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CAN’T WE ALL JUST BELONG?

PERSISTENT IN THEIR recruitment efforts, Daesh has been known to invest hundreds of hours to ensnare just one individual in their web of terror. Fortunately for Kyrgyzstan, one peace-building organization in the Central Asian nation outperforms them by investing more than 1,500 hours to identify the 3 to 4 percent of youth who are most at risk of violent radicalization. Through grassroots discussions, they ask illuminating questions revealing grievances, frictions, and fears, like “How do you see your community in the next five years?” They speak to schools, juvenile detention facilities, influencers, and opinion leaders to identify the most isolated and vulnerable. They study what makes the concept of a caliphate resonate and deconstruct the language and rhetoric used by terrorist recruiters.¹

Ultimately, what they have learned is that terror groups bait their victims with three simple promises: a just society, brotherhood and belonging, and equality for the disenfranchised. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, ethnic conflicts, political divides, and religious tensions have increased societal friction in Kyrgyzstan. Nepotism is pervasive—inflaming existing inequalities. And many youths whose parents leave to work in more financially lucrative cities like Moscow—some 2,500 miles away—are left vulnerable to the fraternity of terrorist groups.

Through the Youth as Agents of Peace and Stability program, the 3 to 4 percent of young people most at risk are transformed from young problem-makers into emerging community builders. Applying this peace-building approach yields tremendous dividends for the country’s long-term trajectory. In one testimonial, a seventeen-year-old, beaming at his own reinvention, says, “Before I was known for being good at fighting, now I am popular for my social work.”² Facilitating an individual’s personal transition from societal menace to altruist is also effective in other Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, where members of law enforcement bond with detainees through jointly helping slums and orphanages. Police officers reinforce the message that this is what being a good Muslim is about— helping others. And the experiences cultivate empathy and reconnect extremists to society.³

Similarly in Iraq, Fatima Al-Bahadly, founder of the Firdaus (paradise) Foundation, teaches youth that God created them not to kill or die but to dedicate their lives to worship, work, and service of society. When the frustrations of unemployment shockingly enticed her own son to join Daesh, Al-Bahadly walked from camp to camp in Salah al-Din province, speaking with over 3,500 youth in an attempt to reengage them. Al-Bahadly redefines the nature of heroism paraded by militia groups as constructive action for the betterment of communities, rehabilitating derelict schools, and replanting trees. “I tell them jihad is not spilling blood on the streets, it is giving blood in hospitals.” So far, she has managed to disarm around 150 young men—including her own son.⁴

Conscious of the void and the stark absence of alternatives to satisfy the primitive human needs of heroism, Jordanian social entrepreneur Suleiman Bakhit created Hero-Factor: a comic portraying positive role models for young Arabs and promoting heroism as an antidote to extremism. Hero-Factor also features stories of prominent Islamic historical figures—delegitimizing and rivaling historically inaccurate narratives peddled by Islamic extremists. If this sounds too simple or ineffective, I can assure you that the extremists don’t think so.

I reached out to Bakhit just before the 2018 World Economic Forum at Davos, which we were both scheduled to attend. Only one of us showed up. A couple of months later, I received an apologetic message from Bakhit, who had been attacked and targeted by extremist groups (again) because of his work, and had to undergo several surgeries. If a comic book can provoke such a backlash, perhaps we should pay more attention to what truly threatens extremist groups.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Both absurd in its simplicity and logical in its psychology, sometimes, to deradicalize an individual, all you need is love. Black September, for example, was at one time one of the most ruthless and feared terrorist organizations in the world, infamously known for the kidnapping and massacre of eleven Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. The group was also responsible for assassinating Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi al-Tal. As al-Tal lay on the marble floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo, dying, one of the assassins reportedly knelt beside him and licked his flowing blood.⁵

Black September was purposefully established following the loss of the West Bank to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and the expulsion of Palestinians from Jordan in September 1970. The elite terror unit had one primary mission: to highly publicize and prioritize the Palestinian cause on the global agenda. And it worked. Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), was invited to address the UN General Assembly, and shortly thereafter, the PLO was granted special observer status. After it had served its purpose, however, Black September became somewhat of a liability. How does one shut down a cold-blooded maniacal group of around 100 unrestrained young men?

