Transcripts For CSPAN Preventing ISIS Recruitment 20171007

New america is a think tank in washington dc. The group posted a discussion on how to Counter Terrorism recruitment and how to link them to economic inequality in the middle east. This is an hour and a half. Good afternoon and welcome to good america. On behalf of our president , Vice President , thank you very much for coming. I am a senior fellow here at new america. Discuss aare here to new paper by my colleagues. It is entitled all jihad is l oca. L. Im really excited about this paper because isis and al qaeda and the recruitment of of jihadis is something we talk about a lot. You often see people on stages debating how this comes about, what do people go join isis and so on. Generally the conversation ranges from i think this, you think that, and i emote this, and you emote that. What is exciting today is we have data, which they will talk about in some detail. Let me talk about my colleagues, and i will let them give an overview of the paper. Nate rosenblatt is a security fellow, oxford world student, employees mixed method roaches understanding local conflict development qualities. He can be found on twitter. My far left, David Sterman is a policy analyst at new america. His work focuses on homegrown extremism and the maintenance of new america databases on terrorists in the United States and preventing such terrorism. He was a contributing editor at the polls and interned at the israeli Palestine Center for research in jerusalem. With that, i will of the two authors talk about this paper. Towards the end we will engage our audience and let you ask questions. Thank you. I want to thank my coauthor, dave sternin. Thank you all for coming. Im going to do a little discussion on the methods used in this paper before passing it to my colleague focusing on north africa. I will focus on the peninsula. First, i wanted to talk a little bit about the provenance of the data we have access to, mainly the data were using our foreign fighter registration forms. Registration forms of foreign fighters who joined isis between 2013 and 2014 on the turkishsyrian border. These forms are essentially isis recordkeeping of new foreign fighter joiners, a variety of questions that include names, mother stand, blood type but also include a lot of really interesting material on previous professions, education levels, religious knowledge, countries travel, people referred them to join isis, people who facilitated their arrival and a variety of other things. Thats the main data from which we will be drawing conclusions to be there i get to the limitations of that date in a minute but i would just say the data were smuggled out of raqqa in march of 2016. We validated these data along with the Counterterrorism Center at west point, as well as some of the personal details that were not publicly available to my research and research from others. So last year we wrote a paper on this topic that looked at the regions in the world that had the highest per capita recruitment rate for isis all over the world, included western china, it included of course parts of north africa and the Arabian Peninsula we are looking at, in lebanon and in other places. The difference in this years report is not just that were focusing on two regions which saw some of the highest recruitment rates of foreign fighters to isis, including libya and tunisia, which david will talk about, but also saudi arabia. But also we try to supplement the data on foreign fighter registration forms with other useful information. So we use census data in a variety of cases to say, ok, if fighters are joining isis and saudi arabia are reporting certain education level are certain level of work profession or skill, how does that correlate to the places they are from among the general population, are these representative of these people from the provinces they come from, or is this a a distinct phenomena we should look at . We look at census data. David did some interesting work look at protest data especially from tunisia. I pulled in some data from 1980s onward on subnational origins of saudi terrorists, and im going to use some of that in my analysis. We incorporate a lot of this additional data. Let me say a few brief words about some of the caveats so we can frame our discussion and so our remarks have some context. The first is time. These fighters join basically between 20132014. The landscape obviously looks a lot different today as the coalition is pushing back isis in syria and iraq. As i spoke to a friend, most people from the Arabian Peninsula have basically left already and the foreign fighter rates decreased dramatically after 2015 when the saudi government especially started cracking down on fighters once isis attacks started to occur across Arabian Peninsula in kuwait and in saudi and in other places. This is also limited by location. The foreign fighter forms are recorded on border crossings between syria, and turkey while of course as it although turkey was a huge Transit Route for fighters to join isis. Of course, there were other parts in iraq, lebanon, jordan where people able to join. We dont think they systematically alter the result of a region but it would manifest in other places so lebanese fighters, jordanian fighters, iraqi fighters, syrian fighters are not recorded in the data. Lebanese fighters, jordanian a couple quick more points. Theres a point on the truthfulness i think we think the data are going to be more likely to be true than if fighters were being interviewed by journalists or researchers. Some of this information could be validated by isis of course, people who referred or people who facilitated one joining, but there are certainly elements that were omitted in these files and we had to work around that. We can talk more about that if youre interested in the q a. The last couple of points, this is only isis foreign fighter recruitment. Crucially whats missing is foreign fighter recruitment to other malicious that were militias that were fighting especially in syria including what was wholly known as alnusra and i go into low bit about that in the Arabian Peninsula section. Just to conclude, last year we found provinces with high rates of recruitment all shared in common a certain kind of grievance they had with the federal government. The repressed regions of western china, generally underfunded and unsupported regions Like Northern lebanon and my colleague will talk about Eastern Libya, but this year what we found and im sort of paraphrasing tolstoy here, is that all happy provinces are alike, but all unhappy provinces are unhappy in their own way. We will swear to discuss i think what is important in the key take away which is while there is no consensus among experts on terrorism about what is a driving terrorism recruitment, i think when you look at the subnational regions of different countries, certain trends emerge and these trends are important and they are distinct and we need to address them in different ways. So with that being said im going to pass it over to my colleague, david. Thanks. So im going to speak about what we found in north africa, or initial key findings which will be expanded further and a forthcoming paper. But basically our analysis of north africa involved three broad conclusions. There was recruitment in provinces that shared huge structural aspects in common that are economically marginalized from the center of their countrys economic, their countrys economy where most of the good jobs are, where oil wealth is centered. Also they are marginalized politically, often the two go together, they are one and the same. Second, we found in most places this is the mobilization that this is the mobilization that comes from places where there was mobilization in prior years for