Trinidad: Too close for comfort with its Islamic State problem

The death of Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does not mean that the threat from the Islamic State is over. Far from it. The Islamic State’s mission is to advance Islam violently, in accord with the dictates of Islamic theology found in the Hadith and Quran. The Washington Post referred to al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar” and was lambasted for that reference, but that’s one of the things that al-Baghdadi really was (along with mass murderer and rapist).

“One of the biggest recruitment hubs for ISIS in the West” is the Caribbean Island of Trinidad.

“One of the least known, but most alarming, aspects of the Islamic State is its ability to draw recruits and sympathizers from around the world, including from many countries not known as hotbeds of radicalism. On a per-capita basis, Trinidad was one of the largest providers of volunteers for the caliphate, a development that seems to come out of nowhere.”

Adding to the problem, Trinidad is uncomfortably close to Venezuela. Foreign Policy published an article two years ago, In Venezuela’s Toxic Brew, Failed Narco-State Meets Iran-Backed Terrorism, which addressed “the convergence of narco-trafficking and jihadism in America’s own backyard.” Venezuela is so close to Trinidad that it can be seen with the naked eye from the Southern and Western coast of the island, and like many Western countries, Trinidad has a grave problem with unvetted refugees.

A mass exodus of Venezuelans into Trinidad, with an untold number belonging to this “toxic brew,” adds to the already serious jihadist problem in Trinidad. Stephen Brown explained in his FrontPage Magazine article about “the forgotten Islamic coup” that happened 29 years ago in Trinidad — the only Islamic coup attempt against a sovereign country in the Western hemisphere, so far.

Of little comfort is an announcement two years ago that “the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is currently taking measures to prevent fighters from returning to the islands, located southeastern from the United States, into a platform from which terrorist attacks can be organised.” There was no followup.

Jihad Watch was also cited at a CARICOM Counter-Terrorism Strategy conference at that time, in which twenty Caribbean countries participated. When quizzed over the risk of jihadis returning at the conference in Port of Spain, Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon replied, according to the Trinidad Express:

It is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when….The UK Sun warned that “fears are growing that Trinidad and Tobago could face a new wave of terror attacks from returning ISIS jihadis” and that we have “the highest rate of ISIS foreign recruitment in the Western hemisphere, while Jihad Watch reported that ‘fears are growing that Western holidaymakers will be targeted in terror attacks by depraved terrorists who have travelled back to Trinidad and Tobago from the beaten caliphate.’”

What is it about Trinidad that attracts jihadists? According to the article below:

What seems to have pushed them, although “push” is far too deterministic a metaphor, was a profound spiritual disaffection from the very best that Trinidad had to offer, which was a decent life of tranquility and ease on a tropical island that they came to see as sexually permissive, corrupt and lacking in any real value—a sort of anti-paradise. What seems to have “pulled” them to the Islamic State was a conviction that it was the true paradise that Trinidad claimed to be but was not: a pristine society of faith free of corruption, deviance and worldly temptation.

We live in a world with tragic social ills, mental illness and endless challenges; millions of those suffering do not commit murder in reaction to their suffering. But in the case of jihadists, everything else but Islam is blamed for their woes. Those who promote Islamic jihad inspire their followers with lies about material rewards and paradise. It is this flawed theological “hope” that drives jihadist recruitment. What makes the call to jihad more alluring for those who are psychologically troubled is the fact that Islam teaches that martyrs are heroes for the cause of Allah and that these heroes will be eternally rewarded in paradise.

Such a theology — incorporating the psychological, spiritual and physical — can be attractive to disturbed and hopeless elements of society. Of course, all Muslims do not follow commands of jihad by the sword in accordance with normative Islam, but enough do follow (or quietly support) such doctrine to warrant alarm.

Thus far the T&T government, like most Western states, has shown little political will in seeking to address this issue and has not yet even publicly acknowledged that there are Trini children in the Al-Hol camp.

Throughout the West, merely discussing the jihad threat is now taboo. To pursue such a discussion or to propose it renders one Islamophobic. Stealth jihadists worldwide have created an effective means to further their war on Western civilization using fear and identity politics. As one can see in the report below, the jihad doctrine is not discussed as jihadists in Trinidad become an ever increasing threat to other countries in the West.

“Trinidad’s Islamic State Problem,” by Simon Cottee, Lawfare Blog, November 17, 2019:

Editor’s Note: One of the least known, but most alarming, aspects of the Islamic State is its ability to draw recruits and sympathizers from around the world, including from many countries not known as hotbeds of radicalism. On a per-capita basis, Trinidad was one of the largest providers of volunteers for the caliphate, a development that seems to come out of nowhere. Simon Cottee of the University of Kent looks in detail at the volunteers from Trinidad, assessing their motivations and the danger they pose should they return.

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In November 2013 Shane Crawford and two other men pulled off a double murder in a busy town in central Trinidad. Less than a month later all three were in Syria fighting for the Islamic State—the first Trinidadians, or Trinis (to use the local idiom), to do so. By the time the U.S. State Department added Crawford to its list of “Global Terrorists” in 2017, more than 240 Trini nationals had migrated to the so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq. This makes Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a small twin-island republic in the Caribbean, one of the world’s biggest recruiting grounds, per capita, of the Islamic State.

