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Matenia Sirseloudi

Violent Jihadi Radicalisation in Europe and Conflicts in the Muslim World 1. Introduction Radicalisation processes in European diaspora communities are subject to a variety of causation clusters. Private psychological motivations – such as the desire to gain public attention, an identity crisis, or feelings of discrimination in the country of residence – as well as the role of religion in diaspora situa-tions and certain radical religious currents play a determining role. Political conflicts in a diaspora community’s countries of origin or in countries with Muslim majorities in general are particularly relevant. They contribute to radicalisation processes in Europe via a number of channels. This paper con-centrates on conflicts taking place outside Europe as a pre-eminent source of radicalisation processes within Europe, elaborating on the main underlying concepts and hypotheses and reporting some first results of the TERAS-INDEX project, an initiative that seeks to explore different impact dynamics in empirical terms. After defining the terms “radicalisation”, “Islamism” and “conflict”, we out-line the historical background of conflicts in the Muslim world and their impact on the European Muslim diaspora before finally analyzing the relation of military interventions and Islamist radicalisation as reflected in the Jihadi narrative of a global fighting brotherhood and in its manifestation in the form of veteran and foreign fighter networks, with reference to TERAS-INDEX results. The concluding remarks consider how these phenomena may develop in the near future. 2. Definitions When talking about violent radicalisation, we refer to the definition provided by the European Commission, which defines it as “…a phenomenon in which people embrace opinions, views and ideas that could lead to acts of terror-ism.” (Commission of the European Communities 2005). This clearly relates radicalisation to a special form of political violence, namely terrorism. Before the term “violent radicalisation” originated in EU policy circles after the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004, it had not been widely used in the social sciences, and where it was used it referred to a process of socialisation lead-ing to the use of violence. However, the term can be misleading because the socialisation process itself does not have to be violent per se. Violent radi-

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calisation may entail the pursuit of a path that involves violent behaviour, but may equally refer to the acceptance of ideas that entail and justify violence. Moreover, socialisation into violence does not necessarily mean socialisation into terrorism. There are various forms of violence, not all of which are po-litical, and terrorism is just one particular kind of political violence. With hundreds of definitions of terrorism, here we will focus on its most striking features: its political, communicative, provocative and often symbolic charac-ter, which is often manifested by the application of indiscriminate violence against civilian and non-combatant targets (Sirseloudi 2005, European Com-mission's Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation 2008). Another often misguiding term is “Islamism”, which is often confused with Islam at one end of the continuum of meanings and with Jihadism at the other. When talking about Islamism, I will be referring to “Islamic activism”, as the assertion and promotion of beliefs, prescriptions, laws, or policies that are held to be Islamic in character – a definition provided by the International Crisis Group. There are numerous currents of Islamism, only one of which is associated with terrorism. What they all have in common is that they found their activism on Islamic traditions and teachings as contained in scripture and authoritative commentaries (ICG 2005). Finally, we have to define the term “conflict”, as there is no standard defini-tion in the academic community. While most approaches concentrate on armed conflict alone, here, we apply a broader definition that is more focused on incompatible interests than on violence: “Conflict is present when two or more parties perceive that their interests are incompatible, express hostile attitudes, or pursue their interests through actions that damage the other par-ties. These parties may be individuals, small or large groups and countries.” (Lund 1997:2) This includes conflicts of very low intensity violence such as terrorist campaigns (as opposed to civil wars, for example) as well as re-pressed conflicts in authoritarian systems. Most of the authoritarian regimes concerned use a variety of forms of repressive violence to maintain their power, while oppositional forces have recourse to violence in seeking to challenge the status quo. However, these kinds of conflicts rarely reach the level of violence of what is usually understood as an armed conflict. This definition also takes account of the concept of conflict as used by Islamists, which covers crude violence such as the ethnically motivated massacre of Srebrenica, war and counter-insurgency, as well as the action of repressive and authoritarian states in the Middle East.

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3. Historical background – conflicts in the Muslim world The strengthening of Islamist movements in the Muslim world began in the late 1970s as a result of a crisis in secular postcolonial development projects in Arab countries. A lack of political participation, repression of the opposi-tion, social injustice resulting in high youth unemployment and a conflict over values between the Western-oriented elite and the majority population created fertile ground for the rise of Islamist mass movements. The Arab defeats in the Arab-Israeli wars, the Islamic revolution in Iran and the war in Afghanistan also contributed to a boost in Islamist opposition movements, while the regimes in these countries reacted with inconsistent policies – al-ternating waves of repression with efforts to play off Islamists against left wing parties. In the early 1990s, many regimes in the Arab world went through a phase of stagnation. While the rest of the world liberalised, Arab governments searched for arguments for their anachronistic authoritarian structures. Using a repressive strategy, the regimes tried to break their Islamist opponents, and ended up narrowing the political space and radicalis-ing the opposition. This was also a time when numerous volunteers from Afghanistan were returning home. Militarily trained and ideologically Islamist, they attempted to intensify the armed conflict against the regimes in their countries of origin and raised the potential for conflict between govern-ments and oppositions. This in turn led to a significant expansion of the secu-rity apparatuses in these countries. Parallel to that development, we can ob-serve the emergence of a strong critical tendency in the Arab media. Broad-casters such as Al Jazeera questioned the regimes’ tactics and legitimacy and expressed the widespread frustration of the countries’ populations, while the internet has provided a public space for all kinds of suppressed voices. As evident in the turmoil in the Muslim world triggered by the so-called Arab Spring movements, the deep-seated contradiction between incompatible con-ceptions of society is far from having been overcome. These conflicts not only affect the countries where they take place, but also resonate in the broader radical movement. They have shaped the mindset of many important figures in international radical networks – thereby creating political consciousness – as well as many “ordinary” radicals, such as those interviewed by Farhad Khosrokhavar (Khosrokhavar 2006) in French pris-ons, who had their “cognitive opening” during the events in Algeria follow-ing the electoral successes of the Islamist FIS in 1991. Even Osama bin Laden, the former leader of Al-Qaeda, and known for his international orien-tation with a special focus on Saudi Arabia as the heartland of Islam and the centre of gravity for Jihad, states that his attention was drawn to the struggle of Islam by the difficult situation of the Islamist opposition in his mother’s