other Jobs Movement as well as for other nonjihadi outbreaks of anger over what appear to be structural issues. Recruitment and mobilization which isis is the latest or perhaps now not the latest example of is predated by these other mobilizations. And finally where mobilization occurred, where its not a product of a long history of mobilization and outbursts of anger, whether jihadists or not, its a product of the arab spring, which really was a massive outbreak of this anger and spread that anger throughout the region in a way that metastasized the problem. So to begin with if we look at the question of structural aspects, ill begin with what we found in libya, by far the clearest example, 80 of the fighters from libya came from Eastern Libya and they were all centered in two provinces. Eastern libya has historically been marginalized by the then gadhafi government which centered its Patronage Network largely in the west of the the largely in the west of the the country and funded tripoli in that area while simultaneously economically marginalizing the east. East. In particular it marginalized the area where we found amongst the fighters we looked at there were underemployed. People were underemployed, and our models people who are unemployed, people who report subsistent agricultural work, not i own the farm, but im doing agricultural work. People lower students in these north african countries, students face a particularly for Employment Situation upon graduation. In tunisia, for example, on average it takes six years to find a job. Also people report unskilled labor which is often unpredictable in these north african countries. In durna, we found it was 70 . We found a similar dynamic in southern tunisia which is another hot spot of recruitment. And in the highest secondhighest province, theres also 70 unemployment among fighters. And then in the suburbs of grand tunis we found a similar level of underemployment and economic struggle which is important to know because its the capital of tunisia, its what a lot of the factory jobs and economic wealth is actually centered and if youre just running a large and aggression provinces, youre likely to miss that theres a massive internal inequality within these provinces. We found the fighters tend to come from poor regions. It was two to four times overproducing what we would have overproducing what we would have expected based on population. That neighborhood or city within the larger grand tunis metropolitan areas has an Unemployment Rate above that of the nation as a whole. As well as above the particular province that it sits in. Its Unemployment Rate was actually below tunisia as well. What we see is theres these hotspots of economic marginalization. That comes with political marginalization as well, the hotspot of protest activity during the arab spring. The east of libya has historically been a site of resistance and protests against the gadhafi government and militancy more broadly. And southern tunisia also has a history of pension with the Central Government of tunisia. So we found similarity of the structure. The second part is in each of so we found similarity of the these places theres a long history. In Eastern Libya its very clear. We can trace it back on isis mobilization were looking at in 20132014. Benghazi was the capital of the arab spring uprising against gadhafi and produce many fighters for that. If we go back to the records that were found in 2007 you get almost exactly the same percentage of fighters in that mobilization as we found in the isis records for 20132014. In 2008, the state department added a cable, the report said similar conditions and words of fighter equipment. In words fighter recruitment. In terms very similar to that are applicable to the 20132014. If you go back further to the 1990s, you have the Islamic Fighting group conducting war against gadhafi a gain in uprising, again centered in the east, and then if you go for the that were found in 2007 you get back in the 70s and 80s, this region was really at the center of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition to gadhafi. Mobilization in Eastern Libya predates the particular isis claim to be building the caliphate. If we turn to tunisia, its a lot different. Its more widespread. However, we again see as i noted hotspots in southern libya, or southern tunisia, sorry, particularly has historical produced fighters in the early iraq conflict and other conflicts before, as the economy based on smuggling was the center of protest activity during the arab spring. And we have suburbs of grand tunis which again were sent a center of protest activity during the arab spring. That also proved to many of fighters before. In tunisia, there was a massive expansion that may have some aspect to do with the particular ideological pitch of basis. Isis. The lawyer also just seeing we are also just seeing fighters come from areas that are produced outbursts of anger for decades, largely due to the structural factors. Finally, as i noted when reduce the expansion, its largely about the arab spring. This was pretty clear in tunisia where the government felt a result of arab spring protests that were particularly high in the areas that were hotspots. In contrast, along the eastern coast of libya and its economic center, where fighters actually came below the national rate, there were about a third as many protesters per capita as the were in grand tunis. In addition, we see on an individual level when you look at the data, about 7. 5 of the fighters who mobilized from tunisia were recommended by one figure who came out of sharia and himself in western libya, where he was running a Training Camp. Thats again an example of how these dynamic arab spring really created the foundation that isis set itself to the top. So the basic conclusion that i will float for you here that were still looking at, is in many ways the counter messaging and the idea of countering violent extremism that is become a very important part of countering isis recruitment, doesnt make sense in much of north africa. Countering isis claim to be building the caliphate does not address the problems where there was recruitment for decades prior to isis rise. Thats some element in tunisia which also going to run into this repetitive mobilization of the anger areas that are being produced by structural factors. So we really to the extent where we are going to prevent the future possibility of a mobilization, as i could happen simply on counter messaging. Needs to address the structural issues. Thanks, david. In contrast i think the Arabian Peninsula has a variety of very distinct trends that i want to present today. Before i go into the three arguments i want to make on isis recruitment in the Arabian Peninsula i just want to note there are few countries where there simply were not in a fashion enough foreign fighters data in the forms to draw any conclusions from, so automatic, the uae has less than five fighters in each one of this country and the overall data. My findings dont discuss the report will not discuss those three countries. Some supplementary information and qualitative work was done on recruitment in those three countries and we can discuss those in the q a, but i generally want to focus on saudi arabia which had about 90 of the fighters that republican from the area as well as kuwait, yemen, and bahrain. That is very interesting trend with regards to marginalization and im going to discuss those three and give what they think the policy educations of those are. The first of those is a new phenomenon. There are a few periods i want to make under this. The first is that we know isis has recruited a lot of young people to join especially in comparison pairs into other terrorist organizations and document efforts but the Arabian