TSG IntelBrief Quoted on International Business Times: Recruiting Terrorists: How Extremists Target Tunisia’s Unemployed Youth

July 1, 2015

Recruiting Terrorists: How Extremists Target Tunisia’s Unemployed Youth

International Business Times
By: Alessandria Masi

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When Islamic State group extremists told Malik they would send his family $1,500 through a Western Union wire transfer the day he arrived in Syria to fight, he packed his bags that night. Malik, whose real name is being withheld for security reasons, had quit school in Tunisia at 14 and gotten a low-paying job at a hotel gift shop to support his family. He was lucky: Nearly 40 percent of Tunisia’s youth is unemployed. But the income wasn’t enough, and the economy was getting worse, so, at 17 years old, he took the alternative option offered by the militants.

“People become discouraged with life. Young people are, mentally, very weak, and they become brainwashed,” says Wael Ouni, Malik’s 18-year-old cousin from Sousse.“You could say it’s like a travel agency that recruits militants.”

A year after Ouni’s cousin was arrested by Tunisian security forces, the country’s economy suffered a devastating blow: The 24-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui walked onto the beach outside the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba and opened fire on tourists last Friday…

Tourism is “an industry that reacts quickly and negatively to security concerns, but that takes a long time to recover once the perception of insecurity is set,” according to a report by The Soufan Group, a security-service company headquartered in New York…

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To read the full article please click on the link below:
http://www.ibtimes.com/recruiting-terrorists-how-extremists-target-tunisias-unemployed-youth-1989033

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