Blood Profits

by Vanessa Neumann

  The propaganda that criminal organizations use is similar to that of insurgencies and terrorist groups who position themselves as freedom fighters. Their terror tactics are designed to scare people—both civilian citizens and government or law enforcement officials. They’re also aimed at spreading the glorification of their lifestyle so that they can gain control of those upper factions of society that are most prized: the highly educated and well connected—those who can move money, influence policy, and run for political office, extending the criminal pipeline deep into our government and long into the future. The bad guys plan a whole generation ahead.

  Entry-level recruitment is usually subtle: asking kids to be straw buyers of weapons, usually inside the United States. The cartels also place ads in classified sections of newspapers offering to pay $500 for a drive to a destination in the US; the driver will be unaware that the car is packed with drugs. Or, more simply, they place ads offering $500 a week for “entry-level positions”; that is a lot of money to a sixteen-year-old in Mexico, but these kids are as cheap and expendable to the cartels as they are to Daesh. The US government has also paid for ads in these classified sections, warning readers that such offers are criminal acts of recruitment into the cartels and to stay away.

  The objective of recruitment is clear: get power to control the money flows. Los Zetas, the cartel that was born of former Special Ops, trains these “entry-level” kids in paramilitary operations in a program akin to a boot camp. They are trained in surveillance and assassination tactics, including weaponry, martial arts, hand-to-hand combat, aggressive driving, and even SERE: survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.

  The more genteel and longer-term offerings for the particularly bright ones are college scholarships for those who want to study law and criminal justice, so that they may enter law enforcement or become judges with lifetime loyalty to the cartels. That is the kind of long-term strategic thinking law enforcement needs to confront. The cartels’ highest-value targets for recruitment are American police officers and border agents, precisely because they are trusted by law enforcement and know the vulnerabilities within the system, and can thus help the cartels to circumvent interdiction. An added bonus: the officers may even be trained in weaponry and torture techniques.

  As in Colombia’s reintegration program, the Mexican government has joined the narrative battle space and reached out to its youth with anti-narco comics and songs directed at kids.5 The Mexican government sponsored a ten-episode comic series depicting the heroics of federal agents and cops. This is not unlike the comic strips and TV shows glorifying the US G-Men (the FBI) during Prohibition in the US, when mobsters such as Al Capone or outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and “Baby Face” Nelson were admired by Depression-era impoverished and desperate Americans. The bad guys and the media platforms may have changed, but the battle for the “hearts and minds” of supporters has been going on for centuries—certainly since the time of Christ.

  THE JIHADI NEW WAVE: FOREIGN FIGHTERS AND “LONE WOLVES”

  Few people know more about how bad guys recruit good guys than Sri Lankan de-radicalization expert Professor Rohan Gunaratna. We met while working together at the Asymmetric Warfare Group, where his expertise in manipulating identity narratives (in his case: turning the bad guys back to good) was useful. When I was in Singapore in March 2013 for other reasons, I went to visit him at his home and brought another friend who had been involved in the Global War on Terror. We three chatted for several hours.

  Gunaratna finds a predictable pattern of radicalization. First, there is some event in the teenage years that triggers a search for self-identity. The crisis can be personal (heartbreak in romance, death of a loved one), economic (layoff, lack of advancement), social (racism or discrimination), or political (feeling that an event in another place affects him or her, like attacks on Muslims elsewhere). The young person feels he or she will never psychologically recover, begins to question his or her worldview or place in life, and goes in search of group with a set of beliefs that might give him or her a sense of purpose.

  Then the person searches for institutions that will provide answers, a way to understand and process the trauma of the crisis. These institutions become “incubators,”6 where the process of radicalization starts. They are everywhere, and as varied as the stories that drive people to radicalize: mosques and Islamic centers, prisons, coffee shops, bookstores, student associations, shisha smoking bars, halal butcher stores—or, more simply, the Internet.

