, their plans for the future.
Senator Kinsella: Mr. Hegghammer, please share with the committee what you have read on the Internet that relates to discussions about specific delivery vehicles for dirty bombs or nuclear biological weaponry. For example, whether it is of the missile type, whether it is in containers on container ships, freighters, what is the chatter out there with respect to the various kinds of delivery vehicles?
Mr. Hegghammer: I have an overall feeling for what you have said although that is a topic that I have not worked on very much. It is rare for me to see very ingenious methods of delivery. The tactical handbooks that I find, and that I sometimes have a look at, contain instructions for producing the material and sometimes for placing that material in a particular way in a bomb. That main delivery vehicle is circulated in the tactical manuals that I come across.
Whether other means of delivery are under consideration, I cannot say. I simply have not studied the issue in enough detail to make an observation. There may well be people in the intelligence communities who have looked at this in much more detail than I have. My work focuses mainly on ideology and the ideological debates more than the tactical aspects of terrorist activity.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Hegghammer, you have described the various causes of terrorism as multifaceted.
Could you exchange with us your wisdom, knowledge and expertise on the response of the free world to terrorism?
Are we concentrating too much on what I call curing the effect of terrorism, that is intelligence and war, and not enough time in defining multifaceted policies that would prevent terrorism from appearing?
I think our bias is that we seem to concentrate all of our efforts on repressing and not enough on preventing. In terms of prevention, it seems that it is a very difficult and sophisticated endeavour.
How would you, in your own experience, express concern at that level?
Mr. Hegghammer: That is a very good, yet difficult question. I agree with you that one must focus as much as possible on the causes of terrorism in order to prevent it. It is probably not a question, and I am sure you are not intending it in an either/or way. What you are hinting at is perhaps the overemphasis of the security perspective on terrorism at the expense of more long-term, preventive political measures to prevent it.
I do not think I am well placed or qualified enough to opine on what exactly the proportions of focus should be. What I can say, however, is that one should think about counterterrorism on perhaps three different levels. First is the tactical level, where one must have good and competent intelligence services that can intercept communications and plans to prevent specific plots from being executed.
Second is a more strategic level, and this is where ideology and the study of the thinking of terrorists comes in; this area of study has been somewhat neglected. This is a level that is somewhere in between the larger root causes of terrorism and the more tactical causes. It is a level at which one understands how the political, social and economic realities are interpreted to legitimize violence. This dimension can be useful in obtaining an early warning for the general strategic direction that some terrorist groups or movements may be taking months or perhaps years in advance.
Above the tactical and strategic levels is the level of the root causes. As I mentioned previously, this level involves several issues. There are the political conflicts and the wars that are fundamental to these phenomena. There is also the issue of social exclusion, which is particularly relevant for diaspora Muslims. There is the issue of socio-economic factors. The debate over whether poverty causes terrorism has unfortunately been dismissed somewhat in favour of the view that it has no link to it whatsoever. The relationship is very complicated. The issue of poverty is relevant to some extent in this context. Poverty is part of this more long-term, root-cause level that must be addressed.
In order to prevent international terrorism, one must work very hard in all three of these spheres. I hope that politicians and others will see that and act accordingly.
Senator Smith: You said that you have followed the mosque activity in Britain and that political propaganda in mosques no longer exists.
I think that is generally true, but I know there was at least one mosque in London that was very extreme, and where the shoe bomber was from. As I recall, a couple of months ago, the British government decided to try to deport the imam, even though he might have been born in Britain. The imam went underground and I have not heard much more about it.
Can you shed any more light on whether that tactic seems to work?
Mr. Hegghammer: I am not sure that I am either able or well placed enough to say anything about that situation. I know the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, and about Abu Hamza who is currently in custody in the U.K. while awaiting extradition to the U.S. The Finsbury Park mosque was a particular phenomenon in the Islamist scene in that radical North African Arabs dominated its membership. It was a mosque in a milieu that could be linked to a lot of concrete terrorist plots and criminal activity. It was an arena for recruitment and radicalization, and we know that many people who frequented that mosque ended up in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There is legislation available to the British government to deal with problems related to the Finsbury Park mosque.
