Hi everyone,
Just wanted to add a few resources on the topic of de-radicalization. As I told you during our class, ping-pong seems to be an effective weapon in de-radicalizing youth in the Middle East – this could well be, as noted by Mr. Randt, because it simply offers something to do, an escape valve which allows for socialization and expending the normal energy of young people without directing it to violence.
In any case, a good place to start is Richard Barrett and Laila Bokhari’s study “Deradicalization and rehabilitation programmes targeting religious terrorists and extremists in the Muslim world – an overview” (PDF available here). Another entry point is this post from another blog, the Insurgency Research Group blog, created an maintained by a group of scholars at London’d King’s College. Regarding the apparent success of Egypt’s de-radicalization program in “turning” Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, you can read about it here. The same blog (Foreign Policy Watch) then has a more critical follow up on the strengths and weaknesses of such de-radicalisation strategies. Another such critical assessment – but a longer and more scholarly one – is an essay by John Horgan (remember him from our readings on the psychology of terrorism?), entitled “Deradicalization or disengagement? – a process in need of clarity and a counterterrorism initiative in need of evaluation”. You can find the full text here, but I’ll leave you with just a taste of his main argument:
The basis of this article began with a simple premise – there is no evidence to suggest that disengagement from terrorism may result in deradicalization. For this and other reasons, particularly the growth of these diverse programmes, it may be worthwhile to seek greater conceptual clarity between the two. While there are a number of ways in which we can do this, one immediate objective is to engage in research to evaluate, through multiple means, the increasing prevalence of the deradicalization programmes worldwide. The otherwise unverified and often spurious claims to success by the proponents of some of these programmes does not mean that we should dismiss their claims, rather we should engage in efforts to ask one of the most basic questions in all counterterrorism: do they actually work (and why?).
If you remember, the largest such programs (that we know of) are in place in several countries, mostly in the Muslim world. They include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Indonesia. Below I leave you a number of links where you can read about individuals programs in these countries, as well as about institutional learning between them – that is, how countries adopt strategies that have been tried elsewhere and seem sucessful.
Bennet, D. (2008) How to defuse a human bomb
Rehabilitating the Jihadists (an IISS report on the Saudi initiative)
Zoepff, C (2008) Deprogramming Jihadists
One program that has both been praised and criticized is Indonesia. Al-Jazeera has a nice, short report on it, watch it below:
The BBC also has a report on Saudi Arabia’s re-education program under the syggestive title of “Killing terror with kindness”. Watch it here:
