Terrorism and Security IRL3516 L, Niyazbekov Nurseit

I watched Mohamed Ali's TED Talk called "The link between unemployment and terrorism". Ali uses a of patos, and tells a story about a young somalian boy, who became a terrorist - according to Ali, because the boy was in a 'waitingposition'. The boy had no hope for the future, why he was easy for terrororganization al-Shabaab to recruit. Ali also tells the story of a friend of him, who also was in the 'waitingposition', and according to himself was an easy target for al-Shabaab because he was unemployed and frustrated. The friend instead ended up being an succesful entrepreneur in Mogadishu. Now, Ali finds entrepreneurship as maybe the best weapon against terrorism and violence, because it creates economic opportunities.

I think that Ali's thoughts are sympatic and good, but I also find it naive and unrealistic to think, that every young person in Somalia or the rest of the world has the opportunity to start their own business. First of all, because far from all young persons has the capital - neither economic og socially, to start their own business. Also, I think there's a limit to how many entrepreneurs there can be. Someone also has to be a "normal" employee, be a public employee etc. Yes, it would be great and maybe prevent someone from being terrorists, if the opportunity to be an entrepreneur were better. But I still think that religion, propaganda, politics and personal issues creates terrorists - and you can not necessarily avoid these reasons for terrorism, by making young people entrepreneurs. It seems like a little too easy solution.

I chose the Trevor Aaronson’s TED talk called “How this FBI strategy is actually creating US-based terrorists”. His main idea is that after 9/11, the FBI focused on sting operations with undercover informants and many of the terror acts in the US were actually initiated or constructed by FBI itself. Anderson emphasizes that FBI encouraged vulnerable, poor, mentally unstable people, mostly targeting Muslim Americans to commit crimes, provided them with weapons and plan, and then arrested them, presenting them as dangerous terrorists. It seems like such cases are created mainly for the sake of reporting and demonstrating success in “preventing terrorist attacks”. I think these practices are also applicable to Kazakhstan and many other countries.
I find Anderson’s speech and findings of his research very impressing and scary because it makes you question what really happens under the guise of protecting the society and security.

I watched a talk by a guy named Trevor Aaronson, who spoke about what the FBI has been doing after 9/11. It feels symbolic, since the day after tomorrow is already September 11 again.

So, the main idea of his speech was that the FBI has allegedly staged many terrorist attacks in the U.S. In other words, it’s easier for them to create the situation themselves. They pay people, give them weapons, and then arrest them. It’s like when random people at the airport ask you to take something through security and then, you know what happens next.. but in this case the situation is much more global and serious.

Another point he made is that because of these schemes, minorities suffer, especially Muslims, who are already stereotyped as terrorists. And because of that, real threats often get overlooked, while energy is wasted on people who aren’t actually dangerous.

He also mentioned that there’s a whole system where informants get paid huge sums of money for information about so-called threats. And the scary part is that there are almost no real criteria for who can be an informant even people with serious mental health issues are involved. Supposedly, all this comes from the FBI’s fear of another 9/11. But creating fake problems just to solve them later, for career growth and publicity, feels deeply disappointing.