Sophisticated online ISIS recruiting efforts will be difficult to stop, experts say

It appears that another Canadian has died fighting abroad.

According to CBC News, there are reports that Hamilton teenager Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud has been killed an anti-ISIS military campaign in Syria.

He isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last Canadian-turned-ISIS supporter to die in the Middle East.

The federal government’s 2014 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada, released last month, says 130 Canadians have joined terrorism-related activities, with at least 30 believed to be fighting in Syria.

A Calgary imam told CBC that he knows of at least five Canadians who have now died fighting for the extremist group.

How are these young people being drawn-in to fight in these deadly battles abroad?

While details are still scarce on the latest Canadian death, it looks as is most westerners are being sucked in by slick videos and propaganda shared on social media.

[ Related: How a vibrant Hamilton youth may have died as an ISIS fighter ]

According to the Daily Mail, ISIS has gained six thousand members since the American airstrikes began in August.

1,300 of those have come from outside Syria or Iraq, many of them from Western countries including Canada.

These individuals – most of whom are between the ages of 15 and 20 and have never been involved in armed conflicts before – are wooed by Hollywood-quality videos that depict beheadings and glorify jihad.

The most recent video, Flames of War, declares “the fight has just begun”, mocks Western media reports and shows a series of scenes from ISIS battles in Syria and Iraq.

Flames of War was put on ISIS’ online English-language website and spread widely throughout social media on Twitter, on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

ISIS has also developed their own Android App which gives them the ability to send tweets through users’ accounts.

Moreover, they’re using sophisticated online ‘marketing’ techniques to amplify their propaganda. Last week on Twitter, on the day of Scotland’s independence referendum, they utilized the trending hashtag #VoteYesforScotland. According to CBC News, they also infiltrated #NLpoli when Newfoundland and Labrador’s Progressive Conservative party chose their new leader.

University of Calgary terrorism expert Michael Zekulin says that the extremist group’s social media techniques have proven to be very sophisticated and have evolved dramatically since the early 2000s and the recruitment efforts of al-Qaeda.

"They’re trying to tap into the the connected generation," Zekulin told Yahoo Canada News.

"You’re talking 17 to 27 … and all these people are glued to their screens and phones. They’re using what’s available to them and they’re doing it very effectively."

[ Related: Foreign affairs experts slam Stephen Harper for his relationship with the U.N. ]

The likes of Twitter, YouTube and others are trying to stymie the spread of ISIS recruitment messages but it’s been a difficult battle.

According to social media expert Dave Teixeira, it might be an impossible one simply because of the nature of social media.

“I don’t see how they can ever stop these people." Teixeira told Yahoo Canada News. “Whenever they set up an account, it gets shut down pretty quickly, but the way web works, once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.

"Once they set up their network, their followers can be the ones that are amplifying these messages. What Twitter has tried to do, is they banned people when they forwarded these images. This is going to be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions as time goes on because people are forwarding these images."

[ Related: Iraqi PM says Islamic State plot uncovered to bomb subway systems in US and Paris ]

The Conservatives have even raised the specter of social media being used as a conduit to launch attacks in North America.

In an address to the Canadian Club on Tuesday, cabinet minister Jason Kenney said that homegrown radicalization has become a real threat.

“I think part of the problem is there is a certain poison circulating on the Internet and in some theological circles which makes some young westerners believe that they are at war with the West,” Kenney said.

"These extremist forces very deliberately target young people in the West who are perhaps going through the kind of adolescent identity crisis that is often the case and they are offering them a very compelling world view about armed jihad and something to believe in and something to die for."

The government’s policy response to date – in addition to sending military advisers to Iraq – is to revoke the passports from ISIS recruits.

"It’s used where there are credible grounds that a passport-holder has the intention to travel abroad … [to participate in jihad groups] like the barbaric murderers in the so-called Islamic State," Kenney told reporters, according to Sun News.

"It’s certainly our intention to enforce the law and every other major, developed democracy has similar provisions for revocation of citizenship for traitors and terrorists."

At this point, that may be all they can do to stop ISIS from recruiting Canadians.

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