Over the past two decades policymakers and practitioners have balanced out traditional hard counterterror practices with Countering Violent Extremism and Deradicalization efforts to prevent terrorist recruitment. There has been a surge of these initiatives globally that focus on rehabilitating former terrorists as well as monitoring the early warning signs of radicalization within marginalized communities and countering them. These programs and initiatives attempt to strip the individual of their former group identity and extremist ideology and reintegrate them into society. Additionally, while research that looks engagement with political violence has been growing over the past two decades, research that explores the reasons of why individuals choose to disengage from violent extremist groups has been limited in comparison. However, past studies have shown that there are many potential ways out of terrorism and that the process of disengagement may be as complex as that of radicalization.
There are two common working definition of disengagement, “one is in terms of leaving behind the shared social norms, values, attitudes and aspirations so carefully forged while the individual was still a member”, whereas the other definition indicates that there is “some continued adherence to these values and attitudes, and perhaps continued engagement in some other socially relevant ‘supportive’ behavior but no longer participating in actual terrorist operations”(Horgan, 2008). Other leading scholars have differentiated between the approaches of disengagement and deradicalization. There is a discourse over what the term deradicalization actually means. Where there is usually clarity in that the term implies that the individual who voluntarily joins a terrorist group may make the decision to leave their involvement behind, there is contention over the logic for why that individual makes this decision. Disengagement and deradicalization are often seen as being connected when in fact they can occur separately. John Horgan argues in his piece “Deradicalization or Disengagement” that there is no evidence to suggest that disengagement from terrorism results in deradicalizaiton thus it might be worthwhile to seek a greater clarity between the two. One body of knowledge argues that disengagement is more of a concept that deals with behavioral modification in that it refers to the process in which an individual ceases to participate in activities that are associated or directly linked to extremist violence whereas deradicalization deals with a psychological change in attitude or ideology. Paul Davis and Kim Cragin make a similar claim in their work when they differentiate between a ‘ change in beliefs’ and a ‘change in actions’.
While disengagement focuses solely on behavioral change, counter-radicalization and deradicalization approaches are closely linked. Both approaches work on winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the communities they target. Counter-radicalization tactics often work towards preventing radicalization from occurring by attempting to reduce marginalized groups’ vulnerability and increasing resilience to extremism. Whereas, deradicalization refers to programs that are “directed against individuals who have become radical with the aim of re-integrating them into society”. In sum, deradicalization seeks to undo the radicalization process and facilitate the individual’s return to society. This framework draws its logic from the body of work that insinuates that radicalization occurs as people search for their identity. In Political Ideologies, the author describes an ideological framework as central to the development of any movement or group. He argues that ideologies offer their believers a coherent set of ideas that provide the basis for organized political action whether that is directed at preserving, modifying or overthrowing an existing system of power. Ideology could thus serve as a leadership or command structure and in fact it could be that ideology is central to the radicalization process. Alex P. Scmid argues that individuals who are motivated by an ideology that supports violence as an acceptable course of action are more likely to engage in terrorist-related activit.
It would then logically follow that the main objective of deradicalization approaches is to target the individual extremist’s ideology and convince that individual to reject and accept the dominant society’s values and belief system. This is challenging on two counts, that the individual must reject their former ideological identity that it must be possible to assess whether this psychological process in fact took place. In a paper written by Darcy M.E. Noricks she argues that disengagement is a more realistic goal than deradicalization, because individuals will often disengage from the activities of terrorism without actually rejecting their cause or beliefs. Horgan identifies this challenge when he talks about how in the interviews he conducted he found that almost all of the individuals in the samples could be described as disengaged, however none of them could be said to be de-radicalized. In addition he noted that some individuals could not even fully be described as disengaged in that they expressed that leaving the movement was only temporary and that they would return at a later stage. He further goes on to say that the idea of “a quick fix, undoing the gradual, incrementally experienced process of social and behavioral learning that has culminated in this individual person engaging in terrorist activities” is misrepresentative of the enormously complex issue of attempting to de-radicalize an individual (Horgan, 2008). However western governments and non-governmental organizations continue to pursue deradicalization and counter-radicalization initiatives as a way to approach the issue of terrorism. Another body of scholarship focuses on analyzing the various challenges to evaluating the effectiveness of Countering Violent Extremism policies and approaches.
One of the first issues being that there is no consensus on definitions of radicalization and violent extremism. The abstractness of the term radicalization not only poses a problem of conceptualization for academics, but also various practitioners who are expected to manage the phenomenon and communicate concerns about ‘early signs of radicalization’. Additionally, there is a limited understanding of the push and pull factors that lead to a pathway of violent extremism. While scholars are able to identify an interplay of political, cultural, and economic root causes, network dynamics, trigger events, relative deprivation, and personal factors, there is little understanding of how these factors interact and when the ; ‘tipping point’ occurs that turns extremist attitudes into violent extremist behaviour. There are also scholars calling for the reconsideration of the idea of a ‘tipping point’, where an ideological process tips over into violence, as they note that a pathways toward political violence do not necessarily entail a step from ideology to violence. Furthermore, the majority of CVE and counter-radicalization approaches treat ideology as one of the main drivers of radicalization, and this in part is influenced by the predominant scholarship on radicalization.
