CEP has reviewed the details of dozens of cases involving Western foreign fighters and jihadist brides who in some way were radicalized and became involved in the conflict in Iraq and Syria. Given the similarity of the end result, you would suspect that some characteristic, some common trait, would be present in, if not all, then the majority of these cases. Yet, that does not appear to be true and no single profile appears to emerge.

What does materialize is instead something closer to a kaleidoscope, with glimmers of trends (or at least a few strange similarities) that seem to fade and then sometimes reappear across cases. No single characteristic unites the set of these Western Islamist conscripts, but these tidbits of recurring ‘trends’ do spark questions for further research. They may also help us think of possible parameters when considering how we can hope to prevent such future radicalization of our youth.

In one example of a strange recurrence, media reports reveal that Western foreign fighters Mohammed Ali Baryalei (Australia), Khaled Sharrouf (Australia), and John Maguire (Canada) all suffered childhood abuse at the hands of their fathers. Is this a noteworthy possible characteristic? Is childhood abuse – an at-risk factor for future gang violence – also a possible indicator for potential radicalization? And would addressing issues of childhood abuse therefore help prevent radicalization?

Similar questions arise when one notices that among Western foreign fighters throughout the world, a history of juvenile delinquency, prison time, and mental illness (particularly schizophrenia and extreme paranoia) repeatedly pop up. Would addressing these mental health issues through prevention programs also diminish the number of potential Western foreign fighters?

That too may be a promising research avenue to explore.  What is certain so far, however, is that it is too early to tell. 

As CEP has noted, geography, socio-economic factors and family dynamics are not yet predictive in terms of who will emerge as a future jihadist. We do know that most Western foreign fighters have thus far been predominantly Muslim, young and male. Even then, however, prevention programs targeting specifically this demographic would appear to exclude a significant number of potential cases.

For example, the effort by Muslim communities themselves to establish prevention programs may be invaluable to addressing the phenomenon of foreign fighters as a whole. But these programs, primarily focused on Muslim-born youth, do not necessarily address the significant percentage of Western foreign fighters who convert to Islam during their teenage years and beyond. These community-based programs also may not address future foreign fighters who have been documented as not being particularly active within their Muslim communities.

This is not to say that such prevention programs should be instead focused on an older crowd. Studies show that community-based gang prevention programs are most effective when addressing at-risk individuals as early as possible. And given the surprising number of teenage Western foreign fighters, the need to address this issue early may be similarly worthwhile. However, relying solely on programs aimed at young Muslim men does seem to by definition miss older converts to Islam and the Western foreign fighters who were neither religious nor particularly active within their communities. While they are likely very helpful, these programs cannot be expected to prevent all cases of Westerners seeking to become jihadists.

Media profiles of Western foreign fighters can therefore be disillusioning for anyone expecting them to reveal a personality type or a group of conclusive, predictive characteristics. As neat and as useful it would be to have a reliable profile of a Western foreign fighter, that profile continues to remain elusive.

However, the failure of researchers to accurately predict the personality characteristics and circumstances that will eventually transform someone into a radical Islamist willing to die for his or her cause is not a dead-end but a unique opportunity. Research and resources must be expanded so more can be learned and prevention programs can be better refined to protect a seemingly large and vulnerable sector of our society.

After more than 10 years as a failed nationalist movement, the now fragmented Baloch insurgency in Pakistan is likely to be taken over by Sunni militias. Supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in an effort to further antagonize Iran’s eastern front, skirmishes among Baloch insurgents, Islamist extremists and the Iranian and Pakistani governments have increased in the last year.

Predominantly Sunni, Balochistan is a region roughly the size of France that is part of three countries, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran annexed its portion in 1928 and dubbed it “Sistan-e-Balochistan.” On the Pakistan side, Balochistan is resource-rich and most famous for housing and training the Taliban for many years before 9/11. Pakistan forcibly annexed the province in 1947, which resulted in four insurgencies - 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63 and 1973-77. Nevertheless, the separatist movement has survived to the present.

