Here is the link to his presentation -- it's less than 15 minutes and very informative. He begins at 4 minutes in (right after the introductory remarks from the Committee Chair.)
As Atran wrote in the Guardian a few weeks ago, ISIS is not a bunch of mindless terrorists. They work from a script. In order to defeat ISIS, and particularly its attraction and ideology, first we must understand it.
The first step to combating Isis is to understand it. We have yet to do so. That failure costs us dear.
.... what inspires the most uncompromisingly lethal actors in the world today is not so much the Qur’an or religious teachings. It’s a thrilling cause that promises glory and esteem. Jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer: fraternal, fast-breaking, glorious, cool – and persuasive.
Their playbook is called the Management of Savagery and was written by a pseudonymous author, Abu Bakr Naji, for the section of al-Qaida that later became Isis. You can read the English translation by Will McCants, a Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point)here. Atran outlines the main points in the Guardian article.
He also writes about the current strength of ISIS:
Radical Arab Sunni revivalism, which Isis now spearheads, is a dynamic, revolutionary countercultural movement of world historic proportions, with the largest and most diverse volunteer fighting force since the second world war. In less than two years, it has created a dominion over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres and millions of people. Despite being attacked on all sides by internal and external foes, it has not been degraded to any appreciable degree, while rooting ever stronger in areas it controls and expanding its influence in deepening pockets throughout Eurasia.
Simply treating Isis as a form of “terrorism” or “violent extremism” masks the menace. Merely dismissing it as “nihilistic” reflects a wilful and dangerous avoidance of trying to comprehend, and deal with, its profoundly alluring moral mission to change and save the world. And the constant refrain that Isis seeks to turn back history to the Middle Ages is no more compelling than a claim that the Tea Party movement wants everything the way it was in 1776.
Isis is reaching out to fill the void wherever a state of “chaos” or “savagery” (at-tawahoush) exists, as in central Asia and Africa. And where there is insufficient chaos in the lands of the infidel, called “The House of War”, it seeks to create it, as in Europe.
It conscientiously exploits the disheartening dynamic between the rise of radical Islamism and the revival of the xenophobic ethno-nationalist movements that are beginning to seriously undermine the middle class – the mainstay of stability and democracy – in Europe in ways reminiscent of the hatchet job that the communists and fascists did on European democracy in the 1920s and 30s.
Atran told the U.N. last week:
the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 cost al-Qaida between $400,000 and $500,000 — and “we’ve spent between $4 trillion and $5 trillion” in the military and security response.
“Thus far, we are worse off than before and if we continue in this way we will be worse off still.”
Military intervention will not defeat ISIS or stop the recruits. We need to do a better job of countering their ideology. And we will never do that unless we first understand their beliefs, motivations, intentions, strategies and allure.
Also from Atran recently in the New York Review of Books (co-written with Nafees Hamid): Paris: The War ISIS Wants
Some other recent articles on countering ISIS ideology and its allure to western, Asian and African recruits.
