Gargash hails efforts to tackle violent extremism, online dissemination of pernicious ideologies

WASHINGTON, 6th April, 2017 (WAM)-- Dr. Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has hailed the efforts being exerted to tackle the scourge of violent extremism and the online dissemination of pernicious ideologies. He underlined that the United Arab Emirates is committed to fight against extremism and terrorism in light of its tolerance culture, openness and compassion for others. Addressing a distinguished gathering of leading practitioners from government and the private sector at George Washington University, Dr. Gargash, called for liquidating financial resources of terrorists, preventing them from controlling a territory and imposing their extremist programmes. "This also requires a consistent focus on strengthening, and in some cases rebuilding states in the region, and promoting effective, inclusive governance, so we can prevent external powers from fueling extremism and sectarianism inside those states," he said. While congratulating the audience on working to make progress to eradicate the terrorism, the UAE minister, who is an alumni of the university, added, "To win this battle of ideas, we need to recognise the complexity of the problem and that the nature of the battle varies significantly between different communities, countries and regions." Dr. Gargash noted, "We must use the full range of tools at our disposal and take on the prevalence of extremist ideas that provide the fertile ground for radicalisation and terrorism." Warning over Daesh's online capabilities to radicalise young people, the UAE minister called for studying the extremists, with a view to come up with an understanding of their ideology, and tailor messages that resonate powerfully among young people to protect them from those ideologies. Full text of keynote speech of Dr. Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash at symposium on tackling extremism online George Washington University, 28 March 2017 President Knapp, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today. I would like to congratulate George Washington University for bringing together such a distinguished gathering of leading practitioners from government and the private sector, to work out how we can make further progress in tackling the scourge of violent extremism and the online dissemination of the pernicious ideologies that underpin it. Many years ago, I had the great fortune of being a student at this fine university. In my experience, it has always been a place that has not only sought to enhance our understanding of important issues, but that has promoted dialogue between practitioners and academia, which is what we are witnessing in this symposium. Ladies and Gentlemen, Our efforts to tackle the online dissemination of Daesh’s propaganda are of course extremely important. In today’s discussions, you will no doubt share many ideas about how we can make further progress with this vital work. But it is critical that these efforts are rooted in a proper understanding of the complexity of the problem we are fighting. So please allow me to use these remarks to situate our online work in this broader context, as I hope this will be useful to your subsequent discussions. The first point I would like to underline is that the United Arab Emirates is absolutely committed to the fight against extremism and terrorism. Indeed, the truth is that this fight is intrinsic to who we are as a nation, as our culture is one of tolerance, openness and compassion for others. But more than that, our cosmopolitan society and globalised economy depend for their very existence on the containment of the divisive and regressive ideologies and the associated terrorism that have taken a foothold in some other parts of the Middle East. And this leads to my next point, which is that the link between extremism and terrorism is a clear one, and one that has a deep-rooted history in the Middle East. For Daesh is in many ways just the latest manifestation of a more enduring problem. Daesh, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have fed off a wider current of extremist ideas that have been allowed to go unchecked for too long. These extremist narratives have been propagated and used by political Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood for decades. Their narratives are backward-looking and reject open, pluralistic societies. They seek to impose a narrow worldview and to create divisions and intolerance between three people of different faiths. Their denigration of women’s role in society is a reflection of this mindset. And they have been relatively successful at injecting these extremist narratives into some of the educational and religious institutions in the broader Middle East. The success of these ideas has been fueled by three watershed geopolitical events that occurred over the last 50 years. The first was the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which in many ways led to the end of the idea of Arab nationalism, such was the shock at the severity of the defeat. This Arab nationalism was then in some ways replaced as a transnational ideology by a political Islamist ideology. As with Arab nationalism, this emanated primarily from Egypt, influenced by the work of the leading Muslim Brotherhood intellectual, Sayyid Qutb. Its followers saw secularist Arab leaders as to blame for the 1967 defeat. So they sought answers in the rejection of secular government and in the establishment of a sort of Islamist caliphate. The second watershed event was the Iranian revolution of 1979. Despite their obvious differences, the Shiite Iranian revolutionaries shared significant characteristics with the Sunni extremists in the region: on a rejection of secular leaders; on the notion that Islamism had to permeate all aspects of the state and society; on an ambition to see the transnational spread of their Islamist revolution; and the portrayal of the west as an enemy. For the first time, the agenda of political Islamists had the weight of a major country behind it. The third event was the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the success of the jihadists who fought against them. The jihadists included Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, who had himself been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Islamic Jihad, in Egypt. And their success in Afghanistan strengthened the appeal of extremist ideas and of course allowed Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden to establish Al Qaeda. The recent developments in the Middle East are a part of this continuum. They have not emerged from nowhere. Instead, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Daesh and Iran have opportunistically sought to fill vacuums as they have emerged, in countries ranging from Egypt to Iraq to Syria. And they have systematically sowed the seeds of division and extremism. So given the deep roots and extended nature of this challenge, our response has to be robust and comprehensive, and we need to be committed to it for the long term. That means that where necessary we need to be ready to take military action and stop their financial flows, to prevent them from taking control of territory and imposing their extremist programmes. This also requires a consistent focus on strengthening and in some cases rebuilding states in the region, and promoting effective, inclusive governance, so we can prevent external powers from fueling extremism and sectarianism inside those states. And just as importantly, we must redouble our efforts to win the battle of ideas. We need to vigorously combat the propaganda of violent extremists but we also have a collective responsibility to drain the wider swamp of extremism that underpins it. As part of this, we should promote positive examples of what it means