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ABSTRACT
Building community resilience to violent extremism increasingly figures as a goal in national security strategies and debates. The exact meaning of resilience remains unclear, complicating an informed discussion of whom and what to support. This article presents findings from an explorative study of resilience to militant Islamism in three Danish communities. It shows how families and trust-based networks, including local government, are the major sources of resilience, but also how punitive national policies and discourses work at cross purposes with resilience-building by reducing local actors’ willingness and ability to share their problems, tailor solutions to local conditions, and mobilize collectively.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Josefine Kühnel Larsen, Charlotte Wandorf, and Louisa Menne Martini for a special contribution to data acquisition and analysis.
Notes
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2. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Counter Terrorism White Paper: Securing Australia, Protecting Our Community (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2010): 65–67; Executive Office, Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States (Washington, DC: White House, 2011b): 2; Executive Office, National Strategy for Counterterrorism (Washington, DC: White House, 2011a); Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 2015); Rohan Gunaratna, Jolene Jerard, and Salim Mohamed Nasir, “Countering Extremism: Building Social Resilience through Community Engagement,” Insurgency and Terrorism Vol. 1 (London: Imperial College Press, 2013): vii; Regeringen. 2014. “Forebyggelse af radikalisering og ekstremisme. Regeringens handlingsplan.” København: Ministeriet for Børn, Ligestilling, Integration og Sociale Forhold: 6.
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4. Executive Office, 2011b, 1; Weine et al., 2013, 328.
5. Violent extremism is obviously not tied to any particular ideology, ethnicity, or religion. Our focus is on militant Islamism as the majority of failed, foiled, and completed acts of terror over the past decade in the country of our case studies, Denmark, were connected to a militant Islamist ideology.
6. CARRI Report, Definitions of Community Resilience: An Analysis (Washington, DC: Community and Regional Resilience Institute, 2013); J. Brian Houston, “Bouncing Forward: Assessing Advances in Community Resilience Assessment, Intervention, and Theory to Guide Future Work,” American Behavioral Scientist 59, no. 2 (2015): 175–180: 176; Fran H. Norris, Susan P. Stevens, Betty Pfefferbaum, Karen F. Wyche, and Rose L. Pfefferbaum, “Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness,” American Journal of Psychology 41 (2008): 127–150: 127; Keith Shaw and Louise Maythorne, “Managing for Local Resilience: Towards a Strategic Approach,” Public Policy Administration, 28, no. 1 (2011): 43–65: 44.
7. Bach et al., 2010, 17; Norris et al., 2008, 128.
8. David D. Brown and Judith C. Kulig, “The Concept of Resiliency: Theoretical Lessons from Community Research,” Health and Canadian Society 4, no. 19 (1996/97): 29–50: 43; Betty J. Pfefferbaum, Dori B. Reissman, Rose L. Pfefferbaum, Richard W. Klomp, and Robin H. Gurwitch, “Building Resilience to Mass Trauma Events,” in Handbook on Injury and Violence Prevention, edited by Lynda S. Doll, Sandra E. Bonzo, James A. Mercy, David A. Sleet, and Elizabeth N. Haas (Berlin: Springer, 2007): 347–358: 349.
9. CARRI, 2013, 10.
10. Norris et al., 2008, 130.
11. Ibid., 135–136.
12. Karen Amit and Nicole Fleischer, “Between Social Resilience and Social Capital,” in Concept of Social Resilience by Nehemia Friedland, Asher Arian, Alan Kirschenbaum, Karin Amit, and Nicole Fleischer, 83–103 (Haifa: Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, 2005), 89–91; Bill Durodie, “Terrorism and Community Resilience—A UK Perspective,” Security, Terrorism and the UK, ISP/NSC Briefing Paper 05/01 (London: Chatham House, 2005), 4–5: 5; Pfefferbaum et al., 2007, 349–350; David R. Godschalk, “Urban Hazard Mitigation: Creating Resilient Cities” (Paper presented at the Urban Hazards forum, New York: City University of New York, January 22–24, 2002); Brown and Kulig, 1996/1997, 33 and 45; CARRI Report, 2013; Rashid Ahmed, Mohamed Seedat, Ashley van Niekerk, and Samed Bulbulla, “Discerning Community Resilience in Disadvantaged Communities in the Context of Violence and Injury Prevention,” South African Journal of Psychology 34, no. 3 (2004): 386–408: 388–391; Lesley Chenoweth and Daniela Stehlik, “Building Resilient Communities: Social Work Practice in Rural Queensland,” Australian Social Work 54, no. 2 (2001): 47–54: 48; Robert J. Sampson, Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls, “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science 277 (1997): 918–924: 918, doi: 10:1126; Norris et al., 2008, 137.