Trinidad has still yet to come to terms with this unenviable record, and there remains a widespread sense of incomprehension in the county that any of its nationals could have traded the paradise on their shores for a world of sectarian slaughter and chaos in Syria and Iraq. Now, more than six months after the fall of the territorial caliphate, the country faces the mother of all returnee problems: what to do about the scores of its nationals who are currently in detention in Syria and Iraq. This problem is all the more urgent given the uncertainty in northeastern Syria following President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops and support from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). At the time of writing, the Ain Issa camp, which houses hundreds of foreign Islamic State-affiliated women and children, has fallen.

One local group in Trinidad, the “Concerned Muslims of T&T,” is calling for the repatriation of all Trini women and children, while other voices, notably Col. Claudia Carrizales, a U.S. Embassy military liaison officer, have expressed alarm at the prospect of returning foreign fighters. “Within the next year or so, you will eventually have some hardened FTFs [foreign terrorist fighters] return to this country,” Carrizales said recently at a conference in the country’s capital, Port of Spain, adding: “Those are your citizens. They are your responsibility. Are you ready to deal with that kind of threat?”

But how did Trinidad get to this point in the first place?

I first became alerted to the issue of Trinis joining the Islamic State in mid-2014 via the reporting of local journalist Mark Bassant, but it wasn’t until early 2016 that I decided to return to the country—I used to be a lecturer in criminology at the University of the West Indies—in an effort to make better sense of what was going on. Since then I’ve made many more research trips to Trinidad, interviewing Islamists, police officers, politicians, journalists, community activists, ordinary Muslims, and relatives and friends of Trini foreign fighters.

Who Are the Trini Jihadists?

According to the T&T government, 130 Trinis left the country between 2013 and 2015 to join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. This may sound like a trifling number, a mere ripple among the 41,000 or so international citizens from 80 countries who joined the Islamic State, but it easily places Trinidad, with a population of 1.3 million, including around 100,000 Muslims, at the top of the list of Western countries with the highest rates of Islamic State recruitment. To put this into context, the figure of 130 amounts to 96 individuals per million—a rate that is roughly double that of Belgium, which, according to some estimates, has the highest per-capita rate of foreign fighters in the Western world. Yet 130 is almost certainly a gross underestimate. Based on recent discussions I’ve had with several national security sources in Trinidad, the true figure is likely to be in the region of 240.

Who are these individuals? In a recent article published in the journal International Affairs, I presented demographic data on 70 of them:

Thirty-four percent are adult men, 23 percent are adult women and 43 percent are minors.
Of the adults, the ratio of males to females is 60:40. This places T&T at the top of the list of Western countries for female Islamic State migrants.

The average age at time of departure across all 40 of the adults is 34. This is unusual compared to age averages found for all other Western Islamic State contingents; travelers from other countries are, on average, nearly a decade younger.

Nearly all the adult men were employed at the time they departed to join the Islamic State. The vast majority—90 percent—can be categorized as middle class, while 10 percent can be categorized as lower class.

Among the men, nearly 80 percent were married at the time of leaving, while among the women all were married, with the sole exception of an 18 year old who left with her family. So, among the Trini individuals for whom we have data, there were no “jihadi brides,” and while in the European and North American context the norm was “bunches of guys” leaving, in Trinidad it was “bunches of families,” of which there were at least 26.

Forty-three percent are converts, which, though high, doesn’t deviate from the pattern in other Western Islamic State mobilizations, where converts are also over-represented.

Thirty percent had a criminal record or had been involved in criminal activities prior to their departure, which is also broadly in line with research on European foreign fighters.

Finally, the vast majority of those who left come from three areas in Trinidad: Rio Claro in the southeast, Chaguanas in west-central Trinidad, and Diego Martin in the northwest. The majority—nearly 70 percent—lived in Rio Claro on or near the Boos Settlement Muslim community led by Imam Nazim Mohammed.
Many attended Salafi mosques (of which there are fewer than five out of a total of 85 mosques in T&T; Salafi-Muslims in T&T are a tiny minority within a minority).

Motives and Networks

What factors “pulled” or “pushed” these individuals to leave Trinidad and join the Islamic State? The Trinis who left to join the Islamic State were not pushed by frustration over poverty or social exclusion, because they were neither poor nor socially excluded; they were not pushed by anger over anti-Islamic bigotry, because in Trinidad they were blessed with a highly tolerant culture that is broadly favorable to Islam; they were not pushed by the pains of exile or migration, because they were very much of the society they grew up in; and they were not pushed by charismatic others who exploited their so-called vulnerability, since most were bright and mature individuals.

What seems to have pushed them, although “push” is far too deterministic a metaphor, was a profound spiritual disaffection from the very best that Trinidad had to offer, which was a decent life of tranquility and ease on a tropical island that they came to see as sexually permissive, corrupt and lacking in any real value—a sort of anti-paradise. What seems to have “pulled” them to the Islamic State was a conviction that it was the true paradise that Trinidad claimed to be but was not: a pristine society of faith free of corruption, deviance and worldly temptation.

Just as important a question as why they radicalized and joined the Islamic State is how they radicalized and joined. This is really a question about recruiters, facilitators and networks. One of the most striking features about the entire cohort of Trini Islamic State travelers is just how networked it was. Everyone in it was connected to everyone else. They all knew each other, either because they were friends or because they were related….