Deradicalisation and Terrorist Rehabilitation

A Framework for Policy-making and Implementation

Rohan Gunaratna, Sabariah Hussin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429891045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The threat of terrorism, if not adequately managed, is likely to increase exponentially. As terrorist groups' influence and networks spread globally, a concerted effort in counterterrorism strategy is critical to mitigating the threat they present. Governments facing the threat of terrorism are typically strengthening their law enforcement, military and intelligence capabilities, but more complex initiatives such as deradicalisation and terrorist rehabilitation are more time-consuming and less attention-grabbing and so tend to be neglected. It is all too easy to 'do' rehabilitation ineffectively or to simply ignore it altogether. This is unfortunate, as an effective rehabilitation strategy can yield dividends over the longer term. Every committed terrorist is a potential recruiter, whether in prison or at liberty, for more terrorists. Even in death, they can potentially be presented as martyrs. Conversely, successfully rehabilitated terrorists can be valuable assets in the public relations theatre of battle.

There is no single, simple solution to the challenges of deradicalisation and rehabilitation, but this book places examples of best practice within a robust, but flexible, conceptual framework. It gives guidelines for establishing and implementing a successful deradicalisation or rehabilitation programme, derived from a series of empirical case studies of successful projects around the world. It sets out both the necessary and desirable facets of such a programme, identifying which areas to prioritise and where budgets can be best spent if resources are tight. The authors provide detailed case studies of each step to illustrate an approach that has worked and how best to replicate this success.

1 Introduction

Rohan Gunaratna and Sabariah Hussin

Terrorism, extremism and exclusivism present major security challenges in the world today. They are interlinked and present a growing threat to social stability. Exclusivism as an extension of extremism is the belief or doctrine of believing that only one interpretation of the religious texts is right thereby excluding the possibility of others interpretations. It often manifests in the form of religious-politico-social rhetoric and behaviour that rejects diversity.¹ These phenomena are detrimental to social harmony and could threaten the existing international order. If governments fail to address terrorism, these conflicts could escalate, evolving into full-fledged insurgencies and even spread to neighbouring countries beyond the conflict zones.

Over the years, government agencies and their partners, such as the European Union and the United Nations (UN), have constructed a counterterrorism toolkit that provides guidance in addressing issues of terrorism. This toolkit covers three principal counterterrorism approaches: (1) strategic counterterrorism; (2) operational counterterrorism; and (3) tactical counterterrorism.

Strategic counterterrorism, also known as countering violent extremism (CVE), is designed to shape and influence the threat environment. It covers both the preventive and corrective aspects of countering ideologies. Its objective is to create a hostile environment for terrorist operatives and an unfriendly environment for their supporters. The strategic counterterrorism initiatives consist of community engagement measures to help prevent extremism from developing as well as to build social resilience rehabilitation and reintegration programmes to deradicalise terrorists and extremists.

While community engagement is the tool to prevent exclusivism and extremism, rehabilitation attempts to disengage terrorists and insurgents from violent action by addressing radical ideologies and misunderstood concepts, instilling appropriate defence mechanisms in the detainees and imparting universal values to prevent manipulation by terrorist organisations.

Conversely, operational and tactical counterterrorism aims to kill or capture terrorists and dismantle their operations. It is, therefore, essential that the tactical and operational counterterrorism measures be complemented with strategic counterterrorism approaches to provide a holistic counterterrorism approach.

As such, this book will serve as a guide to creating and implementing a rehabilitation programme. It will outline and detail the necessary steps required in creating a successful rehabilitation programme and this will be further demonstrated by case studies from various countries. It must also be noted that there is also a companion book International Case Studies in Terrorist Rehabilitation that readers may find useful. This book aims to provide a theoretical framework supported by case studies. The companion book goes further into detail and builds upon the theoretical framework introduced in this book. It has thrice as many country-based case studies on deradicalisation and rehabilitation programmes, presenting real-life experience with implementing rehabilitation programmes in various settings. The companion book serves to reinforce the framework established in this book and give a better understanding of the challenges encountered in translating theory into practice. In essence, both books aim to send the message that idealistic solutions may not exist when crafting a rehabilitation programme. Instead, each programme will need to be tailored to its specific setting. With the tailoring, it provides an expansion of ideas for those who desire to design and implement rehabilitation programmes.

The context

After al-Qaeda had attacked America’s iconic landmarks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration (2001–2009) announced the global war on terror and invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. The action caused a segment of Muslims worldwide to be angry about the suffering of Iraqis as a result of the invasion. The insurgents, terrorists and extremists who sought to build global support for a fight against the US and its allies exploited the situation. Thereafter, as a strategy to engage Muslim communities and prevent violent radicalisation, the US adopted CVE during the Obama Administration (2009–2017).

In contrast, the Trump Administration (2017–current) returned to the kinetic and lethal approach adopted by the Bush Administration. In President Trump’s new counterterrorism policy, the White House counterterrorism team perceives CVE as ineffective, and succumbs to the use of hard power. The return to the target-centric approach and abandoning the population-centric approach is likely to increase public support for terrorism, extremism and exclusivism in the coming years. Thus, President Trump and his followers are determined to replace the term CVE.