In Afghanistan, according to unofficial estimates, there are around 600,000 Baloch. The majority are settled in Nimroz, in southwest Afghanistan. The war in Pakistani Balochistan has resulted in an influx of Baloch refugees into Afghanistan, with many living in Helmand and Farah also. The majority are unofficial refugees and remain mostly ignored by the Afghan government. As the number of refugees increases, however, it is likely to increase tensions between the Afghan and Pakistan governments. 

Both Iran and Pakistan have also attempted to force integration of the Baloch through their respective cultural and political policies. 

The secular Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has accused Islamabad and its intelligence agency, the ISI, of encouraging religious militancy in an effort to dominate the separatist groups in Balochistan. Moreover, as Sunni extremist groups overlap regionally and in terms of ideology, training and funding, several Pakistan Taliban commanders have declared their loyalty to ISIS. There are also reports of ISIS establishing an affiliate, Ansar-ul Daulat-e Islamia fil Pakistan, and luring recruits from two other Sunni militant groups, Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Ahl-e Sunnat Wai Jamat.

Typically, the Pakistani and Iranian governments contained their respective reactions to Baloch insurgents targeting Iran from the Pakistani side of the border. Due to the increase in the number and scope of incidents, however, Iran may take a more aggressive approach to limit attacks on its sovereignty in its Sistan-e-Balochistan province. For example, in October 2014, about 30 Iranian security personnel crossed the Pakistani border in pursuit of anti-Iranian militants. The Iranian raid resulted in the death of a Pakistani Frontier Corps soldier.

Jundullah may have been responsible for the latest incidents. An anti-Iranian Sunni-Baloch militia group, Jundullah is an example of a Baloch nationalist group evolving into an Islamist extremist organization. In 2008, it was reported that the US was funding Jundullah as part of its anti-Iranian policies. Last year, a spokesperson for Jundullah confirmed that leaders of the organization had met with ISIS in Balochistan. Jundullah also has ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups in Pakistan.

Iran’s response to Jundullah activities remains unclear. An Iranian member of Parliament, Hussain Ali Sheryari, recently strongly warned Iran that ISIS could capture Sistan-Balochistan if peace is not restored there. Sheryari cited the growing number of clashes between yet another Sunni extremist group operating in the area, Jaesh-ul-Adl, and Iranian Border Security Forces.  Whether or not Iran is taking Sheryari’s concerns seriously and will act on them remains to be seen.

What is clear is that the dream of the Baloch for a homeland is slipping farther away all the time.  

The Internet has been a game changer in many ways. A globalizing force, the Internet has helped to break down the barriers between people who would have otherwise never connected. But just as fire that warms can also burn, the Internet has been used to unleash harm as well as good. The ease of communication has also enabled drug dealers, pirates, and pedophiles to congregate and communicate.

Extremists have also discovered the benefits of the tools of the digital world. New media have enabled extremist ideologies to spread unabated and unrestricted, making it easy, for example, to find instructions on building bombs, and follow Boko Haram’s Twitter-based pledge of allegiance to ISIS.

With the eruption of the Internet in the early 2000s, extremists — and more specifically Islamists — have taken the battlefield online. Terror group leaders, members, and sympathizers have all played a role in the explosion of extremist ideology on the Internet. In the 1990s, terrorists used what now seem like ancient technologies; videotapes, audiotapes, CDs, DVDs, photographs, and cell phones to communicate, propagandize, and recruit. Since the advent of the Internet, terrorists have launched jihadist websites, chat rooms, and online magazines, effectively used e-mail, and more recently, social media, to pursue their goals.

Al-Qaeda’s evolving use of modern communication tools is one illuminating example. At the time of its founding in 1988, in order to communicate, the group relied on public pay phones, primitive cellphones, and encrypted emails sent from Internet cafes throughout the Middle East. In 1996, Osama bin Laden started using a satellite phone — costing $15,000 and the size of a laptop computer — to make international calls from his hideout in the mountainous region on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 1998, al-Qaeda began exploiting Qatar-based media outlet Al Jazeera as a conduit through which to communicate its ideology, demands, and fatwas (religious decrees). In 2000, the group launched its own media department, as-Sahab, which was responsible for producing videos of al-Qaeda’s activities, cementing the group’s legitimacy in the minds of its followers and disseminating important informational files.

