Inherited Jihadism: Like Father, Like Son

Over at the International Crisis Group, Sydney Jones has an op-ed published in the Australian Financial Review with the title borrowed by this post. The op-ed focuses on the need to pay more attention to the phenomenon of sons following their father's footsteps in embracing Jihad.

Jones provides us examples from the Jemaah Islamiyah where this is the case, including that of

[o]ne top JI leader, Abu Rusdan, now in his late 40s, [who] is the son of a man imprisoned by Soeharto in the early 1980s for involvement in Darul Islam, the Islamic rebellion that gave birth to JI. At the age of 15 his son was inducted into the father's organisation. Abu Jibril, a contemporary of Abu Rusdan, supervised the creation of a JI cell in Karachi, Pakistan that consisted of his own son, Mohamed, and the siblings of several fellow JI members.

He further adds that this phenomenon

isn't just a question of the fathers providing inspiration. JI has a systematic indoctrination program that starts with pre-kindergarten playgroups and moves into kindergartens for Quranic study, Islamic elementary schools and a small group of pesantrens - religious boarding schools - across Java. The close family ties ensure that the children in these schools will grow up in a network where the parents have already bonded, and where the ideology serves to strengthen a social and economic network that could survive dozens more arrests.

The description of this problem above, is very similar to Marc Sageman's description of how small groups of friends, not only develop an in-group, out-group mentality that facilitates their joining extremist organizations but once in, keeps them in. According to Sageman, the process by which people become part of these cliques is progressive, but once they are in "strong bonds of loyalty and emotional intimacy discourage their departure." (Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 155). Sageman, in discussing the "rich nexus of social and economic linkages between members of an organization and its environment," looks at the manner in which the EIG leadership imprisoned in Egypt continued to retain their closeness to the Saidi community from which they came. According to him, many of these EIG members married relatives of other EIG members, fathering their children thereby strengthening the bonds that held them together (Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 148). Tying both Sageman and Jones's descriptions it becomes clear that once part of the group, the member's world view is socialized to the extent that it becomes the norm within the group, and a son following his father in fighting Jihad becomes as natural as a son following his father in the study of law. To those who are not part of this in-group, such behavior is seen as odd, and even sickening, but understanding it is essential in how we fight this Long War.

Although, Jones focuses exclusively on the case of the Jemaah Islamiyah and Sageman as quoted focused on the EIG, this phenomenon has already been seen with regard to the al Qaeda organization. Saad bin Laden, has followed his father's footsteps and although reportedly under house arrest in Iran, is seen as a pivotal player within the organization. Additionally, one of the main features of al Qaeda has been the nature of its familial and tribal linkages particularly as exemplified by Khaled Sheik Muhammed and Ramzi Yousef who were uncle and nephew respectively. A report by Thomas Hegghammer in Middle East Policy, analyzes just such a trend. This means that even if we are to defeat the current crop of terrorists, as noted by Jones, we also need to begin thinking more long-term in how we will deal with the families (wives, sons, etc.) of al Qaeda members, particularly those who have taken their families into the field (as is the case of bin Laden) since having already been socialized to the struggle they are more likely to re-emerge in the future to continue to carry the banner of Jihad. Jones compares them to child soldiers, and calls for an examination of the programs instituted to deal with the problem in Ireland with IRA children and our experience with drawing child soldiers from war to re-engage into society.

This is an important issue that we will have to deal with in this long war, not so much in the case of foot-soldiers like the London group, or even the Hamburg cell that carried out the 9/11 attacks (though these were also drawn from family and tribal networks) but more with leaders and planners closer to the Core of the organization. It is also something we need to be prepared to deal with in response to any post-Iraq situation, as any surviving foreign members of AQI or other militant groups, will undoubtedly return to their home countries with not only the zeal and training, but also connections to the larger movement and resources to build new networks of Jihad. In short, it's not only blowback that should concern us, but the inheriting of the ideology from fathers to sons.