Many scholars apply the social identity theory to radicalization, and through this scope, argue that one of the primarily characteristics of radical groups is the embracing of an ideology that legitimizes violence to address their concerns, and that this violence is often directed at an out-group they view as the reason for their grievances. There is then a distinction that is made between ‘ideological radicalization’ and ‘behavioral radicalization’ (Neumann, 2013), with ideological radicalization being the process through which a person becomes influenced by extremist notions and ‘behavioral radicalization’ being the process through which a person, having already adopted an extremist mindset, accepts violence as a necessary means to actualize his or her extremist agenda. While the concepts of radicalization differ in terms of their ultimate outcomes, they share the core notion that radicalization implies an intellectual transformation and claim a specific relationship between ideas and violence (Wiktorowicz, 2014). While the dominant stream of scholarship emphasizes the importance of ideology in the radicalization process, another body of work argues against a hyperfocus on ideology as the main driver of radicalization, stating that it ignores the radical milieu or environment that breeds radicalization and extremism in the first place. Stefan Mathaner and Peter Waldmann argue that violent extremist groups are not ‘free-floating’ entities, rather that they emerge from and operate within a specific, immediate social environment that shares their objectives and world view, approves of certain forms of violence, and to some extent support the group morally and logistically.
They focus in on relationship-patterns between violent extremist groups and radical milieus while simultaneously analyzing the processes of interaction between radical milieus and their broader political and societal environment, to which they imply, entails dynamics of support and control but also of isolation and radicalization. Conversely, there is a body of scholarly work that argues that violence, instead of ideology, is actually a pre-indication of engagement with violent extremism. Manni Crone puts forth the notion that one pathway towards terrorism could be the ‘politicization of violence’, wherein this politicization would transform the one-dimensionality of the violence from ordinary crime into a political form of violence, otherwise known as terrorism. Crone argues that the majority of perpetrators of violent extremist attacks have experience with violence from criminal environments and eventually convert their violent skills to serve an extremist cause. He asserts that in contrast to the dominant notion that an acquaintanceship with a radical ideology leading to violence, there is the opposite taking place, where young men who are already part of violent milieus eventually convert their violent skills to serve a politico-religious cause, which from their point of view is noble.
Furthermore, he asserts that religions and extremist ideology are not necessarily gateways to violences, rather it appears that embodies skills of violence and a previous relationship with violent milieus is more often a precondition for perpetrating terrorists acts than are extremist options. I am not suggesting that extremist ideology plays no role at all on the path towards terrorism; merely that it is not necessarily the primary cause of and driving force behind this kind of violence. However, the endorsement of rudimentary extremist ideas can contribute to the transformation of one form of violence into another; it can change regular crime into the political form of crime that currently goes under the name of ‘terrorism’. An emerging body of knowledge argues that context is important in evaluating CVE programmes as what works in one city or neighborhood of Europe might not necessarily work in another. Empirical data, especially in community contexts, directly relating to CVE is lacking and this continues to pose challenges to the design, reporting, and analysis of these initiatives. There is tendency within the study of drivers of violent extremism to seek a universal formula to explain and detect drivers of violent extremism which has led to a lack of serious consideration of the impact and uniqueness of local contexts and local actors in shaping the dynamics of the drivers of violent extremism. There is also the reality that timing and political context influence the effectiveness of CVE programmes. Implementing community engagement programmes at a politically contentious time, perhaps right after a string of violent extremist attacks, will yield entirely different outcomes that implementing them at a time where there is relative ‘peace’ in a country. With the lack of context- specific evaluations of drivers of violent extremism and heightened focus on ideology as main driver of violent extremist engagement, more CVE and Counter-radicalization measures have focused on adopting counter-narrative approaches. The idea of using counter-narratives as a way to prevent violent extremism and radicalization is gaining momentum as a response to the rise of the vase amount of propaganda from groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
The UN and the EU are increasingly including counter-narratives in their CVE strategies, leading to a push for member states to do the same. However, using Counter-narratives are in essence reactive and in some ways could end up reinforcing the narrative they are attempting to counter, because they are using the narratives in practice a recognition of the terms laid down by the violent extremists. Additionally, confrontational counter-narratives that seek to directly expose, correct or ridicule the extremist narrative at hand, run the risk of being automatically rejected. Furthermore, the lack of understanding on how and why groups, such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State attract audiences makes it difficult to construct attractive counter-narratives Additionally, there are a wide range of CVE objectives, with measures ranging from prevention through educational programmes that attempt on creating resilience against extremist attitudes, to programs that aim at changing radical beliefs or aiding in the disengagement of violent extremist individuals. Furthermore, with a wide range of programs to assess, many scholars have struggled with how to measure success. Additional difficulties arise with the lack of randomised control groups, limited or no access to target audience and no clear goal defined in the majority of CVE measures.