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country of origin, Syria. He was already supporting them financially in the early 1980s (Kepel and Milelli 2006:30). It needs to be borne in mind, however, that the radical thoughts motivating young Muslims today often emerged under very specific conditions. Sayyid Qutb – an important figure in Islamist radical thinking – wrote while in prison, where he suffered torture and witnessed his friends being killed. An important element of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s (bin Laden’s successor as leader of Al-Qaeda) outlook is ascribed to his own experience in prison.1 Al-Qaeda al-ways incorporated these local battles against the so-called “near enemy” into its radical narrative, and the insurgencies against secular and semi-secular regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have probably become even more integrated into a globally orientated Jihadi structure today, since the intervention in Afghanistan has dispersed the Jihad Internationale (Hegghammer 2009, Sirseloudi 2008). 4. Armed conflicts and diaspora In the Western diaspora, only a very small percentage of immigrants are directly affected by the conflicts in their countries of origin, namely refugees and those who have suffered persecution in their home countries for their (Islamist) political opinions and activities. Ethnic and religious immigrant enclaves usually maintain relations with the populations from which they derive. In general this takes the form of financial contributions, but occasion-ally some young man in the “diaspora” might decide to “temporarily” return to his country of origin, in order to participate directly in the struggle. For the host country, this involvement does not present a direct danger. Nevertheless direct participation in an armed conflict regularly results in an intensification of radical tendencies in those who return. Conflicts may also be imported to the country of residence (e.g. the Kashmir issue in Britain or the Kurdish problem in Germany). Another aspect is that with freedom of speech, heated religio-political discussions that would never have been allowed to take place in the countries of origin proliferate, and this may encourage various kinds of radicalisation processes. Radical discourse may at times lead to a rejection of the host country, when it is considered to be a backer of repressive Arab regimes. Radical Islamists from various countries often apply for asylum because of persecution in their countries of origin. London became a notori-ous hub for exponents of radical Islam because a certain proportion of the Middle Eastern refugee population claimed asylum specifically on the basis of their Islamist political opinions and activities.

1 The still inspiring success of Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s “Black Book” describing torture under Mubarak’s regime, shows how long-lasting consequences of repression can resonate in radical ideology (McCants, Brachman et al. 2006:11, 265).

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In Europe many mosques still have a national flavour, with Tunisians, for example, attending mosques where there is a Tunisian imam. The same is true of Algerians, Moroccans, Libyans and Turks. The suggestion, therefore, that there exists “a transnational Islam divorced from its country of origin” does not always apply. Even in the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union, where the primary aim was to defend the global Ummah in the name of a transnational Islam, the fighters tended to remain divided along national lines (Sageman 2004). But there are notable exceptions at the extreme end of the radical spectrum. The perpetrators of the Madrid bombings, for example, included Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians, while today foreign fighter networks in Syria or Afghanistan are filled with converts and young people from all kinds of second and third-generation backgrounds (Cilluffo et al. 2010; Hegghammer 2013). This does not mean that they are not motivated by political developments in their (or their families’) countries of origin. But it seems that certain radicals have come to the conclusion that if they cannot combat their own governments, then the next best thing is to target govern-ments that are supporting the regimes “back home”. These radicals tend to take it as given that European governments provide unquestioning support to regimes in North Africa and the Middle East that are known to regularly commit human rights abuses. This view of Europe also fits in with the anti-Western sentiment that is as old as political Islam in the Arab world itself. 5. The narrative of a global fighting brotherhood Broadly speaking there are two ways in which local conflicts with Muslim participation are placed in the broader framework of a dualistic worldview. One is via the political critique of neo-imperialism, which concentrates on the advantages given to Israel by the United States and the Western attitude to-wards Chechnya, Afghanistan, etc. The other is a purely religious framing, focusing on the idea that Islam is in danger, not only in political terms, but also culturally (sexuality, women’s rights, recreational drug use, etc.) though, of course, we will also find forms in between these two poles (Sirseloudi 2006; 2008). Political Manichaeism is the logical extrapolation of the fight against regimes perceived as corrupt in a global(ised) context, as blaming Westernised elites often goes hand in hand with blaming the Western powers that back them. Shared grievances give rise to a growing consciousness of a coherent ex-ploited “Muslim world”. In militant networks, this perception of shared fate is further deepened by participation in military campaigns. “Brothers in arms” are bound together through their common experience of war (Afghani-stan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, and now Syria and/or Somalia) – by strong

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bonds of blood and sweat created in battle under the omnipresent danger of death. The purely religious framing of local conflicts legitimises the armed struggle against the West as a personal or collective religious duty to liberate Arab lands. This can mean overcoming foreign repression in countries with a ma-jority Muslim population (defensive), but it can also be interpreted in a broader sense as entailing the reconquest of all the land that ever lay under Muslim rule, such as large areas of Spain, Turkey, the Balkans and of course Jerusalem (offensive). The most radical approach is represented by the will to subjugate the whole world to the glory of Allah. An example of this was former Hizb ut-Tahrir member and founder of Al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri Mohammed calling for the Islamisation of Great Britain (Wiktorowicz 2005:9). For all these kinds of religious duties to fight, participation in Jihad is the test for true commitment to establishing Islam at any cost. Abdullah Azzam be-lieved that permanent armed struggle was necessary to bring the unified strength of Muslims to bear on their supposed enemies. This ideology is also a crude attempt to mimic the early struggles of the Prophet Mohammed by preparing for a promised apocalyptic holy war against the excommunicated “infidel regimes”. Nonetheless, the radical narrative inevitably includes a certain ambivalence. While, for example, the “takfirist” ideology of the Algerian GIA allowed the group to perpetrate acts of indiscriminate violence in the group’s home coun-try, their use of violence in Europe was characterised by high selectivity. The high costs involved with mounting international operations also meant that the strategy was abandoned as soon as it was clear that it would not pay off (Lia and Åshild 2001:47f.). Hizb ut-Tahrir also provides a good example: Although the group has a considerable capacity for terrorist violence (strong organisational resources, an international reach, solid finances, and a cellular structure that makes it relatively opaque to security services) and although violence might be in the group’s interests, it refrains from violence because of its understanding of the Muslim concept of da‘wah (Karagiannis 2006:275). The Jihadi narrative is broad, contains various streams and a fragmented reference base.2 Armed defence of the Ummah was already a salient feature of resistance to colonial conquest and often assumed the explicit form of Jihad, notably in Algeria, Libya and the Sudan. It was not, however, neces-sarily conceived as a Jihad in the traditional sense, even where it assumed a

