Extremists harness around 90,000 web pages for online recruitment in Arab world — officers

AMMAN — Around 3,400 Arab citizens join terrorist organisations annually as a consequence of following online pages or hashtags that promote extremist ideologies, officials from the Preventive Security Department’s Community Peace Centre said in a discussion on Saturday. 

The event, held at YWCA Jordan, suggested ways of countering extremism and raising awareness on online recruitment strategies used by terrorist groups to persuade young citizens to embrace and promote their ideologies.

Captain Omar Khalayleh said most of the young people lured into joining terrorist groups are told how perfect life is “on the other side, where justice prevails”, but when they move to the areas under the control of terrorists, they are shocked by exactly an opposite reality. 

The most targeted age group is between 20 and 25 years old, he said.

“The youth during those years have a passion to rush [into] adventures; it is difficult to control them and easy to instill ideology in their minds,” he told The Jordan Times on the sideline of the event, where the audience consisted mainly of mothers.

When notified on a close family member or a friend who is willing to join terrorist groups, he said, dialogue is the best way to solve the problem and eventually flush out the extremist thoughts injected in their minds. 

“Anyone can be targeted by extremists and if family members talk to them with honesty and openness, they are likely to open and talk about the issue without constraints,” he said, adding that war in our time is mainly a war of ideologies.

Lt. Khalil Sagarat, director of the cooperation department, said the issue of extremism starts by “taking Koranic verses out of their context and misinterpreting them to serve terrorists’ agendas”.

 He stressed that the importance of reporting any extremist behaviour to concerned authorities, adding: “As a tribal society, we find it very difficult to report anyone related or close to us, yet, not reporting means the family or society are accomplices.” 

Ameera Yaaqbeh, the executive director of the Arab Student Aid International Organisation, said the main problem lies within the curricula taught to students in schools.

“We should start reforms by detecting and addressing the flaws in our educational system, which sometimes teaches students to exclude ‘the other’,” she said.

From the Preventive Security Department’s information technology and social media office, Lt. Mohammad Jarrah said the average online recruitment process takes around five to six months. 

“It is not an overnight course; extremists instill their ideologies gradually, with one or two posts per day, until the [page or website] starts attracting like-minded people,” he told The Jordan Times.

“Extremist ideologies are sometimes promoted through fake accounts on social media networks,” Jarrah added. “They target the youth by pretending to have similar interests, such as university subjects or sports.”

There are around 90,000 pages in the Arab world that promote Daesh’ extremist ideologies to young citizens, with more than 40,000 non-Arab pages preaching the same ideas, according to the official.

He added that violent online games are also used for online recruitment since the chat feature in the games is not monitored, and “violent” gamers can be easily persuaded to join real life battles.

Lt. Mohammad Rbeihat, the department’s director of the research office, told The Jordan Times that the highest percentage of online recruitment in Jordan was recorded in the city of Jerash, followed by Ruseifa.

In the next few months, Khalayleh said, a centre will be opened in Amman to rehabilitate extremists in the Kingdom, with the help of specialised people whether in religious or social issues.