The answer, it turned out, was by marrying them off. After hand-picking the most attractive young Palestinian women they could find and enlisting them on a “mission to a greater cause” at the request of their leader, Yasser Arafat, the PLO arranged a mixer in Beirut. In addition to anticipated matrimony, the PLO offered financial incentives. Those who married would be paid US$3,000, would be given an apartment in Beirut furnished with kitchen essentials like a gas stove and a refrigerator, and a television, and would be offered a nonviolent role with the PLO.⁶

Couples that conceived within a year would be rewarded with an additional US$5,000. Remarkably, it worked. The Black September-ists fell in love and reprioritized what mattered most to them, and what was not worth losing: their wives and their children. In validating their “sobriety,” former terrorists who were asked by the PLO to travel abroad for nonillicit activities refused—fearing that they would be arrested en route and deprived of their families.⁷

Having children doesn’t always yield this result, but for one extremist on the other end of the hate spectrum, it was a pivotal moment. I was initially intrigued by an article describing Arno Michaelis’s encounter at a McDonald’s, where a black woman working at the cash register noticed a swastika tattooed on his middle finger. With all the unconditional love in her eyes, she told him “You’re a better person than that. I know that’s not who you are.” Michaelis literally ran away and never went back to that McDonald’s again.⁸

When I reached out to Michaelis to learn more about his experiences, he pointed out that for an extremist to validate his or her worldview, society must reflect their hostility, leading to mutual dehumanization. So when people responded to him with hate they were behaving exactly as he wanted them to behave. He was in control. However, when people defied his hostility with kindness and compassion, it forced him to question his own savagery—instead of his perceived savagery of “the others.” He recounts another incident where he was hung over and hungry at work and a black colleague extended his hand and said, “Hey skinhead, do you want half my sandwich?”⁹

In isolation, these encounters are insufficient to totally disarm someone, but an aggregation of kindness is humanly difficult to reject in the long run. And although Michaelis would get drunk and surround himself with others who shared his ideology to reinvigorate his white supremacist rhetoric, he was unable to submerge his surfacing recognition. “Once you realize, it’s not exactly something you can un-know,” he tells me.¹⁰

Based on his personal experience, and having worked with innumerable violent Islamists and right-wingers, Michaelis insists that their actions are always designed to provoke hostility. A white supremacist must make Jews and people of color hate whites. Similarly, Muslim extremists, like Daeshites, must make non-Muslims hate Muslims to continue perpetuating their narrative. Otherwise, the lines between “us and them” blur into union.

I ask how influential Michaelis’s own feelings of exclusion were in feeding his extremism. “It’s a prerequisite,” he says, definitively. “You cannot function without exclusion to perpetuate the suffering you’re going through.”¹¹ Thus, it becomes a psychological paradox. To end your suffering, you need connection with society, but because your ideology reaffirms the belief that society hates you and has forsaken you, your salvation becomes your source of anguish. And even though Michaelis didn’t fall neatly into the category of an at-risk young white American—having come from a nice suburb of Milwaukee—he actively convinced himself society had abandoned him.

As I listened to Michaelis’s insights on incels—involuntary celibates who are unable to find a sexual or romantic partner despite desiring one—I contemplated the parallels with sexually frustrated youth joining Islamist extremist groups. And although the white power movement didn’t necessarily articulate it in this way, essentially they framed their ideology around three main types of exclusion, according to Michaelis: those feeling rejected by society were glorified as white warriors that no one appreciated; unemployment was caused by the Jews, who were bringing in the Mexicans to take all the jobs; and if you didn’t have a girlfriend, the Jews were also at fault for putting black men like Michael Jordan on billboards and elevating their heartthrob status among white women. Laughable and ridiculous as these theories may be to some, it would be unproductive not to take seriously the underlying sentiments they substantiate.