2 For further reading see Kepel 2002.

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primarily military form. Since the provisional resolution of the political con-flict between Western powers and the Muslim world at the end of the colo-nial era in the 1950s and early 1960s, the revival of the Jihadi current within Sunni Islamic activism has occurred as a complex process that has exhibited four main, if overlapping, stages: a) the emergence of a doctrinaire Jihadi tendency in Egypt in the 1970s and 80s based on the radical thought of Say-yid Qutb, and particularly the concepts of takfir and jahiliyyah; b) the mobili-sation of Jihadi energies across the Muslim world for the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet presence and the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul (1979-1989); c) the protracted but unsuccessful insurgencies against allegedly un-Islamic regimes, notably in Algeria (since 1991) and Egypt (until 1997); and d) the Jihad launched by Al-Qaeda against the West in the late 1990s. While Jihad as “Holy War” is usually bound to a certain territory, bin Laden’s “fatwa against Jews and Crusaders” deterritorialises it and expands it to the whole world – clearly breaking with the classic tradition (Kepel and Milelli 2006:85ff.). The Jihad born out of the Afghan experience became the core narrative of the new radical Islamism (Escobar Stemmann 2006). At the same time as the fundamentalist doctrine of Salafism was evolving in Saudi Arabia, Jihadism was gradually gaining ground in Afghanistan, where the two tendencies eventually merged. The chief proponent of the resulting ideology was Abdullah Azzam, who was to have a decisive influence on Osama bin Laden. In his work “The Main Obligation of Muslims is to De-fend the Land of Islam”, he writes that Jihad is a moral obligation for all Muslims, the sixth pillar of faith (McCants, Brachman et al. 2006:41). Using bombastic and mystical language, he set out a vision of a world based on strict Salafism and martyrdom, stressing the deep and lasting humiliation suffered by the Ummah as a result of the actions of “Crusaders and Zionists”. His work was to have a decisive influence on Jihadi radicalism. Under bin Laden, the global proliferation of Jihadi Salafiyya was further consolidated. His declaration of war on the West – backed by the creation of the “World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders” in 1999 – caused groups that had originally been set up to provide logistical support to Al-Qaeda, and had originally sought to punish and purify their own societies, to now set their sights on the West. As far as contemporary radical thought is concerned, one has to take into account the immediate availability and connectivity of texts and thoughts in the globalised era of the internet. According to the radical narrative, Jihadists will fight for the unity of thought (rejecting any form of pluralism and de-mocracy), they will fight until every country in the Middle East is ruled only by Islamic law (with the Taliban state as the only state that has ever come close to their vision), contending that violence against their own people is not

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only necessary and religiously sanctioned, but indirectly the fault of the West, of Israel, and of apostate regimes. The Jihadi cause is best served when the conflict with local and foreign governments is portrayed as a conflict between Islam and the infidels: “Islam is under siege and only the Jihadis can lift it, and as countries in the Middle East are weak; they cannot remove ty-rants or reform their societies without the help of outsiders.” (McCants, Brachman et al. 2006). Islamist radicalisation is closely related to sympathy with brothers in faith who are perceived to suffer humiliation, be it in Bosnia, Palestine or Chech-nya, and this is mixed with feelings of personal humiliation and victimisation (Sirseloudi 2012). The young “Arab” of Maghreb origin in France or the “Paki” in the UK identifies with the humiliation of the Palestinian “chebab” by the Israeli army that he sees on TV or in the internet, and this often leads to anti-Semitism and a generalised resentment towards the West. In the relig-iously loaded interpretation, the West takes the role of “evil”. Such solidarity at a distance is only possible via modern communication techniques, which create the imaginary neo-Ummah that sometimes leads from virtual commu-nity to concrete involvement. In this neo-Ummah, the heroes of the Holy War are perceived as “saints” in a new pantheon, replacing the saints of popular Islam (Khosrokhavar 2006:371). The recent “Holy War” in Afghanistan, for example, began with the invasion of the Red Army in the winter of 1979. Foreign troops, an army of unbeliev-ers, conquered a Muslim country in another attack against the Ummah, the common nation of all Muslims. Radicals were later overjoyed when US President George W. Bush used the term “crusade” in one of his speeches concerning the war on terror (Wiktorowicz 2005:109). From a Jihadi point of view, the fight between civilisations began about a millennium ago with the crusades – from Pope Urban II’s call for Christians to come to the aid of their brothers in faith in Jerusalem in 1095 up to the withdrawal of the crusaders from the city of Akkon in 1291. Correctly speaking, one would have to go back to the year 632, the year of Prophet Mohammed’s death, after which Muslims conquered wide parts of the Byzantine Empire and subordinated the Sassanid Persians and Visigothic Spain. The latter territory, known as Al Andalus, was held for about 800 years. The Balearic islands, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus and parts of the South of Italy also came under Muslim con-trol. In 1389, the Turks defeated the European armies at the Battle of Kosovo, and marched on Constantinople six times before finally managing to seize it in 1453. In 1683, they stood at the gates of Vienna. The era of European colonialism, beginning with Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, marked a turn-ing of the tables, and most of the Muslim world was now conquered by Europeans. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France divided up the Arab dominions of the former Ottoman empire in the Levant.

