Counter-radicalisation: Helping kids to resist Islamic State allure

A supplied image obtained Sunday, March, 8, 2015 shows CCTV vision of two teenage brothers suspected of trying to fly to the Middle East to fight. Customs officials and a member of the counter-terrorism unit check the belongings of the two brothers. (AAP Image/ Sydney Airport) NO ARCHIVING

Geoff Lazarus was a relief teacher at a high school in Canberra when he encountered three boys in the canteen talking angrily and openly about Israel and the US. The three were aged about 15. One was very frustrated about the treatment of Muslim people in the Middle East and expressed a hatred of Israel and the US.

“He unleashed extraordinary views about Israel and Israel’s treatment of Muslim people and how the Jews were all going to ‘get theirs’,” Lazarus tells Inquirer. “He expressed hatred for the United States and said they would ‘get theirs’ as well. That boy said he was determined to get back and take revenge against these people and these countries for what they had done to Muslim people.”

The other two boys were agreeing and nodding, and appeared to support strongly what he was saying. Lazarus did not tell them he was Jewish or that his nephew, Australian trade official Craig Senger, was killed in the bombing of Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel in July 2009. But, alarmed, he spoke to other teachers about what he’d heard. It quickly became clear, he said, that the teachers at the school had no idea that some of their pupils held jihadist views and the school had no mechanism or capacity to deal with the situation, to counsel the students and set them on a path to more sensible and balanced views about conflict in the Middle East.

This exchange happened about a year ago, not long after the Islamic State terror group swept across the north of Iraq and captured the major city of Mosul. Lazarus says at the time he feared the boys would be vulnerable to recruitment by extremists.

Teachers, along with federal and state police and other frontline agencies, are being given special training to help them identify men and women at risk of being radicalised by terrorist recruiters.

There have been successes at pulling young people back from the Islamist orbit. In Sydney early this year, privately sponsored youth workers noticed that a small number of young men who had been living rough had gravitated to a local Muslim group and adopted Islamic names and prayer hats.

The homeless youths might have been responding to acts of kindness from the mosque but the youth workers believed the contact could have been the first step in the recruitment of foreign fighters for the war in Iraq and Syria.

It is a good example of where the highly complex process of radicalising young men and women can begin at pavement level in Australia’s cities with carefully focused personal attention to vulnerable individuals.

As it turned out, the local youth group’s tiny team of workers tell Inquirer how they used down-to-earth techniques they’d developed across 30 years working the streets and parks of Sydney to seek out and care for young people who’d fallen on hard times.

The youth workers gathered a group of peers of the young men to engage with them and to persuade them to step back from what the workers feared was a radical path that might have taken them to the Islamic State terror group’s headquarters in Raqqa, Syria.

“We’ve seen Muslim kids and Christian kids recruited into these Islamic extremist groups — it’s not just Islamic kids,” one worker says.

She says the young people were not necessarily being recruited through a religious doctrine. “They’re being recruited because people prey on their vulnerability.”

And while the public focus has been on radical Islam, security agencies say individuals and groups of concern also include white supremacists.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan tells Inquirer that a range of government employees are being given comprehensive instruction on how better to read warning signs and divert those at risk away from whatever radical path they are on. The course was prepared by Monash University and is based on the work of terrorism specialist Greg Barton. It is being implemented under the $40 million Countering Violent Extremism Program.

Bodies being given additional training include the Department of Corrective Services, the Department for Child Protection and Family Support, the Department of Education, the Office of Multicultural Interests, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, and police forces across the nation.

“There is no single path towards radicalisation and no single personality type, religion, culture or sex that gives us an indication someone is vulnerable to radicalisation,” Keenan says.

It used to take some time for an individual to be persuaded to accept the use of violence as a means of pursuing political, ideological or religious goals, but access to extremist propaganda online is fast-tracking this process. Police and security agencies are concerned about the speed at which they are brought to the point where they might carry out a terrorist attack. This gives authorities much less time to get on to them.

Keenan says effective early intervention requires the combined efforts of the whole community, with parents, community organisations, educators, governments and police working towards a common goal.

“We must become better at noticing those warning signs that could indicate someone is falling prey to violent ideology. Of course, the close family and friends of someone becoming radicalised are most likely to notice changes first.”