Ultimately, for Michaelis, his serial encounters with kindness, and the fear of losing his daughter due to either his own incarceration or death, jolted him to do a 180. Today, he helps counsel people trying to exit extremist movements. Typically, these are individuals who, like substance abusers, have already hit rock bottom and have made a conscious decision not to pursue a path of self-destruction. With one exception: Chris Buckley, whom Michaelis met while filming a documentary on the Ku Klux Klan (ironically, the documentary never aired because the channel was concerned it “humanized the Klan”).¹²

Buckley, the former Klansman, left for Iraq following 9/11 to counterattack Muslims. Daring his enemy with KKK symbols and kafir (infidel) tattooed on his body, Buckley hated Muslims, blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. Eventually, Michaelis convinced Buckley to meet Heval Mohamed Kelli, a Muslim Kurdish refugee who fled Syria after 9/11 to come to the US.

Kelli climbed the professional ladder—initially working as a restaurant dishwasher and eventually becoming a cardiologist. Today, he owns a black Mercedes sedan and a house on a pond—having achieved the American dream. Buckley, on the other hand—who served his country at war—lives in refugee-like conditions and spiraled into drug addiction through a common gateway of painkillers after breaking his back in an accident. The sad irony of those living like refugees in their own country is not lost on the emotionally intelligent Kelli, and he has made it his mission to interact with and spotlight these Hillbilly Elegy-type forgotten and excluded parts of America—a message made more powerful by his identity as a Muslim refugee.¹³

THE POWER OF EMPATHY

I cannot over-emphasize how consequential empathy is to this type of work. Judy Korn, a German social entrepreneur who rehabilitates Neo-Nazi and Muslim extremist youth incarcerated for hate crimes, does so by teaching them empathy. Since 2001, Korn’s organization, the Violence Prevention Network (VPN), has worked with more than 500 such cases in Germany. Her track record is impressive, showing recidivism rates of 30 percent, compared with 80 percent for all juvenile offenders in Germany.¹⁴

In addition to empathy, Korn’s main ingredients for resilience against extremism are teaching youth to develop self-awareness and self-reflection skills; the ability to question personal justifications for criminal behavior; building reliability and dependability in personal relationships; and gaining self-esteem through balancing self-acceptance with constructive self-criticism.¹⁵ VPN also adopts a preventative approach by protecting vulnerable children from the claws of Daeshite recruiters. With the influx of refugees in her home city of Berlin, Korn’s Al Manara program—or lighthouse—targets the 4,000 unaccompanied refugee minors who are dangerously at-risk.¹⁶ At an investment of around EUR 10,000 per person per year, Korn’s program is far less costly than military interventions—both fiscally and in terms of human loss of life.¹⁷

Given that extremism is religion-agnostic, various other programs and organizations, like Exit, utilize the same tools to help Neo-Nazis abandon white supremacism as they employ to deradicalize young Swedes belonging to violent Islamist groups. Robert Örell, who works for Exit and is a former Neo-Nazi himself, reflects on what drove his own extremism, noting that as a “loser” in school, “I never did well. The group made me believe that I was superior, they welcomed me and channeled my anger.” He says, “They were able to give explanations to the wrongs and injustices polarizing the world. Us and them. Right and wrong.” The best candidates for groups like this are the weakest: victims of bullying or marginalization, with difficult family situations—perfect for brainwashing.¹⁸ In this sense, radicalization is less about recruiting supporters and more about mobilizing enemies. For Örell, he ultimately found the brotherhood, protection, and status he was seeking by joining the military.