13. Frequently, a combination of the presence of militant narratives and propaganda that depict an existential conflict between the West and Islam and the presence of militant networks, groups, and recruiters that offer a sense of purpose, brotherhood, and excitement are emphasized. Many studies also point to the importance of individual-level factors such as feelings of loneliness, marginalization, or lack of direction, which create receptiveness toward extremist messages and networks; Peter R. Neumann, ed., Radicalization: Major Works Collection Volumes I–IV (London: Routledge, 2015); Tore Bjorgo, ed., Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and the Way Forward (London: Routledge, 2005); Magnus Ranstorp, ed., Understanding Violent Radicalism; Terrorist and Jihadist Movements in Europe (New York: Routledge, 2010); Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
14. Tore Bjørgo, “Counter-terrorism as Crime Prevention: A Holistic Approach,” Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 8, no. 1 (2015): 25–44, doi: 10:1080/19434472; Ronald Crelinsten, Counterterrorism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).
15. Weine et al., 2013, 328.
16. Stevan Weine and Osman Ahmed, Building Resilience to Violent Extremism among Somali-Americans in Minneapolis-St. Paul (College Park, Maryland: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, 2012): 7 and 31.
17. Rachel Briggs, “Community Engagement for Counterterrorism: Lessons from the United Kingdom,” International Affairs 86, no. 4 (2010): 972–981: 973; Rachel Briggs, Catherine Fieschi, and Hannah Lownsbrough, Bringing It Home: Community-based Approaches to Counterterrorism (London: Demos, 2006), http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Bringing%20it%20Home%20-%20web.pdf; James J. Nolan III, Norman Conti, and Jack McDevitt, “Situational Policing: Neighbourhood Development and Crime Control,” Policing & Society 14, no. 2 (2004): 99–117: 106; Sharon Pickering, Jude McCuloch, and David Wright-Neville, “Counter-terrorism Policing: Towards Social Cohesion,” Crime, Law and Social Change 50 (2008): 91: 105–106. doi: 10.1007/s10611-008–9119-3.
18. Williams et al., 2016, 45.
19. Global Terrorism Database, University of Maryland, June. http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?search=denmark&sa.x=0&sa.y=0 (accessed February 4 2015).
20. Regeringen, 2014.
21. Katrin Euer, Anke van Vossole, Anne Groenen, Karel Van Bouchaute, and Thomas More Hogeschool, Strengthening Resilience against Violent Radicalization (STRESAVIORA) Part I: Literature Analysis, http://www.kekidatabank.be/opac/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=2242: 11; Regeringen, 2014; PET. n/a. “Hvorfor forebygge?” https://www.pet.dk/Forebyggende%20Afdeling/Hvorfor%20forebygge.aspx (accessed April 17, 2014).
22. Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz, eds., The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory (Los Angeles: Sage, 2007).
23. Ministry for Foreigners, Integration and Housing. 2014. “Liste over særligt udsatte boligområder.” http://uibm.dk/
24. Thirty-one people from Gellerup have been registered as Syrian fighters (Ritzau, 2015. “Aarhusiansk Syrien-Kriger: jeg kæmper mod al-Assad.” Ritzaus Bureau, January 3), and local police have reported that 22 of these frequented a local Gellerup mosque “Grimhoejmoskeen” (Aarhus Kommune, 2015. “Svar på 10-forespørgelse vedrørende Aarhus-modellen for antiradikalisering.” Socialforvaltningen). The individuals involved in one of the largest foiled Danish terrorism pots were residents of Vollsmose. Morten Skjoldager, Truslen indefra, de danske terrorister (København: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2009). And Omar El-Hussein, the perpetrator of the attacks in Copenhagen in February 2015, grew up and lived in Mjoelnerparken.