I do not think this is a general strategy for dealing with potentially radical mosques in the U.K., and I do not think I am the proper person to judge whether the strategy has been successful or not.
Senator Smith: My last question relates to the three types of radical Islamist groups. The first category is out for state power and who are disillusioned with their particular regime. This brings me to Saudi Arabia. I have been reading more and more about the Wahhabi group that killed foreigners who were working in Saudi Arabia.
I know that there is quite a large princely regime in Saudi Arabia. I do not know that most Westerners would be comfortable with that type of regime, but maybe it is better than the alternative of extremely radical, militant terrorist group. If Saudi Arabia ever fell to a radical element, it would be almost unthinkable.
Do you have any sense of whether the Wahhabi is gaining momentum or if it is in retreat? How do you assess this particular group?
Mr. Hegghammer: The militants in Saudi Arabia consist of people who returned to Saudi Arab from Afghanistan in late 2001, early 2002 following the fall of the Taliban. In the late 1990s or earlier these people left Saudi Arabia to train in Afghanistan or perhaps fight on other fronts; by late 2001, early 2002, they did not have any other place to go. In some ways, one could say they were a somewhat alien element on the political scene in Saudi Arabia when they returned in early 2002, because they had undergone processes that local Islamist circles had not. They were much more brutal and violent than most other Islamist circles in Saudi Arabia. They started planning for terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia as soon as they returned. It took them about a year to reach a state in which they felt ready to strike, and so they started their terrorist campaign in May 2003.
Since then, they have carried out a series of significant terrorist attacks, including three or four large bombings and several assassinations of individual Westerners in Saudi Arabia. There have been numerous clashes and shoot-outs between Saudi police and the militants. The Saudi police and security services severely weakened the militants by taking out many of the leaders and destroyed their safe houses et cetera. The other and perhaps most important reason is that they very soon lost political legitimacy within Saudi Arabia, principally because they carried out operations that killed many Muslims and Saudi's as well.
By late 2003, one could say that the militants no longer had popular support. They were marginalized both in the Saudi public as a whole but also in Islamist circles. By ``Islamist,'' I mean political groups that were seeking to make Saudi Arabia more Islamic but not necessarily with the use of violence. The militants found themselves operationally weakened and politically marginalized. This is also true today.
There has been sporadic violence in Saudi Arabia and there probably will be in the future. There is a tendency towards smaller operations with less sophisticated explosives and so on and so forth. The House of Saud is relatively safe for the moment.
The Chairman: It is unusual for me to ask a question, but since you have mentioned the work that you are doing on the Internet, I would like to raise the issue of the increased involvement of women, and particularly young women, in some of the terrorist activities that have taken place in recent months.
While I was in Russia, two women used bombs to destroy two Russian aircraft. Soon after, a woman set off a bomb in a subway near the Kremlin. These activities caused a great deal of anxiety in Moscow.
Is the involvement of women a topic discussed on the Internet in a way that it has not been before?
Mr. Hegghammer: The issue of female participation in jihad is addressed in some the texts and web forums that I look at.
The view is that women should not participate in military activity, but that they should limit their support to such things as educating children for jihad. The women provide support, health care, and resources for jihad, but do not participate in military activity. Indeed, female participation in militant Islamist activity has been limited. You mentioned some of the more prominent and important examples. If you look beyond the specific arenas of Chechnya and Palestine, female involvement in Islamist terrorism is quite rare.
There have been some indications of a slightly larger focus on women's role. For example, the militants in Saudi Arabia publish a rather curious jihad magazine for women. The pink front page tells of articles on topics such as health care for wounded jihadi and how to raise your child for jihad and that kind of thing.