One program Örell has collaborated on with a local theatre uses storytelling and sharing personal narratives to help antagonistic groups empathize, humanize, and relate to one another. During a series of around twenty half-day sessions, the participants explore group dynamics and in-depth identity work. In the process of self-discovery, what many have noted as a particularly powerful realization is hearing the reflections of their own feelings mirrored by the “other,” as well as the role they personally play through their actions, and the consequences of those actions in perpetuating the same feelings of exclusion that they suffer from. Exit has been operating for twenty years and Örell’s dedication has enabled more than 700 reformed extremists to escape a cycle of violence.¹⁹

Scientific research also substantiates the empirical evidence on empathy. A renowned social neuroscientist, Tania Singer, initiated “Project ReSource” at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. By engaging 300 volunteers over the course of the nine-month project, Singer was able to detect structural changes to the brain in MRI scans after just one week of training on mindfulness, compassion, and perspective taking, which corresponded with enhanced prosocial behaviors! Singer posits that incorporating such training into school curricula could build more cohesive interconnected societies that are more resilient to extremism.²⁰

THEY ARE “OUR TERRORISTS”

Mayor Bart Somers of Mechelen is perhaps one of the most enlightened politicians I have encountered. Recognizing that all violence starts with disconnection, his Belgian city has adopted a policy of integration rather than segregation as an armor of resilience against terrorism. Whereas Daesh managed to poach the highest number of foreign fighters of all the European countries from Belgium, in Mechelen, not a single person was successfully enlisted to join. A remarkable feat considering the small city is home to 20,000 Muslims—more than Hungary and Slovakia combined—and is straddled between Antwerp and Brussels, where foreign fighter rates are high. Mayor Somers, who was awarded the biennial World Mayor Prize, estimates that according to the regional average, twenty-five residents should have left Mechelen in pursuit of violent jihad.²¹ So how does Mechelen do it?

When you speak about radicalization, you need to have empathy and intuitive thinking, he tells me. Violent extremists try to provoke an emotional response to engage recruits. They demonstrate compassion to convince marginalized individuals their unfavorable circumstances and feelings of frustration are not their fault—but society’s. With the group, one goes from zero to hero. Mayor Somers, who has read extensively on the topic, and also bases his city’s policies on decades of experience, observes similarities in the pathways of isolation architected by such groups—whether they are violent Islamists or cults. “It always begins with isolating an individual from society— for example, telling them they shouldn’t have non-Muslim friends. Gradually, even their Muslim friends are not real Muslims, so you should abandon those too. Then your family is also no good.”²²

Emphasizing the importance of prevention, the Mayor underscores how much more difficult, costly, and energy intensive deradicalization is compared with prevention. “You need to be there at the moment people are still psychologically open to reasoning. We are recruiting people to our society before extremists recruit them.”²³ What does it mean to be there early enough to recruit citizens to society?

For a start, the city focuses on mutually reinforcing elements of policing and community dialogue. Since 9/11, Somers diligently transformed a neglected Belgian city into a paradigm of inclusion and social integration through targeted preventative measures aimed at bolstering social cohesion. Immigrants view themselves as full citizens, rather than societal rejects or second class. Urban renewal and revitalization projects have upgraded rundown neighborhoods melding socioeconomic classes and promoting class-based integration between immigrants and the affluent.

Community programs are subsidized, including a center offering social and recreational services ranging from counseling to soccer. Youth workers assist children with homework, and even school dropouts receive assistance to complete their studies. One prevention counsellor says, “The challenge is to make them [youth] feel part of the community and that means giving them real opportunities to develop as members of the community with rights—but also with duties.”²⁴ Immigrants see themselves as meaningful contributors to society, rather than as a burden, and that this society is for them. Of paramount importance to the mayor is bringing people together on an individual level, rather than only a community level—personalizing and deepening their interactions. And he believes all cities should have a Minister of Society tasked with ensuring that citizens live together in harmony, without isolation or alienation.

I must emphasize that the mayor is not against military interventions per se, and policing is key to his city’s strategy. However, he recognizes the serious imbalance in funding between the two approaches. “The prevention work doesn’t cost so much money—you just have to do it and redirect funds to reduce the segregation,” he says.²⁵ Thus, it’s a matter of political will (rather than dollars or Euro bills). Nonetheless, while a city must respect the rule of law and create safety, police cannot be viewed as the enemy. Key to this is the interaction of police at the community center—no doubt refashioning their image as punitive law enforcement to being stewards and custodians of community well-being. Even the mayor himself drops into the center from time to time. Consequently, citizens don’t see the state as a place they don’t belong, or perceive it as hostile.