After September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda went underground and dispersed to ensure its survival, a move that coincided with the rapid expansion of the World Wide Web. The Internet enabled al-Qaeda operatives to continue to communicate, but online. Better yet, the group now had an international audience that could be reached, and reached easily, from any keyboard. The number of jihadist websites metastasized post-9/11, inspiring a seeming never-ending supply of new content from al-Qaeda sympathizers and wanna-bes from around the globe. In 2002, bin Laden declared, “The time has come to have the media take its rightful place, to carry out its required role in confronting this aggressive campaign and the open declared Crusader war by all means that can be seen, heard, and read.”

Since the turn of the century, al-Qaeda and other terror groups have vastly improved their online capabilities to incorporate new and sophisticated production techniques that appeal to their target audiences for recruitment, fundraising and incitement to violence. Extremist groups now produce nad post everything from grisly beheading videos to online magazines available in a number of Western languages.

More recently, terror groups have exploited the freedom and anonymity of social media platforms to troll for recruits and to terrorize the public. In January 2015, ISIS or its sympathizers hacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command, posting threatening messaging and uploading recruitment videos.  The hackers later published a 52-page list containing the personal contact information of retired U.S. military officers. And it’s become clear that Twitter has an ISIS problem; the social media platform reportedly supported at least 46,000 separate ISIS-related accounts between September and December 2014.

The tools of communication have always been vital to extremists and as technology has grown and developed, so too have extremist strategies to exploit them. Their use of communications tools has shifted tremendously, demanding greater understanding of these new threats and a strategy to combat them.

Removing the most egregious jihadist propaganda and violent content from social media sites would be a step forward in creating an environment where counter narratives could have the chance to compete and take hold.  Extremists will never stop trying to convince others to join their violent cause, but reasonable measures can and should be taken to at least keep content off the internet that glorifies beheadings and murder and encourages indiscriminate lone-wolf attacks against innocent people around the world.   

In the string of grisly videos released in the past seven months, beginning with ISIS’ execution of James Foley through the February beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, there is one that haunts me most. It is not one that showcases the devastating brutality or barbarism of a beheading; rather, it is the video entitled “Uncovering an Enemy Within,”  capturing  a young Kazakh boy’s blank stare as he puts his gun to an alleged Russian spy’s head, the cold emptiness of a child indoctrinated out of innocence and trained to kill. There is some speculation that the video, which news outlets have had difficulty authenticating, may have been staged. Regardless, we have seen this boy in ISIS propaganda videos before, looking back at us, as fervent and dangerous as the most seasoned fighter on Syria’s frontlines.

This killer. This kid. This image is branded on my brain, but the philosophy that conceived of it is even scarier, a philosophy that promotes the reality of expendable children growing up in an environment that has normalized violence and has utter disregard for the humanity of “the other.” As captured so hauntingly in the blockbuster movie American Sniper, these children-turned-combatants, at the click of a clip, can reluctantly become targets for military sharp-shooters and drone strikes.  

These sad, quiet thoughts become angry questions. What kind of an organization would use children in such a way, for propaganda purposes and in battle? How are extremist groups like ISIS recruiting or forcing children into this type of indoctrination? And what does it mean for the future of peace, tolerance and security if ISIS has built a system that produces future generations of combatants?

The use of children in conflict is not a new phenomenon. It is difficult to carve out a period in history during which children were not involved in warfare in some capacity. Even after the UN codified the ban on children in conflict with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, militant groups have still managed to incorporate youth into their violent struggle. In the past few years, Western millennial activists focused attention on the use of child soldiers by groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army or by rebels fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The civil war in Syria, however, has increased the number of children in conflict to staggering levels.

