This special issue offers a critical examination of current approaches to ‘countering’ violent extremism and explores alternative approaches to understanding and addressing the related challenges and dynamics at their sources. These alternatives aim to prevent and transform violent extremism through research, policy and practice at the intersection of peacebuilding, governance and development.
Violent extremisms of all varieties are driven by complex configurations of historical, political, economic, cultural, social and psychological factors. Yet the urgency of responding to the threats posed by violent extremism has resulted in theories and practices that are predominantly state-centric and security-based. This results in interventions that tend to focus on responding to the short-term consequences (terrorist attacks) rather than transforming the long-term (historical and systemic) causes and dynamics of violent extremisms.
While the causes of violent extremism are multiplex, requiring multi-levelled and multi-sectoral responses, disciplinary blinders often hamper theoreticians seeking to understand the phenomenon, and policy-maker action is often constrained by bureaucratic stovepipes. The theories and practices from the fields of peacebuilding and conflict transformation, alternatively, emphasise analysing root and proximate causes, parties and dynamics, and multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral (or horizontal), and multi-levelled (or vertical) strategic responses. As such they have much to offer scholars, policy-makers and practitioners seeking to more effectively understand and address violent extremism.
This issue explores several interacting themes:
| • | the specific configurations of macro-level (such as intractable conflict or international laws), meso-level (such as radicalised religious leaders or heavy-handed security forces) and/or micro-level (such as parenting practices or ‘doing time’) factors that contribute to the decision by individuals and groups to pursue violent extremism; | ||||
| • | the specific combinations of circumstances (whether internal/external historical factors or intentional interventions) that have motivated individuals and groups to abandon violent extremism and/or to participate in peace processes, political processes and/or disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) processes; | ||||
| • | the similarities and differences between the push and pull factors in Western countries and those in countries on the ‘front lines’ of violent extremism; and | ||||
| • | the conflict resolution, governance, development, and peacebuilding practices that are proving to be fruitful in preventing and transforming violent extremism — practices that might hold utility in different contexts. | ||||
This collection of articles and briefings proffers analyses from authors from countries on the ‘front lines’ of violent extremism while several compelling pieces pertain to preventing violent extremism in Western countries. The authors are scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners, or a combination of these, and they represent perspectives from Africa, South Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. In addition, although violent extremism tends to be a male-dominated field, over half of the authors in this issue are women. Taken together the papers in this issue proffer a set of diverse ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches to explaining or understanding violent extremism. They include both emic and etic, and inductive and deductive, approaches to researching the phenomenon.
A number of the articles discuss good practices that hold value in both the Global South and the Global North, including Arthur Boutellis and Youssef Mahmoud’s description of regional dialogues in the Sahara and Sahel, Harriet Lewis’s discussion of an interfaith dialogue and action programme in Chicago, and Lilla Schumicky-Logan’s presentation of a holistic youth programme for at-risk youth in Somalia. Some of the pieces describe contexts that are already in the grip of intractable conflict and violent extremism, such as Juliette Loesch’s briefing on Mindanao in the Philippines, while others, such as Sabrina Chikhi’s study of refugees in Western Sahara, describe contexts that have not experienced violent extremism, but where potential risks and threats are present. Some authors recommend interventions that are explicitly prevention oriented, such as Tamara Laine’s article on international citizenship laws, while others, such as Abdul-Wasi Babatunde Moshood and Paul-Sewa Thovoethin’s briefing on rehabilitating and reintegrating victims and perpetrators of Boko Haram in Nigeria, recommend interventions in contexts emerging from conflict and violent extremism, that aim to prevent a return to violence in the future.
Several authors in this issue discuss theoretical approaches that have specific implications for practice. Interventions to address violent extremism are based on assumptions, whether explicit or implicit, about its causes. Emeka Eugene Dim makes a case for a multidisciplinary integrated model for understanding the violent extremist group Boko Haram. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, he draws on three salient theories from the fields of economics, conflict resolution and social psychology, demonstrates their singular inadequacies for understanding violent extremism, and develops a conceptual framework that integrates the three theories. Dim’s framework suggests policy-makers engage in a holistic intervention that extends beyond the Nigerian government’s current focus on military and intelligence efforts to address the historical, economic, political, and psychological root causes of the conflict.
Addressing polarisation and violent extremisms in Western societies calls for a re-examination of the limitations of assumptions underpinning current approaches to addressing difference in Western liberal democracies. Drawing on two streams of democratic theory — deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism — Selen Ercan makes a case for a more effective deliberative democratic approach that is able to address conflicts that emerge in pluralist societies characterised by deep identity-based divides, including violent extremisms. Ercan critiques both multiculturalism and social cohesion as inadequate responses for addressing the challenges of violent extremism, because they exclude those who are viewed as too dogmatic or too irrational to be included within the liberal framework or they depoliticise identity-based differences instead of creating spaces for their ‘articulation, contestation, and re-negotiation’. Ercan proposes an alternative response that draws on deliberation and agonism, which acknowledges the inevitability of and allows for much more conflictual relations. The implications for practice are discussed below.
