PfP Consortium project focuses on terrorist recruitment
September 2007
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany — Security and law enforcement experts from across Europe took a close look at recruitment mechanisms used by Islamist terrorists in Europe, during a meeting of the Partnership for Peace Consortium Counter Terrorism Working Group Sept. 6-7 at the George C. Marshall Center here.
Dr. Jahangir Arasli, an advisor on international issues to the minister of defense of Azerbaijan and a Marshall Center alumnus, speaks about terrorist recruitment of converts to Islam during the Partnership for Peace Consortium Counter Terrorism Working Group meeting Sept. 6 at the Marshall Center.
(Photo by Karlheinz Wedhorn)
The two-day meeting, part of a year-long project coordinated with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, focused on the methods and venues extremists use to radicalize new recruits both in specific regions and Europe-wide.
One of the week’s big news stories—the arrest of three terror suspects in Germany—underscored the timeliness of the working group’s efforts, according to the working group chairman, Marshall Center Professor Dr. John LeBeau.
“Islamist terror organizations such as Al Qaeda are attracting recruits from Europe,” LeBeau said. “These recruits have in some instances traveled to Iraq to serve as suicide bombers and in other instances have been engaged in operations on the European continent. The subway bombing in London is an example of this, as is the recently discovered and disrupted plot against Ramstein in Germany.”
Current information on how recruits are moved along the terrorist transmission belt is crucial to effective counter terrorism measures, according to LeBeau.
“Recruitment is clearly the lifeblood of terrorist organizations. Without attracting new recruits an organization could not replace its losses and survive,” LeBeau said. “Nonetheless, a case can be made that authorities are not concentrating sufficiently on diminishing recruiting, but on trying to stop attacks. Both are important, which is why we have focused on understanding how recruitment mechanisms in Europe function, as a prelude to disrupting the same.”
LeBeau anticipates being able to use the study’s conclusions in the Marshall Center’s Program in Terrorism and Security Studies, which focuses on trends in the development of international terrorism and strategies and methods for combating it. “The working group sessions established some areas where law enforcement and intelligence organizations might focus to get a handle on recruitment,” LeBeau said.
Project members will next meet in Tirana, Albania, in March to examine intelligence cooperation as a tool in combating terrorism.