Peninsula is distinctly more useful than the rest of the sample of isis equipments. The average age of isis biter the first is that we know isis has recruited a lot of young people to join especially in comparison to other terrorist organizations and document efforts but the Arabian Peninsula is distinctly more useful than the rest of the sample of isis equipments. The average age of isis biter from the Arabian Peninsula is over one year younger than the overall sample. When you dig deeply into this for i should say it is distinct from the demographic trends of the regions as a whole which generally you hold older than the arab world. When you dig more deeply into this you find that the regions with the highest rate of isis recruitment at the subnational level correlates very strongly with the proportion of those regions that have youthful populations. When you dig that the youngest population as a proportion, so 1529, over the provincial population. The youngest ones are those that have the highest agreement and i did a bunch of progression to figure out which transfer most interesting about the overall provincial population, household income, for people being recorded, education levels was it under or over educated and the variety of other factors. The only factor that had a strong significant statistically significant positive correlation was the proportion of provincial population that was the ages of 1529. The second piece of this phenomenon that is new and important to emphasize is that income, for people being the fighters that came from the Arabian Peninsula were much less likely to have reported to participate in a previous contract. The question on the form is have you participated in a previous jihad. About 12 of the overall sample of fighters that we looked at reported yes. So, places like libya, yemen, afghanistan, chechnya, bosnia and other places. In the Arabian Peninsula only 5 of the fighters reported to have participated in previous jihad. When you look at the correlation between provinces that were report participation in previous jihads, there is no relationship people who participate previously in the jihad and people who joined isis. All of this is strongly suggestive of the fact that the phenomenon on the Arabian Peninsula and the people who joined isis were new to fighting in conflicts and new to affiliations of the hottie organizations as a whole and when interviewing people they also would admit that this is very new and the two places where this is most acute was in bahrain and saudi arabia. Bahrain and saudis would say the places, the subnational origin of fighters in these countries were places that were new. Im going to discuss a little about the saudi case in a little bit. What is also interesting is where they are not coming from and the best example in the Arabian Peninsula is yemen. In the yemen isis foreign fighter sample from 2013 to 2014 only 26 fighters were at the national level, about 35 fighters from yemen as a whole. When you compare that to rates were during the iraq war or people who were detained in one time and open yemen the rates are significantly higher. In the isis foreign fighter sample you have about 30 yemenis out of 3581 total fighters recorded. In the guantanamo case, you had 110 yemenis being detained out of 770. Four times more yemenis being involved in a sample that is four times smaller. Something is happening here. I have some hypotheses. We can discuss that in the q a. All of this suggest the phenomenon is new and i think from a policy perspective need to seriously think about the efforts of the region undertaking deradicalization, not just arresting people who are perpetrating terrorist acts but more importantly figuring out ways to prevent future waves of mobilizations to occur. The second thing i will say is that it appears that not only do these countries have different motivations than north africa but theyre different from each other. The two cases i want to focus on here are bahrain and saudi arabia. Last years paper we talked about the mobilization of fighters from bahrain. I will say briefly that in 2011 there was a major arab demonstration in bahrain and the bahraini crackdown required the use and sanctioning of very violent rhetoric against the majority population of the country, which is shiite by the government which is a minority of the population which is to be. I think the mobilization of communities in bahrain that we see where fighters are coming from was encouraged by the government and cut down the file and a lot of those guys ended up joining isis. We talk more about this phenomenon in the question and answer but i want to get to an interesting case which is saudi arabia. The handout you have in the back of map at the bottom of three different maps saudi arabia. When i looked at their equipment is saudi arabia i looked at the historical rates of equipment and where were saudi fighters coming from went to afghanistan or iraq or when they went to bosnia or chechnya. I looked at three different data sets and the place where they were coming from were completely different than the places where saudi foreigners were coming from to join isis. Previously the fighters that were joining primarily Al Qaeda Affiliated conflicts from mecca, medina but this time around fighters are coming from the heartland of saudi arabia. This is an area where we normally associate with the most conservative region of saudi arabia and these are the parts of saudi arabia that mobilize 100 years ago for the saudi family to establish the saudi state. These are the regions that we think about. There are a bunch of different theories about why this has changed and going to present a few briefly and then we can talk more about this if it is of interest. I think the most compelling one i think the most compelling one is there is a connection between the questions that animate people from these regions and the message of equipment that isis was presenting. People arent so interested in the slightly more esoteric, geopolitical context against the far enemy that a group like al qaeda is present. They are much morenterested in social question of how to more interested in social questions of how to organize Islamic Society. When you have a group like isis which is declaring in Islamic State i think there is a huge amount of interest in a region like that for a project like that and in fact they built an Islamic State which was the saudi state 100 years ago, i think youre seeing a mobilization for similarly attractive passage now. Spoken with stories from this region and we need to understand that in the region as a whole there is the question of are we muslims saudis or rv saudi are we saudi muslim and i think even though we now recognize the notion of the caliphate was a hollow promise and its been full of horrible human right violations and atrocities at the time at which it was announced it did have a lot of grounding in islamic law in theology. I think there is interesting papers that have been written and thats what few other options could be a social network, people from these regions couldve gone first to syria and recruited their i think there is interesting friends and recruited their friends and the snowball effect. The other piece of the puzzle of what subsequently is that although dont associate saudi arabia with an arab spring. There were a lot of demonstration centered in the heartland province next to the ryad and around the detention of the saudi state people were charged with terrorism christ but never tried in court and a lot of the people involved in organizing the demonstrations the release of the detainees took advantage of the instability the saudi state was feeling during the arab spring to mobilize demonstrations a lot of that was organized by people from the city