Human being to Human bomb - Inside the mind of a terrorist

Nimisha, a young pregnant woman who converted to Islam, is among a group of 15 people from Kerala suspected to have joined Islamic State for terrorist activity reports Rediff.com and the Indian Express. Earlier she had won prizes for Indian classical dance (Mohiniattam and the Bharatanatyam) and music. She changed her name to Fatima and married Issa, a Christian who also converted to Islam, and then disappeared from her home.

Merlin alias Mariyam, a woman from Kochi working in Mumbai at IBM, was one among the fifteen. She too converted to Islam before getting married to Issa's brother Yahiya. They too are missing from their homes. Issa and Yahiya’s father Vincent, filed a missing person’s complaint on the 9th of July 2016. The last their families have heard was that both couples were in Sri Lanka.

The families are extremely pained but helpless. Nimisha, who like most Indian daughters, had been extremely close to her mother in the past did not reveal the changes that were taking place in her life. The mother says the family was not aware of the changes in her, and the college authorities did not inform them of the same, or else her current situation could perhaps have been prevented.

Terror in Bangladesh and Kashmir

In another case of terror in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka,a majority of the assailants, who participated in the July 1 shooting and assault on patrons of an upmarket café in a posh area of Dhaka, were from well-to-do and educated families. They were in the age group of 20-22 and used weapons like machetes to kill the hostages. It was a mind boggling and a mind numbing attack in one. All of them had bright careers ahead of them. They went to top schools and universities. They seemed like normal, middle-class men. Faiz Sobhan of the Dhaka-based think tank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute says "They were normal, regular guys who hung out at cafes, played sports, and had Facebook pages." Bangladesh Information and Broadcasting Minister Hassan-ul-Haq Inna told Indian broadcaster NDTV that the attackers "were from a top school and university in Dhaka ... The parents of these boys are normal and have secular credentials."

Closer home, a high school headmaster’s son, 21 year old Burhan Wani was shot dead along with two others by security forces in Kashmir on the 8th of July. Wani’s death triggered off a violent reaction in Kashmir, leading to eight more casualties and a wave of protests that have yet to die down. He was the head of the terror group Hizbul Mujhaheden in Kashmir. He had joined the organization when he was fifteen.

Burhan was the poster boy of terror. Young, handsome, macho, with gun slung around his shoulders, giving him an aura of invincibility, he was popular on social media, and used it for recruitment. He became a cult figure of sorts. But like all the others, before he joined the terror league he was an ordinary adolescent, and a bright student at school. According to Scroll.in, he was also a cricket fan, with Shahid Afridi and Virender Sehwag being two of his favourite players.

His recruitment into the terror league was, reports suggest, prompted by the alleged killing of his elder brother Khalid in an “encounter” in 2015. His mutilated corpse was returned to his family by the authorities.

Inside the mind of a terrorist

Three separate and disparate cases of gender neutral terror and terrorists, with one common link -All the alleged terrorists are youngsters in the age group of 15 to 30 and seem to have been ‘influenced’. But is that really true? It’s a question that puzzles many.

Are terrorists crazy or psychopaths without any feeling for another’s life or pain? Unlikely. Research through interviews with current and former terrorists from the same background has shown that psychopathology and personality disorders are not more likely among terrorists than among non-terrorists.

There is corroborating evidence to this research conclusion. None of us, ‘normal’ human beings - non-terrorists- want to depend upon people with abnormal psychopathology for our lives. Similarly terrorists, who generally hunt in groups, would also not want to their lives in the hands of people with any psychopathology to speak of. Of course there is always the lone gunman like in Orlando, and in Nice who kill for political or religious causes, and such individuals may indeed suffer from some form of psychopathology.

However in general, it must be concluded that terrorists in groups, especially groups that can organize successful attacks on their chosen targets, are normal human beings who seek identity, meaning purpose and security in small groups. In fact, terrorism would not have been difficult to combat, if a terrorist could be associated with a particular psychopathology.

So what makes them who they end up being, and do what they do? Kill people without a thought spared for their own or anyone else’s pain? There is only one answer - A search for identity and of meaning and purpose in their lives that goes beyond 'well-being' or 'success' as we know it.

Prevailing social and economic systems encourage us to think of ‘well-being’ or ‘success’ in terms of being successful professionally and financially. Our status in society is measured by that yardstick. So we end up performing repetitive and monotonous tasks to achieve this ‘success’.

