In February, Bengali-American blogger, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death and his wife was injured during a visit to a literary fair in Bangladesh. Roy had raised the ire of Islamists for his Bill Maher-esque anti-religious writings on his website, Mukto Mona, which means free mind.

Extremists in Bangladesh, according to CNN, resented Roy’s criticism of religion and threatened to kill him if he came home from the United States to visit. Despite the arrest of Farabi Shafiur Rahman, who has previously been jailed for his ties to the international Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir, the group Ansar Bangla-7, took credit for Roy’s murder soon after the incident by allegedly tweeting, “Target down in Bangladesh.”

Apparently, free speech is a threat to Islamists in Bangladesh. In the absence of blasphemy laws, Islamists have no avenue to censor criticism of their platform legally.  Resorting to direct violence will result in political parties being shut down.  As a result, it is alleged that Islamist parties are greenlighting attacks against critics by militant groups in the country, of which Ansar Bangla-7 is simply one. Besides Roy, this has resulted in the murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2013, and more recently, Washiqur Rahman as well.

The recent spate of violence against bloggers is not new.  Humayun Azad, survived an attack more than 10 years ago - on February 27, 2004 – only to succumb to his injuries a few months later in Germany.

Governmental flip-flopping has contributed to the rising confidence of pro-Islamist militants in Bangladesh. In 2013, four secular bloggers were arrested for “hurting the religious sentiments” of the country’s Muslims on the heels of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider’s murder.  The arrests were followed days later by an Islamist rally demanding blasphemy laws in the country.

Yet, months later, seven leaders of one of the country’s largest Islamist parties, the Jamaat-i-Islami, were tried for war crimes committed during the country’s fight for independence from Pakistan in 1971. The trials concluded with multiple convictions, including that of Jamaat party leader Abdul Quader Mollah. Mollah was given a life sentence until the public demanded not only death, but a complete ban of the Jamaat-i-Islami party during a peaceful month-long rally now referred to as the Shahbag Awakening.

Despite criticism that the war crime trials were an opportunistic pre-election ploy by the secular Sheikh Hasina government to remain in power, it is possible that the government was afraid to make a direct statement supporting the free speech rights of secular bloggers over the Islamist push for a blasphemy law. As a result, the war crimes trials may have been an attempt to de-legitimize the Islamist party indirectly.

This raises the fundamental issue of free speech against a backdrop of rising Islamism globally; and more specifically, the debate over how to defend free speech not only in Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, but wherever Islamists have attacked critics of political Islam, like France and the U.K.

Bangladesh, for one, must set a standard for acceptable behavior by its citizens by enforcing free speech rights directly. More importantly, the government has a duty to foster a society where one does not feel his or her faith is threatened simply if another does not agree with a particular aspect of it. Otherwise, Islamists will continue to control the narrative.

Islamists are globally politicizing Muslim identity under one narrow and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They have global support through a variety of networks that provide the means to indoctrinate others, money, and arms. Apolitical Muslims, progressive Muslims, minorities and human rights activists of all shades, on the other hand, remain disconnected, and by believing in democracy, cannot resort to vigilantism – they must rely on the rule of law for protection and support.

Countering extremism requires strict law enforcement as a first step. More importantly, truly countering extremism requires inculcating values such as tolerance in societies where accusations of “hurt feelings” abound, and governments that do not appease the “victim” because it fears the possibility of violence.

On January 7, 2015, France suffered the worst terrorist attack on its soil in over 50 years when gunmen Said and Cherif Kouachi barged into the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering 12. Over the next two days, another Islamic extremist, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a French policewoman as well as four hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, France appeared unified in its shock and grief. On January 10, 2015, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared war “against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.” The next day, at least 3.7 million people marched in anti-terrorism rallies in Paris and elsewhere in France.

The government’s reaction to the attacks was swift. France mobilized troops and deployed upwards of 10,000 security personnel to protect 830 “sensitive sites,” including synagogues, airports, railway stations and major tourist attractions. Nearly half of the security officers were sent to protect Jewish schools. Some mosques have also been given equipped with extra security after more than 100 ‘reprisal’ attacks' that targeted Muslim sites. 

In the weeks and months since the attacks, France has maintained this high alert level. After a February 3, 2015 attack at a Jewish school in Nice left three soldiers wounded, the government decided to extend the alert level until at least April 10. Under this alert, the government will continue to deploy its more than 10,000 soldiers to sensitive sites throughout the country.