and a lot of those people joined isis later on but also were responsible for attacks in the Arabian Peninsula, most famously the one where the saudi father tried it from bahrain and attacked the shiite mosque in kuwait. This suggest different motivations. You have the question of the compelling notion of. Notion of state building. The last thing i will say briefly is that the regions that we looked at with the highest rates of isis agreement had strong elite women. To mobilize demonstrations a lot of that was organized by people from the city and a lot of those people joined isis later on but also were responsible for attacks in the Arabian Peninsula, most famously the one where the saudi father tried it from bahrain and attacked the shiite mosque in kuwait. This suggest different motivations. The last thing i will say briefly is that the regionsthat we looked at with the highest rates of isis agreement had strong elite women. For example, its true in bahrain the most desperate so the minister of defense and the Royal Court Minister are known which is part of the bahrain royal family that is very hard lined and very violent antishiite opponents and their rhetoric suggest that there is a large sanctioning in bahrain communities to violently attack shiites both in the firing and elsewhere. We dont have to do all this but turkey was the nicest theologian is a member of a very prominent bahraini family and when asked who referred you to join isis almost half of all bahraini and use him as the person there for them. He settled to the equipment in bahrain a veryprominent individual. His cousin iran some state prisons andpoint bahrain later. These are wellconnected individuals. The same is true of kuwait. We know now that they have a longstanding finance laws that they cleaned up and they have those is because theres been a very successful Business Community that has been politically active and religiously conservative. What does that mean for what we see Going Forward and whatdoes this mean for policy. Im concerned that future reform fighter mobilizations cute similarly and successfully. This mean for policy. I thinkthere is a strong the radicalization in these countries and theres a strong criminal effort in many of these countries. I would conclude and wrap up what the message is that david and i want to convey here is there is i think the debate why people join terrorist groups is less helpful than thinking about where a certain theory about white people join terrorist groups in most people. In some cases its marginalization and other cares there is a theological element to the mobilization and we need to be able to first diagnose where people are coming from at this level where we start thinking about what is motivating them to join in the first place. Thank you. Great. Youve given us a lot to think about here. I will try to keep my questions why people join terrorist groups so we can get to the audience. We were talking backstage earlier and you alluded here in your presentation that the al qaeda original message was somewhat esoteric. It has begin the far enemy over time and on some unspecified timelines almost certainly outside your lifetime that then brings about the caliphate and thats a great argument for seminary students and Technology Workers and people who deal with complex concepts but probably isnt going to sell two years since farmer. Conversely, isis can be burn, baby burn but lets bring about the caliphate today and it happened last year, isis can be burn, baby burn but get on board. Given these two models and it makes sense that there would be a much greater economic determinant for the isis fighter because he is thinking about his present day situation. David, in your north africa presentation you almost said exactly that that essentially joining the odds of joining isis acts is essentially a function of economic deprivation why. You say that on the gulf its much more complicated than that. If i try to put an xy line over top of you david, i want you to say why that is too simplistic support north africa and i want you to tell me how much purchase then getting me in the gulf. In north africa, i think, what we see is that its not that there is acorrelation between economic stress or poverty or fighter production. If you look at libya its all centered in the east butsouthern libya, the region known as produced no fighters. It is actually the poorer part of libya. The key outside is much less that you can take policymaker or for analyst the Economic Data and from that we should focus on some work so that when we find a place of high production it shared the aspect of economic strength. There may be other places that are also economically struck but dont have the history ofpolitical mobilization or the political grievance. They may also have economic stress in a different way. One of the ways we would like to look at in the future is whether there is a difference what things characterized in southern libya and many young menwho dont have jobs and arent married and poverty wherepeople do have family. What we found is there is a long history of economic and political marginalization combined and when we look at regions that dont share that the happy families of north africa they dont produce fighters at a high rate. And the only cases where you find spots where they may be considered happy families you look deeper its the function or appears to be a function of substantial internal inequality. On a permit is not actually by consensus number all that high in the provinces of. When you look at neighborhood like [inaudible] that the permit rate is similar to what we see i the southern part of tunisia. One aspect i note on the ideological aspect is that worth considering is that ideological aspects of jihad is him in north africa arguably have long been closer to Islamic State Building Elements than the qaeda mobilizations in saudi arabia. North africa was theperiphery of the al qaeda mobilizations in the past al qaeda headcontrol over north africa affiliates and over it south asian were saudi arabian. Theres a part of the question about whether the lack of impact isis ideology here is done decades ago by other groups and were just seeing the outcome of that. I would just say two things in response, doug. The first is that i think people were more animated in many regions by social issues than the political one. The notion of this being a statebuilding project. What we we are looking at in 20132014 was compelling for people in the region that was a lot more animated about the questions of how to use socially organized in Islamic Society as opposed to how do you contest the influence of materialism or colonialism et cetera. These are the regions of saudi arabia that are also protesting the new laws that the kingdom has passed about allowing women to drive. I think it will be the source of a lot of angst as the kingdom continues down this path of economic reform it has been promising. The other piece of it is the message of recruitment is powerful because it is so flexible it is the message of the invention of self. You can go and be someone new in this place and i think that is attractive for a lot of people, through wide variety of reasons. It is not just that im a poor farmer from the tunisian hinterland and i have a chance to work as an Office Monkey in the records of foreign fighters, but its also an opportunity to structure society. Especially in parts of conservative saudi arabia where they see the kingdom growingfurther away from that conservative idea of Islamic State. Honestly this has changed a lot since 2014 and of course this notion of an Islamic State is hollow for many years now and i think a lot of saudis and since 2014 and of course this people on the Arabian Peninsula have left. At that time it was significant. Im