White jihadis

The last month has seen a rise of drone strikes in our tribal belt, and linked to that a story of a plot being hatched which would target Britain, France and Germany in a series of strikes. As the details emerged a new term came into currency - 'White Jihadis'. The drone strikes are said to have been aimed at young, sometimes Western-born, men who were either recruited in the west or gravitated to Pakistan to join the fight against what they perceive as the myriad injustices inflicted upon the Muslim world. The Afghan war has from the outset attracted foreign Muslim fighters, and there are plentiful reports of overheard battlefield communications between people speaking with, for instance, marked British and American accents. White Jihadis are drawn from what is an increasing pool of disaffected young Muslims in a range of primarily (but not exclusively) European countries or America. For extremist recruiters in the West such a plenitude of disaffected youth is much to their advantage. Many of these young people are self-radicalising and need little persuasion to move from supporting the jihad online in the privacy of their own homes, to joining the jihad for real. They can point to a range of negative reinforcers - the French burqa ban, the rise of the anti-Islam political right in the Netherlands - and will find many volunteers willing to train and then lay down their lives.
But this is only a part of the story. The success of the recruiters lies in the failure of the states where these young people were born or which their parents elected for them to live in; a failure to engage with them and to create an alternative narrative that might draw them away from extremism. For a long time, Pakistan has faced much heat from the world for permitting militancy to breed on its soil. Certainly, we must admit it has put down strong roots here. However, Pakistan needs to turn some of the pressure back on other nations. While we need to tackle the mindset that gives rise to militancy - so do other nations. The inclusion of people from other countries in the groups that continue to do war in our north is proof of this. Militancy is a global problem - and it needs to be addressed as one that can be eliminated only through joint efforts in many places.