Aditya Rangroo
Internet penetration across the world has served as a basket for recruiters and job-seekers across the world to make decisions over their career style, but these very various technological platforms have also had an adverse effect on national security. One of the biggest gainers with catastrophic impact on society has been the worldwide expansion of web of terrorist recruitment, and therefore fundamentally accelerating the importance of cyber security.
Groups like Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and lately Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have successfully created online “madrasas” that has put a significant dent in the young and vulnerable population across the world from the West to the East and irrespective of their religious inclination. They have also succeeded in gathering massive ‘sympathizers’ online where evidently these sympathizers are readily available to provide physical support on the behest of several online videos posted on their terrorist organization’s websites and YouTube (online video channel).
Terrorist organizations, over the years, have successfully used social media tools to recruit, propagate and raised fund for their dreadful agendas. Sermons by so called charismatic extremists have succeeded in influencing youths to join terrorist organizations and carry out sinister attacks across the world. One of the key reasons behind using mass media heavily is because ultimately these anti-social elements are trying to legitimize their unlawful activities, as most of them have a mass following online and has a possibility of gaining greater audience. As current Al Qaeda chief Al Zawahiri says, “Al-Qaeda is in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. Al Qaeda is in a media battle for the hearts and minds of the ummah” (ummah meaning nation/community).
Popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have become the preferred choice for the terrorists, as highlighted in a report by the Robert Hannigan, UK Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) that the upsurge of radical jihadi material online on Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp are now able to hide their identities using encryption tools which were once only available to States. Terrorist organization like ISIL has extensively used YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr besides posting nearly 40,000 tweets on Twitter in one day following their march in the northern city of Iraq Mosul. In addition to the tweets, ISIS is constantly uploading provocative images and video clips which are then shared by global users and mainstream news media houses. Such has been the impact of the ISIS in its social media activities that at least 700,000 accounts has been created to discuss terrorist group and activities as suggested by Recorded Future, a social media monitor.
Similarly, the dreaded terrorist organization Al Qaeda has a presence on internet for nearly two decades with its slain chief Osama Bin Laden often posting his rhetoric on recorded videos online that perpetually brainwashes many across the globe and prompting western powers to carry out war on the lands of Iraq and Afghanistan, which eventually evoked the animosity among Muslim world against western powers, mainly the US.
The impetus to terror propaganda in India is not merely driven by external forces instead, home-grown and banned fundamental organizations such as Student of Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Indian Mujahideen (IM) are heavily reliant on social media and have been persistently playing key role in abetting and injecting the terror campaign in India. IM was accused in August 2014 to help ISIS in recruiting and spreading propaganda in India through YouTube videos. It has been reported that by the time of the report, more than 100 young Indian men were allegedly missing, believed to have been taken away to Middle East to join ISIS. Therefore, further substantiating terror nexus among various terrorist organizations across the world facilitated through technology.
Factors used to rouse sentiment to join jihad and exacerbate the feeling of fundamentalism keywords such as Al wala’ wal bara’ which symbolizes a belief that Muslims owe allegiance to Muslims alone and must reject non-Muslims as allies or friends., Fatwa: A religious edict, often issued by a religious authority in response to a question seeking clarification of Islamic doctrine, Jihad: Literally ‘to struggle’ but often used to refer to armed struggle, etc., are no longer a validation to join a terror campaign.
An important factor that has come to fore is that most of these youths belong to educated class with professional qualifications and despite holding a potentially bright career graph, these youths are misled through a sustained propaganda. ISIL has successfully recruited many of its “jihadis” both men and women from Western and European countries as well, therefore negating the notion about class difference or poverty stricken youths are more vulnerable to terrorist propaganda.
Andre Poulin of Canadian nationality who joined ISIS in 2013 after converting to Islam and calling himself Abu Muslim said in a video message to all that, “We need the engineers, we need the doctors, we need professionals. Every person can contribute something to Islamic State.” This statement speaks volumes about the psychology of drive of an educated person to join these terrorist organisations i.e. terror propaganda are mostly laced with creating a utopia for the youths as an inclusive place providing a thriving organisation who are ready to absorb from the range of a sociopath to an idealist. And also one of the major facilitator for such propaganda dissemination is because terrorist organisations have evolved to use social media adeptly.
In this purview, there cannot be denying that social media has steadily been converted into a lethal mind game by the terrorist organizations to carry out their dreadful radical and terror campaign. While it still remains a question that why the US has not actively pursued stringent policy on these social media platforms so as to work on a mandatory policy for all these media organizations to curb terrorist organization’s freedom of speech? Despite the knowledge about social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp, Skype, Tumblr and Instagram owned by the US corporations have been misused by the terrorists, terrorist activities on these social media platform.
India as a country is fast evolving into one of the largest internet users in the world, and therefore is much more susceptible to the challenges posed against its national interest in the backdrop of growing misuse of social media by the hands of terrorist. It is only but need of the hour to congregate an agile foundation for cyber security, where the government agencies must work on a robust monitoring and filtering of anti-national activities conducted online.
For the same, the Government agencies should constitute more eloquent cyber experts who track all the users on social media. Cracking down on cyber-hackers that aim to sabotage sensitive information for India’s national interests must also be taken prerogative. Earlier Indian authorities proposed National Cyber Security Policy in 2013, calling for 50,000 highly-skilled analysts and experts by 2018. Although it was a welcome step by the then government, but sadly the policy could not be implemented effectively, owing majorly to budget constraints viz India’s cyber security budget for 2013-2014 was just USD$7.76 million, a minuscule of the US budget USD$5.1 billion in 2014.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a reputation of a being a technologically-savvy and displays the understanding of nuisances of social media and has even run a digital Indian campaign, must pursue this matter on a global stage as the topmost priority in 2015. India along with other South Asian countries must also consider the footsteps of 28 European Union members, which on October 8, 2014, beckoned major American technology organizations to a “private” meeting in Luxembourg on the extensive use of internet by terrorist, against the backdrop of electronic jihad that the EU is confronting. The objective of the meeting was to design a plan for these technological companies to eliminate online radicalization on their websites.
If India has to eliminate terrorism threat from social media, the government should create awareness about cyber terrorism and set up highly competitive and efficient cyber-security think tanks which will monitor and report suspected terrorism related activities. A database should be maintained on the accounts of users who frequently search these words online. Just merely by eliminating provocative video and text contents from YouTube, Twitter or Facebook will not be sufficient to stymie the growth of terrorist web. The symbiotic relationship that terrorist organizations that has taken root must be prevented.
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