going to turn to your handout. You have not only data but maps and these are quite powerful. The big, middle centerfield, if you will, is this map of where you found these groups from colorcoded on the map of the region which is extremely useful. Then you have these three smaller maps on the back that showsaudi arabia recruitment overtime. If you are to make me one of these maps that has this data showing differences over time what do you think would tilt off the map get me . Where are recruits coming from now that they have not historically and conversely, i think, more interestingly what are the dogs that are not barking . Where are the places that have produced large amounts of jihadist over time that are in the gray or neutral marking on your map . In north africa there are two examples that are interesting. Untreated historically persons now. They are both really good examples. First, as discussed libya where they as you trace it back to the decades it is the same to provinces and their in Eastern Libya. Its not a new issue. It is one that the United States and the Libyan Government have been struggling with for decades. Its gotten particularly bad but there has been really a meaningful Libyan Government with control over the whole country. The other interesting one is algeria which did notproduce fighters in this case. Only 26 fighters came from algeria. Thats an extremely tiny rate given algerias Large Population and its surprising because algeria was one of the foremost producers when you look at the record and the leading of north african fighters in the past. It also has an internal history of jihadism with it is somewhat surprising that algeria does not show up. One of the reasons why we suspect that maybe the case although one we cantdemonstrate because there arent enough fighters from algeria to get a sense of what the demographics of algerian fighters are is that this is a product of algerias lack of movement. It experienced fewer protest and the protests were not as anti regime as they took on the character in they did not part of that is they dont want to repeat the history of the 1990s. Therefore, algeria sat out not the isis mobilization but the last permanent outburst of anger at Structural Conditions in north africa. Which, to me, although one would have to get a whole bunch more research from algeria. It really provides this idea that in north africa we have a structural problem that predates isis. To touch on a few places i spent a lot of time in this presentation emphasizing the newness of mobilization for it to occur in bahrain. I wont delve into that anymore but one of the places on the map that doesnt show up at all is surprising and i briefly touched on it is yemen. I think ultimately there is a very powerful notion as commitment, you make a pledge toa leader of a different moviement. So theres this notion of stickiness. You make this pledge and promise and its hard to switch to another group, and when isis declared the caliphate there was very few Al Qaeda Affiliated organizations around the world that expected even though it is strongly suggestive that isis had a lot of times coordinating these movements to try to make this declaration caliphate in mosul and in 2014 more powerful by the fact that they could get these other affiliates to declare allegiance. In yemen, it is one of those places you see how the commitment to a leader of a different is still very strong. I it is very likely we would see despite thereenis are people taking part in that. Outside the Arabian Peninsula, there are a few other countries i would like to highlight. One is turkey. Support of the turkish government to a variety of militants in the syrian conflict, including the al qaeda , on and on, lots of different branding, patches and logos. But anyway, i think the turkish Political Court or the movement has given citizens in turkey a lot of freedom to join these conflicts and this is a place there is not a lot of good work being done on what the motivations are being done. The other place i would highlight is jordan. Our data doesnt show a lot on jordan simply because not a lot of jordanians would need to fly to turkey, they could do it on their own. I dont think there are a large number of jordanians represented. You kind of preempted my last question but i will ask it anyway. Comfortablen pretty about saying the limits of your data. You have these wonderful maps on the back that show the differences between this time , but 2013 2014 time. And historical norms. On where aree data the other Al Qaeda Affiliated movements the al qaeda brand, where are they getting their recruits . Other minor jihad groups that are some that still dont fall under the isis or the eq umbrellas. If you can get the data on these , do you think the current map would look much more like the historical norm . In other words, do you think they are Still Producing these source countries across north africa across the region, are Still Producing foreign fighters at the same rates or in the same proportions, in the gross approximately does it look the same or do you think something is changing in the way jihadist groups across lets call it this whole family of extremism across the way all of these groups are recruiting . Something new or just a limitation of we have one snapshot of one segment of recruitment . I would say there are two things that have helped improvement among the full variety of organizations. Al qaeda, isis. Others and those are that the syrian conflict in the spring. When you look at those two as the key determining variables so, when it comes to arab spring like david had mentioned the case of tunisia, where the phenomena in of isis agreement is widespread and an extraordinarily high rate as compared to morocco which has a dispersed isis went but you didnt have the extent of arab protest that tunisia had and for that level its much lower. There are obviously more completed factors but lets keep it that. In addition, you have the syrian conflict, and i think there is probably a strong correlation between the countries that politically supported militants in the syrian conflict and fighters that joined no attempt groups in the syrian conflict. It catalyzed treatment, equipment and battlefield tactics and strategy has become a safe haven for a variety of organizations and the generation before we were able to address this in a systematic way. Places in saudi arabia, inchoate members of parliaments were andg official visits loading rockets into rocket launchers. Theres huge amounts of sanctions at the time where we are looking at to support fighters that are going to these places to join a grunt variety of groups. In cases where they went to join the Free Syrian Army and overtime the phenomenon occurs and they find themselves getting a salary because to eat food and they join isis. Those two variables are hugely when you look at where fighters are coming from. I would propose one would do a study to see how that relates. Douglas the only thing i would add on the question of whether we see similar locations had we stopped al qaeda recruitment xyz militia record. I returned to one of the overall findings of our papers, is that we should be so focused on the overall question aware, and while its certainly possible that the we we dont have access to that data. One of the suggestions i have had is the extent to which the government hasnt released the data is the major hold on that research. To think in north africa, there probably isnt a big difference. We see that in libya that relativelyy, similar. There is not extensive reason to think that it was coming from a different place. Also a reason i would suggest is in tunisia, isis work recruitment built off a Solid Foundation that were shared between isis and al qaeda factions. Sl. As built off of