De-Radicalisation in the UK Prevent Strategy

Security, Identity and Religion

M. S. Elshimi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351984843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Liberté politique

This book examines de-radicalisation policy in the UK and addresses the contradictions evident in the conceptualisation and practice of de-radicalisation.

It explores three main themes that touch upon some of the most pressing issues of our day: security, identity and religion. Situated within the Prevent strand of the UK Counter-Terrorism policy and administered by the police through the 'Channel Programme', policymakers have promoted de-radicalisation as a vital instrument in the fight against terrorism. Despite the political and legal importance of de-radicalisation as an instrument of counter-terrorism, we continue to know very little about the programme andthe profile of individuals who have been de-radicalised, as well as having little or no access to data on the programme. There is also a glaring lacuna in the wider literature regarding the concept, theory, and evidence base for de-radicalisation policies. This book addresses this lacuna and, with the use of data collected from interviews conducted with27 practitioners, this work reveals the existence of multiple conceptions of de-radicalisation and a number of conceptual features unique to the UK context. Subsequently, the book proposes that de-radicalisation in the UK would be best conceptualised as 'technologies of the self'. Seen in this way, de-radicalisation is less about tackling terrorism and radicalisation and more about the re-configuring of citizenship, the construction of a mainstream British identity, and the promotion of certain subjectivities in an era of uncertainty about British political identity.

This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, de-radicalisation, counter-terrorism, UK politics and security studies in general.

1 Radicalisation as the ‘new security challenge’

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seed to repeat it to us inexorably.

(Wittgenstein 1958, 45, para 115)

This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) Sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

(Foucault 2002, xvi)

In the quote above, Foucault invites us to consider the wider discursive structures – what he calls ‘episteme’ – that shape what is being said and done in a particular epoch rather than merely attributing it to the zeitgeist produced by authors or thinkers, or individuals in general. Taking my cue from Foucault’s ‘episteme’, the premise of the following chapter rests on the idea that the way things are ordered and made intelligible is structured by a paradigm that governs mainstream thinking and practices. Following this logic, I claim that our understanding of de-radicalisation, in the UK context at least, emanates from the discourses on radicalisation. In other words, it is our conception of radicalisation which will allow us to arrive at a clearer understanding of how de-radicalisation came to acquire certain characteristics. Consequently, this chapter aims to (1) provide a discursive account of the major ideas and debates that lead to our current understanding of radicalisation; and (2) situate de-radicalisation genealogically within the historical and political context in which it emerges.

How did the concept of ‘radicalisation’ come to signify the journey undertaken by Muslims towards terrorism? How did ‘radicalisation’ come to eclipse our conventional understanding of ‘radical’ and ‘radicalism’? The word ‘radical’ has a number of meanings, one of which is the noun: ‘person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims’ (Oxford Dictionary). Or the adjective: ‘characterised by departure from tradition; innovative or progressive’ (ibid.). In modern times ‘radical’ and ‘radicalism’ were primarily associated politically with the Left, the Civil Right Movements in the United States, the Student ‘Social Revolutions’ of 1968 and the Feminist movement. It was not, however, only the preserve of the Left, since it was also associated with former conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Being a ‘radical’ and ‘radicalism’ generally meant ‘change’ and ‘innovation’ in politics and was on the whole regarded as a positive attribute, if not a celebrated feature of democratic societies. However, today the current understanding of ‘radical’ has become synonymous with fundamentalism, extremism, terrorism, Al-Qaeda, Islamism, and is loosely applied in conjunction with Islam (Githens-Mazer 2010; Tahir Abbas 2005a). How did the meaning of the term ‘radical’ change?

Radicalisation did not exist before 2004. The term ‘radicalisation’ was seldom referred to in the press before 2001 but became used a lot more frequently in the media between 2005 and 2007 (Sedgwick 2010, 480). Indeed ‘as late as the early 2000s, hardly any reference to radicalization could be found in the academic literature on terrorism and political violence’ (Neumann 2008, 3). The changing security environment post 9/11, coupled with the severity of the attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), brought a new urgency to understand terrorism. This shift in the understanding of terrorism is explained by Peter Neumann.

