On June 14, 2015, over 100 heavily-armed special forces clad in military fatigues with their faces obscured by balaclavas raided the homes of residents of Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge whom they suspected of recruiting for the Islamic State. Captured by video and still cameras, the media blitz that accompanied the operation…
Two recent false alarms concerning gunshots at military installations in Washington, D.C. were not terrorism related but do highlight the persistent public fear of lone wolf attacks. The massive law enforcement response to such incidents is understandable since the threat is uncertain upon arrival; it is the public response and…
Bottom Line Up Front: • The reported death of British foreign fighter Abu Abdullah al-Britanni by a U.S. airstrike in Syria highlights how the nationalities and borders that once limited military action are fading in light of the true borderless nature of the threat • At the counter-terrorism level, nationalities…
The current state of countering violent extremism (CVE) in Australia and other Western nations is characterised by definitional dilemmas around its relationship to the concepts and practice of counterterrorism (CT) and security. While attempts have been made to engage the civil society sector in CVE through programmes that provide funding…
With increasing numbers of terrorism offenders in custodial settings across the globe, effectively managing this specific prison population and ensuring that violent extremist radicalization does not spread through the system have become key priorities for many governments. Certain prisons seem to have become incubators for radicalization and recruitment, while others…
This report summarizes the discussions during the “Countering FTF Recruitment Workshop: Counter-Messaging and the Role of Disillusioned Former Fighters” workshop held in Abu Dhabi, June 2015.
This document summarizes the expert meeting on Foreign Terrorist Fighter (FTF) Initiative co-organized with the Global Counterterrorism Forum Co-Leads, Morocco and the Netherlands, in Abu Dhabi, June 2014.
Libya is in chaos: the country’s transition out of Qadhafi’s dictatorship is plagued by an extreme polarization in politics and an ongoing military conflict. Added to that are other pressing issues such as the current migrant-smuggling crisis and the proliferation of jihadism. This policy brief explains how Libya’s multiple crises…
The article sketches the main theoretical approaches that account for the phenomenon of youth extremism. It compares the theoretical description of the causes of extremism to the opinions of specialists in its prevention in the educational environment. It explores the limited nature of perceptions that a leading role is played…
The firebrand Buddhist monk, U Wirathu, frequently remarks that Islam poses an existential threat to Myanmar. A central tenet of this argument is the citation of one Muslim militant organization, the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO). The RSO is often accused of being responsible for coordinated attacks against the Myanmar Defense…
Despite the exponential growth in research on domestic counterterrorism over the past decade, relatively little is known about the actual effectiveness of specific counterterrorism policies in disrupting targeted terrorist networks. Using an original data set of network ties among British Islamists in the UK between 1999 and 2008, this study…
WASHINGTON — In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks on New York and the Pentagon, extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States, explaining their motives in online manifestoes or social media rants. But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come…