is which, which direction do we go . One that wasnt really resolved either but particular individuals within it. North africa would tend to think that an area further studies should be looking at and the incoming hypothesis would be that its similar dynamics for us and the Arabian Peninsula, i think there is reason to begin with that hypothesis that there is a difference between al qaeda and isis and one area to test that would be yemen, where they is there is basically no meaningful isis agreement. There have been some reports of large numbers of al aqeda. Al qaeda recruitment from yemen. Whether those are believable or accurate, i have no clue. There does seem to be a distinction in what is reported the along the script. About how this is bounded geographically, and that is a very important important qualifier. How much of this is found in temporally . As you pointed out, these records are drawn from a time when isis was really at its peak. When otherwise responsible people in washington weresaying baghdad would certainly fall, and jordan and lebanon right after the fact. Isis looked pretty good in this 20132014 from which you are recruiting. Lets say the antiisis coalition grabs your paper and the use it as the basis for their future efforts. What cautions would you give them about hey, we are looking at a period where again this is the faith building project. I would caution you to not use it now that were moving into. Into a period that will look more traditional terrorism focused . Ite i would just say that is very impacted by the time. If you looked at post 2015 isis recruitment, you would find very few people coming from saudi arabia or the rest of the peninsula to both because the saudi government was starting to crack down on a lot of these weretures because attacks being perpetrated within the kingdom and the satellites around the kingdom, but also because no one wants to join the losing team. That is effectively what isis became. Caution, if we were to being a briefing, i would caution that the fundamental context in which these fighters were being recruited hasnt changed. I dont see the radicalization efforts addressing these issues in the region. In bahrain i think its the most acute of any in the whole Arabian Peninsula. Move tothat, we will questions. Let me give you the ground rules for questions. Please, razor hands and wait to be recognized. Once you are recognized, please wait for the microphone so that those who do not have the benefit of being in the room can hear you. Once you have the microphone in your hand, please identify yourself and any relevant affiliation. Please ask a question. The question usually begins with a who, what, when, why and when you ask it as a slight infection in your voice to indicate a question mark is there. A short preamble to your question is acceptable, a long statement that essentially ends with a what you think about that is not. [laughter] so with this, we will go right here in the jacket. Id like to ask about how isis recruitment posted strategies in egypt after the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Is there any impact or did you see any correlation . Thank you. So, i will talk briefly to that. With we did egypt from our north africa region on the basis that when we looked at that data, there were a lot of phenomena that seemed to suggest a shared mobilization dynamic with other ntries in the love aunt, nt, rather than so muchthe much of the dynamic in libya, tunisia, morocco and algeria. Therefore, we found it risky to analyze that without the comparison of israel and the palestinian territories, jordan, lebanon as that comparison. So we havent really looked to deeply added. It does appear to share a similar dynamic more broadly with some of the north african sites. But is the country his government founded the arab spring. We do see the importance of parts of the country that have been marginalized, mount sinai particular, and there is some dynamic between sinai and the gaza strip that shows up in where people are reporting previous jihad. Really, that is all tentative and we did not examine each of them. We viewed it as part of the distinct regional grouping that seemed to be different from what we were looking at and tied together the north african country. Right here in the front. John hogan. Giving your findings of alllized phenomenon, unhappy provinces are unhappy in their own way. Did you explore the use of qualitative methods that are specifically designed to test hypotheses . Did you test any sample size of one . Sample size on one being what . These provinces are unhappy. In its own way, how and why . Yeah, ok. No, what i would love to accomplish with this paper to be honest i think this paper and our presentation, the goal is there are two dozen hypotheses out there for more rigorous oriented testing. These are strongly suggestive conclusion we believe to be true but i think as you emphasized people should be going to these places where possible. Some of these places require indepth qualitative work to agree with or disagree with our questions. It is a valid question. Our findings. It is a valid question. The woman in the aisle. Question is about political marginalization. You mentioned economic and political. Measuring political marginalization, how is it different from economic and how are you testing . Politicalhe marginalization can definitely use more measures that are better. A large part of what we were looking at, or what i was looking at in north africa is and that looksa at the fighters reporting jobs and other demographic information that appears to put them within part of the issue we define in north africa is that these are not distinct phenomena to a large extent. There are places where they are obviously not the same paired isil economic marginalization isso much a product of the ways the patronage and the distribution of wealth and government jobs. That is the large aspect of that. I would also note that our emphasis on the protest data and qualitative work by others have looked at in the region. Great. Next, in the very back. David galloway. This is a question that goes more to north africa. You have identified the subnational regions that have these economic and social political marginalization issues, is your study going to lend itself to a solution of, perhaps, focusing International Aid other than either from intergovernmental agencies or individual countries like usa, as a way of stanching the recruitment of isis fighters by improving the source of isis fighters . This is one of the key areas that the process of our report intervenes and the existing debate. There is a current debate, which media give you the narrative. Obviously, within academic and policy circles, it is a bit more detail than this but it goes Something Like, there is a set of people who say we have to give them jobs and there are a bunch of people who say jobs for jihadists . That wont make any difference. One of the findings was that sort of debate is really those. Ul to getting at in many of the areas in north africa we looked at, these subnational areas, there does appear to be something about being underemployed or not having a stable job that i cant tell you it is causal, but it sure shows up in a lot of these provinces at really high rates. To therast, if you go Arabian Peninsula, i think the people who say jobs for jihadist probably have much more of a point in that region, that many of the people from bahrain actually have not great job situations. There are a whole bunch of them that are well connected to institutions of power. Thing, just adding more jobs when there is an ideological aspect, is unlikely to help. Is other thing i would note one of the things we need to get a better handle on is that we this paper,ng with and the field more generally, the