Articles of the month: Aug 2021

In the vast literature on terrorism the choice of weapons has received relatively limited attention, despite the importance and visibility of this topic. Building on the literature on innovation in terrorism, the article first proposes a multi-level analytical framework that helps study terrorist weapon selection. It then investigates the use of weapons in jihadist attacks in Europe from 2014, with the rise of the so-called Islamic State, until 2020, based on an original database. The empirical analysis shows that the two traditional types of weapon of modern terrorism, firearms and explosives, were largely replaced by more primitive tools like melee weapons. In fact, in recent years jihadist terrorists in Europe have become less technologically advanced. Based on the original analytical framework, the article examines the reasons of this evolution, paying special attention to the use of the most common type of weapon in the database, bladed weapons, and the most lethal type, firearms.

Islamist radicalization and terrorism studies, besides lacking in methodological transparency, have long suffered from immense access problems. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden and Denmark—two countries with significant populations of Salafi-jihadist Western foreign fighter returnees—this article focuses on challenges to gaining initial access to a field described as emotionally demanding, hard-to-reach and high-risk. Addressing emotional trials that emerge when experiencing risks of physical dangers, emotional stressors and ethical issues, we demonstrate how emotions shape and influence decisions made in the field, such as whether to continue or to give up attempting to gain initial access. Thus, we provide the transparency that is so crucial to unraveling and understanding the methodological obstacles to accessing Salafi-jihadist environments.

We analyzed posts written by Facebook profiles who advocate violent jihad without supporting any terrorist group. They share extremist content in the middle of regular posts, thanks to which they are likely to reach a large audience. We identified to what extent their ingroup-outgroup opposition is constructed in crisis, identity, and solution frames and how they use these frames in posts which sometimes breach Facebook’s community standards, but which mostly circumvent them through various strategies of doublespeak. Among them, myth, in the sense of Barthes, and eudaimonic content appeared as particularly powerful to naturalize and spread jihadi ideology on social media.

Discursive struggles for legitimation are a constitutive feature of the politically guided deployment of force. This dynamic of political communication frequently entails engaging with multiple audiences, such as international, local, and intra-group. As it compels actors to diversify their narrative strategies, it often results in conflicting statements. We argue that a particular discursive strategy, which we call the collectivization of the self, provides actors with an instrument to address different audiences with a singular narrative. We present this strategy through a content and qualitative analysis of Bin Laden’s statements on terrorist actions and Bush’s speeches on the intervention in Afghanistan.

Previous research has indicated that constitutionalized emergency provisions effectively constrain the behaviour of democratic governments subsequent to terrorist attacks. In this article, we ask if this is also true for autocratic governments. Are non-democratic governments equally subject to constitutionalized constraints regarding their reactions to emergencies and particularly to terrorist attacks? To answer the question, we analyse the behaviour of a specific group of predominantly autocratic governments that are particularly subject to frequent terrorist incidents, namely the states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Employing data on terrorist activity from the Global Terrorism Database and constitutional data from the Index of Emergency Powers, we estimate the association between constitutionalized constraints and terrorist attacks in a dataset covering 48 member-states of the organization observed annually between 1970 and 2014. As hypothesized, we find that emergency constitutions that politically make it relatively cheap for governments to declare a state of emergency are more likely to be invoked. In addition, we find that governments are more likely to increase repression after terrorist events when the constitution allocates more discretionary power to the government in emergencies. Our evidence thus suggests that emergency constitutions also impact on the behaviour of largely autocratic governments.

Al-Shabaab employs diverse strategies to recruit and radicalize youth to the network. The Social Movement Theory is used to assess recruitment models for terrorist networks such as the Al-Shabaab. Five models are explored to understand the evolving recruitment trends for the Al-Shabaab network from 2007 to 2019: the net, funnel, infiltrator, intimidation, and for-profit motives. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of selected 47 cases of individuals associated with the Al-Shabaab, the study recognizes the role of kinship networks, social relationships between the recruiter and the recruited, group dynamics, and recruitment spaces as crucial in Al-Shabaab recruitment. The study offers insights into the evolving recruitment strategies of terrorist organizations navigating counter-terrorism responses in the aftermath of terror attacks at the Westgate Mall and the Garissa University attacks in Kenya.

This article argues that the structural conflict conditions surrounding insurgencies produce rebel demand for external participation. Drawing on a data set of 140 militant organizations between 1998 and 2012, we find robust evidence that violence between insurgent groups is most likely to cause one or more of them to recruit externally. The effect is especially pronounced when regimes also employ punitive “stick” measures against opponents. Rather than a particular ideology being the best predictor of foreign fighters, it is desperate conflict conditions that lead insurgents to invest in the costs and uncertainties of outside assistance.

This article presents a preliminary set of empirical findings and observations on the current status of Central Asian fighters in Syria and Iraq, with a specific focus on the question of where and how they might be leaving the battlefield after concluding their active fighting roles. Drawing on data collected exclusively from local online sources as well as regional events covering the subject, the article develops common profiles of the known contingent and identifies overall patterns in their movements. In order to help with analysis, the entire contingent is grouped into four distinct categories, or the 4 “Rs”: “Remainers”, “Repatriates”, “Returnees”, and “Relocators”. This typological framework allows a closer study of the characteristics as well as the impact of each category, which could also be employed when looking at other FTF cohorts.

Prisons have featured repeatedly in narratives of terrorist and other violent extremist groups. Such groups have exploited the imprisonment of their members as a propaganda tool aimed at eliciting support and attracting new members through discourses of struggle and oppression. This article examines three such cases, to isolate key elements that support the use of prisons as a symbol of the ideological struggle of violent militants. It encompasses cases of right-wing extremism as well as nationalist and religious terrorism. With an emphasis on illustrating how terrorist groups utilize prisons to achieve various aims, this article seeks to provide a preliminary understanding of the symbolic and iconic use of prisons across a variety of ideologies. Greater understanding of the factors that promote the choice of prisons as symbols of ideological legitimization could serve to support approaches to minimise the representation of prisons in legitimizing ideologically motivated violence.