Articles of the month: May 2021

This article analyses Islamic State’s English language propaganda targeting Western women and how that messaging changed as the group shifted from territorial control back into an insurgency. It argues that Islamic State leverages five female representations in its appeals to women in order to construct and project an alternative gender order designed to further the group’s strategic objectives. As those objectives changed, so did the nature of its appeals and the female representations its propaganda emphasised. Based on primary source analysis, it draws on fifteen issues of Dabiq which spans a period of success for the group when it controlled territories and population centres (July 2014 to July 2016) and thirteen issues of Rumiyah which was a period characterised by strategic decline back into an insurgency (September 2016 to September 2017).

This study explores the nexus between crime and Islamic State (ISIS) terrorism in America. It highlights trends in the criminal history of all federal ISIS defendants and deceased perpetrators in America, and evaluates whether crime was integral to a plot’s funding or logistics. While less pronounced than in Europe, a prevalence of prior violent crimes is evident, although plot-relevant crime was generally perpetrated by those without criminal history. It explores how gangs and prison impact defendant radicalization and mobilization, finding that gang members often left gang life upon radicalization, and while rare, prison inmates were radicalized by non-isolated terrorist inmates.

From the perspective of emotion and affect research, a double paradox structures the study of terrorism. The first paradox consists in assuming terrorist violence’s clear psychological impact without unpacking its affective workings. The second relates to the presumption of organisations’ strategically rational turn to terrorist violence, thereby emptying accounts of non-state actors’ motivations of complex, intersubjective emotional dynamics. The article argues that an epistemological shift is necessary in terrorism research to question the relationship between emotions/affects and knowledge/power. Drawing on concepts and theoretical engagements from emotion and affect research in global politics, the article interrogates how emotions/affects inform political agency and how researchers may explore their complex, diffuse, and partly contradictory sociopolitical effects. The article illustrates the value of such theoretical engagements by turning to two examples, in which the performance of (non-state) collective emotions, on one side, and the state politics of emotion, on the other, highlight the ambiguous political effects of emotions/affects.

We provide empirical support for a positive relationship between social safety spending and the phenomenon of ISIS foreign fighters, particularly among OECD countries. We argue that the problem with social safety spending is not its abuse by recipients but the way it is distributed. When examining the nature of social safety spending, we find that OECD countries that prioritize passive rather than active labor market programs have, on average, proportionally more ISIS foreign fighters. We conclude that social safety spending that supports socioeconomic immobility is significantly associated with radicalization and terrorism.

The frames of counterterrorism and countering violent extremism are increasingly shaping much international engagement in Mali. In this environment, women's contributions are often reduced to their peacemaking potential. This article studies how the UN policy agendas on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) are translated in discourses on P/CVE in Mali. It draws on feminist and postcolonial scholarship to develop a framework for analysing how local intermediaries in norm translation engage in ‘discursive practices of re-presentation’ and conducts a discourse analysis of interviews with Malian civil society and government representatives. The analysis finds that a re-presentation of women as security actors, constructed as an extension of their roles as peacemakers, dominates the discourse. I use the term ‘new security actors’ to describe the dominant re-presentation of women that emerges in this context: a woman who will contribute to preventing radicalization and violent extremism by influencing, counselling, and/or informing on her family or community members. ‘New security actors’, however, emerges as a problematic re-presentation of women which emphasizes traditional gender roles and potentially exposes women to risks, and in many ways seem to contradict much of the normative aspirations of the WPS agenda.

Evidence from multiple sources suggests converts to Islam are significantly overrepresented in the ranks of Salafi-jihadist terrorists. Researchers have been speculating for some time why this might be the case. This paper identifies, and critically examines, four hypothetical explanations commonly found in the literature: (1) some explanations focus on the significance of prior personal characteristics of the converts; (2) some explanations emphasize the rapidity of the movement from conversion to radicalization; (3) some explanations highlight the lack of religious knowledge on the part of radicalized converts; and (4) some explanations point to the role of the zealotry of converts. Examining each explanation, we find the causal mechanisms hypothesized are inadequate and the hypotheses are incongruent with the data we have collected on radicalized Canadian converts. In the end, we offer an alternative hypothesis, based on the analysis of the response of radicalized converts to an experience of disappointment that is common in the post-conversion period.