There might be efforts made in some circles to reach and recruit women and to muster their support in the overall terrorist efforts, however, the pervading view in these circles is that women should not take part in military activity.
One of the reasons why we have seen female participation in Palestine and in Chechnya is that the conflicts there are of an ethnic separatist nature. The Islamist groups that send women out to carry out terrorist acts are different from the global jihad groups associated with al Qaeda.
The ethnic separatist-motivated groups that you find in Palestinian and in Chechnya are perhaps more politically and militarily pragmatic than some of the global jihad groups. They are much more socially conservative and put a greater emphasis on keeping the social roles of each individual, and that includes women, as they should be, and put an emphasis on not transgressing the lines dividing man and woman.
If one has not seen this in Palestinian and Chechnya, it is because these movements are more pragmatic and perhaps less concerned with the extreme social conservativism that dominates in many of the global jihad groups.
The Chairman: What you have said about the importance of teaching young people to develop into the direction that you have been talking about may be a non-violent but significant role.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Hegghammer, I would like your assessment of the impact of media coverage of terrorism. This is a broad question. Coverage may, of course, differ from one country to another and from one newspaper or television station to another.
How would you evaluate the impact of media over the spread of terrorism? How do terrorists use media to foster their ends?
Mr. Hegghammer: That question allows me to bring forward some points that I consider very important indeed. The relationship between terrorism and media is a much outlined and analyzed subject. There is a consensus that terrorism and the media go hand in hand. Some have even pointed out that changes in the form of international terrorism closely follow trends in the media. For example, when mobile cameras were developed the media was able to move a camera into a particular operational theatre and send live television pictures. It was at that time that we observed a parallel increase in spectacular international terrorist operations.
One often says that terrorism and media are in an osmotic relationship. The media can be used also to explain the increase in the use of violence among terrorist groups and the increased lethality of international terrorism that we can observe from the late 1980s onwards. Each terrorist attack statistically becomes more lethal; on average, it kills more people than before.
One can explain this partially by the media in the sense that in the media picture today one must fight for attention. The way to get more attention is to carry out an act that is even more extreme than the last, so as to have one's voice heard in the media.
It is difficult, however, to limit the media's freedoms in handling this kind of information in today's liberal democracies, although this is an issue for legislators.
We must make key media personnel more aware of the role that they play in all of this. We must educate the media. We need to do a significant amount of work in this area. Much of the discrimination or exclusion that many Muslims feel today is due to the increased focus on Muslim communities — a feeling of being seen as a victim — is being produced by the media, which overall portrays Muslims as terrorists.
My advice with regard to terrorist legislation is to ensure that the strategy for terrorism prevention goes hand in hand with a strategy for educating the media as to the role that they play in this matter.
Anti-terrorist legislation may be perceived in different ways in Muslim communities, all depending on the way in which it is presented in the media. The media needs to be involved in our anti-terrorism or counterterrorism strategy.
It is very important to ensure that if one introduces new legislation which, given the threat environment today, will target a particular religious and ethnic group more than others, it is of utmost importance that one does what one can to counteract that feeling of victimization in the community that is being targeted.
The problem is not just one of civil liberties; it is also one of terrorism prevention. When young Muslims feel victimized and excluded, the chances increase that they will join radical groups, therefore, avoiding discrimination is also an important counterterrorism prerogative.
The Chairman: Thank you very much to our guest who has given a considerable amount of his time to us this morning. You have opened up many other channels of discussion, and we thank you very much.
We wish you the very best in your efforts on this very difficult issue, and we will be thinking of you and hoping that you will continue to make the contribution in your own country, Norway, that you are doing today. Next time, perhaps, you might be able to see us in person here in Canada.
Mr. Hegghammer: Thank you. It has been a great pleasure, and we have touched upon very many extremely interesting and important questions. Once again I would like to express my gratitude and to say that I am very honoured to have been allowed to address you today.
The Chairman: Colleagues, we will adjourn.
The committee adjourned.