Often the first thing new recruits get from party HQ is an email begging for time and money On the campaigning trail I saw a few moments of charismatic evangelism and a lot of robotic data collection.
Until the last few weeks the conventional wisdom in Washington, London and Arab capitals was that Isis had been forced on to the back foot, suffering from shortages of cash, weapons and problems of resupply, even if its morale was sustained by a slick propaganda machine that kept attracting recruits.
Merah was thus not only part of an old style of terrorism – recruits making their way to the badlands of Pakistan to get trained and then returning to carry out attacks – but was also much less effective than predecessors such as those responsible for the 7/7 attacks in London.
Back in 2008, according to interrogation documents, handlers were forced to admit to new recruits coming straight from Europe that their facilities unfortunately bore no resemblance to those depicted in recruiting videos.
Several of the recruits are understood to have tried to claim asylum, but Cameron indicated this would not be granted.
The US government insists it has no firm proof that any American nationals took part in the Westgate attack, but the FBI is thought to be investigating the suspected involvement of al-Shabaab recruits from Somali communities in Minnesota and Maine.
It recruits almost exclusively final-year undergraduates or those studying for masters degrees.
An open letter from the team asking the fans to accept that it might take some new arrivals a little longer "to adapt to the German mentality and lifestyle" was either an earnest attempt to foster integration or a cynical, Magath-led ploy to shift the blame from the obsessive wheeler-dealer manager to the foreign recruits.
Meanwhile, new recruits to the workforce were told they had to get a degree – and a shedload of debt – to get ahead, only to come out and find there weren't the commensurate jobs for them.
Reports filed by the police about the attack describe the confession of one leading member of the network responsible that he had instructed recruits to "take revenge against a series of rightwing figures, including Narendra Modi, or their [prayers] will not be accepted," the document says.
The failure to solve those issues, even though Arsenal still had the finance for additional recruits, results in self-inflicted pressure.