  When that person has a confrontation with other members or leaders of a moderate mosque and then leaves to find a more radical Salafi mosque (practicing the ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam that developed in Arabia as a reaction to colonialism in the early eighteenth century) more suited to the anger he or she is feeling, that is a pretty good sign we could have a blossoming jihadist on our hands. Assessing whether an individual poses a risk of becoming a jihadist is not easy. The person’s behavior has to be assessed holistically, considering a number of factors and relationships in context. While adoption of a jihadist Salafi interpretation of Islam (Salafiyyah jihadiyah) is the final step in Sunni radicalization, there are other signs: alienation from old social groups in favor of other Salafis, quitting drinking alcohol or smoking, growing a beard, adopting traditional Islamic dress, and assuming voluntary duties inside the Salafi community.

  Back to the point of context and holistic assessment: I have plenty of Brooklyn hipster friends who are bearded, teetotaling vegans but are in no way Islamist radicals. When radicalization is under way, the radical cell seeks a role model, a spiritual and operational mentor who has street credibility as a jihadist, having fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kashmir, or any other jihad arena.7 This is their revolutionary hero, whom they will seek to emulate, in order to belong, by becoming a good fellow revolutionary Muslim. (In its mechanism, not its goal, this is not dissimilar to the Chavistas and their purported Bolivarian Revolution.)

  In the jihadist cell, total group thinking takes over and each individual assumes his or her personal responsibility for jihad. There can be a variety of tasks: operational training, perhaps by traveling to seek military training; renting safe houses; making explosives; identifying targets.8 A bit before they are ready to execute a terrorist attack, the radicalized youth revert to Western dress and behavior in order to evade surveillance and capture before the attack is carried out. You might think they have reentered the Western liberal community, but they are actually just blending in so they can get close to their targets.

  As criminals like to recruit law enforcement, jihadists like to recruit Westerners, and Daesh has improved the operational model that was first formulated by Al Qaeda. All but one of the terrorist attacks (plotted or carried out) in the West by the different elements of the Global Jihad Movement since 9/11 were perpetrated by homegrown cells: the terrorists were born, resided, and were educated for a substantial and significant time in the United States, Canada, Western European countries, or Australia.

  While the organizational affiliation behind the attack or plot will vary, the homegrown cells are highly prized by jihadists as a key operational asset: ready-made individuals who speak Western languages, are familiar with the Western mentality and lifestyle, and in most cases hold genuine documentation, like passports and driver’s licenses. Among the “Abbotabad papers” (found during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden) was an instruction from bin Laden to Abu Bassir al-Yamani, leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to “[c]oncentrate on the Yemeni emigrants who come back to visit Yemen and have American visas or citizenship and would be able to conduct operation inside America.”9

  I attended a UN Security Council briefing on November 24, 2015, discussing the recruitment and possible de-radicalization of fighters from the West who had gone to fight alongside Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Analyzing the social network is essential. Three-quarters of foreign fighters join through friends; one-fifth join th
rough family. Often those who live with them are not aware they have a jihadist-in-the-making under their roof: the prospective jihadists hook up and connect online in secret. Eighty percent of youth who radicalize do not have a religious background, but radicalize through contact with other active and prospective jihadists on social media sites.

  The consensus at the UN Security Council was that we shouldn’t just focus on socioeconomic factors, but also on how those factors connect with grievances. Therefore, counterterrorism strategies that violate human rights are counterproductive. Approaches should be family-based and culturally literate. Children are not necessarily looking for religion, but rather something to belong to.

  To the terrorist groups (as to the criminal groups), these kids are little more than cannon fodder. When and if they do travel to Iraq or Syria to get Daesh training, they sometimes do not make it any farther than Turkey. In border terrain, they are trained minimally in how to handle an automatic weapon and a suicide vest. They are given little combat experience for a reason: they are used for suicide missions. However, they are indoctrinated to believe that they are not allowed to become martyrs until they pass on their knowledge to at least five people, growing Daesh terrorist ranks exponentially.