Some moderation strategies of online content have targeted the individuals believed to be the most influential in the diffusion of such material, while others have focused on censorship of the content itself. Few approaches consider these two aspects simultaneously. The present study addresses this gap by showing how a socio-semantic network analysis can help identify individuals and subgroups who are strategically positioned in radical networks and whose comments encourage the use of violence. It also made it possible to identify the individuals and subgroups who act as intermediaries and whose statements are often the most violent.

This paper examines the under-studied area of innovation and terrorism. Beyond exploring the debate on the difference between creativity and innovation and how it impacts terrorist groups, the paper also reviews the typology of terrorist innovation and of the law of unintended consequences. The presence of terrorist groups in the online gaming world is an example of creativity and innovation as the groups recognize that counterterrorist policies have limited their ability to communicate with potential recruits. Consequently, extremists have had to find new avenues to communicate with supporters and attract potential recruits as they are determined to survive. Security agencies must also ensure that they are also thinking ‘outside the box’ as only through creativity can they stay one-step ahead of their adversaries.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) brought with it a new wave of child soldier. This was characterised by media and propaganda circulating of children as young as four being exposed to detonators and rifles, along with perpetrating acts of violence. However, since the dismantling of ISIS, many of these children are now returning home to countries such as Australia and those in the United Kingdom and Europe; having been exposed to extremist Islamic ideology, radicalisation, and psychological and physical abuse. This review highlights that the trauma experienced by the child soldiers increases the possibility of symptomology associated with depression, anxiety, and externalising problems. Due to the complex and prolonged exposure to trauma, Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) is considered. Alongside mental health symptomology, psychometric risk assessment tools are examined, and suitable psychological services are discussed as possible interventions and support systems for children.

Empirical data have indicated that radical Islamists often interpret their everyday life as embedded in religion. Nonetheless, the research field has at times tended to downplay the religious dimensions of radicalization processes. This paper aims to reinstate religion in analyses of radicalization by introducing the theoretical approach of everyday religion. By utilizing this approach, the paper argues that when religion, in the minds of radical Islamists themselves, has an effect on everyday lives and practices, then religion plays a substantial role in their radicalization process. The potential of the approach is illustrated through an analysis of interviews with former converts to radical Islamism.

This article introduces the “Boko Haram disaggregation problem,” or the often frequent failure by observers to disaggregate the group following its August 2016 split into two distinct factions, instead, labeling and studying all factions as “Boko Haram.” It asks: What are the origins of the “Boko Haram disaggregation problem,” and, given this phenomenon, what are the possibilities and constraints in understanding profiles of violence between the pre-2016 and post-2016 iterations of the group(s)? It argues that the “Boko Haram disaggregation problem” has origins both internal and external to the group(s), most prevalent in quantitative academic research. Highlighting the challenges of this phenomenon, it uses data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) from 2009 to 2018 to compare profiles of violence between various “Boko Haram” factions. In sum, it shows why beyond merely a methodological challenge, overcoming this phenomenon has real-world impacts for addressing the violence perpetrated by these groups.

Terrorism research increased markedly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11). How has research on this subject changed in the past 20 years? I examine data on more than 6,000 academic articles on terrorism between 1970 and 2019, and the more than 1,500 authors of multiple articles. This information comes from every article in the Web of Science database with “terrorism” or “terrorist” in the title. Several primary findings emerge. (1) The volume of terrorism research surged to record highs after 9/11, and has not decreased since. (2) Psychologists became the most numerous terrorism researchers after 9/11, displacing political scientists for about 10 years. Research on health or medical aspects of terrorism jumped after 9/11. (3) The proportion of female scholars increased substantially after 9/11, outpacing the rise in academia generally. This is in part because scholars new to the field were often from disciplines with relatively high percentages of women, such as psychology. (4) Terrorism scholars were mostly based in North America or Western Europe before 9/11, but the number of countries with scholars publishing terrorism research expanded considerably after 2001. Overall, terrorism research has developed in many ways over the decades, but 9/11 led to fundamental changes.