An exploratory analysis of leakage warning behavior in lone-actor terrorists
Leakage is one of the eight warning behaviors referred to in the violence risk and threat assessment literature. Previous research has highlighted the relevance and prevalence of leakage in loneactor terrorists; however, a more detailed understanding of this phenomenon is lacking. This study sets ou...
Discourse, medical metaphor and the East Asian medicine approach to conflict resolution
This article analyses how threats and dangers have been understood through biomedical metaphors in international relations (IR) and US security discourse, suggesting an alternative to such understandings based on an East Asian medicine (EAM) approach to world politics. By conducting a genealogic...
The missing jihad. Why have there been no jihadist civil wars in Southeast Asi
Why has there been no jihadist civil war in Southeast Asia? Although there has been a global surge in armed conflicts where at least one side fights for self-proclaimed Islamist aspirations, the region of Southeast Asia stands out by not having experienced a single jihadist civil war after 1975. ...
The Trouble with Numbers: Difficult Decision Making in Identifying Right-Wing Terrorism Cases. An Investigative Look at Open Source Social Scientific and Legal Data
Terrorism research has gained much traction since the 9/11 attacks, but some sub genres of terrorism, such as right-wing terrorism, have remained under-studied areas. Unsurprisingly data sources to study these phenomena are scarce and frequently face unique data collec tion obstacles. This paper...
Online as the New Frontline: Affect, Gender, and ISIS-Take-Down on Social Medi
Using a dataset of more than 80 accounts during 2015, this article explores the gendered ways in which self-proclaiming Twitter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) supporters construct community around “suspension.” The article argues that suspension is an integral event in the online liv...
The Radical Milieu and Radical Influencers of Bosnian Foreign Fighters
This research note looks at the radical influencers of Bosnian foreign fighters. This group is important, as the Balkan region has been seen as a spot of jihadist activism and recruitment for the IS and Al-Nusra Front. Previous research on foreign fighters emphasized that a small number of indiv...
American Cold War Strategy and the Absence of “Swift and Effective Retribution” for the 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing
Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981 as the president who promised to confront the foreign enemies of the United States. Whilst the Soviet Union remained the single greatest threat to the United States, the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran dramatically raised concerns over international terr...
Motivations for Jihad and Cognitive Dissonance A Qualitative Analysis of Former Swedish Jihadists
This study is based on interviews with three former Swedish jihad ists, and it uses cognitive dissonance theory to analyze how their motivations for jihad changed—from the early stages of radicaliza tion to fighting as part of a jihadist group and finally leaving jihad. It argues that cognitive...
From Oslo to Be’eri: how the 30-years-long peace delusion led to Hamas’s 10/7 massacres
The failure to prevent Hamas’s slaughter of some 1,300 Israelis on 7 October 2023 – the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – is a direct result of an emergency phone consultation three hours before the terror group’s invasion of Israel with the participation of the IDF’s and S...
India’s counterinsurgency knowledge: theorizing global position in wars on terror
Within recent critical debates about the geographies and circulations of counterinsurgency knowledge, scholars have focused primarily on domi nant centres of power and authority in the global North. Building a framework drawn from critical geography, this article decentres these locations and ac...
The global order of Muslim surveillance and its thought architecture
This essay contends that since 2015 a global surveillance order has come into existence as a result of Islamophobia in the international political system in the context of the rise of Islamic State. With regard to the causes of Islamophobic surveillance, the article rejects the argument that it ...
The Oslo disaster 30 years on
and the PLO stands as the worst calamity to have afflicted Israelis and Palestinians since the 1948 war, and the most catastrophic strategic blunder in Israel’s history. By replacing Israel’s control of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians with corrupt and repressive terrorist entities that in...
‘This is the fate of Libyan women:’ contempt, ridicule, and indifference of Seham Sergiwa
As the debate on how harmful online content translates into violent offline actions continues in the Global North, this debate should be enriched by data from the Global South. In Libya, the kidnapping of a female politician (Seham Sergiwa) in 2019 was arguably foresha dowed on social media, wit...
Masculinities and Disengagement from Jihadi Networks: The Case of Indonesian Militant Islamists
Men who join militant Islamist networks often frame their participa tion in masculine terms, as protectors, warriors or brothers. While the role of masculinities in recruitment to jihadi groups has received increasing attention, their role in disengaging men from armed groups (and particularly m...
“Jurisprudence Beyond the State: An Analysis of Jihadist “Justice” in Yemen, Syria and Libya
The provision of law, order and justice are some of the most sacred responsibilities of the contemporary nation-state. However, non-state actors have frequently introduced their own jurisprudence, imple menting courts and various forms of related law and order in broader attempts to implement go...
Conceptualising the waves of Islamist radicalisation in the UK
In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in interest in the study of radicalisation. To comprehend this phenomenon, numerous political science and sociological perspectives are emphasised to deter mine social movement conceptualisations. Using British Muslim youth as a case stud...
China’s Solutions to Security Governance in the Middle East: An Assessment
Over several decades, many intricate security issues in the Middle East, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Syrian conflict and terrorism, etc., have greatly influenced regional and global security and stability. The international community has taken many me...
Economic and Religious Dynamics of Boko Haram: Understanding Conflict and Security in the Lake Chad Basin
This study explores the intertwined economic and religious drivers of Boko Haram’s insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin. While the group’s ideological foundation is rooted in Salafist jihadism, its operations increasingly reflect economic motiva tions, particularly resource control and illicit t...
The Role of Socioeconomic Marginalization in the Radicalization of Jihadi Foreign Fighters from Europe
Is socioeconomic marginalization associated with the radicalization of European foreign fighters? I analyze biographical data on 1019 foreign fighters from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom and compare their level of education and unemployment rate with those of the population most at ris...
“Take them to Government House or Aso Rock”: Community receptivity to reintegration of Operation Safe Corridor’s deradicalised Ex-Boko Haram members in Northeastern Nigeria
Boko Haram (BH) insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria has been extensively studied but much scholarly attention has not been given to Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC). Yet, it remains the most significant non-kinetic approaches to BH insur gency. This study examines the deradicalisation programme of OP...
The Rise of ISIS as a Partial Surprise: An Open Source Analysis on the Threat Evolution and Early Warnings in the United Kingdom
Was the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a regional and global threat a strategic surprise? If so, what made it so difficult to anticipate? Based on an open-source analysis about developments in Syria and Iraq between April 2013 and June 2014, this article’s main argum...
The Release and Community Supervision of Radicalised Offenders: Issues and Challenges that Can Influence Reintegration
This paper explores the challenges that correctional authorities encounter when dealing with the transition of offenders back into the community after the completionofterrorism-relatedsentencesorafterdemonstrating extremist views or associations. It draws on research conducted in the Australian ...
Supporting self-continuity during the hospital to community transition after acquired brain injury: A qualitative study of priorities, expectations and experiences of rehabilitation
Rehabilitation during community integration after acquired brain injury (ABI) focuses on supporting individuals to make sense of and manage injury-related changes in the context of occupational engagement. To improve understanding of the role of rehabilitation in facilitating early adjustment t...
Intersectionality and rehabilitation: how gendered, racial and religious assumptions structure the rehabilitation and reintegration of women returnees
Women associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are returning to their home countries from camps in northern Syria and require prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration. Yet, as femin ist security and terrorism scholars have demonstrated, rehabilita tion and reintegration pro...
Young people’s everyday securities: pre-emptive and pro-active strategies towards ontological security in Scotland
This paper uses a framework of ‘ontological security’ to discuss the psychosocial strategies of self-securitisation employed by ethnic and religious minority young people in Scotland. We argue that broad discourses of securitisation are present in the everyday risks and threats that young pe...
Redefining deterrence in cyberspace: Private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence
This article explores the nature and the desirability of private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence. The article starts by developing a variation of the concept of cyber deterrence, called RCDC deterrence, which is simultaneously restrictive, comprehensive, dynamic, an...
AMISOM: charting a new course for African Union peace missions
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is an atypical peace support operation (PSO) that has evolved sui generis and continues to chart its own trajectory politically and militarily. With a view to contributing to the African Union (AU) Commission’s policymaking process and articulation ...
Chaos as opportunity: the United States and world order in India’s grand strategy
Theworldis in flux, both in terms of thechanging globaldistribution of power and the declining commitment of the United States to the international order. This article argues that, unlike many other major powers, India is well positioned to benefit from the contemporary disorder. The U.S. has co...
The inevitable dead end of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Focusing on one historic but unsuccessful effort to achieve peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 2000 Camp David summit, this paper pres ents a systematic framework for future analyses of the conflict. An analysis of the failure of the Camp David summit enables us to spotlight some of th...
The European Union's model of Integrated Border Management: preventing transnational threats, cross-border crime and irregular migration in the context of the EU's security policies and strategies
Transnational threats, cross-border crime and irregular migration require comprehensive, multidimensional, collective and well-coordinated responses that are well integrated. The consistent application of the principle of legality and the implementation of effective control mechanisms enables eac...
“The European family? Wouldn’t that be the white people?”: Brexit and British ethnic minority attitudes towards Europe
Though ethnic minorities were significantly more likely to vote to Remain in the European Union in the 2016 Referendum than the white British, there has been scant analysis of ethnic minority attitudes towards the EU. Using focus group and interview data, this article analyses support for EU me...
Qatar’s approach across the Triple Nexus in conflict-affected contexts: the case of Darfur
The purpose of this paper is to document Qatar’s recent contribution of humanitarian, development, and peace-related efforts to the Sudanese in Darfur. It delves deeply into Qatar’s involvement in Darfur by tracing the flow of foreign assistance provided between 2011 and 2018, while analysi...
Rethinking Muslim narratives: Stereotypes reinforced or contested in recent genre fiction?
This article discusses the challenges British Muslim writers and publishers face in a largely secular literary marketplace and a society marked by Islamophobia. It explores these authors’ pub lication experiences, analysing examples from industry diversity initiatives and from conducting interv...
