Essay Example on Countering Jihadi Ideology: A Policy Framework

Introduction

Jihadi is an Islamic movement that believes in a holy war that is believed to be fought on behalf of Allah. Ideally, the War has been diversified all over the world, where many people have been assimilated into the Ideology. Over the recent period, this Ideology has spread too many countries, and many people have been understood to the jihadi Ideology.

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A policy that addresses challenges of countering Jihadi ideology would include killing terrorist leaders and their affiliate supporters to dismantle the group.

Without leadership, the government envisages a situation where the continuation of the jihadist group will be slowed down or even cease to exist. Even though it is challenging with the policy to kill the leadership among the jihadists, the probability that the group will cease to exist is significant.

The policy of killing Jihadist leaders as a strategy to help in addressing the challenges of countering the jihadi Ideology.

Overview of the Topic

In the context of Jihadi ideology, terrorism is involved. Terrorism has created havoc in society leading to challenges among humans. Social and economic lives have been ruined through incidences of terrorism globally. Countering Jihadi ideology is an important objective that has been envisaged with the government. The government has to make sure it deploys resources within its reach to address safety concerns among citizens

History of the Policy

Historically, the killing policy of addressing these challenges was initiated in the early times in the western counties of neologism languages that were mainly describing Islamic movements that were perceived as movements based on the Islamic religion. Ideally, the basis of the policy was to conquer the jihadist leaders who never were ever composed and determined to terrorize people globally. Admittedly, the policy was first applied in the United States of America during the reign of H.E President Barrack Obama in 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was killed by the Navy SEAL. Ever since, the Ideology has been adopted in so many rebellions and terrorist groups whose Ideology revolves around a holy war; the Islamic perception of Jihadi.

Nevertheless, the policy has its roots between the 19th and 20th in the development of Islamic revivalism, whose main result was Qutbism and firmly attached notions during the century. Among various countries such as the Soviet Union popularly known as the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979 to 1989, the terrorist movements reinforced the rise of Jihadism, therefore, propagating the Ideology in various armed conflicts throughout the entire world (Watts, 2015).

Success of the Policy

Substantially, the strategy has succeeded in the United States of America. Admittedly, in Washington, President Obama ordered for a raid of Bin Laden's compound in 2011.Ideally, Obama used a board of some lawyers who strategized the whole process of the raid. In essence, the White House could not allow consultations on any aide because an intensified secrecy was paramount to the success of the entire plan. Instead, the government carried its research and wrote memos on highly secured computers for security purposes in case they were pressed before and after the raid of the terrorist and al-Qaeda leader.

As a way of facilitating the raid, the United States government used bombs that were intensive enough to destroy every underground tunnel that Osama could use to escape, because during this time, the al-Qaeda leader did not surrender nor fight back. Therefore, accessing and engaging him for a war was risky and tricky at the same time. Bin Laden was the al-Qaeda leader and founder for over two decades. Because of this, killing him was a great success that had not been registered in the Guinness book of records. Admittedly, the policy has succeeded in the United States of America, a record that is yet to be broken currently.

Various movements for the jihadi War have been in existence, which includes the Somalian Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda of Yemen, and the Nigerian Boko Haram, where the Jihadists believe in killing innocent people in the notion of holiness within the War. According to Shadi Hamid and Rashid Dar, the Ideology of Jihadism was by the idea that the holy fight war was an individual obligation, a responsibility for every Muslim. However, many Muslims believe that Jihadism is a communal obligation carried out following the directives of legitimate representatives of the community. Additionally, Jihadism insists that all Muslims should participate because it is believed that their leaders are illegitimate enough to disqualify them the authority to command justified violence and War against other people (Siddiqa, 2009).

As a way of countering this prevalent Ideology, countries experiencing terrorist attacks should practice the approach besides the traditional counter-terrorism weapons, making legislations against the Ideology, promoting intelligence human resources capabilities, and applying counter-radicalization strategies to disintegrate Jihadi militants and movements. However, in doing so, countering the Ideology has become a significant challenge all over the world. Because of this, many terror attacks within the globe are naturally associated with Jihadi warfare (Ramakrishna, 2005).

For instance, working to kill the leader of the jihadist movement helps in cases where the state has no idea of the entire process that is involved in assimilating people to the Ideology and its associative movements and groups. Since doing this does not need the information about the process, a few issues have been proven to some extent, more divisive and controversial among experts within and from elsewhere in a particular country. However, trying the identification of the reasons why individuals engage themselves in radical ideological practices and act on them accordingly has turned out to be a complicated task for almost all the countries that try to suppress the Jihadi ideology.