  Two factors determine whether people are willing to fight and die. First, there must be fusion with their group; and second, the fusion must be great enough that they come to perceive themselves as physically strong and invincible, to believe they possess superhuman powers, thus driving them to identify further with the group, in a self-reinforcing cycle.

  To activate this willingness to fight to the death, Daesh needs the ultimate enemy fighting on its terrain: it needs Western forces in the Middle East. It is in a hadith (hadiths are the collection of traditions containing sayings of the Prophet Muhammad that, along with accounts of his daily practice, constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims apart from the Koran) that when an army with black flags (like Daesh uses) rises from Khorasan (a region in modern-day Afghanistan), it prepares the terrain for the arrival of Imam Mahdi, the Twelfth, or “Hidden,” imam, who will rule over the caliphate that will bring “The Hour,” the End of Days, the Apocalypse. In other words, Daesh thinks it is bringing forth the Apocalypse. Since Daesh took over the Khorasan region in Afghanistan, the recruitment of foreign terrorist fighters from Central Asia has become more acute: more fighters travel to die.

  One of their main recruitment tools is their glossy magazine, Dabiq, named for a town in rural Aleppo, Syria, that is featured in an old hadith about the “The Hour,” the apocalyptic battle. Dabiq’s headlining motto, with which it opens every issue, is: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq and its heat will continue to intensify, by Allah’s permission, until it burns the crusader army in Dabiq.” The motto is also featured in Daesh videos featuring Al-Zarqawi (the former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who then founded Daesh), marching in slow motion, holding up the Daesh black flag.10 Daesh’s public actions are designed to presage The Hour, “including the blowing up of shrines and the tossing of homosexuals from rooftops.”11 Even the sexual enslavement of women is part of this. “According to a hadith, the apocalypse will come when a ‘slave gives birth to her master.’”12

  Daesh’s “jihadist pornography” has been stunningly effective. Films of gun-toting fighters out on patrol, calling themselves Rafidah Hunters (“rafidah” is a pejorative term Sunnis use to refer to Shia; in Arabic it means “the rejectors,” because the Shia reject the “true” lineage from the Prophet Muhammad), often culminate in personalized and graphic beheadings. “Don’t hear about us, hear from us,” say the Daesh recruits.13 Their messages of brutality with purpose are targeted, whether by Twitter or YouTube, in Dabiq, or in the encrypted audio file-sharing app Zello, where followers can tune in to ISIS sermons.

  The current trend of the Global Jihad Movement’s activating local citizens in Western countries was officially espoused as military doctrine in a 2004 publication by Mustafa Satmariam Nasser (better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Musab al-Suri), The Call to Global Islamic Resistance. This text is so familiar to scholars of violent extremism that they refer to it simply by its initials, GIR. Al-Suri wrote the GIR while on the run in the aftermath of 9/11, when America was aggressively hunting Al Qaeda terrorists. His purpose was suited to those circumstances: to greatly reduce Al Qaeda’s vulnerability to disruption by transforming it from a hierarchical organization to a decentralized one14—in other words, a flat and adaptive network.

  In the GIR, al-Suri advocates constant and independent jihadi activity at the level of individual or small, isolated Al Qaeda cells, all over the world, against Western interests and targets. This would lead to an unprecedented number of attacks,15 many more than one centrally commanded organization could ever achieve. The attacks would appear random but be continual, creating psychological terror and making life untenable in Western countries. This decentralized global jihad would give the impression of a bourgeoning global movement and inspire more Muslims all over the world to join the cause. Al Qaeda commanders Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki recognized the brilliance of al-Suri’s argument and adopted the GIR as Al Qaeda’s official warfare doctrine. Thus Al-Suri’s “death by a thousand cuts” military strategy became Al Qaeda’s Global Jihad Movement.

