WRITTEN BY Ernest Harsch
News headlines and television clips provide ample evidence of the military side of the ‘war on terror’: bombing raids against Islamic State fighters in Iraq, special forces incursions in Somalia, or ground operations against Islamist rebels in northern Mali. The killings of civilians by such insurgents generally provide the justification for forceful action.
The heat of battle and the atmosphere of urgency often seem to leave government officials and military commanders little time to ask a fundamental question: Can terrorism be defeated primarily through arms?
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WRITTEN BY Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko
In this paper we first put ISIS volunteers in context by considering other examples of Americans citizens fighting in someone else’s war. Next we consider poll results indicating that many U.S. Muslims perceive a war on Islam and prejudice against Muslims; at least ten percent of younger U.S. Muslims justify suicide attacks in defense of Islam. Against this background it is perhaps surprising that only a few hundred U.S. Muslims have volunteered to fight in Syria. In the absence of accurate data about U.S. volunteers, we review what has been learned about the thousands of European volunteers for ISIS, many of whom seem to be pushed to action by individual-level mechanisms described by McCauley and Moskalenko in 2011. Finally, we raise doubt about current efforts to criminalize and block would-be volunteers.
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WRITTEN BY Anne Speckhard
The draw for young people to join a terrorist group has never been as strong as it is today. I know because I have spent over a decade interviewing over four hundred terrorists around the world and, in the case of suicide bombers who are already dead, interviewing their family members, close associates and even the hostages they held. My questions always centered on what put these (mostly young) people on the terrorist trajectory. Could their movement along this trajectory have been prevented? Once on the trajectory, could they have been moved back off it by some sort of intervention?
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WRITTEN BY Massimo Leone
On the one hand, terrorism is the antithesis of communication. It does not aim at transmitting any message to its victims, but at annihilating them. On the other hand, yet, terrorism is extremely powerful communication for those who witness the tragedy, directly or through the media, and are either terrified or fascinated by it
(1). Terrorist acts revolutionize the social attitudes of individuals and groups, pushing them to radically change their lifestyles. Those acts instill fear, but can also attract supporters’ admiration. From September 11 on, terrorist jihadist groups have resorted to increasingly sophisticated communication in order to accompany and influence the reception of their violent deeds.
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WRITTEN BY Rik Coolsaet
‘Pop-jihad as a lifestyle’, so the Dutch Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism opined, when expressing his worries about the appeal of jihadist symbols to young Europeans
(1). Starting in 2012, many thousands Europeans have travelled to join jihadist groups in Syria, in particular the so called Islamic State (aka ISIL or ISIS). Numbers vary from 3,400 to 5,000. By July 2015, from Belgium alone some 440 individuals have gone to the region (included are the 50 or so who never made it to Syria). But looking into the motivations and backgrounds of this relative large group from a small country might help to shed a light on the journey of Westerners to “a country they do not know, in a culture they are not familiar with, and where a language is spoken that they do not understand
(2).“
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WRITTEN BY Mia Bloom
(0)We remain fascinated by terrorist acts and how seemingly normal people transform into cold-blooded killers. We have certain preconceived notions about who becomes a terrorist and why. Much of the conventional wisdom and preconceived notions are more conventional wisdom that empirically based on reality and facts. Mohammed Emwazi previously known as ‘Jihad John’ an educated middle class British citizen who became notorious for beheading Western aid workers and journalists in Syria surprised many who saw an educated Westernized person with no history of radical views
(1). The stereotypes about terrorists include faulty assumptions about sanity, a history of anti social behavior, poverty, or drug and alcohol abuse
(2). More often than not, terrorist groups use these assumptions to their benefit. Among the many assumptions about level of education, wealth, and ethnic background inevitably has also been that of gender.
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WRITTEN BY Annelies Pauwels
The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) recently shocked the world by destroying a number of archaeological sites throughout the region under its control, among which were the ancient Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud. Determined to impose its culture as the dominant one in the region, Daesh – the Arabic equivalent of ISIS – calls for the destruction of all cultural property of other religious groups, as well as Islamic artefacts it considers haram or forbidden in Islam, such as religious shrines and art depicting human faces. In reality, the trade in looted artefacts from Syria and Iraq to the rest of the world represents a major source of income for the terrorist group.
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WRITTEN BY Alberto Mallardo
Foreword
As suggested by the sociologist Luigi Manconi, Roma people
(1) are unpleasant to many people and there is no doubt that some of them live committing crimes and inducing their children to beg. Although the Roma, like everyone else, are accountable for their actions, other factors have concurred to shape this situation. This article analyses the effectiveness and the outcome reached by the different policy measures towards Roma people adopted by the Italian Government since the spring of 2008.
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