Rise of the white jehadi

Picture this: An adolescent, full of angst, gets online, surfs for ways to fill ‘that’ void. Jihad confronts him here. It offers many answers — radical, violent, and even philosophical. The propagated ideologies are backed with arguments loaded with grievances. He dabbles with the lighter stuff, then harder. His appetite for blood grows over time. He moves deeper and deeper until there is no looking back.

That’s the story of each of the five young Muslim men from Virginia, US, who went to Pakistan seeking jihad. Also of David Coleman Headley, born in Washington DC to a Pakistani diplomat and an American. And of Najibullah Zazi, a coffee vendor in Manhattan. And of former Queen’s college student Zarein Ahmedzay, who majored in economics. And of high school footballer Adis Medunjanin. And many more.

Terrorism expert Jarret Brachman calls them ‘Ji-hobbyists’ — young, online obsessives who radicalise themselves by ingesting hardcore jihadist web content, from YouTube videos to discussion forums — who eventually became operational.

But what is most glaring about this spate of cases is the underlying truth of terror home grown in the US. The year has alarmingly brought ‘white jihad’ to the forefront which, despite many earlier examples, has been largely ignored — the focus having always been on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, to an extent, as the seat of radical Islam.

Balkan terrorism expert Darko Trifunovic was the first to develop a theory of ‘white al Qaeda’, which he said was introduced to the Balkans during the civil war in Bosnia during the early ‘90s when thousands of mujahideen from Islamic countries came to fight for local Muslims. al Qaeda has adopted the tactic of using white European youth for terrorist attacks, “because of their non-Arabic appearance”, Trifunovic wrote. “The strategy is to indoctrinate or poison the hearts and minds of youngsters to psyche them up for terror operations.”

Non-Arabic appearance and a Christian-sounding name did seem to have helped Headley cross the US, India and Pakistan borders easily and several times over the years. “That is one of the defeat techniques he used,” says Ajit Doval, former director of the Intelligence Bureau and now a security advisor to the Indian government. But branding the trend ‘white jihad’ would be “oversimplification”, he adds.

The ways to tackle the phenomenon should start with studying the socio-economic and psychological aspects that have made the Muslim youth in the US or the West susceptible to aggressive publicity by radicals. “Intensive propaganda online, even in popular social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook, finds wide hearing. Some people have a propensity to violence and they are lured in,” he says. “Anger over the Iraq war, Afghan crisis and Palestine are causative factors” used as snares, he says. That is exactly what is now happening in the US.

The contradictions between the culture in which they were raised and the demands of religious fundamentalism are the main reason why young Muslims in the US fall prey to radicalism, says Dr TPS Sasikumar, former principal director, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). “White jihadis are bound to increase as there is an inherent insecurity in them. Islamist beliefs and Western upbringing is a tough concoction,” he says.

The New York Times recently reported that 21-year-old Samir Khan has been running a popular blog called inshallahshaheed, which serves as a kind of western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups. His blog is placed among the top 1% of 100 billion websites. Samir Khan isn’t alone.

Terrorism experts at the US Military Academy at West Point say there are over 100 English sites appealing to young American and European Muslims by playing on this. This is besides the al Qaeda videos available on YouTube and other sites. Evidence shows that army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a self-radicalised jihad hobbyist, who wreaked havoc without any external support.

Security expert B Raman, retired additional secretary and director of the Institute for Topical Studies, points out a “recent trend among Muslim families in the US and West Europe to send their children, including girls, to Pakistan for a short attachment to the madrasas in order to make them true Muslims”. He says: “Since many of these madrasas maintain close links with jihadi organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), these students come under their influence and are brainwashed before they return home.”

He rubbishes ‘white jihad’ as a concept or a recent phenomenon, saying the propaganda and the process have been active for a long time.

He believes that the Headley case has India appearing as a soft state. He says there have been failures on the part of the intelligence communities of both the US and India, particularly inadequacies in the field of human intelligence (Humint). “But that is easier said than done,” Doval says. The line between individual freedom, right to privacy and the state having human sources for intelligence purposes can be very thin, he says. “When in conflict, though, the State will give priority to larger safety over guaranteed freedom,” he adds, pointing out the problems of implementing tough measures on terror tracking.

The authorities in the US and India are grappling with hurdles to beat terror. Meanwhile, the terror network stretches its web. Many are poised to follow the path of Adam Gadahn, the media advisor to al Qaeda. He is an American born to hippie parents who left their Jewish faith in favour of Christianity. As a teenager he had a rock band, Aphasia, and furiously contributed music reviews and artwork to a zine called Xenocide. When 17, he began studying Islam at the Islamic Society of Orange County. He became a Muslim to fill a “yawning emptiness”. He began to work out his opinions and his reasons for conversion in web postings. The way to jihad, he found, was online.