  Global Jihad Movement ideology radicalizes and mobilizes using mechanisms that are remarkably similar to those in “the GIR.” In al-Suri’s work and subsequent derivative texts, America is a “disease,” the “cure” for which is jihad. America, the Soviet East, and the Crusader West (sometimes referred to by the ancient term “Al-Room,” to further the impression of historical legitimacy) are destined for decline because such is the will of God, who is on the side of the jihadists.

  The worldview is simple and binary. This future superior ummah (Muslim community) will be led by the jihadists, who are in effect precursors and the vanguard of the rest of the (purified) Muslim ummah. As in conquest ideology, the jihadist revolutionary will purify himself and his entire community through his struggles.16 (Similar arguments were used by the conquistadors of South America in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.)

  Although carried out in the name of Daesh, the terrorist attacks in Paris in early November 2015 were GIR strategy perfectly executed by French nationals and native speakers living in the banlieues (suburbs), where francophone North African Muslims feel angry, warehoused in public housing projects. With some direction from overseas and minimal training, several attacks were carried out at once, terrifying the whole city. Furthermore, the bombs that would have gone off inside the Stade de France would have forced tens of thousands of people out specific exits and onto the streets in predictable patterns, where more suicide bombers would have killed them at strategic nodes, generating even more pandemonium.

  Daesh is well funded by the same thing that funds the repressive Chavista government in Venezuela: oil. Colombia’s FARC and the Mexican cartels also extort oil companies or simply punch holes in the pipelines and steal oil. For Daesh, it is even easier, as it controls territory in two oil-rich countries: Iraq and Syria. In Syria, while it controls the territory, it controls the supply to the locals, to the truckers, to the hospitals in enemy territory, and even to the Assad regime, whom it fights. In 2015, Daesh was making $1.5 million a day from the oil sold at the wellheads in the territory under its control.17 Thus, the Syrian dictatorship has to buy diesel fuel and oil from the insurgent terrorist group it is fighting.

  So Daesh is not only the most sophisticated manipulator of narratives on the Internet and other platforms, but the sophistication is funded by vast coffers: it is the “world’s richest terrorist organization,”18 benefiting from a vast black market. In Iraq, in addition to the oil, it overran Iraq’s Central Bank and stole $420 million from its vaults. It extorts local businesses, sells women into prostitution, and coerces local government officials so that it benefits at the expense of Iraqi taxpayers. Like all terrorist groups, it also gets don
ations from wealthy donors and charities.

  The form of illicit trade in which the Western consumer is most complicit is the trade in antiquities. Modern-day Iraq is the cradle of civilization: Mesopotamia thrived in the Indus Valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Syria’s and Iraq’s antiquities predate Rome, Greece, and even Egypt—and are highly coveted by museums and collectors. The fog of war has facilitated looting and the corruption of customs officials, and many antiquities have been reaching dealers in Vienna, Munich, London, and New York. Daesh profits from the international art market. (The need for applying banking-level due diligence standards to the international art market was discussed at a UN Security Council meeting on terrorist finance in December 2016.)

  WHY IDENTITY NARRATIVES WORK

  Yet regardless of how much a terrorist group may have “sold out” to the profit motive by funding itself mainly through the business of illicit trade, grievance is a good fund-raiser. A good grievance is still the best tool to raise donations, recruit fighters, and motivate the diaspora. Groups use the classic manipulations of subversive identity politics: to be one of us, you will support our cause; to be a good citizen, you need to be a good supporter of our revolutionary cause: you will fund it; you will advocate it, and you will enjoin others to do so, too. In the context of terror, the shortest route to pride is making others fear you. Fear is power.

  The violence we see across our television screens at night is at least as much about getting and keeping power as it is about Christians or Jews or Muslims. If you strip away the Daesh rhetoric on religion, the scenario is the same: thugs inspiring fear to consolidate their power. Religion is their excuse, fear their method. Daesh and the Mexican cartels operate much the same way: they control territory, kill their enemies, videotape beheadings to intimidate those who would challenge them, and use pervasive propaganda to recruit. The Mexican cartels also use religious insignia to mark their territory and legitimize their power.