How Contagious Were the Capitol Riots in Europe – In Praxis and in Perception?
This contribution presents a short overview on the impact of the Capitol Riots riots in Europe. Fear of a similar mass-mediated contagion was explicitly expressed by most of the European leaders. Echoes and acclamation for the riots in the U.S. were indeed heard on websites, QAnon-sites, and within ...
Religion and China’s Public Diplomacy in the Era of Globalization
Since the end of the cold war, especially since the 9/11, religion’s importance has risen sharply in international relations. It has already become an inevitable and important factor in the strategic considerations of national security and foreign policy in various countries. Therefore, in the...
Anti-imperial feminist geographies: resisting
Vasuki Nesiah has argued that genocide should be thought not so much as an extraordinary event that is spatiotemporally bound, but as a ‘world-making project’. But what kind of a world is being made through genocide, and what enables its possibility? Histories of colonisation and contemporary fo...
A democratic approach to religion news: Newspaper coverage of Christianity and Islam in the UK and Turkey
This paper introduces and utilizes a systematic and unified fourdimension democratic approach to the study of newspaper religion reporting to examine the coverage of faith, particularly Christianity and Islam, in the British and Turkish national press. While the research employs a sample from 2014 a...
Respectful tolerance, misrecognition, and religious diversity: reflections on the New Zealand government’s response to the 2019 Christchurch massacre
This paper shows that the traditional framing of diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand in terms of ethnicity hampers the govern ment’s ability to give due recognition to Muslim communities in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. It first examines the New Zealand government’s response to the Ro...
Everyday Prevention of Radicalization: The Impacts of Family, Peer, and Police Intervention
This study examines early intervention against individual radicalization. The data originate from interviews with young Muslims in Norway who had experienced interventions related to their own radicalization, or engaged in or witnessed interventions directed at a radicalized peer or relative. We fin...
Writing war, and the politics of poetic conversation
This article’s premise is that war is ontological devastation, which opens up questions as to how to write about it. The paper contends that even critiques of war, whether critical-geopolitical analyses of global structures or ethnographies of the everyday, center war in ways that underscore erasu...
Ad-hoc Security Initiatives, an African response to insecurity
This article contends that Ad-hoc Security Initiatives (ASI) have developed over the last decade in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin and represents a new form of African collective security mechanism. The G5 Sahel Force and the Multi-National Joint Task Force emerged from a context-specific need for sm...
Masking and countering racialisation: Dutch counter radicalisation through policymakers’ eyes
This article explores the reflections and problematisations of Dutch Preventing and Countering radicalisation and Violent Extremism (P/ CVE) policymakers, focusing on racialisation and the masking thereof. It analyses their reflections on changing contexts, effects versus origins of policies, and th...
‘Forever wars’? Patterns of diffusion and consolidation of Jihadism in Africa
The article will discuss the patterns that jihadism has followed when spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the major scholarly debates but also to bring forward the elements that various African cases seemingly have in common. The discussions over African Jihadism has seen several gre...
Who supports Jihadi foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq? Assessing the role of religion- and grievance-based explanations
This article explores public support for Jihadi foreign fighters, an area largely unexplored in existing literature, despite its relevance to counterterrorism. The study draws on two key theoretical perspectives: grievance-based explanations that propose support for militancy arises from perceived s...
Muslims as a suspect community: a typology to support classroom discussions
The problematic, illogical, arguably unethical concept of ‘Muslims as a suspect community’ has been explored in the literature for over a decade, following early discussions. We seek to offer a novel set of questions and responses to the debate with the intention of offering a means by which fru...
Not so unique after all? Urgency and norms in EU foreign and security policy
The EU Global Strategy puts ‘principled pragmatism’ at the core of EU foreign and security policy. This has also been promoted as away of closing the gap between talk and action. Still, the concept has been widely criticized and interpreted as away of making the Union’s ‘organized hypoc...
Does Incapacitation Effectively Deter the Occurrence of Terror Attacks? Israel as a Case Study
While countries may differ considerably in their counter-terrorism strategies, there are some shared features across contexts, namely the use of incapacitation in the form of arrests, incarcerations, and sometimes killings of offenders. These counter-terrorism practices mirror those in anti-crime se...
Implications of the New Taliban Government for the Biden Administration
The August 2021Taliban takeover of Kabul, and the prospect of Jihadi influxes from Afghanistan subject to Taliban government manipulation, elicit several international security challenges to the United States, and several international and domestic security challenges to several nation-states in clo...
‘Enemy of the state’: citizenship deprivation and the problem of returning foreign terrorist fighters
RACT This paper analyses the UK’s law and practice of citizenship depri vation as a counterterrorism measure to deal with returning foreign terrorist fighters. What used to be an “exceptional” measure has become increasingly institutionalised to give the executive broad powers even at the ...
“The Word Must Precede the Bullet”: Words as Ammunition – Hamas’s Media Artillery
This article analyzes Hamas’s media system as a coordinated propaganda network that operates across traditional and digital platforms to compensate for military weakness and sustain poli tical-religious authority. Through a multi-year analysis of charters, official media outlets, affiliated age...
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