Universities and colleges have in the recent past become a rich ground for terrorist recruitment into the various Global Terror Organizations (GTO). Recruiters have mastered and crafted techniques that lure youths in universities and colleges to join the cause, offer financial as well as technical expertise to GTO. Previously, the networks would recruit locally and offer training where the fighters would be involved in combat as well as take part in the day-to-day activities. It did not matter who they recruited as long as the individual was willing to travel to the camps and be part of the organization. However, this has morphed to a more intricate system that radicalizes the youth, empowers them and even supports them in conducting attacks in their vicinity. For instance, ISIS has been recruiting university students abroad and inciting them to conduct attacks in their home countries in the name of the terror organization.
Significantly, it has become evident that terrorist organizations in the world have changed tactics and are now interested in high-performing students in their recruitment drive, even as the war on terror becomes sophisticated. Several incidents confirm that terror groups – the Al Shabaab militia included – have been using university students to plan and execute their atrocities, against people who don’t subscribe to their ideologies.
Kenya’s intelligence sources now indicate the presence of a number of university and college students who are on the payroll at the Somalia bases for al Shabaab as well as ISIS in Puntland. These are young people who have agreed to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al Qaeda branch Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahideen (HSM). Intelligence sources reveal that there is a very serious rebirth of homegrown terrorism aimed at establishing an East African Islamic Caliphate by al Qaeda and al Shabaab. Due to this, there is increased recruitment, training, and indoctrination of the youth into terrorist cells.
Instances Of Terror Recruitment Of University Students
April 2015,- one of the Garissa University massacre, Abdirahim Abdullahi was discovered to have been a university drop-out from the University of Nairobi taking law course that left school to join and fight in al Shabaab.
June 2016, – 27-year-old Javan Murai alias Jamal from Kenya’s Kabarak University was arrested in Marsabit en route to Somalia to join al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab in Somalia.
February 2016– Kenyan Anti-terrorism police arrested a University of Nairobi student while on his way to Libya, to join the IS terror network. The first-year biochemistry student had used his school fees to buy an air ticket to the North African country after he was lured by a terrorist organization and told his starting salary would be $2,000 (Sh200,000).
March 2017, – Reports of two trainee medical doctors of Kenyan origin were killed in an airstrike against ISIS in Libya. They were believed to be part of a larger ISIS cell in Kenya consisting of medical students and recent graduates and were planning biological attacks in the country.
October 2018– European radical president and principal of a science school in Sweden was arrested. Abdel Nasser El Nadi was arrested on suspicions that he was radicalizing and recruits his students to join ISIS either travel to the Middle East as well as to conduct attacks locally in Europe.
January 2019, – orchestrators of Nairobi’s Dusit Hotel Complex attack were discovered to be in league with university students Abdinoor Maalim Ismail, a law student currently doing his pupillage as well as perpetrators girlfriend being a recent graduate from Masinde Muliro University.
How do Jihadists recruit in Universities and colleges?
- Online platforms- in a bid to foster tech-savvy learning and keep abreast with technological advancements, Universities and colleges offer free and unlimited access to the internet to its students and faculty. The unmonitored and unlimited internet leaves the students on their own where they could stumble upon radical and extremists’ materials as the research school projects.
- Social Media- the main recruitment avenues by GTO online is social media where recruiters can scout, target, approach and recruit members they think are susceptible to join the cause. Also, students seek out radical members and accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram as well as other social media which opens them to receiving material that influences them to join the terror groups.
- Video Games- at least 70% of college students play video games that have enhanced the player experience by having chat rooms and private messaging. Recruiters use such tools to talk to potential recruits who spend hours playing the game and thus end up being radicalized.
- Money incentives- terror recruiters tend to offer university students monetary incentives to conduct violence on behalf of GTO and offer to pay through untraceable online money transfers and cryptocurrency. This is especially facilitated by the huge amounts of student loans accrued as well as inadequate job opportunities for when they graduate.
- Tapping into Angry, frustrated and mentally at-risk students- in the era of free speech and anonymous posting online the youth have found an avenue to air out their grievances, anger, and frustration without necessarily revealing your identity a move that has offered recruits for GTO an opportunity to radicalize and instill extremist views. Mental illnesses and diseases especially among university students have made them susceptible and an easy target by recruiters who offer seemingly needed answers.
Persistent Threat Of Terrorism On Universities And Colleges
Superficially, the recruitment seems to have died down or reduced because there are fewer cases of students getting arrested as they travel to join the GTO. It would be reckless to assume that the recruitment of University and college students have subsided seeing as more sophistication and tactic changes have masked and hidden the number of active terror members and sympathizers in universities and colleges. Herein are likely scenarios that continued recruitment from Universities and colleges could pose to global, domestic as well as regional security.
- Terror groups are likely to morph to adopt a more sophisticated and tactics and implementation of their attacks and ideology. This will be enhanced by incorporating better leaders, strategists as well as fighters with the technical prowess to execute attacks.
- The production of intelligent and skilled militants, fighters and sympathizers are harder to track both online and offline.
- A great sophistication in the nature, targets, and execution of attacks will be observed and will likely translate to more casualties as was experienced in the Sri-Lankan Easter attacks.
- Improved recruitment drives with better quality material; videos and literature delivered by eloquent people that will appeal more to people from all walks of life as such it may facilitate an upsurge in the recruitment.
- Imminent delocalization of global terror organizations to diversify attacks and geographical presence of the said terror outfits and caliphates.
- Creation of Self-replenishing and reliant terror organizations that have professionals within their ranks and as such a structure that allows for division of labor. Division of labor will allow the groups to be more effective in tasks they set to achieving and by extension upping the threat to global security.