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However, the two European powers failed to live up to the promises they had made both the Jews and the Arabs. Nowadays, this is interpreted by radicals as an early attempt to split the Arab world. It is compared with the supposed agreement between Tony Blair and George W. Bush to divide up the Middle East, breaking the unity of the Ummah (Kepel and Milelli 2006:46). Since then, in the view of radicals, Muslims have been waging their “recon-quest”, or the recapture of former territory, including much of Spain. They follow the official Jihad proclaimed by the penultimate Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed V Reshad, in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. At the time his call fell on deaf ears, but that changed after the Second World War, and especially after the foundation of Israel (Mekhennet, Sautter et al. 2006:38). The Palestinian struggle is the key recent event underlying the Jihadist apologia and worldview. The conflict against the Shah in Iran that led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 was the first major victory for the common Islamic cause. A Western-oriented regime had been defeated. The ideals of the West had proven to be futile and full of hollow promises, as social progress and prosperity did not materialise in countries following either Western path – capitalism or social-ism. Orthodox Muslim thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb evoked an Islamic revo-lution, appealing to the youth and explaining that neither socialism nor capi-talism had benefited Muslim societies. The global historical perspective that apparently binds small local Jihadi movements together is best represented by Osama bin Laden’s movement, and, thanks to his special reading of the last 50 years, he was the first to succeed in presenting himself as “commander-in-chief of Jihad” in the logical continuity and culmination of the 1,000 years of war between civilisations. When it comes to the regimes in the Middle East, the radical Islamist ideolo-gists do not have a hard time finding evidence of injustice. The countries concerned are relatively undemocratic, suffer from many socio-economic problems and lack the means to offer any sort of hopeful future to their popu-lations. In their struggle against Islamist movements they seek – and often receive – support from “infidel” Western powers. Jihadists also reproach the West for tolerating Israeli violence against the Palestinians, on the one hand, while also interfering in the region without the approval of the majority of the people (AIVD 2002:29). This struggle, which focuses mainly on the United States, is interpreted as the religious duty (either collective or individual) of every real Muslim. Al-Qaeda gives tactical advice on how to wage it, their leitmotif being: “When the powerful elites in the US do not listen, they have to be given painful lessons.” In this vision, everything fits a coherent picture: the crusades, colonialism, the creation of the Israeli state, wars in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, Chechnya and now Syria, Soma-lia and Nigeria. For the Jihadists, these wars represent an imperialist cam-

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paign against the Muslim world. Zawahiri expresses it as the apocalyptic fight between good and evil, in which any form of violence is permitted, anywhere in the world: “The enemies of Islam call us Islamic fundamental-ists, even Russia has joined their coalition, which includes the UN, the servile governments of Muslim peoples, multinational enterprises, international communication systems and international news agencies and NGOs used to spy out the Muslim world, do missionary work or smuggle weapons. But this coalition has to face a fundamentalist alliance, consisting of the Jihad move-ments of different countries liberated through Jihad.”3 The influence of this kind of thinking on young Muslims in Europe is evi-dent. Many closely follow international developments in the Islamic world on Arab satellite TV stations and European websites. The regular media are also often quite critical of political developments and conflicts that affect Muslims worldwide. In addition to this, the internet provides a constant flow of un-evaluated and often very emotive reports and assessments of the alleged oppression and abuse of Muslims in many countries. As a consequence of this, young European Muslims could easily come to the conclusion that the Ummah is being placed under severe pressure from oppression and persecu-tion. 6. Propaganda Besides providing a religious legitimation for violence against the West, armed conflicts present opportunities for the production of propaganda vid-eos. These can create heroes and present clear-cut friend-and-foe distinctions. At the same time, film-making is not only a valuable instrument for radicali-sation and recruitment, it also plays an important role in fundraising activities for militant groups, nurturing the conflict and contributing indirectly to radi-calisation. Scenes of combat filmed by the mujaheddin frequently contain shocking images, such as the murder of prisoners. Despite the crudeness of these images, they attract support and new members. Jihadists seem to con-sider videos of beheadings and other acts of cruelty as a necessary means of implanting terror in the hearts of their enemies, and evoking sympathy among potential followers. In such videos, the radicals’ arguments are often strengthened by the use of images demonstrating the suffering of weak and innocent Muslim women and children. Since the war in Iraq, the volume of propaganda available on the internet has increased rapidly, whilst becoming both more professional and more brutal. Executions are shown in full length and the cries of victims can be heard in their full intensity. At the same time, young Muslims in Europe are incited to distrust the Quran interpretation of

3 Extract from Zawahiri “Knights under the Banner of the Prophet” in: (Kepel and Milelli 2006:352ff.), author’s translation.

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their parents and their local sheikhs and to follow their emotions towards Jihad. 7. Military interventions and radicalisation Empirical analysis of international interventions as triggers for terrorist cam-paigns shows that the majority of terrorist attacks undertaken in reaction to international interventions were actually carried out by groups that had no apparent stake in the conflict (Kjøk, Hegghammer et al. 2003:30). Radicalisa-tion mostly affects indirectly involved groups and individuals rather than stakeholders. The intensity of reactive radicalisation processes depends on the perceived political legitimacy of a given intervention in the Muslim world, the level of force used and the aversion to military casualties of the various allies. In this regard, large powers tend to be suspected of having imperialist ambitions and of pursuing only their own interests, whereas lesser powers participating in the effort often remain shielded. Apart from those factors, the best predictor of terrorist campaigns related to military interven-tions seems to be the existence of a potential terrorist infrastructure with a stake in the conflict or a strong Manichean ideology. But it should also be kept in mind that what matters to the terrorist response is not necessarily the legitimacy of the intervention among the general population, but how it is perceived among extremist groups with terrorist capabilities (Kjøk, Hegghammer et al. 2003:76). Radicals who are willing to use violent means exploit these conflicts in seeking to legitimate their own hate campaigns without taking the risk of being drawn into the original conflict. In this arena, Islamists are assuming the role occupied by radical leftists in the 1970s and 1980s. Far more significant than military interventions in the wider Muslim world are conflicts between country of origin and country of residence. They have the potential to cause deep conflicts of loyalty in the migrant population. With international (especially military) involvement of European countries in ever more local conflicts, this is a matter that is set to grow in significance. Past evidence can be drawn from French involvement in the Algerian civil war, in which the former colonial power’s support of Algeria in its fight against radical Islamists during the 1980s triggered the terrorist campaigns of the GIA in France and gave birth to a new radicalism in France. The UK’s anti-terror campaign in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has radicalised certain parts of the Muslim diaspora in Britain, or the demonstrations of radi-cal Shiites in Germany against its support for the Israeli campaign against Lebanese Hizbollah in the summer of 2006 are similar cases.

