Canadian police are thwarting a growing number of Islamic State terrorist plots in major cities, but the resurgence is being driven by the group's recruitment of young Canadians into its ranks.
canadian global news on monday published The investigation revealed that 20 suspects have been arrested for ISIS-related crimes this year, and another 20 will be arrested in 2023. Only two similar arrests were made in 2022.
of global news He quoted one of the young men, Zakariya Rida Hussein, who was 20 years old at the time of his arrest in June 2023. Hussein posted a message on Snapchat in which he declared: My mission begins tomorrow. It's Pride Month. ”
He also sent threatening text messages to Premier Daniel Smith's party, the Alberta United Conservative Party, saying: I will kill each and every one of you. ”
Police searched Hussein's home and found “an ISIS flag, three knives, instructions for making bombs, and an ideological booklet about killing homosexuals.” He was arrested in Calgary along with three minors, one of whom was only 15 years old.
RELATED: TikTok CEO doesn't deny ByteDance accesses Americans' data
Most of the individuals profiled by global news Some were recent immigrants from Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, and other parts of Africa and the Middle East, and several were older Canadians who had converted to Islam. One of them was 52-year-old Kimberly Polman, who was trained by ISIS in Syria before becoming involved in a terrorist plot in Canada.
Polman appears as another character. global news investigation report In this article last year, we documented the Islamic State's success in recruiting younger women by using older women like Polman, who had been trained in Syria during the Salad Caliphate.
ISIS had a women's battalion in Syria called Katiba Nusayba, catering to female recruits who wanted to be more than just passive home-based jihadi brides. The battalion had a squad of older women with no family connections who became known as “sexy seniors.” These women were trained in ideology and espionage, and helped refine ISIS' marketing to marginalized young women living in Western countries.
Current trends are strongly leaning towards hiring young people. “Since the beginning of 2023, almost half of the suspects arrested in Canada were under the age of 21, and six were minors.” global news he pointed out.
These young people are often approached and recruited to ISIS online through social media platforms frequented by young people. TikTok, Snapchat, and Discord have been prominent recruiting sites, but ISIS recruiters are also appearing on Facebook, Reddit, and other platforms, and video game platforms like Minecraft and Roblox are also becoming more active. I am.
Bridget Gauvin, deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), said: “When people visit certain sites or research certain topics, algorithms reflect what they see on a daily basis. “So algorithms play a role in these online recruitment efforts.” ”
In other words, according to Govan, young people, by researching certain extremist topics online, create an avalanche of increasingly extremist “propaganda” that, as if touching the edge of a vortex, is rapidly accelerating the rise of terrorism. It is said that he is being drawn into the depths. This process seems to occur particularly rapidly among very young Internet users.
Multiple experts cited by Global Times TikTok is the worst social media for radicalization because it has a high proportion of young users, its algorithm is particularly aggressive in pushing content to them, and recruiters are very aggressive against this system. He pointed out that it is a platform.
Since the collapse of the secular “caliphates” in Syria and Iraq in 2019, Islamic State has become a demon haunting the internet. The terrorist state still has physical territory in places such as Afghanistan and Africa, and has become adept at using the internet. Coordinate global operations. The network also spreads a large amount of propaganda online and has enough personnel to communicate with potential recruits once they have piqued their interest.
After the fall of the caliphate, ISIS recruitment suffered a major blow, but several high-profile terrorist attacks occurred. Russia and Iran This year, the terrorist state has regained some of its murderous credibility. Although it had no direct connection to the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel, ISIS was able to feed off the climate of anti-Semitic, anti-Western hatred it had created.
Law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe are also reporting a surge in young ISIS recruits. FBI officials recently said that the average age of terrorist suspects is now under 21, and that the average time from exposure to terrorist propaganda to becoming fully radicalized is only a few months.
NBC News reported Last month, it was revealed that much of the Islamic State's recruiting energy emanates from its Afghanistan operation, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K). ISIS-K is adept at persuading “disaffected Muslims” to carry out terrorist plots in the United States, Canada, and other Western countries.
“Seeking support and recruitment from various Muslim diaspora communities in Europe and the United States, the group has created a mass created videos and articles about Afghanistan,'' NBC News noted.
Terrorism experts say ISIS-K began by targeting disaffected immigrants to the West from Afghanistan and neighboring Tajikistan, but soon attracted potential recruits from among refugees from other Islamic countries. It was discovered that they were abundant. ISIS-K has learned to counter resentment and contempt for the Western culture into which it has been transplanted, making the Islamic State the most effective and “pure” Islamist organization fighting the West's “declining empire.” He is good at drawing as. ”
