Experts discuss radicalisation of youth in Pak, say ‘J&K a possible battleground for Jihadi movement’

Updated:6 years, 11 months ago

Amsterdam (Netherlands), Dec 05 (ANI): The European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS), in collaboration with the Center for International Criminal Justice (CICJ) and Enactus Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, organised a day-long Seminar, ‘Terrorism in South Asia’ at the VU University on December 03, during which experts deliberated on the “development and future of terrorism” in South Asia. The conference was moderated by Joris van Wijk, a professor at VU, and was comprised four speakers including Dorothee Vandamme, Paul Stott, Danielle DePaulis and Junaid Qureshi (the Director of EFSAS). Stott, a lecturer at the University of Leicester and in the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London, examined the links between Jihadism in Great Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He took the example of a British health practitioner of Pakistani origins, Mirza Ali, who travelled Pakistan to fight for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar (TTPJA) to prove that extremist groups targeted young disenfranchised vulnerable young men, often first or second-generation migrants, in Western countries for recruitment. “Stott said that there is ample evidence to demonstrate that Pakistan takes centre-stage in terms of jihadism in the West, which made Gordon Brown say in 2008 that, 75 per cent of UK terrorist plots originate in Pakistan,” an official press release stated. He also expressed his fears that Jammu and Kashmir could be seen as a possible next battlefield of the Jihadi movement by terrorists.