It is true that tactical and operational counterterrorism can detect, disrupt and degrade terrorist operations. However, the reality is that an understanding of the human terrain, through the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, political science, regional studies and linguistics, is extremely important in countering terrorism. This is where strategic counterterrorism comes in, either by preventive methods or correctives ones such as engaging and influencing the public. It is essential to stabilise local, national, regional and global contexts with initiatives to counter extremism and promote moderation (wassatiyah). The US under President Barack Obama understood strategic counterterrorism and his team embraced CVE as the cornerstone of US counterterrorism strategy. However, while the US supported rehabilitation and community engagement efforts overseas, its reception in the US homeland was limited. For instance, there was no effort to build a rehabilitation programme in Guantanamo Bay and military force remained the dominant strategy. This is not to say that the prevalence of the hard option of military force meant that the US did not develop some capabilities in strategic counterterrorism. However, despite this progressive approach in the Obama years, with the advent of the Donald Trump era, it would appear that the future of counterterrorism, at least for the foreseeable future, looks to be set for a return to lethal and kinetic operations. Although a target-centric strategy is essential to prevent and pre-empt attacks, a population-centric strategy is key to mitigating the threat and defeating terrorism.

Background

Initially, it appeared that the military might of the United States and its allies would lead them to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with ease and achieve their stated objective of reducing terrorism. However, looking more closely, it would appear that the decision to adopt a singular hard power approach was misguided at best, since it alienated the local populace and resulted in a spike in radicalisation, providing terrorists with fertile recruiting grounds. This ensured that al-Qaeda got more of an opportunity to entrench itself in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as ensuring the rise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group in Iraq, which was the precursor to the Islamic State (IS).

In contrast to the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration realised the need for a softer approach and focused on enlisting the participation of Muslim leaders and communities. To take on the terrorists and manage extremism in their communities, President Obama engaged Muslim leaders and empowered Muslim communities. There was limited support for CVE. The American sense of justice advocated punishment for both the misguided and wrongdoers. Even though religion is confined to the private space in America, the US government was courageous in seriously embracing community engagement or rehabilitation.

One major fault was the US Administration’s miscalculation of the developments in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, US forces downsized, causing the return of the Taliban, and in Iraq the US advocated a total withdrawal thinking that Iraqi forces could contain the threat. In both these theatres, the insurgents returned with a vengeance threatening the fragile governments that the US put in place. Without eliminating the threat and stabilising Iraq, President Obama withdrew US forces, thereby creating conditions for the rise of IS.

Understanding the threat

Global Islamic extremist groups emerged during the multinational, anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahidin campaign (1979–1989), a by-product of the proxy war the West and its allies fought during the Cold War period. This effort was led by Maktab al-Khidamat, the predecessor of al-Qaeda, which invited Muslims worldwide to join its fight. After the withdrawal of the Soviets, Western sponsorship ended and al-Qaeda transformed into an anti-Western movement. By painting a conspiracy like a scenario of global Western hostility towards Muslims and Islam, al-Qaeda initiated the ‘Global Jihad’ movement.

This movement can be roughly distributed into three phases. Global Jihad 1.0, the first phase, emerged after al-Qaeda attacked the US on 9/11 and attracted dozens of militant groups in Asia, Africa, Middle East and the Caucasus regions. Global Jihad 2.0, the next phase, emerged after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared a caliphate and announced the formation of IS on 29 June 2014. Currently, the world is witnessing the third phase, which includes the global expansion of IS. With its battle space shrinking in Iraq and Syria, IS has continued to create more wilayats (provinces) in its stronghold of power in the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus and Asia to be used as launching pads to mount terrorist attacks. Despite the loss of territorial space, IS continues to invest heavily in social media to create networks, cells and personalities to fight and garner support for its cause.

As the ‘pioneering vanguard’, al-Qaeda instilled the belief among other Muslim threat groups that it will lead the way for future violent episodes. By staging an iconic attack on US landmarks using commercial airliners, al-Qaeda inspired and instigated other threat groups to fight against the superpower. The suffering of Muslims in Iraq galvanised a segment of the Muslim population worldwide to support Global Jihad. Until then, Muslim support for violence had been peripheral. Unfortunately, the US and Britain failed to recover weapons of mass destruction, and this was seen as an unclear cause to wage war. With a million civilian deaths in Iraq and the resultant media and public outrage, the proportion of Muslims that supported the West’s fight against the threat groups contracted. Meanwhile, the segment of Muslims that support exclusivist, extremist, terrorist and insurgent ideologies grew.

Both al-Qaeda and IS present a growing global peril today. An incarnation of al-Qaeda, IS can be considered as a vicious by-product of the Afghan, Iraqi and now Syrian conflicts. Both IS and al-Qaeda are multinational global movements, but the scale, magnitude and intensity of IS threats are more severe. While IS represents the higher order threat, the threat posed by al-Qaeda persists. Should IS and al-Qaeda join forces, the threat to the world will escalate drastically. Their key strength resides in their abilities to reach out to Muslim communities in Asia, Africa, the Caucasus, the Middle East and migrant and diaspora communities in the West. Both armed groups rely heavily on social media, especially the use of encrypted instant messaging applications as their propaganda machinery to politicise, radicalise, recruit and militarise their communities. IS fighters’ mastery of social media enabled its narratives to spread worldwide, drawing fighters from 121 countries.