In June 2014, Human Rights Watch reported that all armed groups in Syria have recruited and used children—from Syrian government troops to the Nusra Front and ISIS. What sets ISIS extremists apart, more alarming and difficult to stomach, is their aggressiveness and their lack of any attempt to conceal their targeting and training of children. In fact, the ISIS propaganda machine has heralded it as a source of pride and a tactic to sow fear into the opposition.

One of the earliest examples of ISIS’ child indoctrination program made headlines in December 2013. ISIS released videos and still images of what was dubbed “Zarqawi’s Cubs camp,” a cute moniker for what was actually a summer terrorism camp. ISIS swept vast territory into its self-proclaimed Islamic State, making initial contact with children through public forums in town squares and mosques. These events included passing-out juice and candy while screening extremist propaganda. ISIS was essentially saying, “Here we are, your new leaders to keep you safe from Assad and the infidels. Would you like some sweets? Obey us or else.”

In territories under its control, ISIS group has systematically replaced secular schools with its own brand of education: a perversion of Islam devoid of ‘modern’ subjects like science. Families have the choice of a fundamentalist Islamist education or no education at all. In essence, ISIS has created a network of ‘feeder schools’ to fill its ranks. This strategy of indoctrination under the guise of education is similar to that employed by the Mujahedeen and Taliban in the 1980s, in an effort to mold Afghan children into loyalists.

ISIS has expanded its child recruitment campaign to Kazakhstan, as seen  in the video “Race Towards Good,” and Iraq, according to the video  “Blood Jihad 2,” where dozens of young males are seen  receiving violent training from ISIS militants; one boy is being hit in the torso with a stick, another punched in the stomach. Both blows are inflicted by adults, yet are received without a flinch or hint of resistance. The cold looks and level of discipline under immense pain and abuse is quite chilling.

A key characteristic of ISIS child indoctrination is the use of extreme violence as a means to desensitize the youth. In addition to being subjected to outright torture, boys receive intensive military and ideological training. They are taught how to use multiple weapons, interspersed with teachings on jihadist interpretations of Islam. They are taught skills befitting a savage ISIS warrior, from leading executions to building suicide bombs. One Syrian boy, Jomah, who escaped after being wounded in battle, recalled the desensitization trainees underwent: a class of boys as young as eight were given a beheading lesson that ended with a severed head being passed around.

After several such training sessions, sadly, the members of ISIS' youth brigade become as accustomed to the gruesome product of a beheading as they would one of their treasures for show-and-tell.  

Glasgow girl, Aqsa Mahmoud, wrote on Tumblr from Syria:

“The media at first used to [portray] the ones running away to join the Jihad [holy war] as being unsuccessful, [and say that they] didn’t have a future and [came] from broke down families etc. But that is far from the truth. Most sisters I have come across have been in university studying courses with many promising paths, with big, happy families and friends and everything in the Dunyah to persuade one to stay behind and enjoy the luxury. If we had stayed behind, we could have been blessed with it all from a relaxing and comfortable life and lots of money.”

A long way from her Harry Potter, Coldplay loving days, Mahmoud is a reminder that radicalization is not only the purview of young Muslim men.  An estimated 550+ politicized Muslim women are making or have made their way to ISIS-held territories. Besides Mahmoud, examples include:

• Shamima Begum, 15; Kadiza Sultana, 16; and Amira Abase, 15 (UK)
• Salma and Zahra (UK)
• Sabina Selimovic, 15, and Samra Kesinovic, 17, (Austria)
• Yusra Hussain (UK)
• Hayat Boumeddiene (France) and
• “the Caliphettes”

As Mahmoud confirms in her messgae, the girls are not impoverished or uneducated, but are deeply devout and yearn for a purpose in life tinged with romantic notions of wedded bliss to jihadi warriors and a rewarding afterlife based on their piety. Yet, the decisions made by these women , and the young men they love, is not only the result of Islamist tweets, Youtube videos and the messaging from young hipster jihadis they met online or in their neighborhoods. Their desire to be in “Muslim lands” is based on an identity crisis supported by western media, albeit, unintentionally.