On January 21, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls paved a picture of what France’s domestic ‘war’ would look like. The Prime Minister announced new resources for France’s counterterrorism apparatus, and policy reforms that touch on a wide array of French institutions, including its school and prison systems.

The government also cracked down on suspected foreign fighters, barring a number of suspected jihadists from leaving the country for Syria. France has also arrested at least eight suspected jihadists since the January attacks and arrested at least 54 citizens for engaging in hate speech or supporting terrorism. One of the men convicted and sentenced was Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, a popular and notoriously anti-Semitic French comedian known for inventing a reverse Nazi salute. As authorized by an anti-terror law passed in the fall of 2014, France also began to implement censorship rules that allow the government to shut down websites promoting terrorism.

In the weeks following the January attacks, the French government also launched its “Stop-Djihadisme” (Stop Jihadism) campaign. Through a variety of resources and outreach tools, the campaign aims to empower citizens to identify and prevent violent jihadism in their own communities.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the January attacks, some French Muslims report feeling targeted and resentful of what they consider nationally-sanctioned suspicion. In France’s overcrowded and heavily Muslim-populated prisons, ongoing experiments to prevent radicalization by partially segregating dangerous Islamists do not necessarily promise success and may even serve to bolster and create new jihadist networks.

France post-Charlie Hebdo is at once a proud and highly suspicious country. It barrels down a road hastily paved and defined by what it refuses to accept: jihadism, Islamism and terrorism. Today, it remains unclear whether such a road can prove robust. In seeking a route around the country’s embedded and festering radicalization, France’s reaction to its internal threats could prove fruitful or short-sighted.  Only time will tell.

Recent worldwide attention has focused on France’s domestic counter-extremism efforts. But the country has also been very active in the global fight against extremism, particularly in Africa.

Africa’s Sahel region includes Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), Ansar-Dine, and other jihadist groups operating there have been engaged in terrorist attacks, kidnappings, drug smuggling, and human trafficking. These groups were key in igniting the 2012 Malian civil war.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) led a campaign for independence beginning in January 2012. Ansar-Dine and other Islamist groups capitalized on the fighting, capturing swaths of territory and instituting sharia (Islamic law). In response to a Malian government request for foreign assistance, French forces launched Operation Serval in January 2013. 

From January 2013 to July 2014, France targeted Islamist extremists in Mali in a series of airstrikes in response to AQIM attacks. Mali is a former French colony.

At the conclusion of Operation Serval, France launched an anti-Islamist force in northern Africa in August called Operation Barkhane. Named after a crescent-shaped sand dune in the Sahara, the mission’s main objective is counter-terrorism, according to the French government. The force is made up of about 3,000 French troops working alongside soldiers from Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Chad. France is also contributing fighter jets, helicopters, and drones.

Based in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, Operation Barkhane has the authority to cross borders as it targets Islamist extremism in Mali, Chad, and Niger. It will also create regional military bases in northern Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

In November 2014, French forces killed 24 extremists in northern Mali. The operation, in Mali’s Kidal region also resulted in the seizure of weapons, the destruction of a number of vehicles, and the capture of two extremists. In late December, French troops killed Ahmed al-Tilemsi, a senior leader of al-Qaeda splinter group al-Mourabitoun. In January, French Barkhane forces provided reinforcements after AQIM attacked a Malian army base. Eight Malian troops and 10 militants died in the raid.

Since 2014, French forces have killed or captured over 200 jihadists in the Sahel region. At least 50 have been killed since the start of Operation Barkhane, which has no announced completion date.

CEP has reviewed the details of dozens of cases involving Western foreign fighters and jihadist brides who in some way were radicalized and became involved in the conflict in Iraq and Syria. Given the similarity of the end result, you would suspect that some characteristic, some common trait, would be present in, if not all, then the majority of these cases. Yet, that does not appear to be true and no single profile appears to emerge.

What does materialize is instead something closer to a kaleidoscope, with glimmers of trends (or at least a few strange similarities) that seem to fade and then sometimes reappear across cases. No single characteristic unites the set of these Western Islamist conscripts, but these tidbits of recurring ‘trends’ do spark questions for further research. They may also help us think of possible parameters when considering how we can hope to prevent such future radicalization of our youth.

In one example of a strange recurrence, media reports reveal that Western foreign fighters Mohammed Ali Baryalei (Australia), Khaled Sharrouf (Australia), and John Maguire (Canada) all suffered childhood abuse at the hands of their fathers. Is this a noteworthy possible characteristic? Is childhood abuse – an at-risk factor for future gang violence – also a possible indicator for potential radicalization? And would addressing issues of childhood abuse therefore help prevent radicalization?

