Terrorism and Security IRL3516 L, Niyazbekov Nurseit

I have watched the TED talk "When people of Muslim heritage challenge fundamentalism" by Karima Bennoune, and I found it really informative and heartbreaking at the same time. Before the video, I didn't know what fundamentalism was. And hearing all four stories that Karima mentioned about how people fight fundamentalism and go to their dreams, and many of them even die, makes you think about different things. The world should not fight only terrorism but also fundamentalism. Furthermore, those personal stories are definitely one of the most overlooked human rights struggles in the world.

I watched Mohamed Ali’s TED talk on “The link between unemployment and terrorism”. One of the first things that struck me was the similarities between the recruitment strategy of the Al-Shabab terrorist group and how gangs in the suburbs of Stockholm recruit new members. Their tactics resembled each other in almost every step– starting with innocent gifts that make the invisible kid feel seen, slowly making him a part of a community and indoctrinating him into thinking this is the only possible way forward. Ali’s concept of ‘waithood’ successfully explains this status of vulnerability during which a person is left without a greater purpose for an indefinite period of time.

The antidote to this is entrepreneurship, as Ali sees it. While this might be the simplest solution in a place like Mogadishu, I wonder how that could be transported to Sweden to stem gang violence. Of course, high unemployment in certain areas is often mentioned as one of the factors for the recent growth in gang violence, but it has not been the main concern in the Swedish debates. My assumption why this is might be is simply because the structure of the Swedish economy does not allow for small pop-up entrepreneurs to pursue their ideas without the proper education. Instead, schools and civil society are often mentioned as the most important tools to prevent this trend from growing. A good education will increase a person’s opportunities to lead a successful life and organizations, such as football teams, might give a sense of community – preventing recruitment at the current state.

What do you guys think? Is entrepreneurship the right solution for preventing recruitment to terrorist groups, criminal gangs, or similar organizations? Is it applicable to Western countries in the same way it might be in Somalia? What else could be done?

I watched Trevor Aaronson: How this FBI strategy is actually creating US-based terrorists. To start things off, I am not a tiny bit surprised that this is how the FBI operates. This is shown across many different media outlets, such as TV shows, movies, videogames etc. One thing I will say is that, this just shows that the FBI would do anything to meet their qouta, even praying on poor and mentally challenged people, in order to carry out their "operations". The people that they have targeted are mostly of islamic/arab decent, all that the FBI has done is put a "face" on terrorism via Islam, and fueled the hatred, anger, and fear towards people of Islamic decent. Just like we covered in class the definition of terrorism deosnt include 'state' as an actor who can carry out a terroristic attack, but after seeing this video, I believe that can be changed.

I geuss this part is gonna sound a bit like a conspiracy theory, but it seems like the FBI did all those things, so that the US can have an excuse to continue invading oil rich Islamic states, and bring them the "American Freedom".

So in the end the only thought that I was left with was; if such a "great democracy" can pull the strings and manipulate their citizens like the US has, its hard to imagine what other "less democratic" states do.

I have watched a video “ The surprising way groups like ISIS stay in power”. The speaker provides some strong arguments regarding the reasons why some terrorist groups maintain a big power. I find the speaker’s arguments very interesting and reasonable, and also it is a great approach to look at terrorist groups from another perspective. Despite the fact that terrorist groups are violent killers of the innocent citizens, the speaker gives a look at another side of them. These non-state actors get the power because of the weak government, through the contributions in the society life as financing, building hospitals, schools, micro-loan systems and exc. They are filling the gap that is left by the government, therefore getting more attention towards them. And the goal for these governments, to counter these groups, is to create a long-term investment in filling that security gap, to invest more in non-military tools.