to be ‘modern, Arab and Muslim’, which must include an increasingly empowered and high profile role for women in society. But to win this battle of ideas, we need to recognise the complexity of the problem and that the nature of the battle varies significantly between different communities, countries and regions. For Islamist extremism is not created in the Middle East and exported wholesale to other countries, whether they be in Europe, Asia or Africa; even though Daesh’s messages might sometimes find fertile ground in those regions. Instead, it is in part a product of those countries’ particular histories, political cultures, social issues and geopolitical influences, as well as the way that particular extremist distortions of Islam have developed there. France, for example, which has suffered a number of horrific terrorist attacks in recent years, has its own particular history of tensions between communities, and challenges around identity. These date back to the period of decolonisation in North Africa, especially the very violent and drawn out Algerian war of independence. And there have been ongoing debates and tensions over the role of Islam in society, and over the interpretation of France’s secularist constitution, which has inhibited the display of ‘religious symbols’ in public spaces. The debate about the so-called ‘Burqa ban’ is just the latest manifestation of this. On the other hand, India is perhaps remarkable for the relatively low levels of extremism found among the more than 170 million Indian Muslims. A December 2015 report by the Soufan Group found that less than 50 had gone to fight in Syria and Iraq. On a recent visit to India, I asked the Indian Vice-President, Mohammad Ansari, what the reason is for this. He explained it by saying that Indian Muslims have long been closely culturally integrated with other Indians; that everyone is used to the extraordinary diversity of Indian society; and that community elders emphasise moderation. I am not in a position to be able to judge whether this fully explains the Indian situation, nor do I want to belittle the real challenges with extremism and intercommunal strife that they have faced. But it is certainly important that we seek to understand what is going on there. Indeed, I feel that we still need to do much more nuanced analysis to understand exactly why extremist ideas gain more traction in certain places. With this understanding we will be better able to tailor our messages so that they resonate powerfully with young people. So with this background in mind, let me now turn to the question of what this means for our work to counter the spread of extremism online. The way that Daesh has used the internet to attempt to radicalise young people has been like nothing we have seen before. They use a wide and constantly evolving variety of social media, they produce high quality videos, and they have increasingly been engaging young people in dialogue. The sad truth is that it is a slick communications operation. But governments are working together to push back against this. The UAE co-chairs the working group on strategic communications in the Global Coalition Against Daesh. We have also partnered with the State Department to establish the Sawab Centre for tackling extremism online, which now has around 1.2 million followers on social media platforms. We have collaborated with others, such as the US’s Global Engagement Centre and the UK’s Strategic Communications Cell. Indeed, let me commend the UK for being among the first to engage social media companies in these efforts, by inviting them to one of our working group meetings in London. Together we have worked to counter Daesh’s narratives, by developing and delivering messages that shed light on their vile propaganda and by offering a vision of a more positive alternative. And I believe that collectively we have done a good job. However, in light of what I have said about the varied reasons for the success of extremist ideas in different parts of the world, the challenge now is to increasingly think about how to tailor the messages to people from diverse countries and backgrounds. This has three broad implications for our online counter messaging work. First, we need to make sure we are clear about who we need to get messages to and get better at targeting those messages at them. We must make sure we are not only targeting people in narrow sets of countries but reaching people across both developed and developing countries. This is where the capabilities of social media companies can be so powerful. The same capability that ensures the right advertisements get to the right people can also be used to ensure that messages reach the people we most need to get to. Second, we need to think hard about what kind of messages will have the greatest impact on people of different backgrounds. The messages need to increasingly take account of the local histories and drivers of extremist thought, and the particular reasons why young people in a given country or community are susceptible to these ideas. And third, we need to think about who will be the most effective messengers. Young people will be most influenced by people they feel can empathise with them and understand their background. And those same people will be best placed to know what messages will be most meaningful. Therefore, increasingly, counter messages need to be crafted and delivered by people who are similar to them, know their world, and speak their language. So if we get all of this right we will move towards more targeted messaging, delivered by influential moderate voices, and based on a thorough understanding of people’s local conditions and histories. And there is an important role for social media companies to play in all this. You are of course vital partners in our efforts to tackle online extremism: you can remove extremist material that does not comply with your own rules; you can help with the targeting of messages towards the people who need it most; and you can assist with efforts to amplify the voices of the moderate majority. There may also be ways in which you can help us further develop our understanding about the types of young people who are most vulnerable to radicalisation in different contexts and places, and the particular factors that are motivating them. In addition, I feel there is an important question about how we can create more common public spaces online. I believe that it used to be harder for individuals to live in narrow social worlds in which they are only exposed to extreme ideas and information. In short, I would be really interested to hear your ideas about how we can respond to the challenge of extremism in a way that is as tailored as possible to local circumstances, that strengthens community, and that enhances the reach of moderate voices. Ladies and Gentlemen, In the Middle East, the problem of violent extremism is one with deep roots, which we will be struggling against for a long time to come. We must remain committed to that struggle. We must use the full range of tools at our disposal and take on the prevalence of extremist ideas that provide the fertile ground for radicalisation and terrorism. Strategic communications through the internet is one of those tools – one that has been relentlessly exploited by Daesh. Together, we are fighting back. But in doing so we need to understand that the roots of extremism are complex, and seek to develop our understanding of how to maximise the influence of the counter messaging over people from different countries and backgrounds. I look forward to hearing the outcome of your discussions about how we can build on the excellent work that has already been done and continue to enhance our efforts to tackle the scourge of online extremism. Thank you for listening. http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302607093