IS will start recruiting members from Central Asia, Caucasus and Indonesia: experts from Egypt

According to the report of the Ministry of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) of Egypt, the Islamic State group, also called Daish for its Arabic acronym, will start recruiting new members from Central Asia, where Kazakhstan is located, Caucasus region and Indonesia, Tengrinews reports.

The Egyptian experts believe that these new recruits will be engaged in subversive activities in the entire Islamic world, including Egypt. “After the leadership of Arab countries started an ideological and armed fight against the IS and after Arab religious and cultural organizations imposed an ideological blockade on the IS, the group has changed its recruitment strategy and now it goes beyond the Middle East in search for new safer regions to recruit new members, at the same time acting in the name of religion, protection of Islam and Muslims,” the report said.

They asserted that it would be quite easy for Daish to attract supporters in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Indonesia, because these are the regions with Muslim majority that is not familiar with the extremist and violent ideology of the group and tend to blindly follow Arab Muslims.

At the same time, the IS needs these regions not as part of their “caliphate”, which it declared in June last year and since then had been seizing lands of Syria and Iraq, but for recruitment purposes. “The IS will still use the Middle East to expand the territory under its control," the report said.

The Ministry also urged the countries facing the threat of extremist ideology spread on their territories “to conduct more active counter policy against IS ideology proliferation by using social networks, awareness-raising campaigns, increasing people’s religious knowledge, self-consciousness and helping them understand the difference between religion and extremism".

Horrifying the world with cruel beheadings, suicide bombings and attacks on ancient cultural sites, the IS still manages to attract new supporters. 

According to the recent estimates, at least 25,000 people from all over the world are fighting alongside the militants.

One question arises - what makes people leave their home countries and travel to Syria to join the IS and what can be done to stop it.

Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Kazakhstan Ghorm Said Malhan believes that incorrect interpretation of Islam is part of the reason why people are lured to the IS.

“We could have eliminated this group with the use of military force. But there is another was going on - the so-called information war. It is when people are getting wrong information. This is why so many people from Europe and Central Asia are now joining this group. Journalists should also be involved (in countering the IS) to stop Daish. Be it mosques, schools, homes or any other places – everywhere people should get correct information about Islam in order to finally eliminate Daish,” he told the journalists.

He added that Saudi Arabia did not consider this group an Islamic one and had put it on the terrorist organizations list.

"This group attracts the people who do not know Islam very well," Gorm Said Malhan concluded.

According to a political scientist from Kazakhstan Yerlan Karin, the number of people joining the group is decreasing, which makes the group search for new recruitment methods. “Daish group has long been facing the shortage of recruits because of various objective circumstances. They lack new supporters. Despite the news about people still being arrested on their way to Syria to join the militants, in general, the flow of recruits is declining. But the problem is still pressing,” Yerlan Karin told Tengrinews in late July.

By Assel Satubaldina