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The most important finding of our research into radicalisation in Europe is that the groups who are most active in reacting violently to Western interven-tions have no direct stakes in a given conflict. They use such interventions to legitimise their violent acts. Their engagement in violence and radicalisation efforts also depends on their capabilities; even non-violent radicalisation requires a degree of organisational infrastructure. Such groups, which lack bonds to broader society, have no scruples about intensifying violence, whereas terrorist groups that are bonded to ethnic and religious minorities and have real stakes in conflicts will tend to show consideration for the socie-ties to which they belong, and thus do not feel free to escalate violence to the same extent. This minimal level of restraint is less present in transnational terrorist networks, whose members are not accountable to anybody for their actions. The only principles they follow are the maxims of their radical narra-tive and the consensus of their own cells, which constitutes family, homeland and often suicide squad in one (Waldmann, Sirseloudi et al. 2009). Still, direct spillover might become a more serious problem for future inter-ventions in cases where the parties involved have developed significant ter-rorist capabilities in foreign countries. A further risk is that the intervention might stimulate ideological changes within a movement and give it a more global worldview and strategy – as happened to Osama bin Laden in the years following the Gulf War. Threats against Germany, for example, in-creased directly after that country broadened the military mandate of its NATO contingent in Afghanistan to include participation by German Tor-nado aircraft in the offensive strategy in South Afghanistan. Previously, the German contribution had been limited to security- and nation-building activi-ties in Kabul and North Afghanistan. In Europe, the war in Bosnia illustrates exemplarily the radicalisation effects of external conflicts. In the name of the protection of Muslims, it triggered profound radicalisation processes in European countries via propaganda and support activities (BVT 2006:70). German security services, for example, observed a common trait among many radicals: many seemed to have been initially radicalised in the 1990s after the first Gulf War, a process that gained new momentum after the Serbian massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica (Mekhennet, Sautter et al. 2006:54). Bosnia connected the international Jihad with Europe. Mainly because of their geographical proximity, Germany and Italy played an important role in the recruitment efforts (Kohlmann 2004). The first videos showing German Muslims fighting in Bosnia followed, and propaganda material appeared portraying Serbs as representatives of Christi-anity and the eternal enemy of Muslims. In mosques in southern Germany, not only was financial support organised, but direct recruitment also took place. Radicals even maintained a hospital where injured fighters were looked after. These veterans’ networks later played a significant role in the

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radicalisation of the so called Sauerlandgruppe, who were responsible for the foiled 2007 Ramstein bomb plot. At present, transnational networks in Europe are mainly focussing on support and recruitment for Jihad in Africa and the Levant, while Europe has become an important logistical centre that is critical to the continuation of the strug-gle. The ongoing violence in Africa and the Levant has given existing net-works new impetus and sparked an intensification of their activities. At the same time, the various radical networks in Europe show an increasing ten-dency towards interconnectedness and cooperation. The fact that migrant communities are already linked by transnational social networks facilitates the process of recruiting their members into transnational organisations. Stud-ies of recruitment have shown that the most important precondition for par-ticipation in an organisation seems to be one’s location within a given social network, as recruitment is usually initially based on friendship, personal acquaintance or family connections (Porta 1995; Sageman 2004). Furthermore, Benedict Anderson has already pointed to the role that newspa-pers, the development of vernacular languages, and national communication infrastructures have had on the rise of nationalism and the development of national identities (Anderson 1983). Thanks to new global communication technologies that enable the instantaneous dissemination of ideas and infor-mation around the world, the relationship between national cultures and terri-torial spaces is becoming more tenuous. Satellite dishes and the internet al-low individuals access to the media and information sources of their choice, be it BBC, Al Jazeera, a local broadcasting company or the internet. They experience a simultaneity of information that, as Anderson argues, creates “imagined communities”.4 In this way, the Muslim diaspora communities in general, and the Islamist associations in Europe in particular, keep in touch with their home countries as well as with each other, and have acquired a marked transnational character in their organisation and outlook. 8. Veterans and foreign fighters A serious type of spillover from local armed conflicts is that of war veterans who continue to pursue violent acts outside their local theatre of war. Veter-ans possess fighting skills and frequently have a certain “reputation” among their supporters. Veterans from the “Afghan Jihad” against the Soviet Union have played important roles in the formation of Al-Qaeda and in sustaining transnational Jihadist networks. In Europe it seems that these fighters and other Islamist radicals who came to Bosnia from various Muslim countries

4 For the role of the internet in international Jihadism see Weiman (2004), Jenkins (2006) and Steinberg (2012).

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were crucial in the establishment and maintenance of Jihadist networks all over the continent (Kohlmann 2004; Nesser 2008). These transnational veterans have their roots in organisations that focused initially on overthrowing regimes in their own countries; however, during the war in Afghanistan some adopted Al-Qaeda’s globally-orientated narrative. Arab, Asian and North African mujaheddin got to know one another and forged bonds of mutual trust in Afghan and Pakistani training camps, or on the battlefields of Afghanistan – and later Chechnya and Bosnia. The experi-ences and friendships formed there bind these networks together even more closely than their shared religious dogma and their perception of a common enemy. Since the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan in 1989, the out-break of civil war and the conquest of Kabul by the Taliban in 1992, several tens of thousands of Muslims have received paramilitary training in Afghani-stan. Veterans who had fought the Soviet army and left Afghanistan and Pakistan had difficulties in readapting to civilian life and began looking for new battlegrounds. Some went back to their countries of origin and radical-ised the local Islamist scene. Others did not return home, and became nomads of Jihad, travelling from place to place fighting against the West. They par-ticipated in new campaigns in Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya or applied for asylum in Western Europe. During this time the alliance with the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and Pakistan remained intact. However, the euphoria of Afghanistan turned out to be short lived, as these fighters were no match for the sophisticated security machinery of the North African and Middle Eastern regimes. The Libyan authorities eradicated their militant Islamists and potential supporters in a ruthless campaign during the mid-1990s. The Tunisian regime took a similar approach, allowing no space for anyone with an Islamist agenda. Algeria was a rather different case, partly because of the large number of returning Algerian Afghan veterans, but also because there was enough popular support to sustain a civil war for over a decade. Morocco was somewhat unique, as it seems there were fewer Moroc-cans involved in the first Afghan-Soviet war, and the monarchy was able to contain the Islamic movement at this time. Current developments triggered by the so called Arab Spring mirror these early tensions. As a result of the ongoing repression across the region, many of the veterans not killed by their own regimes have either fled to Afghanistan or to Europe, where they were often granted political asylum. However, this did not deter them from continuing to support the cause from their adopted homes. Some assisted by facilitating transit for new recruits to go and train in Afghanistan or to fight in Bosnia and other locations, and for many of these individuals,