measures we are using to understand economic drought. North africa suffers from an underemployment problem that is not captured well by our in data. Many of the jobs of people who actually are owners are very unpredictable and there is substantial informal work and illicit work and evenfor example even, for example, in tunisia. Jobs are normally only one step away from the smuggling economy. Therefore, you get this dynamic that if you just run your classical economic measures, it wont fit fix pick this up and it failed to pick it up before the arab spring in tunisia that the outburst of anger was coming. When you look at the more qualitative sense or ask people in this region, they will to you marginalization or economic stress seems to have something to do with recruitment. Those people have often been historically dismissed as a moneygrubbing aspect of research, they just want money or for their particular project or the head of the union, will of course tell you unemployment is bad for whatever reason he can come up with. I would suggest that we should be a lot more trusting of these qualitative statements from people, particularly given the high rates of underemployment that show up. Show up in the fighter record. One thing i would add, one concrete policy intervention i very strongly believe in, for the United States and other countries in europe to encourage greater trade within the region. That is an opportunity for a lot of quick wins in pretty much any region of the world. For example, a province in eastern morocco, 25 of the ome comes from the trade that was a hugely important treaty city in the trade route. In the inland trade route across north africa so the lack of trade between morocco, algeria and tunisia is choking the economic opportunity. I think what david is saying is it is not just important from an Economic Development perspective but encouraging trade across these country is a national and regional security. Front to readin the woman in blue. Thank you, this is very important study. Diana perlman from george the school of conflict analysis from george mason. Some of the questions about the age factor in terms of not just biological age, psychological , but Life Experience having been through 015 since 9 11, but issues of humiliation and trauma, and the inequality has a relative deprivation factor in conflicts that they are shaped. Its a ten year lag effect so kids who were tendering the regime, kids who were traumatized later became al qaeda. The effect of trauma and humiliation. Obviously an important work being done on child soldiers. People who are bringing children into these conflicts. That doesnt play out so much among the Arabian Peninsula fighters as much as the central asia. Those are bringing their whole families. But isis Recruitment Strategies are predicated on impulsivity more than any others we have seen. When you look at al qaeda recruitment, they advocate you build a relationship with the recruit. On thes preyed impulsivity of youth more than any other group. A german journalist a few months ago engaged in a conversation on telegram with isis recruiters and basically, they said just send us a video and then we will have that and you can plan the attacks. Dont worry about complicated things. Get a knife and just go out there and do it. The commitment mechanism of someone sending a video to the recruit makes them feel responsible for carrying an action they are supposed to do. There is a lot of detailed thinking in their recruitment strategy to get people to make impulsive decisions. You make impulsive decisions when you are a young kid. Do you want to at the back to that . Thinkould only add that i it is a fascinating area to look at, although one that is unfortunately very incredibly a method where you have the generational aspect of the mobilization and you have medians who are the age we found for them was 19 or 20 at the point they were entering syria. Whether that has an aspect to do with the impact on children, i dont know. My tendency would be to ascribe that to network effects. Militant networks developed over and get reenergized every time there is an outburst of anger. That is something where if anyone can give a meaningful example, it would be an area that could benefit from a lot of discussion. Point,ing on that last the lawyer lawrence from washington university, i would effects, manyk were the same and the Network Workers figure out the local cohort issues and the age factors are very important in north africa. I would add there is huge value in the data you have, but there is a lot of missing stuff. The first one that comes to mind is where in syria, fighters going to iraq. That was a example of moroccans and libyans going to iraq, and that reveals interesting things and other thing you seem to have missed which is the middle class fighters. One of the reasons tunisia since so many is not lack of access to capital but access to capital. So looking at upper middle class , downwardly mobile upper class and middle class tunisians, it is interesting. Let me just get to my question. What i would suggest is that your conclusions are exactly right, but they are still almost at 35,000 feet and once you go down, theres other factors. My question would be this there are lots of profiles out there. Hundreds, how would you, in generations, a version two of this study, capture all of that growing anecdotal information, including from returning fighters, which is another great database. One of the next spots for to turn to the area the profile and examine them geographically, rather than trying to generate the tunisian profile. If you look at the it in aggregate, and we did this with some of the fighter data and are planning to do it. You find they are about as educated as the tunisian and there are about as many students as the tunisian population and they report origins from across the country. It is really easy to come in as a journalists son and get a sample. We will tell you a story, this same dynamic we multiple terrorism campaigns. There is the orthodoxy and the literature, i believe, that terrorism does not have an economic cause. To some extent i think that is true and we shouldnt undercount the tunisian mobilization ability to cut across. I would strongly warn that as you get more local, you begin to see the places that really popout are these geographically, in many ways ghetto areas that are producing underemployment numbers at such high rates. Withnk part of that is the arab spring, the economy really contracted in some ways. Particularly for many of these areas that are hotspots, and i think this is a day name it you see in some reporting of demographics, particularly major attacks and tunisia. They will be reported as middleclass because their family is middleclass or their family has some wealth, but individually, they often dropped out of school and they were doing day labor or construction work. Looking at those profiles will be useful to determine what comes first, the jihad is in or the economic aspects. One of my suspicions based on tunisia is there is an upgrading of people who are really not in the bourgeoisie, when you really have a dynamic of underemployed, Unemployed People who do not have a stake in society, and it is not a radicalizing the last, or at least not a radicalizing stable middleclass in any meaningful terms. I was at your earlier presentation, i guess it was close to a year ago. It had a lot broader take on wasnt just north africa and the middle east. ,ou say anything meaningful about the motivations, the profiles of the foreign fighters that came from the west, came from europe, came from america. Obviously, that is a major concern of ours as some of these will be returning, but any interesting comparisons with that subgroup . This is outside the