Similar questions arise when one notices that among Western foreign fighters throughout the world, a history of juvenile delinquency, prison time, and mental illness (particularly schizophrenia and extreme paranoia) repeatedly pop up. Would addressing these mental health issues through prevention programs also diminish the number of potential Western foreign fighters?

That too may be a promising research avenue to explore.  What is certain so far, however, is that it is too early to tell. 

As CEP has noted, geography, socio-economic factors and family dynamics are not yet predictive in terms of who will emerge as a future jihadist. We do know that most Western foreign fighters have thus far been predominantly Muslim, young and male. Even then, however, prevention programs targeting specifically this demographic would appear to exclude a significant number of potential cases.

For example, the effort by Muslim communities themselves to establish prevention programs may be invaluable to addressing the phenomenon of foreign fighters as a whole. But these programs, primarily focused on Muslim-born youth, do not necessarily address the significant percentage of Western foreign fighters who convert to Islam during their teenage years and beyond. These community-based programs also may not address future foreign fighters who have been documented as not being particularly active within their Muslim communities.

This is not to say that such prevention programs should be instead focused on an older crowd. Studies show that community-based gang prevention programs are most effective when addressing at-risk individuals as early as possible. And given the surprising number of teenage Western foreign fighters, the need to address this issue early may be similarly worthwhile. However, relying solely on programs aimed at young Muslim men does seem to by definition miss older converts to Islam and the Western foreign fighters who were neither religious nor particularly active within their communities. While they are likely very helpful, these programs cannot be expected to prevent all cases of Westerners seeking to become jihadists.

Media profiles of Western foreign fighters can therefore be disillusioning for anyone expecting them to reveal a personality type or a group of conclusive, predictive characteristics. As neat and as useful it would be to have a reliable profile of a Western foreign fighter, that profile continues to remain elusive.

However, the failure of researchers to accurately predict the personality characteristics and circumstances that will eventually transform someone into a radical Islamist willing to die for his or her cause is not a dead-end but a unique opportunity. Research and resources must be expanded so more can be learned and prevention programs can be better refined to protect a seemingly large and vulnerable sector of our society.

After more than 10 years as a failed nationalist movement, the now fragmented Baloch insurgency in Pakistan is likely to be taken over by Sunni militias. Supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in an effort to further antagonize Iran’s eastern front, skirmishes among Baloch insurgents, Islamist extremists and the Iranian and Pakistani governments have increased in the last year.

Predominantly Sunni, Balochistan is a region roughly the size of France that is part of three countries, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran annexed its portion in 1928 and dubbed it “Sistan-e-Balochistan.” On the Pakistan side, Balochistan is resource-rich and most famous for housing and training the Taliban for many years before 9/11. Pakistan forcibly annexed the province in 1947, which resulted in four insurgencies - 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63 and 1973-77. Nevertheless, the separatist movement has survived to the present.

In Afghanistan, according to unofficial estimates, there are around 600,000 Baloch. The majority are settled in Nimroz, in southwest Afghanistan. The war in Pakistani Balochistan has resulted in an influx of Baloch refugees into Afghanistan, with many living in Helmand and Farah also. The majority are unofficial refugees and remain mostly ignored by the Afghan government. As the number of refugees increases, however, it is likely to increase tensions between the Afghan and Pakistan governments. 

Both Iran and Pakistan have also attempted to force integration of the Baloch through their respective cultural and political policies. 

The secular Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has accused Islamabad and its intelligence agency, the ISI, of encouraging religious militancy in an effort to dominate the separatist groups in Balochistan. Moreover, as Sunni extremist groups overlap regionally and in terms of ideology, training and funding, several Pakistan Taliban commanders have declared their loyalty to ISIS. There are also reports of ISIS establishing an affiliate, Ansar-ul Daulat-e Islamia fil Pakistan, and luring recruits from two other Sunni militant groups, Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Ahl-e Sunnat Wai Jamat.

Typically, the Pakistani and Iranian governments contained their respective reactions to Baloch insurgents targeting Iran from the Pakistani side of the border. Due to the increase in the number and scope of incidents, however, Iran may take a more aggressive approach to limit attacks on its sovereignty in its Sistan-e-Balochistan province. For example, in October 2014, about 30 Iranian security personnel crossed the Pakistani border in pursuit of anti-Iranian militants. The Iranian raid resulted in the death of a Pakistani Frontier Corps soldier.

