Studies on radicalization & comments

[davidbfpo]

An ICSR report released today; the full title being 'Criminal Pasts, Terrorist Futures: European Jihadists and the New Crime-Terror Nexus'. From their summary:

In many European countries, the majority of jihadist foreign fighters are former criminals.
The purpose of this new report is to describe the nature and dynamics of the crime-terror nexus, and understand what it means. To do so, a multi-lingual team of ICSR researchers compiled a database containing the profiles of 79 recent European jihadists with criminal pasts.
What we have found is not the merging of criminals and terrorists as organisations but of their social networks, environments, or milieus. Criminal and terrorist groups have come to recruit from the same pool of people, creating (often unintended) synergies and overlaps that have consequences for how individuals radicalise and operate. This is what we call the new crime-terror nexus.

Link to press release:https://gem.godaddy.com/p/e167d8?fe=1&pact=57646-134827918-8754577104-181c025174f51fc63dd05d9
57a46010a02cbe5ee

One press report:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7352271.html

[davidbfpo]

Just found that one of the authors of the above ICSR report, Peter Neumann, spoke recently @ IISS, London and there is a podcast (just over 1hr):http://www.iiss.org/en/events/events...-jihadist-c84e

[davidbfpo]

An Australian story reporting on the work by a US academic in Australia for a year, Valerie M. Hudson and with a provocative title on April Fool's day no less:http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-miss...28-gv871a.html

It starts with:

What makes it easier to recruit young men into terrorist groups? Lack of employment opportunities, alienation and disenfranchisement are sometimes cited. But what if we've been missing something fundamental all along?What if we were ignoring sex?
A group of researchers have found a causal relationship between the rising trajectory of "brideprice" (similar to a dowry but paid by the prospective groom to the family of the bride) and the ease of recruitment into insurgent groups, in groundbreaking research that is soon to be published in the Harvard-based journal International Security."For example, the sole surviving terrorist from the Mumbai attack of several years ago admitted his father urged him to join the group so that he and his brothers could afford to marry...

[Azor]

An Australian story reporting on the work by a US academic in Australia for a year, Valerie M. Hudson and with a provocative title on April Fool's day no less:http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-miss...28-gv871a.html

It starts with:

Well, if these young men were getting any, would they be that committed to killing and dying? No wonder Daesh stayed put after capturing all of those Yazidi women...

[davidbfpo]

A new, 94 pgs Henry Jackson Society (UK) report and the full title is 'Spotting the Signs: Identifying Vulnerability to Radicalisation Among Students', albeit from a very small sample.

Sadly topical after the Manchester bombing, as the bomber enrolled at a local university, then dropped out and funding his activity - in part - from a student loan to study another year.

From the summary the author explains:

examining the cases of 29 students who travelled, or attempted to travel, to work with extremist groups or fight for armed Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq. Through profiling and analysis of the cases it aims to provide a supportive tool to assist with understanding how indications of radicalisation, or vulnerability to radicalisation, manifest in real cases.

Short of time? Try the two page infographic:http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-co...c-revise-1.pdf

Link to the report:http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-co...rs-Project.pdf

[davidbfpo]

A pointer to research on 'Gang members, domestic extremists vastly different, says first study to compare the two', with a number of links. It opens with:

Domestic extremists tend to be much older, better educated, more affluent, more religious, and are more likely to be white than street gang members, according to a sweeping new University of Colorado Boulder study that systematically compares the groups for the first time. The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and published in the journal Justice Quarterly, also found that contrary to popular belief, U.S. gang members seldom go on to become radicalized and commit acts of terrorism.

Link:http://www.start.umd.edu/news/gang-members-domestic-extremists-vastly-different-says-first-study-compare-two#

[davidbfpo]

One article from CTC's Sentinel on Spanish research; the Abstract says:

Violent radicalization leading to involvement in jihadi terrorism appears to be highly contingent upon two key factors of what has been termed “differential association,” namely contact with radicalizing agents and pre-existing social ties with other radicalized individuals. This empirical study, which examines all those arrested in Spain for jihadi terrorism activities over the four-year period between 2013 and 2016, quantitatively assesses the importance of these two factors and sheds light on why some individuals radicalize while many more with similar demographic and social characteristics, in the same country, do not. The importance of contact with a radicalizing agent points toward the relevance of ideology in the development of jihadi terrorists, while the significance of pre-existing social ties indicates the relevance of communitarian bonds with local networks, which facilitate terrorist radicalization and recruitment.

Link:https://ctc.usma.edu/posts/different...titative-study

A couple of "gems" within:

35.3% of detainees radicalized exclusively online.....24.4% detainees appear to have radicalized only offline.....13.1% of all the detainees—about one out of every 10 of them—radicalized on their own without interacting with others aside from their exposure to jihadi propaganda, making them genuine cases of self-radicalization.

(in the conclusion) the importance of pre-existing social bonds emphasizes the relevance of local networks, made out of interpersonal ties and communitarian bonds, which facilitate jihadi radicalization and recruitment.9 Taken together, these two factors indicate that jihadi radicalization leading to terrorism involvement to a large extent is associated with social interactions through which individuals learn about ideas justifying terrorism.