In an effort to be protective of innocent Muslims since 9/11, most media outlets self-censor the debate over Islam as a faith versus Islamism – Islam as a political movement- resulting in criticism of the latter being blindly labelled as “Islamophobia.” Yet, as is evident from the Atlantic article, “What ISIS Really Wants,” by Graeme Wood and articles published since the Obama administration’s Counter Violent Extremism Summit in February, like Asra Nomani’s Daily Beast article, “Will It Take The End of the World For Obama To Recognize ISIS As 'Islamic'? devout Muslims are looking to Islamic scripture to understand the political chaos they see in the Middle East and the West’s policy response to it.

Given the decentralized nature of Islam, there are numerous interpretations of scripture within the myriad Muslim communities around the world. That said, the ideology of groups such as ISIS falls within that pool of interpretation. It is not Islam, but it is. Muslims are taught that as long as one says the Shahada (there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet), he or she is Muslim. While the interpretation of Islam that ISIS and its ilk choose to follow is literally medieval, there is yet to be a counter-message rooted in scripture that argues for pluralism, universal human rights and individual freedom of thought and action. This is what needs to be supported as part of the counter-extremism effort, not only in Muslim majority countries, but in Western countries as well, to prevent extremist recruitment and lone wolf jihadism.

The smartest article I have read recently on this point is a personal story from Thanaa al-Naggar at Gawker.com, entitled, “Practicing Islam in Short Shorts.”  She hits nail on the head – for all the rigid interpretations of Islam, there are positive, personal ones if one chooses. This allows Muslims to live in the West without giving up their faith.

Yet, without a foundation in scripture, such “moderate” Muslims cannot defend themselves in a religious debate, allowing the most medieval interpretations of Islam to take over (ISIS quotes 13th century Islamic scholars).   It is urgent, as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi implored an audience of Sunni clerics recently at one of Islam’s oldest theological schools, al-Azhar  – counter the extremist narrative of Islam based on scripture so Muslims may live in today’s society. Otherwise, Muslim girls like Aqsa, Hayat and Shamima will continue on their pilgrimage towards violence, separatism and hate for years to come.

China’s largest province, Xinjiang, could become another front in the global war on terror if the government’s policies against Uyghur separatism do not become more nuanced soon. Marginalized from the country’s economic boom, separatists from the mostly Muslim Turkic-minority Uyghur community have increasingly turned to violence against the Han migrants flooding into the province for work. China has responded harshly in the name of national security, choosing to tie all separatist activity to Islamist extremism rather than address any of the local grievances. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, this has made it difficult for outside observers, including the media and human rights groups, to distinguish between China’s “genuine counterterrorism” efforts and its “repression of minority rights” in the province.

The Uyghur have reportedly lived in the area continuously since the 3rd century and experienced periods of independence along with foreign rule for many centuries. Long before the People’s Republic of China annexed the province in 1949, the Mongols, Arab caliphates and ancient Chinese dynasties all laid claim for a time to what China calls Xinjiang  today and what some Uyghur separatists have re-named Eastern Turkestan.

China is not likely to give up sovereignty in its largest oil and gas producing province any time soon. Economic growth initiatives and a new bullet train into Xinjiang is helping to improve the local economy and integrate the province into China proper.  Unfortunately, as some analysts note, many job advertisements explicitly seek Mandarin-only speakers or those who are ethnic Han. This has resulted in some Uyghurs becoming suspicious of the increased Han migration, believing it is a growing threat to their culture and possibly an attempt to dilute the 10 million-strong Uyghur community, which is approximately 45 percent of the total Xinjiang population.

In February, a Uyghur suicide-bomber self-detonated at a hotel in Xinjiang, killing seven. In July 2009, riots in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi left 197 dead. This incident received national attention.  The provincial government responded by increasing the security budget in 2010 by almost 90 percent, to 2.89 billion yuan ($423 million). The underlying issues of discrimination and economic disparity were not addressed. Consequently, conflicts continue. Last year, 29 people were killed in a mass knife attack at a train station in the southern Chinese city of Kunming. Following the government line, the Chinese media labelled the act terrorism.