Many are often ‘successful’, but unhappy and empty on the inside. This emptiness is a vacuum waiting to be filled by the sense of righteousness and purpose that religious fundamentalism or economic deprivation or social discrimination easily provides – a cause and a comrade ready to die for, or to kill for. And then there are those who are not ‘successful’. They are ready and primed for terror.

Most people stick to their routines ignoring the emptiness inside, but for others, especially those at a vulnerable age, and those who have achieved poor personal success, a cause worth living for, and even dying for is easily created and a terrorist is born. They know they are going to die one day, as all of us do, and they would like to make their life meaningful beyond the routine imposed upon them, by societal norms of success.

How is this done? By objectification of people, other than those in their closed secure group, based on their actions, beliefs and cultural ethos – they learn to believe that these people are to be treated as inanimate objects, thus disengaging them from their natural empathy. For eg. Kicking a chair out of anger is very different from kicking a human being. It’s an object. It’s easier to do without guilt as the terrorist believes it’s the right thing to do.

The terrorist’s mentality is collectivist as against individualist. The herd mentality is commonly present as against the ability to think for themselves and chart their own path. This kind of thinking is conditioned early on, to ensure obedience in some religions and in some schools of the world and it is this mentality that is tapped as the individual grows older and recognizes the emptiness he feels inside.

From interviews with some 60 former terrorists conducted by psychologist John Horgan, PhD, who directs the Pennsylvania State University's International Centre for the Study of Terrorism found that people who are more open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization tend to:

• Feel angry, alienated or disenfranchised.
• Believe that their current political involvement does not give them the power to effect real change.
• Identify with perceived victims of the social injustice they are fighting.
• Feel the need to take action rather than just talking about the problem.
• Believe that engaging in violence against the state or others is not immoral.
• Have friends or family sympathetic to the cause.
• Believe that joining a movement offers social and psychological rewards such as adventure, camaraderie and a heightened sense of identity.

Muzaffar Wani’slamentations upon the death of his son Burhan Wani to Youth Ki Awaaz corroborates these findings. “Almost everyone here has been beaten up by the Army... But everyone didn’t become a militant. It depends on how much one can take. Someone’s ‘Ghairat’ (self-respect) got challenged time and again, so he decided to answer. Others decided to stay quiet. My son couldn’t bear to see the atrocities and the humiliation, so he was forced to choose the path which he is on right now.”

Interestingly, no one, not even Burhan Wani woke up one morning and decided that today is the day to become a terrorist. The role grows on the person imperceptibly until one day there is no turning back. But now terrorism is less emotional and more instrumental, psychologists say. Terrorists don’t react, they respond with well laid plans that are designed to inflict long term costs on their enemies. True, there might be an emotional element involved in the act, especially for those who do the killing, but those who plan the terrorist acts are looking to inflict heavy long terms costs on their enemies and bend them to their way of thinking.

Combating the growing menace of terrorism

Clark R. McCauley, Professor of Psychology, Bryn Mawr College in his essay, the The Psychology of Terrorism described terrorism as” the warfare of the weak, the recourse of those desperate for a cause that cannot win by conventional means”. The approach to groupterrorism therefore has to be multipronged. Individual acts of terrorism cannot easily be tackled because of the psychopathology involved. Harsh Punishment has so far not worked as a deterrent, and while it must not be discarded, it cannot and must not be the corner stone of a policyto tackle this growing menace. The plan of action must be at one level tactical and on another, emotional. The tactical approach includes, keeping those who can and do influence such behaviour at bay, by legitimate means by:

• Monitoring the airwaves, social media, the educational institutions and the like and taking appropriate preventive action, when influencers use such media. However this must be done with appropriate safeguards built in for the freedom of expression.
• Isolation – economic and social as far as possible – this is one of the most effective methods of prevention – It is often seen when funds dry up, the ability to mount operations too withers.

At the emotional level the approach must be to,
• Improve two way communication between the disaffected and the authorities responsible for their disaffection
• Provide opportunities for youth to self-actualize, rather than be ‘successful’, because the youth that prefer terrorism rarely want that kind of success. They are looking for something deeper.
• Manage societal inequities in a more just and transparent manner that gives rise to trust rather than mistrust.

- See more at: http://www.newskarnataka.com/opinion/human-being-to-human-bomb-inside-the-mind-of-a-terrorist#sthash.eNzc5RM4.dpuf