The man in the mask who has been on video beheading captives speaking with a British accent has been a mystery to many, but intelligence agents have been trying to put together pieces to identify this egregious murderer.
We now know a name: Mohammed Emwazi.
Emwazi grew up in West London and also has a college degree in computer programming. Unlike many ideas regarding terrorism, he grew up in a well-to-do family. This will spark concerns as we seem to see a substantial amount of people who are well-to-do, college-educated leaving their “normal” lives to join ISIS.
It is believed that Emwazi moved to Syria in 2012 to join the Islamic State. He is in his mid-20s and was born in Kuwait. He is described as being “polite” so it will be key to try and figure out what exactly made Emwazi move and align with such a despicable organization like ISIS.
Some who have been interviewed believe that he may have been radicalized after a trip to Tanzania after he graduated from the University of Westminster.
But what could have happened in Tanzania? What did he learn or see?
According to friends, he never made the trip, and he and two friends were detained in Dar es Salaam in 2009 for unknown reasons. Later, he flew to Amsterdam where he claims a member of the British domestic security agency accused him of trying to get to Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabaab resides. This is all according to emails. We don’t know how much of this is accurate, but according to a former hostage, Emwazi was obsessed with al-Shabaab and made the captured watch their videos. In 2010, he wanted to fly back to his birth country of Kuwait, but was also detained.?All of these instances were said to have made Mohammed feel like he was a “prisoner.”?
What causes terrorism has been the subject of much debate. It is often believed that lack of opportunities (education, poverty, jobs, etc.) causes people to be recruited to these organizations, as they promise them a future, power, and that they will take care of them. But we have increasingly seen prominent examples, like Emwazi, of people who did not live this impoverished, powerless lifestyle. How are they radicalized? Others believe that some actions from the United States can be blamed. What do I mean? Drop a drone in a village and 10 new people are recruited. That is a simplistic example to try and illustrate the viewpoint that we are somehow at fault. Is it a sense of Islamophobia? Racial profiling?
I am not saying that I, or anyone, has all of the answers as to what creates terrorists, but it is imperative that we don’t just think we can kill our way to peace. Senator Ted Cruz stated, just Thursday, at CPAC, that we will defeat terrorists like ISIS by killing all of them. I don’t envision a world where we can ever kill every bad person. That is impossible. If we want to live in a more peaceful world, we have to take seriously preventive measures. Yes, there are many bad people who will be bad regardless, but we should look into things that could help decrease the recruits for these organizations.
What ISIS is doing is reprehensible and indefensible, but whether we want to admit it or not, a lot of the actions from the U.S. and other Western nations genuinely upsets people in the Middle East and across the globe. We have to look at this as the complex problem that it is if we want to stop people like Emwazi, and others.
Note: Authorities have used numerous methods to try and identify the masked terrorist from voice analysts to interviews with hostages and former friends of the man believed to be behind several beheadings. We first came to discuss “Jihadi John” when he was seen beheading the beloved United States journalist, James Foley.
