They Are Coming Back But What Made Them Go In the First Place?
President Trump‘s recent call on the European Allies "to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we [the US] captured in Syria and put them on trial," rejuvenated the debate on how Western nations should address the problem of returning foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs). Even if concerned states would agree to repatriate their nationals, this would still only amount to finding a solution to one part of the equation or "output" (symbolised by returning FTFs) and not the "input" - motivations and patterns behind their decisions to join global jihad while living in Europe.
For the last 18 months, GLOBSEC has been researching the issue of criminal-terrorist interconnections in Europe and built up a database which includes 350 terrorist attackers and arrestees from 11 countries. Currently, in co-operation with the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), it is turning its attention towards the aforementioned "input," i.e. pathways and patterns of individual jihadists towards their terrorism involvement, and seeks to map out how Europeans join global jihad. Where do the future jihadists come from, where do they live, what are their backgrounds, who influences them on their paths to radicalisation, how rapid is this process, to what extent is it "European" or homegrown, is it about redemption or revenge? - these are just some of the questions we answer in our presentation, a thematic analysis of "why" and "how" more than 300 Europeans decided to join global jihad.
Identifying pathways and patterns of radicalization and terrorist careers will serve as a first step to the design of sustainable prevention strategies to ensure that these are based on a sound and detailed understanding of the mechanisms at work and therefore effectively address the risks that global terrorism and homegrown radicalism poses to democratic societies.
Please join us for the presentation of the initial research findings:
When: April 8, 2019, 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Where: Convene, 780 Third Avenue, 18th Floor Union Square Hub, New York, NY
Speakers:
Alena Kudzko, Deputy Director of Research, GLOBSEC
Dr. Kacper Rekawek, Head of National Security Programm
Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director, Counter Extremism Project
To register for the GLOBSEC-CEP event, please click here.