Social Conditioning as a Key to Minimizing Threats from Radicalized Migrants

After a number of high profile terrorist attacks in the US and in Europe, and a record number of potentially radicalized migrants from conflict zones, as well as terrorists using these migration flows as a cover, 2015 brought to the fore a number of questions underlying this migration.

At a time when the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) forecasts the number of forcibly displaced individuals at over a record 60 million people this year, we need to face this new, or enhanced, factor that is sure to shape our economic and national security landscape in the immediate future.

While neither domestic terrorism nor workplace or school shootings are new in the US, the seemingly blended nature of the recent San Bernardino shooting highlighted for us the delicate question of effectively preventing both patent and latent threats from radicalized individuals either migrating from war zones or coming from socio-economic horizons making them more prone to radicalization.

With regards to migrants, the presidential election cycle in the US has crystallized the debate around a pole of demagoguery that is not conducive to sound policy. In Europe, the scale of the migration flux, coming on top of monetary policy issues that have already strained the fabric of the union, brought to the surface existential questions as to the future, if not the wisdom, of the European Union.

In the US, a lot has been said about keeping our borders secure, a fantasy as big as the land mass to secure, or defeating the terrorist organizations that feed this threat, which would stem the flow without drying the tide altogether, but not much has been offered to deal with potentially radicalized individuals already in the US, or the number bound to come in the future.

A thorough assessment at the point of entry, with an advance background check, and sensible intelligence, while a commendable program is neither practical, nor realistic. It doesn’t mean that nothing should be done in that regard, but those offering as a solution a greater scrutiny of immigrants and visitors’ social media profiles are both valiantly optimistic and naively blind to the scaling issue, for the resources needed to do so effectively would be a crippling budget expenditure that would create a new mammoth program at the same time as it would grind border protection operations to a quasi-halt and unhealthily dilute already strained intelligence collection and analysis resources.

The problem here is that anybody coming from a war zone is a potential target for radicalization and/or violent crime. Not necessarily because migrants from war zone are radicalized, but because they are human beings, mostly civilians, ill trained to cope with the horrors of an active conflict, leaving their country, often their family and possessions, profoundly scarred by what they had to endure and mostly unprepared to live in societies with different sets of social rules, moral standards, and tolerance for, or ability to contain, criminal and violent behaviors.

Not unlike the principle under which abused children are more prone to be abusers themselves later in life, migrants from active conflict zones come from an environment where violence is easy, if avoidable at all, and, for many, becomes, if not a way of life, at the very least a new baseline in their daily routine. If we imagine such individuals fleeing their homes to come, after an often grueling journey, to a country where they have little prospects of economic development and social integration, violent crime and radicalization are a deeply disturbing but logical path that, for a number of these migrants, offers a seemingly viable alternative to the financial sustainability and social recognition that they inevitably seek.

Whereas these migrants have, for the most part, not put themselves in this situation by choice, there is a parallel to be drawn with convicts who need to be prepared and coached to reintegrate society after staying in a prison environment that has shaped their behavior and mindset.

Understandably, the equivalent of a parole officer for migrants from at-risk environments might not be practical or even judicious, but the parallel draws one’s attention to a similar set of issues that the US had to resolve on an even bigger scale.

However much credence one lends to S.L.A. Marshall’s studies alleging that, during World War II, only about 15% of infantrymen shot directly at the enemy in close combat, it reflected a widespread sentiment that more needed to be done to turn soldiers into effective killing machines. Came in operant conditioning techniques, improving the firing rate from 15% to 85% by the time of the Vietnam war, resolving the problem by conditioning soldiers to shoot and kill the enemy, no matter how close they were.

What we, as a society, learned the hard way is that soldiers conditioned to disregard human life enough to be able to kill without remorse was a wonderful development in the history of infantry and brought impressive ratios to boast about, but made for very poor contributors to society once back into civilian life. It since brought about numerous studies and very careful processes to literally deprogram soldiers and prepare them for a productive life in society.

While, of course, there are obvious limitations in comparing civilians fleeing a war zones with soldiers engaging in it, the trauma of the battlefield diverges little between the two, and what we have learned to ease soldiers back into civilian life, certainly can be useful to help migrants from a war zone transition into a society where everyone’s peaceful enjoyment of it is bound, mostly, by the rule of law.

The prescription attributed to Sun Tzu of keeping your enemies even closer than your friends is not a plea for sympathy, but a wise reminder of the fact that an enemy you don’t know, or understand, is an enemy exponentially more dangerous than otherwise. In that respect, the intelligence community at large doesn’t only need linguists and translators, but people who can help accurately map the cultural, behavioral, and religious landscape of radicalized individuals, of Islamist or other background, so that we have a better operational knowledge and tactical understanding of the human terrain we are fighting in.

At a time when one can see a significant threat emerging onto our immediate horizon, it would seem wise to translate these principles of human terrain mapping and social engineering into relevant funding and sensible programs to ensure that 2016 does not grow to be the worst evolution of what 2015 brought us.