The most recent incident comes after the federal government launched an anti-terror campaign last year, following the Urumqi incident, blaming Uyghur separatists and Islamist insurgents seeking to establish an independent state.

China is also cracking down on religious observances of Muslims in Xinjiang. In cities across the region, signs warn people against public prayer. Individuals younger than 18 cannot enter mosques. Video cameras are often trained on mosque entrances by the government to keep track of who comes and goes daily.  Civil servants are banned from participating in Friday prayer services and Uyghur college students are not permitted to fast during Ramadan.

Ironically, outside of Xinjiang, Chinese Muslims, mostly ethnic Hui, are not discriminated against by the Han. Some observe it is because they are physically indistinguishable from the Han and Mandarin-speaking. Thus, it seems that the problems in Xinjiang are more closely tied to lack of assimilation of a unique ethnic group, rather than Islamist extremism alone.

Yet, if China continues to threaten Uyghur religious identity, the likelihood of attracting more discontented Muslims to jihadism will grow. Uyghur separatists, to date, seem more inclined to interact with Islamist groups in Pakistan and central Asia for training only, not Islamist indoctrination. Yet, there is a trickle of radicalization in the province, embodied by groups such as the Eastern Turkestan Islamist Movement (ETIM). ETIM’s actual numbers, capabilities and connections to more serious extremists like al-Qaeda or ISIS is unclear.

Strategically located at the border of eight countries: Russia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Xinjiang can either be a buffer to Islamist extremism or an Islamist foothold into China. As evidenced in other nationalist movements where Muslims are involved, like Chechnya or Bosnia, Islamist foreign fighters sometimes take on a cause whether they are invited or not; or in the case of the Iranian revolution, usurp power once a common goal (overthrowing the Shah) is achieved.

Should Islamist extremists in any of these countries (and there are many) turn their attention east, it would be very easy for foreign fighters to adopt the Uyghur nationalist movement as a Muslim cause and introduce Xinjiang to dreams of an enduring caliphate.

More than 20,000 foreign fighters from 80 countries have joined the ranks of ISIS and other extremist groups in Iraq and Syria. Somewhat surprisingly, of that total, almost 4,000 fighters have come from Western Europe.

Why would so many leave relatively comfortable lives in the West to take up jihad?

Religious extremists often believe they are waging a divine battle for good against evil and have historically justified their actions – no matter how violent or grotesque – as appropriate, divine acts in the service of God. Their opponents therefore become not just ideological opponents, but amoral enemies of God. The defense of God’s message against such enemies in turn enables extremists to justify and rationalize all manner of actions that appear cruel or bizarre to outsiders.

Islamic extremism is grabbing headlines today for its widespread brutality, but religious-based extremism is far from exclusive to Islam. For example, Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein committed a reprehensible massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers in a Hebron mosque in 1994. In addition, violent Jewish Israeli nationalists have committed so-called price-tag attacks on Muslim businesses, houses of worship, and private property. In one such recent attack, members of a Jewish anti-Arab group set fire to a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school in Jerusalem. An Orthodox rabbi from Teaneck, N.J., made international headlines in November 2014 with a blog post stating, “Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished.”

One manifestation of Christian extremist violence took place in 1994 when the Rev. Paul Hill killed Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard outside a Florida abortion clinic. Before his 2003 execution, Hill said he expected “a great reward in Heaven.”

The Army of God, a Virginia-based anti-abortion group, has claimed responsibility for the bombings of abortion clinics in Georgia and Alabama, while praising the murders of abortion doctors – though it did not claim direct responsibility for those acts. Its website invites visitors to send thank-you notes to Scott Roeder, convicted for the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller, medical director of a Kansas abortion clinic.

Christian Pastor Terry Jones of Florida issued a worldwide call in 2010 to burn copies of the Koran on September 11, which he dubbed “International Burn a Koran Day.” The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Jones as part of the “Anti-Muslim Inner Circle.”

All of these people were motivated by what they believed to be a divine duty. Clearly, even as mainstream religious leaders seek to condemn religious-based extremism, the justification of violence as a holy endeavor remains an enduring phenomenon across religions.