If the mayor can ensure safety, clean roads, and access to parks, even the older generations witnessing the transformation of their city won’t come to view it as a decline or loss; rather, they see it as a net positive. Identity in Mechelen doesn’t look away from diversity, he tells me. Indeed, Mechelen is safer, cleaner, and more diverse, with 50 percent of its citizens coming from a foreign background, and it has the highest concentration of Moroccans in Belgium. Whether in a corporation or in a city, diversity without inclusion can be deeply destructive. So in Mechelen, they don’t leave people out; they build a wall around their children to ensure they don’t lose a single generation to violent extremism. This inclusive narrative is critical.²⁶

After the 2016 Brussels airport bombing, the mayor tells me how he visited the biggest mosque in his city. Knowing what the Muslims must have been feeling—as I did living in New York during 9/11—fearing the stigma and anger that would be directed towards them, Mayor Somers spoke tremendously reassuring words. “I’m your mayor and you’re my citizens, and unfortunately, you have been twice-victimized.” He was referring to their vulnerability to the threat of terrorism as Belgian citizens, and again as Muslims with a hijacked identity, making them feel unsafe. “But if someone discriminates against you, I will be by your side,” the mayor assured them.²⁷

That evening, politicians condemned the terrorists and their horrific acts—reinforcing a polarizing “us and them” narrative and calling for them to be thrown out of the country. At such a poignant moment, the mayor took a morally courageous stance. While he enforced the need to bring the terrorists to justice and vehemently condemned the attacks, he said, “but even if they’re terrorists they are our terrorists. They were born and raised in our societies, they went to our schools, they are our problem.”²⁸ It was the first time, in such a difficult moment, that someone had embraced them as humans. Many Muslim youth watching the interview were reduced to tears by this demonstration of indiscriminate compassion.

Essentially, Mayor Somers created a city that is worthless in terms of prospective terrorist talent and grievances to exploit. Vilvoorde, for instance, provided Daesh with twenty-eight recruits—despite being half Mechelen’s size. In 2014, Vilvoorde adopted Mechelen’s model of resilience. Miraculously, two years later, the Daesh-bound departures stopped.²⁹ So if this approach is both more humanistic and effective, why aren’t we seeing its application across more European cities?

Part of the challenge lies in its misfit with bipartisan politics because both build on polarization. That is, the left sees discrimination and the right sees criminalization. Neither views cities as non-homogenous, composed of diverse citizens. In some respects, they are somewhat embodying a Western Salafist approach. And yet the mayor argues that many rights and equalities were introduced in opposition to our traditions and habits—like gender equality and LGBT rights because of the fundamentalist values democratic societies are built upon.

Other European cities, like Helsinki, Vienna, Aarhus, and Rotterdam, have also worked to foster a sense of political participation and inclusion—particularly of newcomers and the attitudes towards them. There’s even a “Strong Cities Network” comprising a global web of mayors, policymakers, and practitioners united in building social cohesion and resilience to counter violent extremism. So to summarize using a warrior-like ethos: to prevent violent extremism, we should endeavor to leave no man behind.

GENDER INCLUSIVITY AND SECURITY

Mayor Somer’s approach to community-based interventions and the crucial role of policing in responding to terrorism forms a key component of PAIMAN Alumni Trust’s (PAIMAN) theory of change. This is based on evidence that police—as a permanent presence in local communities—are better positioned than the military to respond to violent extremism in a more humanistic and community-focused way. Studies also indicate that female police officers in particular are less likely to use excessive force—though they will not hesitate to use it where necessary—and are more adept at deescalating potentially violent confrontations than their male counterparts. Furthermore, as one researcher notes, “A community that promotes tolerance and inclusivity, and reflects norms of gender equality, is stronger and less vulnerable to violent extremism.”³⁰

The potency of gender inclusion in security is notably more significant in a country like Pakistan, where PAIMAN is based. The nonprofit’s work has evolved since 2004, from empowering mothers with the critical thinking skills to recognize and disrupt the radicalization of their children, to working with the Taliban to help them reconcile their multiple identities and cultures as Pakistanis, Pathans, and Muslims.³¹ Included in this process is psychosocial care for returnees, religious literacy education, livelihood-skills training, and civic education.