Jundullah may have been responsible for the latest incidents. An anti-Iranian Sunni-Baloch militia group, Jundullah is an example of a Baloch nationalist group evolving into an Islamist extremist organization. In 2008, it was reported that the US was funding Jundullah as part of its anti-Iranian policies. Last year, a spokesperson for Jundullah confirmed that leaders of the organization had met with ISIS in Balochistan. Jundullah also has ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups in Pakistan.

Iran’s response to Jundullah activities remains unclear. An Iranian member of Parliament, Hussain Ali Sheryari, recently strongly warned Iran that ISIS could capture Sistan-Balochistan if peace is not restored there. Sheryari cited the growing number of clashes between yet another Sunni extremist group operating in the area, Jaesh-ul-Adl, and Iranian Border Security Forces.  Whether or not Iran is taking Sheryari’s concerns seriously and will act on them remains to be seen.

What is clear is that the dream of the Baloch for a homeland is slipping farther away all the time.  

The Internet has been a game changer in many ways. A globalizing force, the Internet has helped to break down the barriers between people who would have otherwise never connected. But just as fire that warms can also burn, the Internet has been used to unleash harm as well as good. The ease of communication has also enabled drug dealers, pirates, and pedophiles to congregate and communicate.

Extremists have also discovered the benefits of the tools of the digital world. New media have enabled extremist ideologies to spread unabated and unrestricted, making it easy, for example, to find instructions on building bombs, and follow Boko Haram’s Twitter-based pledge of allegiance to ISIS.

With the eruption of the Internet in the early 2000s, extremists — and more specifically Islamists — have taken the battlefield online. Terror group leaders, members, and sympathizers have all played a role in the explosion of extremist ideology on the Internet. In the 1990s, terrorists used what now seem like ancient technologies; videotapes, audiotapes, CDs, DVDs, photographs, and cell phones to communicate, propagandize, and recruit. Since the advent of the Internet, terrorists have launched jihadist websites, chat rooms, and online magazines, effectively used e-mail, and more recently, social media, to pursue their goals.

Al-Qaeda’s evolving use of modern communication tools is one illuminating example. At the time of its founding in 1988, in order to communicate, the group relied on public pay phones, primitive cellphones, and encrypted emails sent from Internet cafes throughout the Middle East. In 1996, Osama bin Laden started using a satellite phone — costing $15,000 and the size of a laptop computer — to make international calls from his hideout in the mountainous region on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 1998, al-Qaeda began exploiting Qatar-based media outlet Al Jazeera as a conduit through which to communicate its ideology, demands, and fatwas (religious decrees). In 2000, the group launched its own media department, as-Sahab, which was responsible for producing videos of al-Qaeda’s activities, cementing the group’s legitimacy in the minds of its followers and disseminating important informational files.

After September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda went underground and dispersed to ensure its survival, a move that coincided with the rapid expansion of the World Wide Web. The Internet enabled al-Qaeda operatives to continue to communicate, but online. Better yet, the group now had an international audience that could be reached, and reached easily, from any keyboard. The number of jihadist websites metastasized post-9/11, inspiring a seeming never-ending supply of new content from al-Qaeda sympathizers and wanna-bes from around the globe. In 2002, bin Laden declared, “The time has come to have the media take its rightful place, to carry out its required role in confronting this aggressive campaign and the open declared Crusader war by all means that can be seen, heard, and read.”

Since the turn of the century, al-Qaeda and other terror groups have vastly improved their online capabilities to incorporate new and sophisticated production techniques that appeal to their target audiences for recruitment, fundraising and incitement to violence. Extremist groups now produce nad post everything from grisly beheading videos to online magazines available in a number of Western languages.

More recently, terror groups have exploited the freedom and anonymity of social media platforms to troll for recruits and to terrorize the public. In January 2015, ISIS or its sympathizers hacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command, posting threatening messaging and uploading recruitment videos.  The hackers later published a 52-page list containing the personal contact information of retired U.S. military officers. And it’s become clear that Twitter has an ISIS problem; the social media platform reportedly supported at least 46,000 separate ISIS-related accounts between September and December 2014.

The tools of communication have always been vital to extremists and as technology has grown and developed, so too have extremist strategies to exploit them. Their use of communications tools has shifted tremendously, demanding greater understanding of these new threats and a strategy to combat them.