Following the attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001, however, it suddenly became very difficult to talk about the ‘roots of terrorism’, which some commentators claimed was an effort to excuse and justify the killing of innocent civilians. Even so, it seemed obvious (then) that some discussion about underlying factors that had given rise to this seemingly new phenomenon was urgent and necessary, and so experts and officials started referring to the idea of ‘radicalisation’ whenever they wanted to talk about ‘what goes on before the bomb goes off’. In the highly charged atmosphere following the September 11 attacks, it was through the notion of radicalisation that a discussion about the political, economic, social and psychological forces that underpin terrorism and political violence became possible again.

(Neumann 2008, 4)

The advent of radicalisation as a term and concept enabled policymakers, researchers and the public to investigate the question of the ‘root-causes’ of terrorism. This was a welcomed development given the long neglected search for the causes of terrorism (Jackson et al. 2011). The Madrid attacks prompted the EU and its member states to break new ground in their approach to counter-terrorism, compelling them to delve into the mechanisms underpinning the recruitment of individuals into terrorism (Coolsaet 2010, 858). A number of policy documents expounding this new thinking in counter-terrorism were developed in 2004. For example, the ‘EU Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism’ was adopted in June 2004 and by November 2004 the European Council adopted the ‘Communication on prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist attacks’ and the ‘Hague Programme’. These documents refer to the need for identifying factors that cause people to take a path of violence and terror (Change Institute 2008, 8).

Following the 2004 Action Plan, the European Commission Directorate General (DG) for Communication published ‘Terrorist recruitment; addressing the factors contributing to violent radicalisation’ in 2005, which presented the initial development of a long-term EU strategy for addressing the complex factors that contribute to radicalisation and recruitment to terrorist activities (ibid.). Thereafter, that organisation adopted the ‘EU strategy and Action Plan on Radicalisation and Recruitment’ in December 2005 (ibid.). In this document, the concept and term of radicalisation was first defined as: the ‘phenomenon of the people embracing opinions, views, and ideas which could lead to terrorism’ (CEC 2005, 2). Despite Europe’s long history with various forms of terrorisms for over a century (ESRC 2007, 1; Jackson et al. 2011), the EU document merely referred to terrorism perpetrated by Islamist inspired violence.

It was thus at the European level that preventive approaches to counter-terrorism were formulated. More significantly, this new focus on the ‘root cause’ of terrorism situated the problem of terrorism at a stage preceding it, what came to be known as ‘radicalisation’. The term ‘radicalisation’, as well as a strategy geared towards preventing terrorism, was further buttressed into the architecture of the EU counter-terrorism framework following the London attacks. The fact that the UK held the rotating presidency of the EU in the second half of 2005 enabled it to play a key role in shaping counter-terrorism at the EU level. It brought

…order to the chaos and elaborated – mirroring the structure of its own recently adopted counterterrorism strategy – an overall European Union Counterterrorism Strategy, effectively streamlining the ad hoc measures into a single framework.

(Coolsaet 2010, 860)

Meanwhile, the London bombings not only provided the political impetus to firmly anchor the concept of radicalisation in the EU counter-terrorism framework, not to mention at member state level for countries like the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark in particular, but it also embedded ‘radicalisation’ with the ‘home-grown bomber’ theory (Coolsaet 2010, 869). This theory moved the focus away from the threat of international terrorism to domestic terrorism, emphasising the threat of violence posed by citizens of the Islamic faith. The narrative of the ‘enemy within’ represented a significant shift from the narrative accompanying the September 11 attacks, which stressed the international and foreign nature of the terrorist threat. The ‘home-grown bomber’ narrative had the effect of legitimising the move towards ‘softer’ approaches in counter-terrorism policy. In the UK, the New Labour government made public the Home Office Counter-Terrorism Strategy (CONTEST) in 2006, which was accompanied by a new preventive approach to countering radicalisation, known as Prevent. The growing currency of the term and concept of radicalisation in this period was therefore primarily linked to the attention it was receiving in the policy world.

Following the London attacks in 2005, the then New Labour government set up working groups, called ‘Preventing Violent Extremism Together’ (2005), in order to investigate the causes of radicalisation. In December 2006 the EC funded three related studies in order to further understand the subject of ‘violent radicalisation’: motivation and desisting factors for violent radicalisation; the beliefs, ideologies, and narratives of violent radicalisation, and the socioeconomic factors contributing to violent radicalisation (Change Institute 2008, 8). In the UK, in early 2007, a research project titled ‘The New Security Challenge: Radicalisation and Violence – A Critical Reassessment’ and funded by the Foreign Office, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council, was set up, with a pot of £2.5 million, to examine and assess the causes of radicalisation (ESRC 2007, 4). The UK government and the EC were directly sponsoring and funding research on radicalisation.