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Europe seemed to be the most obvious place to go to next. Europe offered them the security from being handed over to their own governments, as well as the freedom to mix with their own communities and follow their religious and political convictions without fear of detection. This was also true for the more extreme elements, who wished to continue the struggle and identified with the Al-Qaeda narrative. These transnational militants, who often have multiple citizenships (or no citizenship at all), no longer associate their strug-gle with a specific state or nation, but rather travel from one Jihad to another, and identify themselves with a sort of “imaginary Ummah”. Once established in the West, veterans (returning foreign fighters) play an important role as recruiters for radical networks. Many recruiters have mili-tary experience in peripheral Jihad conflicts, i.e. a mujaheddin background. Most have undergone some military and ideological training, although only a few have actually participated in fighting. For many, their training took place in Afghanistan, which creates a link to Al-Qaeda. These men are often capa-ble of inspiring admiration, respect and a sense of leadership. They also tend to have some experience in the field of religious doctrine, and herewith arouse the interest and admiration of potential recruits. They reveal their involvement in the global Jihad by demonstrating their knowledge of radical Islam to small groups and by acting as guides at summer camps for young Muslims. However, recruiters tend to have a limited knowledge of Islamic belief. The central message they generally seek to convey is that Islam is being pushed into a defensive position by the enemy, by which they mean the United States, Israel, the West and, in fact, by all non Muslims, and that, as a good Muslim, one must fight for the just Islamic cause by means of Jihad (AIVD 2002:18). This new self-proclaimed elite, devoted to an aggressive radical Islam, see themselves as a heroic avant-garde; in their fight against the West, they have proved that they have no fear of death. Their ideology reflects the apparent necessity for a clear and simple vision. While other Muslims are presented as victims of idolatry and seduction by the West, this self-proclaimed elite in-vents its own truth. The veteran militants who fought against the Soviet Un-ion in the 1980s and the radicals who trained in Jihad camps in Afghanistan and other staging grounds of global Jihad during the 1990s function as gate-keepers to vulnerable young Muslims willing to join radical networks. They provide knowledge of how to join militant groups and where to go to receive the necessary training to become a Holy Warrior. Sometimes they are asked to keep the recruits in the West and to prepare them for violent actions here. In view of this, it can be observed that the role of recruiters in the West has become more important as they have grown increasingly independent of Al-Qaeda’s core in the decentralized Jihadi network. The increasing influence of local recruiters extends not only to the choice of potential recruits to the

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movement, but also to the selection of who will undergo training abroad, and eventually come back with plans to commit terrorist crimes here. 9. Initial empirical results from the analysis of biographies of Euro-

pean Jihadists and the radical narratives they follow As part of the broader collaborative research effort realized in the TERAS-INDEX project,5 the collection of biographical data of Jihadists operating in Europe seeks to shed light on the five channels through which external con-flicts impact on their radicalisation process: 1. the provision of training camps where “foreign fighters” from all over the world can put their belief in Jihad into practice and from which they can take it back to their home coun-tries, 2. the establishment of veterans’ networks in Europe and abroad, 3. the development of the radical narrative based on “legitimate” defensive jihad, 4. the creation of “war” propaganda, 5. the creation of a collective identity and “heroic” role models for vulnerable youth (Sirseloudi 2006). Basic data such as age, gender, family and ethnic background and relations to relevant players in conflict settings have been collected in a database. For some clusters of individuals, the database records are supplemented by quali-tative biography analysis. The evaluation of these biographies follows a pro-cedural analytic approach, as we assume that radicalisation takes place as a process within which external conflicts manifest different relevancies. In order to select the relevant clusters of individuals from the roughly 1,300 entries in the data set (Jihadists from Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Great Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway) for deeper analysis, we produced graphical representations of European Jihadi networks. Figure: The Sauerland Network in Germany

5 www.ifsh.de/1/projects/bmbf-projects

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The more densely connected networks do cluster around groups involved in prominent terrorist plots (e.g. the Ramstein bomb plot planned by the Sauer-land cell in Germany6 and the London and Madrid bombings), associated supporter groups, and recruitment networks for “foreign fighter networks” in Iraq. Qualitative examination of the biographies of individuals involved in such clusters reveals relevant relations between biographical trajectories and the influence of external conflicts. These are the starting points for more intensive analysis. In a first evaluation of the 1,253 entries in the TERAS-INDEX dataset for the last 20 years,7 we see that 244 European Jihadists had direct relations to the Al-Qaeda core, 107 maintained links to Northern African groups (48 to Groupe Islamique Armé, GIA, 38 to Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, GSPC, now known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM – both of which operating in Algeria – as well as 21 to the Moroccan Groupe

6 While some ideological justifications for the prioritization of certain theatres within the interna-tional militant Jihad are provided by the Jihadi narrative, e.g. in the writings of contemporary Al-Qaeda ideologue Abu Mus'ab al Suri, the relevance of the various conflicts can also be deter-mined empirically by examining the biographies of European Jihadists in order to rate the rela-tive importance of external conflicts such as Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghani-stan/Pakistan, and now Somalia and Syria. 7 We have collected 318 entries for the UK, 255 for Germany, 193 for Spain, 135 for France, 62 for Italy, 49 for Belgium, 30 for Sweden and smaller numbers for other European countries, as well as categories such as “unknown”, “international”, “transnational”.