Removing the most egregious jihadist propaganda and violent content from social media sites would be a step forward in creating an environment where counter narratives could have the chance to compete and take hold.  Extremists will never stop trying to convince others to join their violent cause, but reasonable measures can and should be taken to at least keep content off the internet that glorifies beheadings and murder and encourages indiscriminate lone-wolf attacks against innocent people around the world.   

In the string of grisly videos released in the past seven months, beginning with ISIS’ execution of James Foley through the February beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, there is one that haunts me most. It is not one that showcases the devastating brutality or barbarism of a beheading; rather, it is the video entitled “Uncovering an Enemy Within,”  capturing  a young Kazakh boy’s blank stare as he puts his gun to an alleged Russian spy’s head, the cold emptiness of a child indoctrinated out of innocence and trained to kill. There is some speculation that the video, which news outlets have had difficulty authenticating, may have been staged. Regardless, we have seen this boy in ISIS propaganda videos before, looking back at us, as fervent and dangerous as the most seasoned fighter on Syria’s frontlines.

This killer. This kid. This image is branded on my brain, but the philosophy that conceived of it is even scarier, a philosophy that promotes the reality of expendable children growing up in an environment that has normalized violence and has utter disregard for the humanity of “the other.” As captured so hauntingly in the blockbuster movie American Sniper, these children-turned-combatants, at the click of a clip, can reluctantly become targets for military sharp-shooters and drone strikes.  

These sad, quiet thoughts become angry questions. What kind of an organization would use children in such a way, for propaganda purposes and in battle? How are extremist groups like ISIS recruiting or forcing children into this type of indoctrination? And what does it mean for the future of peace, tolerance and security if ISIS has built a system that produces future generations of combatants?

The use of children in conflict is not a new phenomenon. It is difficult to carve out a period in history during which children were not involved in warfare in some capacity. Even after the UN codified the ban on children in conflict with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, militant groups have still managed to incorporate youth into their violent struggle. In the past few years, Western millennial activists focused attention on the use of child soldiers by groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army or by rebels fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The civil war in Syria, however, has increased the number of children in conflict to staggering levels.

In June 2014, Human Rights Watch reported that all armed groups in Syria have recruited and used children—from Syrian government troops to the Nusra Front and ISIS. What sets ISIS extremists apart, more alarming and difficult to stomach, is their aggressiveness and their lack of any attempt to conceal their targeting and training of children. In fact, the ISIS propaganda machine has heralded it as a source of pride and a tactic to sow fear into the opposition.

One of the earliest examples of ISIS’ child indoctrination program made headlines in December 2013. ISIS released videos and still images of what was dubbed “Zarqawi’s Cubs camp,” a cute moniker for what was actually a summer terrorism camp. ISIS swept vast territory into its self-proclaimed Islamic State, making initial contact with children through public forums in town squares and mosques. These events included passing-out juice and candy while screening extremist propaganda. ISIS was essentially saying, “Here we are, your new leaders to keep you safe from Assad and the infidels. Would you like some sweets? Obey us or else.”

In territories under its control, ISIS group has systematically replaced secular schools with its own brand of education: a perversion of Islam devoid of ‘modern’ subjects like science. Families have the choice of a fundamentalist Islamist education or no education at all. In essence, ISIS has created a network of ‘feeder schools’ to fill its ranks. This strategy of indoctrination under the guise of education is similar to that employed by the Mujahedeen and Taliban in the 1980s, in an effort to mold Afghan children into loyalists.

ISIS has expanded its child recruitment campaign to Kazakhstan, as seen  in the video “Race Towards Good,” and Iraq, according to the video  “Blood Jihad 2,” where dozens of young males are seen  receiving violent training from ISIS militants; one boy is being hit in the torso with a stick, another punched in the stomach. Both blows are inflicted by adults, yet are received without a flinch or hint of resistance. The cold looks and level of discipline under immense pain and abuse is quite chilling.

A key characteristic of ISIS child indoctrination is the use of extreme violence as a means to desensitize the youth. In addition to being subjected to outright torture, boys receive intensive military and ideological training. They are taught how to use multiple weapons, interspersed with teachings on jihadist interpretations of Islam. They are taught skills befitting a savage ISIS warrior, from leading executions to building suicide bombs. One Syrian boy, Jomah, who escaped after being wounded in battle, recalled the desensitization trainees underwent: a class of boys as young as eight were given a beheading lesson that ended with a severed head being passed around.

After several such training sessions, sadly, the members of ISIS' youth brigade become as accustomed to the gruesome product of a beheading as they would one of their treasures for show-and-tell.