It is crucial, he says, that the families, friends and communities of someone who may be falling into the extremist orbit have somewhere to go for help.

“There is no single path towards radicalisation, and no single personality type, religion, culture or sex that gives us an indication that someone is vulnerable to radicalisation,” Keenan says.

In May, former ambassador to Indonesia Greg Moriarty was named Australia’s first counter-terrorism co-ordinator. He tells Inquirer early intervention and community-based solutions work best, but these are complex and multifaceted.

“The answers are often in the hands of small, individual community groups that find themselves in the frontline and the government has to work out how best to support them,” Moriarty says. “This is incredibly complex work. The radicalisation path can be different for every individual and it is important not to think that we can impose a template across the country, across the community, across age groups or across socioeconomic backgrounds.

“How is it that some people who are in exactly the same environment, maybe in the same family or living in very similar circumstances, so their external environment is very similar, they might be going to the same place of worship or subject to the same external influences, some may go down this path and others not?

“Who is in the best position to identify a potential jihadist and then to play a useful role in diverting them from that path? What can they do and where do they look for help?”

Community groups and others have to be provided with the skills and the tools they need to identify potential jihadists and turn them back, Moriarty says.

“An enormous amount of work goes into this,” he says. “It’s about building community resilience, positive peer groups, giving educational opportunities, or it might be about employment or the working environment.”

Moriarty says although there is no consensus on what causes people to radicalise, there are signs that show someone is on that path.

“People become intolerant of different points of view and can become very strict about beliefs,” he says. “They may use more ideological language in daily life and pull away from usual friendship groups and activities. Sometimes there is increasing conflict with family and friends over political and ideological issues.”

Sometimes individuals integrate with a smaller, like-minded group. Some draw attention to their beliefs through vandalism of property or other such protests.

Moriarty says he is struck by the willingness of the Islamic community to work with authorities. “They do not want to see this problem afflicting their community and destroying families,” he says.

The messages have to come from credible role models but the government is conscious of the need to ensure steps it takes to support Muslim community leaders do not have the opposite effect of undermining them, he adds.

“There are many credible, successful, dynamic Muslim community leaders who are doing an enormous amount of work in this field and the government wants to support them rather than take any steps that might complicate the environment they are operating in,” he says. “There is no point in getting an incredibly respected religious authority if that’s not what is going to count for some of these kids. They’ve already decided that’s not for them.

“If people are drifting away from a mainstream interpretation of their religion you have to find a credible figure to engage with them. It might be a teacher or a community figure or someone who has succeeded so that the kids say: ‘I may not agree with you but I do respect you.’ ”

In its Gen Y Jihadists report released this week, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says with a few exceptions most Australian jihadists shows no sign of mental illness playing a role in their recruitment. “Our assessment shows a group of people clearly failing to gain satisfaction in mainstream Australian life,” it says.

ASPI says it is striking how many people can become redicalised without their families knowing. Some have fallen for the same sort of careful grooming techniques used by pedophiles, it says.

Many have had some vulnerability that made them susceptible to extremist ideology. Key vulnerabilities include migration to a country where they feel marginalised and subject to racism, a criminal past, religious misunder­standing and naivety, failure to find anything but low-level employment despite good qualifications, travelling abroad and having direct contact with extremist groups, ASPI says.

Police and security agencies want deradicalisation to work so that individual cases do not evolve into crime and the Australian Federal Police works in this space alongside the Attorney-General’s Department and other agencies.

The AFP’s national manager for counter-terrorism, Neil Gaughan, says its community liaison teams are vital to building trusting relationships with local communities. “That work is key to reducing the likelihood of vulnerable individuals who are at risk of becoming radicalised towards violent extremism,” he says.

New diversion programs focused on prevention and early intervention help at-risk youth disengage from violence before they harm themselves or others, Gaughan says. “Our best defence is well-informed and well-equipped families, communities and institutions, including schools,” he says.

Lazarus tells Inquirer that to assume teachers know what to do when they identify a student who appears to have become radicalised presupposes that they have a detailed knowledge of the Muslim community and how many Muslims feel about adverse media commentary concerning their community and events in the Middle East. Also, he warns, it is a mistake to assume that teachers under enormous workload pressures have the time to engage with students to the extent that they can understand or recognise the significance of what some young people may be saying or thinking about themselves as Muslims and what actions they may take.