Notably, the project was nearly aborted due to the fact that a number of researchers had expressed their concerns about the potential risks of the project, particularly its connection to agencies interested in intelligence gathering on British Muslim communities (ESRC 2007, 8). According to an evaluation of the project, the legacy of the ‘false start’ and further issues led to the eventual disengagement of the FCO (Tilley et al. 2011, 1). However, by 2011, the project had produced three books, two journal special issues, and more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles (ibid.). In effect, policy-makers stimulated the proliferation of radicalisation as a discourse, as well contributing to the legitimisation of it as an academic concept, which later dovetailed strategies of counter-terrorism.

Conceptually, radicalisation had undergone some revisions in the three Prevent iterations between 2006 and 2011. In 2006, radicalisation was defined in the Prevent strategy as a ‘process whereby certain experiences and events in a person’s life cause them to become radicalised, to the extent of turning to violence’ (HO 2006, 9). In 2009 Prevent II defined radicalisation as: ‘the process by which people come to support terrorism and violent extremism, and in some cases, then to join terrorist groups’ (HO 2009, 82). The term ‘violent extremism’ was added in the 2009 version in order to resolve the ambiguity inherent in the 2006 definition, where ‘the question of why and how the government should take an interest in thwarting radicalisation was left open’ (Edwards 2015, 55). The term ‘violent extremism’ was perceived as the link between the radicalisation process and the turn to violence, albeit that it conflated the distinct problems of support for terrorism, ideology and terrorism itself. However, the term ‘violent extremism’ was subsequently abandoned in the revised Prevent strategy in 2011. Radicalisation became defined as ‘the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and forms of extremism leading to terrorism’ (HO 2011, 108). The term ‘extremism’ was defined as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and belief’ (HO 2011, 107–108).

Whilst the most recent formulation of radicalisation is more nuanced than it its previous articulation in 2009, it nevertheless leaves unresolved the question of how non-violent radicalism, e.g. ‘extremism’, leads to terrorism. Linked to this is the question of whether something that does not lead to violence, such as ‘extremism’, could be considered a threat (Sedgwick 2010, 484). Regardless however of the frequent revisions of radicalisation conceptually, the various definitions articulated amongst policymakers, academics and others, the explosion of discourse, the emergence of the counter-radicalisation industry and three iterations of Prevent, radicalisation still emerged as a concept with a distinct framework. This conceptual framework comprises the following features:

• Radicalisation is a ‘process’ experienced by individuals: despite the acknowledged complexity in some accounts, policy-makers conceived radicalisation as a ‘process’ and a type of ‘conveyor belt’ which constructed individuals as starting off as ‘integrated’ and non-radical and, due to mainly ideological influences, in response to an identity crisis, ending up on a trajectory that results in violence. Despite the affirmed role of groups and movements in influencing radicalisation, it is nevertheless a ‘process’ that affects and ends with the individual.

• Radicalisation is synonymous with violence: radicalisation almost always means or implies violence. The line of radicalisation is placed between political activism and violence, rather than between apathy and political mobilisation. This consequently means that political mobilisation is viewed within a security lens and therefore potentially criminalises democratic legitimate activism. It also implies violence being committed by its own citizens.

• Radicalisation is associated with Islam and Muslims: a particular conceptualisation of radicalisation took ascendency in popular use, one in which associated Islam and religion as a causal variable in the radicalisation process. Githens-Mazer critiques the dominant pejorative use of radicalisation in academia, the media and amongst policy-makers wherein radicalisation is about the ‘implicit correlation between the “dangers of radical Islam” and violence’ (2010a, 10).

• Radicalisation is about the direct causal relationship between ideas and violence: the concept and process of radicalisation presumed a direct relationship between ideas – particularly religious, theological and political – and action (political mobilisation and especially committing acts violence). Consequently, given the influence afforded to ideas as a prime mover in the radicalisation process (since ideas lead directly to action), Prevent prizes count-ideology as a strategy and this has led to an inordinate focus on what individuals are thinking rather than doing.

• Radicalisation minimises the role of politics: radicalisation excludes ascribing causative role or any significance to political actions taken by governments/state either domestically or internationally. Structural reasons like foreign policy, repression, war, etc. are acknowledged in some accounts ...