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Islamique Combattant Marocain, GICM), 68 were connected to terrorist groups in Iraq (38 to Ansar al Islam, 14 to Al Tawhid and 16 to Al-Qaeda in the Land of the two rivers), 57 to Uzbek groups (29 to the Islamic Jihad Un-ion, IJU, and 28 to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU), 26 to the Taliban in Afghanistan and 17 to the German Taliban Mujaheddin (DTM) in the Afghan-Pakistani border region, 14 to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT, a militant Islamist group based in Pakistan and operating in India), and 14 to Al-Shabaab in Somalia. The current foreign fighter flow to Syria and Africa, which is still not adequately represented by the data, as not all relations have been added, shows that participation in violent conflict abroad is a main driv-ing force for Jihadists in Europe. Figure: Direct relations to foreign terrorist groups8 Al-Qaeda core 244 Groupe Islamique Armé 48 Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat / Al-Qaeda in the Is-lamic Maghreb

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Moroccan Groupe Islamique Com-battant Marocain

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Ansar al Islam 38 Al Tawhid 14 Al-Qaeda in the Land of the two rivers

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Islamic Jihad Union 29 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan 28 Taliban in Afghanistan 26 German Taliban Mujaheddin 17 Lashkar-e-Tayyiba 14 Al-Shabaab 14 In Germany almost 80% of Jihadists had links to terrorist groups in non-German conflict settings. Beginning with Bosnia, the numbers grew during the Iraq war (from 2003), culminating in Waziristan, where a German group established its own small battle force and a German-speaking media wing that is still active today.9 This seems to verify to a certain degree the hypothe-

8 Total number of Jihadists included in the database: 1,253. 9 The current flow of foreign fighters to Syria (according to Hegghammer [2013] there are roughly 5,000 Sunni foreign fighters in Syria, of which 1,500 to 2,000 come from European countries) is not reflected in the database, as counting using open-source data stopped in 2012, while the massive influx of foreign fighters to Syria only began in that year with the involvement of Jihadist groups such as Jahbat al Nusra or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

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sis that training camps and the opportunity to participate in real conflict set-tings have a self-perpetuating effect on Jihadism in Europe, as the myths and propaganda flowing from these conflict settings are of course a starting point for the radicalisation of the next wave of recruiters.10 Jihadist veterans of these wars – those who were able to return – were active in the establishment and expansion of the radical networks, acting as hubs and gatekeepers for new waves of recruitment. In Germany, many of the active groups can be traced back to the early Bosnian mujaheddin networks, in which Reda Seyam, who is still active in the mobilisation for Jihad in Syria today, was a key source of inspiration. The manipulative use of external conflicts for the construction of a collective global Jihadi identity is an ongoing effort. Yet the Jihadi narrative is chal-lenged by other global religious movements wherever it is not represented on the ground by real and accessible actors. Pure lone-wolf radicalisation is rare, and Jihadist narratives tend to be received by small groups of peers, with group dynamics contributing to radicalisation and the justification of vio-lence. At that early stage of radicalisation, the external conflicts are perceived as showing the need for permanent struggle, while it is more the mutual en-couragement of group members that pulls individuals deeper into the radical movement. The analysis of videos targeting German audiences show that German military involvement in Afghanistan has enabled a much more inten-sive mobilisation towards a distant conflict setting than conflicts without German involvement such as Iraq or Libya ever did. Today the established narrative of the religious duty to fight, the existence of radical networks throughout Europe, and the geographic proximity of Syria mean that the country has become an opportune destination for a new generation of foreign fighters, beginning a new cycle of Jihadi radicalisation in Europe and abroad. From qualitative analysis of biographical data, we see that in the early phase of what Wiktorowicz calls a cognitive opening11 – which may be an inde-

10 “Abdullah Azzam, former spiritual leader of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, was already pursuing the goal of creating a brotherhood that would obliterate any ethnic or regional distinc-tions consisting of holy Muslim warriors trained in waging military campaigns and instructed in religion and unity. The continuing fight of this vanguard is necessary for the creation as well as for the maintenance of the imagined community of a global Ummah. It even creates its own martyrs who fulfil the role of quasi-saints in the new religion of takfir and Jihad.” (Sirseloudi, 2006: 7) 11 Khosrokhavar calls it an archetypical event in a person’s life (Khosrokhavar 2006:384ff.). It can be a political event with a great impact on the individual, or an event in everyday life with symbolic significance where he or she reaches a decision about the antagonism of the west towards the Islamic world. An oft-cited trigger event for the decision to join radical or Jihadi movements – even among those who are not particularly religious – was the 1992 military coup in Algeria, which represented violence against Islam, and a jeopardising of Islam and the Ummah by the impious West. Wiktorowicz’ concept of “cognitive opening” can be a traumatic biographical event, but it can also be produced intentionally. In order to attract new recruits, groups can bring about a cognitive opening through discussions and efforts to inform Muslims about conflicts in places such as the Palestinian territories, Kashmir and Bosnia (Wiktorowicz

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pendent individual realisation, but may also be fostered through the outreach activities of radical movements – the credibility of the messenger plays a greater role than the credibility of the message, i.e. social factors, such as group dynamics are more important than the perception of injustice and global Muslim victimhood. External conflicts come into play when young Muslims come in contact with former activists (veterans) or when Jihadi propaganda provides role models for young Muslims to become mujaheddin. Identification with such role models and their purportedly altruistic aims and duties can result in very rapid radicalisation of individuals who are vulner-able and seeking meaning in their lives. The subsequent processes of sociali-sation, value internalisation and, ultimately, joining (Wiktorowicz 2005) are facilitated by opportunity and access to radical networks. In the case of Arid Uka, the only successful Jihadist killer in Germany, who describes himself having been radicalized by the war crimes of US soldiers in Iraq, daily en-counters with US soldiers at his place of work at Frankfurt Airport sufficed as radicalizing context; he had no personal contact to radical groups. Similar prominent cases of Jihad-inspired terrorists whose motivation clearly derived from wars in the Muslim world with Western participation include the cases of Mohammed Merah in France and Michael Olumide Adebolajo in UK. They both killed soldiers and sought to justify their killings by referring to a war paradigm, asserting that they were defending a global Muslim commu-nity, preventing further Muslim victims, taking revenge and punishing West-ern powers involved in conflicts in the Muslim world. Concerning the contextualisation of external conflicts in the Jihadi narrative, analysis of the justification of Jihadi violence in German texts shows that the concept of the fight against the distant enemy, as already elaborated by Ab-dullah Azzam, remains the main feature of Jihadi argumentation.12 While the legitimacy of violence based on this foundation is no longer challenged, the majority of more recent texts and videos produced today are distinguished by containing appeals to Muslims to fulfil their duty to participate in Jihad.13 10. Conclusion Islamist radicalisation in Europe has been and in many cases still is in the hands of people involved in conflicts in their countries of origin or in other

