Blogs, networking sites luring young people to terror

Terror organisations are discovering that the internet is a good place to recruit youths for their nefarious designs. Police officers involved in the investigation of the serial blasts in Ahmedabad and Mumbai are of the view that the internet is quite useful for contacting youths and becoming close to them in a short time.

Terror groups can persuade gullible youths and turn them into sleeper cells while exchange views on issues that have apparently nothing to do with terrorism.

Earlier, terror groups used to employ a different method to find recruits for their sleeper cells. Senior operatives of a terror organisation would target people who had been victims of police atrocities, government indifference during riots or were themselves believers in jihad.

They used to first identify such people and after an exchange of views that could last several months, prepare them for induction in their terror organisation. This method of recruitment involved hard work as the targeted youths had to be brainwashed completely.

But now terror organisations seem to prefer a different method. An intelligence official, who was connected to the investigation into the Ahmedabad serial blasts, said that the internet could be the biggest forum for recruiting youths for terrorist causes.

"There are various social network websites and some jehadi sites as well which serve as a good platform for posting extremist literature. Once persuaded, the gullible youths can easily be inducted as members of sleeper cells," the intelligence officer said.

He further said that there are many people exchanging views on websites after watching videos of atrocities committed on people of their religion or reading extremist literature.

"They tend to move closer to each other after an initial exchange of views. Terror organisations are is search of people who hold views that qualify them as someone who can be recruited to their network. If they find such youths, they become close to them and eventually induct them into their organisation," the sleuth said.
He further said that this was the main reason why more and more educated youths are joining terror networks but few are arrested by the police.

However, a senior IPS officer who was part of the blasts probe said that he had not found any evidence of internet being used to recruit youths for terrorist causes.

"It is possible terror groups are using the internet as a recruiting platform but we did not find any evidence of this during our investigation into the serial blasts. We seized material that had been downloaded from various jehadi websites from the accused arrested from Madhya Pradesh," he said.

Another senior officer of the Ahmedabad police who was involved in the investigation into the Mumbai blasts also expressed the same view. "It is possible that terror groups are using the internet to recruits youths to their organisation. But we did not come across any evidence of this during our investigation," the officer said.

There are many websites and blogs where jehadi views are freely exchanged. But is it possible for the police to keep tabs on all of them all the time? This is virtually impossible and the terror groups are likely to take advantage of this.