Tunisia’s foreign fighter contingent was not only one of the largest in the world but had more concentrated hubs of recruits than in almost any other country. Why one of these hubs emerged, and how people were recruited in it, is the subject of this paper.
The reason recruitment hubs are important is because human beings are social animals – we observe how the people around us act and adapt our own behavior accordingly. When a hub of militant recruitment forms, it creates new and more diverse pathways for people to join. Instead of only the most committed ideologues, places where recruitment is popular also attract people whose friends or family members joined, or because they want to improve their social standing, or to hide from the police. Even though their reasons for joining are less ideological, these recruits can become just as committed as any other member after they join through a process of socialization and indoctrination.
The most important reason why so many hubs emerged in Tunisia was that Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (AST), the country’s main Jihadi Salafi movement, was recruited virtually unopposed for two years after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. This allowed AST to organize activities in all areas of Tunisia, unlike in most places where recruitment was more constrained. When the Tunisian government eventually declared AST a terrorist organization in August 2013, it criminalized a nationwide social movement and drove thousands to flee the country for Syria – mostly to join the Islamic State (IS).
This paper describes how one of the main centers of recruitment of IS foreign fighters formed in Tunisia in order to help us better understand how large numbers of people joined IS and under what conditions they might mobilize in the future. It draws two critical conclusions that are relevant for policies aimed at preventing the next wave of foreign fighters.
1. Interpersonal networks facilitated the recruitment of Tunisian foreign fighters in hubs and kept new joiners involved in the group until they were fully indoctrinated. Properly designed programs can mobilize these friend and family networks to stop recruitment as well.
Interpersonal networks were critical to recruiting IS foreign fighters. Recruiters used personal connections to gather information and customize their pitch for potential recruits before approaching them. Once recruiters convinced someone to join, they deliberately reshaped that person’s personal network to surround him with like-minded members of the group, reinforcing their beliefs and practices to such an extent that their radicalization seemed normal.
Like recruiters, programs aimed at countering recruitment can also use a recruit’s personal network to help dissuade them from joining or to help facilitate their departure from terrorist groups like IS. My interviews with friends and family revealed that someone was almost always aware of the fact that a person was being recruited. Rather than using security services to force families to give up this information – a process that often accelerates radicalism rather than helps reduce it – grassroots non-governmental efforts to counter recruitment should be built to help those who are aware that a person is being recruited find support. In the hub this paper studied, those who wanted to report their concerns about a friend or relative being recruited could not find anyone to help them. With careful programming, this can change.
2. Effective counter-terrorism policy must start with effective counter-recruitment, and this can only succeed if it invests in three complementary lines of effort.
2.1. Support state-led programs that offer new opportunity structures in neighborhoods where recruitment was most prevalent.
Jihadi Salafist groups in Tunisia did not just offer spiritual benefits, new joiners had access to material, social, and psychological benefits as well. Jihadi Salafi groups gave members micro-credit loans and economic cooperatives that helped new members start businesses or design activities that benefitted their community. These opportunities provided structure, meaning, and personal advancement that had previously not been available for new joiners.
Neighborhoods like the hub of IS foreign fighters studied here need state investments that can provide residents with opportunities that go beyond employment. Foreign government support works best if it helps develop state capacity; otherwise, it is too short-term to make the kinds of transformational and inter-generational impacts that these neighborhoods need. In the immediate period, programs could focus on improving municipal governance and economic development, such as giving access to micro-credit banking in poor neighborhoods, increasing funding for social work, and subsidizing grassroots economic cooperatives. In the long term, multi-national investment needs to help develop urban renewal programs that offer mixed-income developments and give residents better access to public transit systems.
2.2. Focus grassroots organizations on addressing the individual-level appeal of Jihadi Salafi recruitment campaigns.
In the hub this paper studied, it was clear that Jihadi Salafis recruited at an individual level whenever possible. In order to counter this recruitment, support is urgently needed to help local nongovernmental organizations 1) identify individuals who are vulnerable to being recruited and 2) intervene before those individuals can become indoctrinated. These programs can only succeed if residents in hubs trust them. In Tunisia they do, but this is a critical problem undermining counterrecruitment efforts in countries in North Africa like Morocco and Egypt.
2.3. Prioritize limited law enforcement and intelligence capacity on prosecuting the most influential recruiters.
Law enforcement and domestic security agencies should prioritize identifying the individuals most responsible for recruiting new members. The majority of Tunisia’s 3,000 foreign fighters were recruited by 20-30 people. Identifying and prosecuting these individuals should be the primary focus of law enforcement and domestic security. This approach is just as applicable to dealing with returning foreign fighters: law enforcement should identify and monitor individuals in the network who are most influential, which is not necessarily the same as the most “radical.” Returnees are more of a threat if they persuade many others to carry out attacks than those who seek to perpetrate them on their own.