PERSPECTIVES on TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5
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ISSN 2334-3745 Volume IX, Issue 5 October 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5 Table of Contents Welcome from the Editor 1 I. Articles Radicalisation to Terrorism in Kenya and Uganda: a Political Socialisation Perspective 2 by Anneli Botha Countering the (Re-) Production of Militancy in Indonesia: between Coercion and Persuasion 15 by Paul J. Carnegie Globalisation and Terrorism in the Middle East 27 by Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz II. Research Notes Lost Souls Searching for Answers? Belgian and Dutch Converts Joining the Islamic State 47 by Marion van San Designing and Applying an ‘Extremist Media Index’ 57 by Donald Holbrook III. Policy Brief The Afghan Insurgency and the Uncertainty of Peace Negotiations 69 by Kambaiz Rafi IV. Resources Bibliography: Muslims and the West 73 Compiled and selected by Judith Tinnes V. Book Reviews Anne Speckhard. Bride of ISIS: One Young Woman’s Path into Homegrown Terrorism. 109 Reviewed by Anita Perešin Counterterrorism Bookshelf: 16 Books on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism-Related Subjects 111 Reviewed by Joshua Sinai ISSN 2334-3745 i October 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5 V. Notes from the Editor Announcement: Dr. Anneli Botha: Winner of the Best Ph.D. Thesis 2014 Award 118 About Perspectives on Terrorism 120 ISSN 2334-3745 ii October 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5 Welcome from the Editor Dear Reader, We are pleased to announce the publication of the October 2015 issue (PT IX 5) of Perspectives on Terrorism at: < www.terrorismanalysts.com >. Now approaching its 10th year of publication, our journal has 5,600 e-mail subscribers and many more website visitors (287,483 in 2014), making it probably the most widely read journal in the field of terrorism- and counter-terrorism studies. Our open access journal is a joint publication of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), headquartered in Vienna (Austria), and the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies (CTSS), at the Lowell Campus of the University of Massachusetts (United States). Six issues of the journal are published annually. The Articles in each issue are fully peer-reviewed by external referees, while its Policy Briefs and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control. The current issue opens with a contribution summarising some of the findings of the award-winning dissertation of Dr. Anneli Botha (South Africa). The reader will find a report of the jury listing also all other theses submitted for the annual TRI Award for the ‘Best Doctoral Thesis on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism’ (2014) as well as a brief description of the short-listed three finalists theses at the end of this issue. Our second article, written by Paul J. Carnegie, explores how Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has been dealing with terrorism, using a mixed carrot-and-stick approach. The third article, from the hands of Brenda Lutz and James Lutz, is more quantitative in nature; it analyses how globalization and terrorism are linked in the Middle East, both in the years before and after 9/11. As so often, the picture is more complex than expected. This issue features two Research Notes. The first, by Marion van San, is based on ethnographic research, looking very closely at a small sample of young men and women from Belgium and the Netherlands who decided to become foreign fighters or jihadist brides in Syria. It turns out that the push factors are in most cases stronger than the pull factors. The second contribution, from Donald Holbrook, proposes a new methodology to measure extremism in media content, something very useful when deciding where to draw a line between licit freedom of expression and illicit incitement to terrorism. PT IX 5 also provides the reader with a timely Policy Brief about the future of Afghanistan and the peace process; the author is Kambaiz Rafi, a citizen of Afghanistan. His text is followed by the Book Reviews section, with contributions from our regular Book Review Editor, Joshua Sinai, and from Anita Peresin. In the bibliography section, Judith Tinnes – like Joshua Sinai a member of our Editorial Team – provides us with another extensive literature review, this time on Muslims and the West. While the present issue of Perspectives on Terrorism was assembled in Vienna by the Editor-in-Chief, the December issue will be prepared in the U.S. by Prof. James Forest, co-editor of PT and interim director of the CTSS. Sincerely, Alex Schmid ISSN 2334-3745 1 October 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5 I. Articles Radicalisation to Terrorism in Kenya and Uganda: a Political Socialisation Perspective by Anneli Botha Abstract Africa is increasingly being classified as the new battleground against terrorism. Yet, despite this renewed interest, countries on the continent have been experiencing manifestations of this threat already for several decades. Similar to most countries in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Europe, countries on the African continent focus on addressing the symptoms and not the cause of terrorism. In addressing the manifestations of terrorism, countries directly affected by acts of terrorism predominantly adopted a security-centric approach in an attempt to bring an end to the violence. Although this might be effective in the short term, in the majority of cases, a security-centric approach has proven to be ineffective and often even counterproductive. Realising this, several scholars—and, since 2006, also the United Nations in its Global Counterterrorism Strategy—have called for addressing the underlying reasons, or conditions conducive to terrorism. Despite this positive shift in focus, governments on the African continent continue to refer to outdated lessons learned from other countries, mostly on other continents, when formulating their own counter-terrorism (CT) strategy. Learning from the experiences of others is necessary, yet foreign CT lessons often tend to be broad and general and, as a result, ineffective. Policy makers and practitioners tend to fall into the trap of framing counter strategies on what are assumed to be the underlying driving factors instead of actually conducting empirical research into the ‘real reasons’. It is from this premise that interviews were conducted with 285 individuals and family members associated with al- Shabaab and the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) in Kenya and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda in an attempt to find empirical evidence to support or discard what are perceived to be the root causes of recruitment into these four militant organisations. The resulting doctoral dissertation has as its most important lesson: countering and preventing terrorism should start with looking at the ‘who’ in addition to asking ‘why’. This article is a summary of the main research findings capturing the personal backgrounds of respondents representing the four organisations. Specific reference will be made to early childhood, the school and friends as socialisation agents in establishing ethnic and religious identity. The analysis concludes by describing the influence of these factors on radicalisation associated with external—most notably, economic, educational and political—circumstances in identifying the most critical factor driving radicalisation. Keywords: Terrorism, Root Causes, Africa, Radicalization, Kenya, Uganda Lord’s Resistance Army, Allied Democratic Forces, Al-Shabaab, Mombasa Republican Council Introduction When exploring why young people turn to political violence, researchers have for many years emphasised the importance of external circumstances that provide the conditions conducive to terrorism. Although these are important, my own personal experience led me to the realisation that much more should be taken into consideration. During field research in 2003 that included discussions with victims of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching (GSPC) – the forerunners of al-Qa’eda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – an Algerian mother approached me and asked why one of her sons ISSN 2334-3745 2 October 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 9, Issue 5 had joined the GIA while the other became a police officer. That was the moment it dawned on me that most scholars tend to oversimplify processes of radicalisation and recruitment by focussing exclusively on the external environment, without acknowledging the role the individual plays in this process. Why do young people, when confronted with the same circumstances, growing up in the same household, decide on two very different career paths in their lives? Understanding radicalisation and recruitment from a political science perspective without including political psychology is clearly insufficient. I was definitely not the first researcher to be confronted with the reasons why and how individuals decide on a particular political position and participate in either legitimate or illegitimate political activities. While a number of factors play a role in the radicalisation process, political socialisation provides important insights into an individual’s increasing involvement in radical causes. John Horgan and Max Taylor best described the nexus between socialisation and radicalisation: “What we know of actual terrorists suggests that there is rarely a conscious decision made to become a terrorist. Most involvement in terrorism results from gradual exposure and socialisation towards extreme behaviour.”[1] Peter Neumann probably provided