scope of what we are looking at right now but i am doing a bit of a social Network Analysis of fighters coming from europe as opposed to those based in the Arabian Peninsula and what we find is the fighters from europe are less connected in the number of ties they have together and the strength of ties they have to each other, then the fighters from the i think when it comes to how to we interpret what that means when it comes to threats, i think what that means is analysis. Series of there is a vulnerability connected to analysis is. It is ultimate Chain Reaction of the whole regions power. So in the case of deeply internet to interconnected terrorist groups, it is easy to knowol a network if you which nodes to control, but if you lose those nodes he will have a catastrophic more easier to have a catastrophic earlier. So i think the threat in the Arabian Peninsula is greater risk of systemic. Theres not enough evidence for us to make concrete claims. Thanks for talk. I want to address the issue of criminal justice. The governments have put in system penalties for any person conflict. Any foreign the person who invented to have a difficult life back home is likely turned off. Any research in this regard . Click the main portion of our data does not really talk to that. In north africa, i think it is really a question of where you look at. A particular Government Health or that has off strengthened and cut that he would have to do is get to syria. Found here, you see a on themilitary crackdown few portions of the country where there was an effort to mobilize the internal isis threat. And from the United States, sort of country terrorism reports and other reportings. It sounds like that was pretty successful. And morocco, like algeria, has a relatively well functioning Security Service at least compared to tunisia and libya during that time. Tunisia was politically constrained as a result of the revolution, and libya had an effect collapsed because of the rebellion and the 2011 nato intervention. As far as the gulf, it is pretty clear that once the arabian countries in the Arabian Peninsula faced a domestic Security Threat as a manifestation of the recruitment of fighters, basically 2016 and afterwards, they crack down very hard on people going but i mean, even at that point, to go to saudi arabia, people would be willing to talk to about any number of people they knew who had left syria. I guess my point is like, to underline motivation and processes of radicalization in the Arabian Peninsula, were still not well addressed. Even though the criminal element are heavily policed, and i think the region faces threats both from al qaeda and isis and they are different. They come from different places and are animated by different questions. The fundamental things that animate them are not being fully address. We have time for one last question. This gentleman here. Flex dave colson, eight congressional fellow. Can you give me some of the hypothesis of why there is a higher rate of fighters in gitmo . In guantanamo you said there was a higher ratio of yemen fighters. Quest i think it is because there are more yemenis who work committed to al qaeda then there were yemenis to isis. With that, time for one more. I was expecting a little longer answer. Twice theoing gentleman in the front will take it. My name is jack, unaffiliated. I was wondering if you could contrast or compare the distinction between foreign fighters and recruitment. In other words, if a dueling coalition shut down the territorial area in syria, well recruitment go away, too, or will recruitment shift and how much can you get that kind of information in the future . Yeah, that is a really good question. I use recruitment is a broad term. When you think about recruitment, you think about someone from room reaching out to people that they want to join the group. There is a deliberate process and elaborate initiation, organized crime in italy might do it. In these cases, it is not that cut and dried. Are seekingple that out people to have them join movements like i says, isis recruiters have a Clear Strategy and are trying to facilitate that process. It comes from both sides and it is very complex. That is kind of how i use it. I think isis found a very effective formula for having recruitment be very broad, so it is not just joining but it is also being recruited. I mean, these data are people who left to join and all terrorism is limited by the quality of the data we have access to. I dont think i think this data it is i guess the word is often misused, unique. And that, you know, you dont have the current selection of fact you have if a journalist is interviewing a bunch of people. If a fighter once to return to tunisia, the people who return one to return and can return, so there is a nonrandom selection bias in the sample. And allies and alive. Yes alive. The data is large and diverse, we can make rutter claims about recruitment rather than just recruitment of people who are willing to pack up and go to turkey and syria. It can be tough to figure out who recommended you, but it is not clear whether that recommendation is, what it means. Whether it means the person may elect the turkish border, whether they were at a turkish Training Camp and you went there in the region and then went over or whether it is just someone who can vouch for you but had no active recruitment outside. I did some digging into this and tunisia and there is certainly some level of more organized movement within the region that we are studying. 7. 5 of the whole tunisian contingent was recommended by one person who ran this arab Training Camp. We know he was in direct contact with isis in syria, more or less on a daily basis. And also that there were connections back into tunisia. This is one of the areas that airstrikes in libya really focused upon during that time. But i cannot really tell you whether within tunisia he was, he had sort of people working with them who were doing a more direct reach out or if it was just people went and some were radicalized in the cited to go to libya, or of people just showed up in libya. That is not really something i can necessarily tell you. There does appear to be a difference between Something Like that and what we seem to see in other parts of the world, perhaps a little bit in algeria or i think we see this a lot in the United States, where people are just showing up or they have an online connection. Something we have seen really an hour research here in our home grown terrorism. I think that is probably a geographical thing based on Extensive Networks and the expanse of marginalization between somewhere like the United States and summerlike rural tunisia. Quest i want to thank david and nate for all of the work they have done to bring this data sent to our attention. As we have pointed out, there are 20 different ways future researchers can go at this data but nonetheless this is a great first contribution. I know the paper is held up with editing but to have a best guess when it will be released on the website . Stay tuned. Thank you for coming for a happy to have you here. Cspans washington journal, live every day with issues that effective. Reports of tension between secretary of state Rex Tillerson and president trump. And Time Magazine Senior Writer talks about his recent article on how kids sports have gone into a multibilliondollar industry. Cspan to come up where history unfolds daily. In a concert and on, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is thought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Groups held atwo rally to end gerrymandering outside of the supreme court. Will determine whether force congressional the case will determine whether congressional districts in wisconsin are unconstitutional. It is one hour 20 minutes