The situation now calls for states to address the threat and effect of the returnees. Foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) pose a grave threat to their respective homelands due to their military training and hatred-filled ideology. Thus, countries are witnessing a phenomenon where FTFs leave their conflict zones and choose to either return to their home or travel to a third country with the intention of joining other conflicts. This ‘blowback effect’ has seen the spread of violence to different regions. The American Political Science Review indicated that the returnees’ lethal capacity doubled due to their battlefield experience compared to before they went to the conflict zones. The number of IS FTFs has been assessed at over 40,000, coming from 121 states. The challenge is so massive that a global response to the FTF phenomenon was adopted by the UN Security Council through its Resolution 2178, which provided a roadmap to tackle the FTF problem. Data from START United States plots revealed that 28 per cent of FTFs participated in a plot and 60 per cent of FTFs became involved in a terrorist plot. The challenge thus doubled for states to manage the FTFs as well as home-grown terrorists.

Managing the threat

Western nations led by the US have advocated the use of a military-centric strategy to defeat insurgency and terrorism. The use of overwhelming kinetic and lethal force reduced the threat in the immediate-term (1–2 years) but caused it to grow in the mid-term (2–5 years). Although effective in Afghanistan in the initial phase to weaken al-Qaeda and its host the Taliban, the Global War on Terror failed to contain the threat from spreading beyond the initial conflict zones.

The effects of the international community’s mismanagement of Iraq and Syria radicalised segments of Muslim communities worldwide. Both battlefield and off-the-battlefield (lone wolf) attacks demonstrate that the threat has spread worldwide in the long-term (5–10 years). Targeted governments and their partners need a comprehensive strategy to control and manage the threat. While security forces are capable of fighting insurgency and terrorism, the affected government should increasingly build partnerships with community organisations to manage exclusivism and extremism.

Emerging strategies

In its fight against IS, the world is confronted with six challenges. First, multiple coalitions divided by geopolitics must work together to contain, isolate and totally eliminate IS in its heartland of Iraq and Syria. Second, it needs to address the group’s creation of wilayats in the global south, acting as bridgeheads to expand quietly and stage surprise attacks. Third, the world is still reeling from trying to address IS’ ideology of extremism, terrorism and insurgency, which presents a long-term security threat to communities, societies, nations and the international system. Fourth, it needs to manage and regulate social media, which IS uses to further its cause. Fifth, it must address and attempt to stem the financing of terrorism. And finally, sixth, it should attempt to resolve root causes such as the marginalisation of Sunnis in Iraq, repression in Syria and misgovernance in Afghanistan etc.

As the threat evolves, it is essential to refine and retool to operate both in the physical and virtual spaces. The newest frontiers in strategic counterterrorism are in digital rehabilitation and online counter extremism. Currently, various institutions are undertaking research on these frontiers to confirm their effectiveness.

The threat, therefore, should compel governments to review the way they operate since they are confronted not with threat groups but threat networks. Governments need to shift from counterterrorism cooperation to collaboration. Governments need to exchange personnel, build common databases, conduct joint training and operations, and share experiences, expertise and resources. With the globalisation of IS, a multipronged, multidimensional, multiagency, multijurisdictional and a multinational approach is central.

Smart power, not hard or soft power!

To guarantee victory for governments, states must develop a full-spectrum response alongside non-state actors. Governments also need to enlist the support of and work with a range of partners – community organisations and the private sector. To fight the threat, they need to build a wide range of capabilities upstream, midstream and downstream. Upstream, the capabilities needed include the prevention of community radicalisation through community engagement and vigorous counter-ideology efforts; midstream, the rehabilitation and reintegration of terrorists and extremists; and downstream, the use of kinetic and lethal action to catch, kill or disrupt terrorist operations.

At the heart of winning the fight is the integration of hard power with soft power and the production of smart power. The strategy is not only to conduct focused operations employing hard power to fight the insurgents and terrorists but also to apply soft power to engage the extremists and exclusiv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Deradicalisation and Terrorist Rehabilitation
• Routledge Studies in the Politics of Disorder and Instability
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Behind Bars: Do Prison Settings Hold the Key to Successful Custodial Rehabilitation Programmes?
• 3 Countering Radical Ideology: Case Studies of Religious Rehabilitation Programmes
• 4 Economic Rehabilitation of Terrorists: What can be Learned from Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Programmes?
• 5 Entrepreneurial Rehabilitation: The Promise of Social Entrepreneurship in Disengaging Religious Terrorists
• 6 Family and Social Rehabilitation as a Mode of Holistic Rehabilitation Programme
• 7 Psychological Rehabilitation for Ideology-Based Terrorism Offenders
• 8 Assessment and Evaluation of Terrorist Rehabilitation Programmes
• Index