Battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other terrorist groups is bad enough for the U.S. and its Western allies. Capturing enough on-the-ground intel and coordinating with predator drones and Special Ops occupies much of U.S. military intelligence, planning strategy to stop what looks like Mideast juggernaut. Complicating the picture is the real battle, taking place on the Internet’s multiple platforms and social networks, all selling wayward youth on joining a new mass movement, promising the world, including eternity in Allah’s paradise. With failed states abounding around the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, ISIS has an endless stockpile of wayward youth to recruit from all corners of the globe. It’s no surprise that in the graffiti covered walls of Europe’s isolated and despairing immigrant neighbourhoods, ISIS promise a way out of what looks like a dead end.
Behind the thin veil of ISIS’s radical Islamic propaganda are the fierce fighting force of Iraq’s former Baathists and Revolutionary guards that once stripped off their uniforms and jumped in the Tigris River to avoid advancing U.S. troops in 2003. Once Baghdad fell April 10, 2003, it opened a free-for-all of competing terrorists groups, all vying for a piece of Iraq and Syria. At ISIS’s point-of-the-sword is its slippery Imam Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the mysterious cleric leading ISIS’s global recruitment campaign. Taking the mantle of the notorious Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killed by a U.S. missile June 7, 2006, al-Baghdadi declared himself the head of a new Islamic caliphate June 30, 2014, demanding loyalty from all Muslims, including Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror group. Al-Baghdadi pounded his chest after seizing Mosul June 10, 2014, Iraq’s second largest city.
Recruiting from all over the planet, al-Baghdadi has convinced young recruits they have a future with ISIS. Al-Baghdadi asks for engineers, doctors, administrators, judges and scholars, all of whom hope to establish a new sovereign state in lands stolen from Iraq and Syria. Capturing Ramadi May 17, the capital of Iraq’s Sunni-controlled Anbar Province, al-Baghdadi learned well from al-Zarqawi the brutality and barbarism needed to conquer land and take charge.. Al-Zarqawi showed al-Baghdadi the way stringing U.S. soldiers up on bridges like ornaments in the bloody battles of Fallujah in 2004. Learning the barbarism from al-Zarqawi and the propaganda from Bin Laden, al-Baghdadi is the new, more evolved Islamic menace plaguing the Middle East. President Barack Obama has chosen to keep the U.S. military at an arm’s length, hoping other states do the heavy lifting.
No U.S. think tank or counter-propaganda message can stop al-Baghdadi’s appeal of the hoards of disenfranchised youth seeking a way out of the world’s failed states or ghettoized neighbourhoods of Europe, breeding grounds of despair and terrorism. “You can easily earn yourself a higher station with God almighty for the next life by sacrificing just a small bit in this worldly life,” said an ISIS recruitment video, playing the pernicious propaganda spewed by ISIS’s recruiters. ISIS has recruited more than twice the number of the French Foreign Legion, drawing eight-of-ten terrorists from Islamic terrorism operations around the world. Of ISIS’s 15,000 fighters, 20% come from Europe, more than a 100 from the U.S. “We all share the concern that fighters will attempt to return to their home countries or regions, and look to participate in or support terrorism and the radicalization to violence,” said Nicholas Rasmussen, Director the U.S. Counter-terrorism Center.
Reporters for the Associated Press tracked former ISIS recruits and found little in common with regard to age or educational background. “There is no typical profile,” said the AP, citing a German study examining former recruits. What’s obvious to almost everyone is the appeal promised to chronically unemployed, disenfranchised youth with little hope for the future. What the German study found is that some 65% had criminal records, not surprising when you consider ISIS’s track record of mass murder and wholesale destruction of ethnic communities. “What they have in common is that are young, they are impressionable and they are hungry for excitement,” said John G. Horgan, with University of Massachusetts, Lowell’s Center for Security and Terrorism studies. Western officials have no answer how to stop recruitment of wayward youth looking for a cause—and work.
When it comes to stopping ISIS advance across Iraq and Syria, the U.S. and its Western allies know that only ground troops can do the job. Whether or not the West has the stomach to incur more costs and casualties is anyone’s guess. Since pulling out of Iraq Dec. 15, 2011, the White House hasn’t had the resolve to re-engage American forces in another foreign war. Re-engaging in Iraq has become a real sticking point in the 2016 battle for the White House. While some candidates sit on the fence, others like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) or Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have diametrically opposite views of what must be done. Paul wants to stay out, Graham wants back in. As long as there’s limited opportunities for Mideast, North African and South Asian immigrants in Europe and failed states in those same areas, ISIS will continue to have a field day recruiting young militants to do the dirty work.
