Aim must be to break the cycle of radicalisation
Professor Greg Barton
by Greg Barton
According to police, an alleged plot to launch an outrageous attack on Anzac Day in Melbourne has been thwarted. That is certainly good news but it is not one of those stories where we can simply move on and forget.
There are two questions to grapple with. Are alleged plots like this the shape of things to come? Will more Australians be cajoled into attempting lone wolf attacks? And will we be forever chasing our tails responding to radicalisation after the fact?
The experience of the past decade suggests that while we are lucky to live in a country where major attacks can generally be prevented, we have not yet begun to deal effectively with a problem that is accelerating.
A decade ago, a much bigger police operation in Victoria and NSW defeated nascent terror plots linked to two cells inspired by Melbourne man Abdul Nacer Benbrika. Operation Pendennis was the biggest and most expensive counter-terrorism operation in our history and led to court proceedings that were the longest and most costly we’ve seen.
Eighteen men were prosecuted and sentenced. The Sydney cell, at least, was frighteningly close to launching a major attack.
But when we take stock of what was achieved, the reality is grim. Most of the 18 sentenced, and many of their associates, remain unrepentant. In fact most are now caught up with jihadi violence in Iraq and Syria, either inspiring their young acolytes to join, as appears to be the case with the five remaining in maximum-security jail in NSW and with Benbrika in Victoria or they have actively gone to join the ranks of Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra/al-Qaeda.
We’re all too familiar with the sickening details of Khaled Sharrouf’s involvement with IS, along with Mohammed Elomar, whose uncle of the same name continues to serve a 28-year jail term arising from the Pendennis trials. And Adam Dahman who left Melbourne aged 17 in November 2013 became a suicide bomber in Baghdad in July last year, having been radicalised through his brother-in-law, Ahmad Raad, who had also served time for his part in the Pendennis plots.
Amira Karroum moved to Sydney from the Gold Coast to stay with relatives, where she came under the influence of two cousins. One, Fadl Sayadi, had served time because of his links with the Sydney Pendennis cell and the other, Bilal Sayadi, was involved in organised crime before joining the extremist Islamist group Street Dakwah under the sway of Mohammad Ali Baryalei. Through Bilal and Street Dakwah she met and married Tyler Casey.
Casey was born into a Christian family in Adelaide but became radicalised in Colorado after falling in with criminal gangs and then finding escape, first through conversion, then through joining al-Qaeda. The pair were shot dead a week after they arrived in Syria to fight with Jabhat al-Nusra.
The list goes on. A web of social connections and friendships links young people being radicalised and older people radicalising them across Australia and globally, like runners linking disparate clumps in a bamboo forest. The networks run across generations, linking youth in Australia with peers and mentors in Syria and Iraq, and, as appears to be the case with the 14-year-old whose arrest in Britain on Saturday triggered the Melbourne raids, joining them in a subculture of jihadis, wannabes and fan boys. Digging a little below the surface reveals the “bamboo runners” that drive the network’s expansion.
Police will allege the young men arrested in Melbourne over the past few days are friends of Numan Haider who in turn was befriended by Mohammad Ali Baryalei and his protege, fellow Melbourne boy Neil Prakash. Responding to these social networks lies at the heart of the challenge to break the vicious cycle of radicalisation that drives this threat. Police operations, necessary though they are, are not the solution in themselves.
Victoria Police, with other forces around Australia, is working with community groups to help them recognise the signs of radicalisation. That awareness is invaluable but, by itself, it is not sufficient. The next step is a nationwide case management approach to dealing with everyone at risk. Every young Australian whose passport has been withheld, or who has been taken into questioning by police or faced arrest or stopped from travelling, needs to be followed up by an expert team of community workers co-ordinating with community leaders. But for the program to work, it needs to move beyond those who have already been in trouble and engage with those at risk of radicalisation.
The devastatingly effective radicalisation dynamics of Islamic State depend upon social networks formed through one-on-one friendships and to counter that we need to do the same thing and invest in relationships.
It won’t be easy but the alternatives are much worse. Even successful police operations merely buy time — they don’t solve the problem. This is something that we will have to all do together.
Professor Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the School of Social Sciences and the Director International of the Global Terroriam Research Centre in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.
This article has appeared in the Herald Sun.