Challenges Associated to the Policy

Nevertheless, the policy has encountered various challenges in the course of the implementation of the policy.

Firstly it is challenging with the policy to kill the leadership among the jihadists to think that the group will cease to exist

Firstly, the policy is not supported fully as it faces opposition from the affiliate groups and individuals associated with these leaders. Some state authorities focus on structural factors such as political tension and cultural cleavages. On the other hand, others concentrate on personalized elements such as shocks of life that could mean some sort of traumatic experiences, including heatless assassinations of their beloved ones or even from other sources. But, the whole concept is often shaped by poorly understood interaction of structural and personal factors that make up the entire Ideology of Jihadism, thus making the whole process difficult to implement.

Additionally, there does not exist a standard profile for jihadi ideologists. Therefore, there is no single documentary or explanation that gives details on the exact leader of any jihadist group. Therefore, state authorities find it difficult to execute this policy because it must be based on the surety that the information at hand is correct. Ideally, people are protected by the law and hence, the government has to be sure not to make the wrong character suffer innocently. In substance, this information is what many countries are not able to access because of the great secrecy within the jihadist groups. As a consequence of this, rather than the one case of Osama, killing of the jihadist leaders has continuously become close to impossibility. Admittedly, this is because the information that the strategy needs for execution is not available at all (Ramakrishna, 2005).

However, most countries encounter the challenge of secrecy in the push for the implementation of the policy. Unfortunately, many top state officials are affiliates of the most jihadi movements all over the world. Due to political pressure, you find many politicians joining the jihadists to secure themselves a roof over their heads during times of political crisis. Ideally, it is expected that these people have to pay back to the jihadists by either funding the movement secretly or giving out secret plans of the government that target to eliminate their leaders. Doubtlessly, in such a state, the policy of assassinating the leaders of these groups becomes a sophisticated task since among the planning officials of the government are traitors leaking every plan. Therefore, it becomes hard to even trace the leader or any other influential person of a group targeted by the government (Maher, 2016).

Additionally, the presence of funding sources from individuals and other affiliate groups of the jihadi ideologists is a big threat when implementing this policy. In essence, whenever a given government succeeds in killing a jihadi leader of a certain group or movement, immediately a need for replacement exists and so, a new leader will be selected from within the movement or elsewhere to provide direction and ensure that the jihadi routine and objectives do not stagnate. Moreover, subscribers to the group believe in Jihadism, even despite the demise of their leaders, they will still have the same belief as they have already undergone the radicalization process and have fully been radicalized to stooge members of the ideology (Maher, 2016).

Furthermore, another challenge associated to the policy is civilian mistrust to the state authorities. Ideally, security is an individual, communal and state responsibility in any country. Therefore, it is evident that, any information required by the government could be in the hands of the civilians. However, due to lack of trust in the government, people may fail to disclose any required information and hence making it difficult for the government to implement the policy. Sometimes also, civilians may be lured and deceived by the jihadists with money to provide cover for any of their leaders in the event that, they have information about the government seeking to find and eliminate the leader. Success of the policy depends on the feedback the people make towards the approach that has been proposed to fight the challenges. Therefore, specifications should be made on whether the program seeks to address the challenges for the benefit of the civilians or the safety of the state officers (Gregg, 2010).

Like every other group or movement has its way of forming its membership and procedures laid down for the process, the jihadists have to be taken through a process of radicalization. Therefore, it is the responsibility of every state to find a secrecy weapon as early as possible before implementing the policy. Defining the policy to every necessary groups and individuals at earlier stages of planning would make it easier for every country to counter the challenges and come up successfully. Admittedly, the roots of the policy should be identified in time and appropriately. Hence, this increases the speed and effectiveness of the policy as it would successfully counter the challenge in the long run (Tibi, 2007).

Additionally, any state's authority in the fight against the Jihadism should ensure continuity in successfully containing the IS within Iraq and Syria, because the IS plays a significant role in advancing new recruitments for the Ideology. Besides, states should devise a way in which they can exploit all the liabilities of the new authorizations awarded to groups or individuals whose agendas are in doubt and have not been well stipulated (Gerges, 2014).

Further, there is another challenge that encountered for quite some time, division of communities within the hemispherical boundaries of...