2005:20f.). This is needed because “it shakes certainty in previously accepted beliefs and renders an individual more receptive to the possibility of alternative views and perspectives.” It also generates a sense of crisis and urgency. One common method used in bringing about a cognitive opening is the use of “moral shock”, in which rhetorical appeals foster “the participation of previously unconnected, concerned citizens with similar ideologies” (Wiktorowicz 2005:21). 12 See Sirseloudi (2012), Steinberg (2013). 13 See for example the English-language propaganda magazine „Inspire“ or autobiographical texts such as “Mein Weg nach Jannah” by Eric Breininger aka Abdul Ghaffar El Almani (2010).

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countries with Muslim majority populations. This came about either through people coming from countries with conflicts and transferring these conflicts to the new country of residence while providing support to factions in the country of origin, or via mujaheddin fleeing the battleground where they had fought in the name of Islam against the “infidels”. The biographies of Ji-hadists have given us hints about the conflicts that shaped their motivation, allowing conclusions to be drawn about how they see their enemies and what final aims they pursue. In conflict and terrorism research there is widespread agreement that interna-tional terrorism frequently originates in local armed conflicts (Sirseloudi 2005). Local insurgents may turn to international terrorism as a substitute tactic when overwhelmed by a government’s repressive response. They may also try to provoke an international escalation with the enemy regime’s for-eign supporters (Lia and Åshild 2001). In line with this reasoning, quantita-tive studies have shown that states that those who intervene in local conflicts, e.g. by supporting a neighbouring state in fighting a separatist movement, are likely to experience a backlash in the form of higher levels of domestic ter-rorism (Marshall 2002). As long as conflict in the Muslim world is regulated violently, be it through violent repression or armed opposition, these conflicts will produce embit-tered individuals who will seek refuge in a global community. There, the fight against their former oppressors and their backers takes the form of reli-gious Jihad and becomes the ultimate purpose of life. This trend will only be weakened when more and more Muslim countries find ways to allow the participation of Islamists in their political systems – without giving up secu-lar principles such as democracy and rule of law. Promotion of such reforms in Europe – if managed in a way that makes it appear credible – could change the existing image of a Western world that backs repressive regimes in order to exploit Muslims by fomenting strife between different groups using the classic divide-and-rule strategy of former colonial powers. However, radicalisation processes are not only determined by the “hard facts” on the ground. In a mass media world, the transmitted image also cre-ates resentment and triggers hatred. As Western cultural hegemony is losing ground in the face of the emerging independent Arab mass media and the open accessibility of the internet, the symbolism and interpretation of con-flicts and history are becoming increasingly contested. Terrorism is a strategy that is used to influence people’s “hearts and minds”; others call it the propa-ganda of the deed: the act of violence always conveys a message. The fram-ing of conflicts in the Jihadi narrative therefore also contributes to the poten-tial for radicalisation. Jihadism interprets militant Jihad as an individual reli-gious duty, and often appeals directly to Muslims (and not infrequently con-

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verts) in Europe. The radical narrative of global Jihad is growing in signifi-cance when compared to direct involvement in local conflicts, and identifica-tion with this narrative often ultimately leads to militant engagement, as seen in current foreign fighter dynamics. Conflict with the potential to be framed as defensive Jihad will continue to attract young fighters from all over the world, whether frustrated members of diaspora communities who identify with the global Ummah, or people who feel betrayed and oppressed by the regimes in their Muslim countries of origin. Open armed conflicts – in contrast to the repressed internal conflicts within the Muslim world – give these individuals the opportunity to create cohesive networks of people who trust and help each other in any given situation, provided that these (often untrained) warriors survive the fights. Fighting shoulder to shoulder against the world’s most powerful armies in Afghani-stan, Iraq, and now Syria brings the radical militant brotherhood dreamt of by Abdullah Azzam closer to realisation. This global network, integrating all conflicts involving Muslims, and especially the ones in which powerful Western armies can be fought with guerrilla tactics, attrition and terrorist attacks, will gain in importance and strength, because the pacification of the key conflicts is nowhere in sight. Furthermore, these conflicts – apart from enjoying greater religious legitimacy when framed as defensive Jihad, as opposed to simply struggles against the political regimes in Muslim countries – are producing images and myths that help to create a self-perpetuating ideological justification for the struggle. As we continue to analyse and interpret the empirical data elaborated in the TERAS-INDEX, it is becoming increasingly clear that the term “homegrown terrorism” neglects the important relation of this phenomenon of political violence to external conflicts, while also underestimating the transnationality of Jihadism. The collected biographies reflect the relevance of both the global Jihadist narrative and group dynamics such as veteran networks and training camps. The growing numbers of foreign fighters provide hesitant radicals with viable mujaheddin role models. If they survive the fight, they have the potential to become key nodes in recruitment networks for new conflicts or to contribute to the global radical movement by producing propaganda and legitimation for their violent strategy. For Germany this means the more we become militarily involved in external conflicts in future, the more we will have to cope with spillover effects, manifesting themselves in a) Jihadists from Germany fighting our army side by side with international mujaheddin, b) foreign fighters from Germany filling the ranks of Jihadi movements and producing mobilizing propaganda from the battle zones in the German lan-guage as well as possibly coming back and perpetuating the confrontation in Germany.

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