25. Interviews in Gellerup, Vollsmose, and Mjølnerparken were supplemented with a handful of interviews in Denmark’s fourth largest city, Aalborg.
26. Three coders worked on the data. In case of different readings, the full, transcribed interview was revisited and a researcher with field work experience and expertise in radicalization studies was consulted.
27. Interview with respondents from Gellerup, Vollsmose, Mjølnerparken, and Aalborg East, summer 2015. The identities of the interviewees are confidential per mutual agreement. Respondents: RM8, RM10, RV25, RV30.
28. Respondents: RV29, RV28, RV27, RV26, RV25, RV24, RV21, RG14, RG16, RG18, RM8, RM1, RAe1, RAe2, RAe3.
29. Respondent RM8.
30. Respondent RM8.
31. Respondents: RV29, RV28, RV27, RV26, RV25, RV24, RV21, RG14, RG16, RG18, RM8, RM1, RAe1, RAe2, RAe3.
32. Respondents: RM3, RM8, RM1, RM2, RM4, RM6, RM5, RM31, RG16, RV29, RV26, RV25.
33. Respondent RM4.
34. Respondent RV25.
35. Respondents: RV30, RV24, RV29, RV21.
36. Respondent RV24.
37. Respondent RV21.
38. Respondent RG11.
39. Respondent RV30.
40. Respondents: RV24, RV27 RV21, RV29, RM3, RM6, RM7, RM10, RM31, RM5, RG1, RG3, RG4, RG5, RG8, RG9, RAe1, RAe2.
41. Respondent RV29.
42. Respondents: RV24 and RV29.
43. Respondent RV24.
44. Respondent RG11.
45. Respondents: RV30, RM31, RM5, RG17, RV21, RM3.
46. Respondent RV27.
47. Respondent RM2.
48. Respondents: RV22, RM3, RM7, RG3, RG8, RG9.
49. Respondent RM3.
50. Respondents: RV26, RV30, RV29, RG9, RG1, RG3, RG7, RG5, RM2.
51. Respondents: RV26, RV29, RV24, RV22, RV21, RG1, RG14, RG18, RM8, RM7, RM10, RAe2.
52. Respondents: RV22, RV29, RV21, RG2, RG16, RG17, RG19, RM3, RAe2.
53. Respondent RV25.
54. Respondents: RV30, RV21, RV26, RV23, RV25, RG20, RAe2.
55. Respondent RV27.
56. Respondent RV27.
57. Respondents: RG8, RG9, RM1, RV24, RV29, RV26, RV23, RAe2.
58. Respondent RV23.
59. Respondents: RM3, RM6, RM8, RG14.
60. Respondent RG14.
61. Part of the explanation why the units are ranked so low could be that they, at least partially, were designed to work through others—for example, mentors—leading respondents to underestimate their impact.
62. Respondent RM8.
63. Respondent RM3.
64. Jonas Hvid and Jacob Haislund, “Exitprogram fremskyndet for at hjælpe Syrien-farere,” Jyllands-Posten, February 27, 2015. http://jyllandsposten.dk/aarhus/politiretsvaesen/ECE6523022/Exitprogram+fremskyndet+for+at+hj%C3%A6lpe+Syrien-farere/ (accessed November 22, 2015).
65. Jakob Sheikh, “Politi advarer mod kontroversiel moske i Aarhus,” Politiken, March 9. http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE2229937/politi-advarer-mod-kontroversiel-moske-i-aarhus/ (accessed November 20, 2014); Ritzau, “Citathistorie fra Politiken: Politi advarer mod kontroversiel moske i Aarhus.” Ritzaus Bureau (March 8, 2014).
66. Respondent GR3.
67. Executive Office, 2011a, 10.
68. Bibi Van Ginkel and Eva Entermann, eds., “The Foreign Fighters Phenomenon in the European Union: Profiles, Threats & Policies,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague 7, no. 2 (2016). doi: 10.19165/2016: 6.
69. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 2011): 59.
70. Nolan et al., 2004, 107.