Western interventions in countries plagued by violent extremism are often characterised by an external versus internal dichotomy that privileges the external ‘expert’ theory and praxis. External actors attempting to de-privilege their own ‘expertise’ often romanticise or ‘orientalise’ the local. Schumicky-Logan applies the theoretical approach of ‘relational sensibility’ to a youth programme in Somalia that aims to prevent and counter criminalisation and radicalisation, as these two phenomena are intertwined in Somalia. The relational sensibility approach emphasises the relations between actors, groups, organisations, and institutions in the context, while de-emphasising the Western versus local dichotomy. Practice derived from this approach is focused on the identification of the problem to be solved and the local practices that can be made more effective through their modification and adaptation to current circumstances.
Much theory and practice on violent extremism, particularly relating to prevention, focuses on youth, as do some of the pieces in this issue. Chikhi’s article focuses on the potential for violence in Western Sahara given its continued failure to achieve independence and the growing threat of violent extremism in the region. She employs a quantitative methodology to explore the possibility that refugee youth are growing impatient with the Polisario’s policy of non-violence in order to gain independence. Her research finds a relationship between the poverty experienced by refugee youth in the camps and their inclination to abandon the policy of non-violence to gain their independence. Chikhi recommends addressing the root cause of violent extremism — in this case the need for independence — while raising the standard of living for refugees as key preventive measures. Specifically this involves programmes to address the poverty, inequality, and lack of opportunity for education and employment of youth in the camps, and a renewed effort to hold a referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara.
Another critical issue that pertains to prevention is the handling of the increasing numbers of returning foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), who are now known to number in the tens of thousands, worldwide. Tamara Laine examines the problem of the growing trend among Western governments’ counterterrorism policies to denationalise individuals whom they perceive to be security risks, in particular those returning after having travelled to join violent extremist groups or as their family members. She writes that these citizenship-stripping policies are counterproductive because they create stateless persons who are more vulnerable to recruitment by violent extremist groups and because they legitimise non-state actor groups such as ISIS. Laine recommends that the international community harmonise its citizenship policies in order to prevent the creation of new security risks.
Arsla Jawaid examines reintegration and rehabilitation programmes for returning FTFs in both Western countries and Muslim-majority countries. The predominant approach towards returning FTFs has been punitive, which sometimes results in prisons becoming sites of radicalisation. She explores alternative approaches for reintegrating and rehabilitating returnees, including the resource- and labour-intensive Aarhus model from Denmark, which is based on community-wide programming, building personal relationships, providing education and employment, and developing social and life skills. She recommends replicating interventions such as the Aarhus model in both the Global North and the Global South, but acknowledges that in some countries it would be challenging due to resource and capacity constraints. Other pieces in this issue suggest some alternatives.
Several of the authors in this issue highlight the importance of more inclusive reintegration and rehabilitation endeavours that go beyond former combatants and traditional DDR programming by including a broader range of target group categories. Lilla Schumicky-Logan writes about a reintegration and rehabilitation programme, implemented in Somalia, that has been effective in achieving its goals of preventing and countering violent extremism and criminalisation by targeting various categories of youth, including at-risk youth and youth who have already been involved in criminality or violent extremism. Because different categories of youth are included in both prevention and rehabilitation activities, stigmatisation of particular categories of youth, such as former al-Shabaab members, does not occur. She discusses the fact that in Somalia, social and political reintegration are prerequisites for economic rehabilitation and that the former are thus the starting point for this efficacious reintegration intervention.
Abdul-Wasi Babatunde Moshood and Paul-Sewa Thovoethin examine the Nigerian government’s efforts to reintegrate returnees who were displaced by Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, as well as other victims of the conflict, including women and girls who were abducted by the group. While the government’s military actions in the region have been fairly successful in regaining territory from Boko Haram, Moshood and Thovoethin write that there is now a need for a comprehensive reintegration programme that would include psychological services, education, employment, and education to address de-stigmatisation. These efforts would be extended to the victims of Boko Haram, ex-Boko Haram fighters, and the army of unemployed youth in the region, in order to prevent (re)radicalisation and (re)recruitment into violent extremism in future.