Rather innovatively, PAIMAN has also expanded their purview to fundamentalist fashion—unravelling numerous lethal prêt-à-porter suicide vest production lines. First, they deglamorized what seamstresses believed to be their contributions to a higher cause by educating them on the true meaning of jihad. Then they steered the women’s stitching skills towards more durable dressmaking, versus a one-time wear.³² Through community empowerment and activating civic engagement, PAIMAN is able to neutralize extremism through strengthening the community’s social fabric—making it bullet- and suicide-bomb proof.

PAIMAN has trained 4,300 women and 14,000 men, and has deradicalized, rehabilitated, and reintegrated almost 1,300 extremists and at-risk individuals. To build social cohesion, they formed a coalition of women representing madrassa teachers, multifaith activists, and leaders of religious political parties. The coalition promotes inclusion, equality, interfaith dialogue, and a platform for expression allowing all voices to be heard—regardless of religious beliefs. Interfaith understanding is celebrated through the observance of multireligious festivals. And in invoking the principles of the Medina Charter, the coalition stands up for one another in the face of violence perpetrated against any one faction of the community.³³

SPORTS AND DEVELOPMENT

Community-building approaches would be lacking without underscoring the universally commended role of sports in development and in dismantling intergroup segregation and individual isolation. I can perhaps think of no recent symbol more powerful to illustrate the unifying power of sports than the 2018 Champions League match between Real Madrid and Liverpool in Ukraine.

I won tickets to the final—which I gifted my brother so I could focus on writing this book! Like a textbook description of globalization, in the sports pubs and bars of Kiev were middle-aged British men dressed in Pharaoh garb, swigging pints of Danish beer. Slurring their speech, the men promised to convert to Islam if Mohamed Salah—Liverpool’s star player who is both an Arab and a Muslim— won the match! Liverpool fans have even created chants like “If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me, if he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too!”³⁴

Even in the sectarian quagmire that is Iraq, soccer was a powerful unifier during the country’s victory in the 2007 Asian Cup quarterfinals. One man told the New York Times that the Iraqi team was the only thing uniting the war-torn nation: “When the Iraqi team wins a game, the people in Karkh, who are Sunnis, get happy. The people in Rusafa, who are Shia’as, get happy . . . The team includes all the Iraqi sects, but they are all Iraqis and they are our brothers . . . I hope that the Iraqi politicians would look at these simple football players who managed to unite the Iraqi people and learn from them.”³⁵

And without even reaching the Champion’s League level, sports and e-sports are a huge untapped resource for PVE efforts towards youth engagement and connecting disparate groups. Australia’s “More Than a Game” program uses soccer to engage young males at risk of radicalization due to personal experiences of marginalization. Sport is used as a platform to build social cohesion and address issues of cultural identity and nonviolent expression, and the youth are also mentored as part of the fortification against extremist ideologies. An evaluation of the initiative, which is a joint effort between the federal police, a sports club, and city councils, found it increased community resilience and cross-cultural awareness, fostered social inclusion and trust, and was especially effective in engaging at-risk youth in civic engagement and responsibility.³⁶

All of the initiatives outlined here are relatively low-cost and low-hanging fruit; they should be a fundamental component of good governance. To reiterate the opening of this chapter, Daesh invests hundreds of hours getting to know individuals on a personal basis— understanding their grievances, empathizing with their personal problems, and successfully framing their narrative to enlist them in the cause. We should question how much we value the diverse and distinct individuals that, together, are the make-up of a terrorist group, and the amount of time and resources we devote to personalizing our prevention programs for something that many of us name as our most urgent global threat.