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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Prof: Isis winning on digital battlefield

by

20160814

When peo­ple be­gin to in­ter­act with Isis prod­ucts on so­cial me­dia by retweet­ing, fol­low­ing and lik­ing, Isis then "swarms in and makes con­tact."

Dr Anne Speck­hard of the Unit­ed States, who has in­ter­viewed close to 500 Isis de­fec­tors, made this ob­ser­va­tion. She said there need­ed to be en­gage­ment on the dig­i­tal bat­tle­field where Isis was cur­rent­ly win­ning.

Speck­hard serves as an ad­junct as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try in the School of Med­i­cine at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty and is the di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for the Study of Vi­o­lent Ex­trem­ism.

She was re­spond­ing to the ques­tion of how peo­ple are tar­get­ed and be­come rad­i­calised.

Speck­hard said Isis was good at dis­tri­b­u­tion of thou­sands of so­cial me­dia posts, videos and posters that grab the at­ten­tion of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple all over the globe who were at­tract­ed out of cu­rios­i­ty, de­sire to be­long, de­sire for ad­ven­ture, pur­pose, sig­nif­i­cance, dig­ni­ty, ex­cite­ment, anger over so­cial in­jus­tices at home, de­pres­sion, trau­ma, men­tal ill­ness and a pletho­ra of oth­er in­di­vid­ual vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

She said such peo­ple would then be tar­gets by Isis re­cruiters.

"Then like any oth­er cult, they find what may mo­ti­vate the in­di­vid­ual to join and be­gin to meet those needs groom­ing them with at­ten­tion, re­in­force­ment, and se­duc­tion fur­ther in­to the group to fi­nal­ly over­take them lead­ing to their own de­struc­tion and the de­struc­tion of oth­ers," she added.

Speck­hard added that the eas­i­est tar­get were youth be­cause they don't have the per­spec­tive, ex­pe­ri­ence and judge­ment to know that utopias nev­er pan out.

She said Isis tar­get­ed every­one and did not mind who re­spond­ed.

"They can and will use any­one who is re­spon­sive to their calls. Women are in­vit­ed to come and be wives, men to be fight­ers and both to mount home­grown at­tacks."

Isis fight­er­scan be rein­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety

The au­thor of sev­en books, which in­clude Talk­ing to Ter­ror­ists: Un­der­stand­ing the Psy­cho-So­cial Mo­ti­va­tions of Mil­i­tant Ji­ha­di Ter­ror­ists, Mass Hostage Tak­ers, Sui­cide Bombers and "Mar­tyrs"; Fe­tal Ab­duc­tion: The True Sto­ry of Mul­ti­ple Per­son­al­i­ties and Mur­der; and Bride of ISIS: One Young Woman's Path in­to Home­grown Ter­ror­ism, Speck­hard said it was pos­si­ble for Isis fight­ers to be rein­te­grat­ed in­to so­ci­ety af­ter be­ing in war-torn Syr­ia.

How­ev­er, she said the im­por­tant thing was to un­cov­er what first made them vul­ner­a­ble to be­liev­ing Isis' lies.

"What were their needs, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and mo­ti­va­tions for join­ing and to find how these can be redi­rect­ed in­to non­vi­o­lent ac­tions.

"If an in­di­vid­ual was pas­sion­ate about world in­jus­tices and con­cerned about the plight of Mus­lims world­wide, can they turn that pas­sion away from Isis to less vi­o­lent ways to ad­dress in­jus­tices?" she said.

Speck­hard said if their needs, mo­ti­va­tions and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties were not ad­dressed, these con­tin­ued to ex­ist up­on their re­turn. It was im­por­tant to note too that Isis fight­ers have tak­en on a lot of trau­ma on the bat­tle­field and were even more vul­ner­a­ble.

"Thus, they can eas­i­ly flip back in­to Isis even af­ter pub­licly re­nounc­ing the group. Like­wise, lone­ly in­di­vid­u­als re­main vul­ner­a­ble to Isis mem­bers re­con­tact­ing them and ac­ti­vat­ing in­ti­mate bonds that may be ide­alised again af­ter their re­turn. So there are many deep con­cerns to ad­dress to safe­guard so­ci­ety from these re­turnees."

From some of her in­ter­views she found Isis de­fec­tors said they liked many as­pects of Isis, es­pe­cial­ly Shari­ah train­ing in which they were taught an ide­al ver­sion of Is­lam which in­clud­ed an ide­alised Caliphate by a very charis­mat­ic and lov­ing teacher–al­though he al­so taught them that all oth­ers are en­e­mies of that dream and could be killed.

She said at the end of Shari­ah train­ing some were asked to demon­strate their com­mit­ment by be­head­ing a pris­on­er.

"All of them be­lieved for a time in the dream of a utopi­an Is­lam­ic Caliphate and un­der­stood that it was go­ing to be achieved via vi­o­lence, but over­time the ex­treme bru­tal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion were turn-offs and they ul­ti­mate­ly got dis­gust­ed and de­cid­ed it was not Is­lam­ic and al­so fear­ful for their own lives."

Speck­hard said for coun­tries in the re­gion who are eye­ing Isis it was im­por­tant to look at the mo­ti­va­tions and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of po­ten­tial re­cruits and find gen­uine so­lu­tions.

She said, "In my view, it's not just the mil­i­tary bat­tle­field where we need to fight Isis. We al­so need to en­gage on the dig­i­tal bat­tle­field where Isis is cur­rent­ly win­ning. We need to break the Isis brand and one vi­able way of do­ing that is rais­ing the voic­es of Isis in­sid­ers–de­fec­tors who are will­ing to de­nounce the group."


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