In her briefing, Juliette Loesch writes about the peace process to resolve the four-decade-long armed conflict between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). She recommends that the extension of the provisions of the agreement that pertain to the decommissioning and rehabilitation of MILF combatants be extended to include members of violent extremist groups operating in Mindanao. Loesch argues that doing so would benefit the government, the MILF and the people of Mindanao. Like Schumicky-Logan, Loesch makes the case for new approaches to DDR that integrate the aims of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), countering violent extremism (CVE) and/or preventing violent extremism (PVE).
Several pieces in the issue focus on the critical role of dialogue in addressing violent extremism — at the community, national and regional levels. Harriet Lewis focuses on a community-level interfaith dialogue initiative in an ethnically, racially and religiously diverse neighbourhood in Chicago, Illinois. She describes the approach of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), an American Muslim-led organisation that seeks to move beyond interfaith dialogue, to collective interfaith action, in order to transform extremist narratives of all types. The vision of the organisation is to facilitate transformational change within the community through critical civic engagement and working collectively for the community in ways that address shared needs beyond the barriers of ethnicity, race and religion.
Agonistic pluralism combined with deliberative democracy, which sometimes entails national level dialogues, is proposed by Selen Ercan as the vehicle for addressing irreconcilable values and worldviews in a society such as that of Australia. He asserts that because there is sufficient evidence that social and political exclusion in pluralist societies such as Australia contributes to radicalisation and violent extremism, part of the solution lies in creating spaces for the excluded and the included to engage across deep divides. The goal of deliberation and dialogue according to Ercan is that antagonistic relationships can be transformed into agonistic ones, in which the engagement may still be conflictual, but nevertheless constructive. This approach has applicability not just for pluralist Western countries, but also for countries experiencing polarisation and violent extremisms relating to deep identity-based, worldview or ideological cleavages.
Regional level dialogues are the focus of Boutellis and Mahmoud’s description of an initiative of the International Peace Institute (IPI), the United Nations and Switzerland, in their policy dialogue. The initiative involves the implementation of a series of regional dialogues on violent extremism in the Sahara and Sahel regions. The dialogues bring together representatives from multiple sectors, including civil society, religious leaders, traditional authorities, the media, the private sector, governments, and officials of regional and international organisations, with the aim of contributing to violent extremism prevention policies, whether at the national or the regional levels. The initiative also aims for the involvement of each of these stakeholders in the development and implementation of interventions to prevent violent extremism.
In their briefing, Gary Milante, Katherine Sullivan and Jiayi Zhou analyse the intersections between the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the UN Plan of Action (PoA) to Prevent Violent Extremism. The goals and objectives of Agenda 2030Footnote1 present a far-reaching global development agenda; the aim of the PoA is to guide national strategies for preventing violent extremism, by improving development and governance, among other things. The authors discuss a study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, that attempts to systematically compile information about violent extremism interventions and provides a framework for organising information about the effectiveness of these interventions.
In her briefing, Melinda Holmes shares insights from a session on ‘Preventing Violent Extremism through Peacebuilding’ that took place at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. The session examined lessons and good practices, and unpacked the implications for policy and practice. It was agreed that effective efforts to prevent violent extremism are comprehensive both in approach and in the inclusion of diverse actors and sectors of society (including women, youth, religious and community leaders, government and security agencies, and local business people). This represents an important consensus within the international community about how to go about preventing violent extremism.
As this issue goes to press, the Trump administration is planning to focus exclusively on traditional security oriented approaches to countering violent extremism, and to focus specifically on Islamist violent extremism, while ignoring other violent extremisms, notably that which is home-grown in Western countries. As the articles in this issue have argued, in both Western countries and countries on the ‘front lines’ of violent extremism, the root causes of and persistence of violent extremism are rooted in discrimination and prejudice against particular populations, economic and political marginalisation, and inequalities and poverty, while the proximate causes are heavy-handed law enforcement practices, punitive rather than rehabilitative approaches to dealing with offenders, and the extreme imbalance between the deployment of military forces over the employment of peaceful means to address conflicts. From the lessons learned from the past two and half decades of research on the drivers of violent extremism it is possible to extrapolate that Trump’s foreign and domestic policies, from selling weapons that support Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen, to banning immigration from some Muslim countries, will likely contribute significantly to the trend towards polarisation and violent extremism worldwide.
Meanwhile, this collection of articles, briefings and policy dialogues not only offers a critical examination of security-based approaches to theorising, researching and addressing violent extremism, it also offers alternative approaches. These are based on the theories, perspectives, principles and practices from the fields of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, governance and development. This special issue ultimately presents a call to governments and international organisations around the world to abandon the militarised and punitive approaches that have been shown to be ineffective at best and harmful and counterproductive at worst, with the sound thinking and good practices and policy recommendations found herein.
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Notes
1 Though the Millennium Declaration acknowledged the importance of peace for development, peace was not a goal in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions goes some way toward promoting peace as an end in itself.