Foiled Terror Plot Points to Long-Distance Recruitment of Terrorists

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The arrest of six young men who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack on the Fort Dix military base raises the question of terrorist recruitment. According to the Washington Post, the FBI revealed that “the group has no apparent connection to al-Qaeda or other international terrorist organizations aside from ideology, but appears to be an example of the kind of self-directed sympathizers widely predicted -- and feared -- by counterterrorism specialists. The defendants allegedly passed around and copied images of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the martyrdom videos of two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.” The revelation that the suspects had spiritual ties to the al Qaeda leader und the 9/11 terrorists points to the growing role and power of all kinds of media in the long-distance recruitment of autonomous cells and, more generally, in the use of media by extremists to indoctrinate especially the young.

To be sure, radicals and terrorists utilized the available means of communication at all times. With respect to violent anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, Jerry Rubin, a leader of the Yippie movement, observed, “Every revolutionary needs a color TV. Walter Cronkite is SDS’s [Student for a Democratic Society] best organizer. Uncle Walter brings out the map of the U.S.with circles around campuses that blew up today. The battle reports. Every kid out there is thinking, ‘Wow! I wanna see my campus on that map.’” The "uncle Walters" of television and the rest of the news media may have fired up anti-Vietnam radicals but hardly had their hands in the recruitment of their violent off-springs in the Weather Underground and Black Power movements. Terrorists in particular, whether from the right or left, have at all times enlisted the bulk of their new comrades through person-to-person contacts. That was also true for the team that carried out the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. But the mass media play a crucial role as well: by paying extraordinary attention to terrorist strikes and to the motives of the perpetrators of terrorism the news disseminates, unwittingly as it may be, what 19^th century anarchists and radical social reformers called "propaganda by deed."

Throughout history terrorists have been particularly clever in exploiting the newest communication technologies and today the promoters of terrorism and their sympathizers have acquired their own media, utilize the Internet, and exploit DVDs and video tapes to win support for their causes. One of the
London would-be bombers told Italian interrogators after his capture in the summer of 2005 that he and his comrades had decided to strike in London after watching DVDs of Muslim women and children being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These kinds of motivational DVDs are widely distributed in various parts of the world. Today, no serious terrorist group and cause will do without their own propaganda. Thus, Shakir al-Abssi, the founder of a new Lebanese terrorist group (Fatah al Islam) told an interviewer recently that he had hired a communication advisor for a campaign to recruit followers.

And then there is the propaganda dispersed by radio and television stations and networks.Following the example of the Lebanese Hezbollah that expanded its original local station Al Manar into a global satellite network, Hamas added a TV station (Al Aqsa Television) to the group’s already existing radio station (The Voice of Al Aqsa). Just as Al Manar glorifies “martyrdom,” Al Aqsa television, too, is a vehicle for indoctrination and recruitment. Even the youngest children, boys and girls, are targeted by these campaigns. For an example, see an excerpt from a children’s program depicting the real life of a female Palestinian suicide bomber and the reaction of her little daughter (See also related stories by AP and a post on the Counterterrorim Blog). Right-wing hate groups here and abroad also use their Internet sites to indoctrinate the young in special kids sections.

Thus, long-distance propaganda and indoctrination have become powerful instruments in conditioning vulnerable people to become recruits that may establish their own leaderless terrorist cells or join larger terror organizations.

Comments

[Brigitte]

thanks for you comment--I was aware that the Al Aqsa TV operation was striving to expand in imitating the Al Manar example--I was not aware that they had manage to do so in such a short time.

[Zohar]

A few words about the history of Al Aqsa television: Hamas launched it last year as a terrestrial broadcasting station that operated inside a Gaza mosque. After less than a year it turned into a satellite channel, and shifted its operational base to Dubai’s “Media City,” far from the reach of both Israel and the Fatah (which tried to shut it down during its first months of operation). As a satellite channel, it became available not only to audiences in Arab countries but also in the Persian Gulf and even in Europe. Clearly, such expansion marks Hamas’s claim for political dominance in the region and its attempts to win the hearts of the Muslim immigrant population in Europe.