James Khalil

This research was conducted in the context of a Somali state offensive in the Federal Member States of Hirshabelle and Galmudug that generated more territorial gains from al-Shabaab than any other military campaign since the mid-2010s. Such conditions provide fertile ground for disengagement from the insurgents, with many ex-members enrolled into the National Program for the Treatment and Handling of Disengaged Combatants. A core element of this program is its communications pillar, which seeks to promote disengagement through a variety of channels, including radio, television, social media, phone conversations, leaflets, and word-of-mouth. This research aims to inform these campaigns, drawing from interviews conducted in May 2023 with former members of al Shabaab at the Serendi center in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab has been evicted—at least temporarily—from scores of towns and villages in the central Somali Federal Member States of Hirshabelle and Galmudug since summer 2022. While this began as an “organic” uprising led by clan militias (the Ma’awisley) against the insurgent’s excessive demands for “taxation” and recruits, it soon transformed into a major state offensive. Within this context, in May 2023 our team conducted interviews with former members of al-Shabaab who had been based in these locations to explore how and why they left the organization, with a particular focus on the extent to which their decisions to disengage were influenced by the offensive, and how their clans helped motivate and facilitate exit.

Scholars seeking to understand why individuals become involved in terrorism and violent extremism rely on a multitude of theoretical frameworks. While these are commonly interpreted as being in antagonistic opposition, the core premise of this article is that further advances in our understanding of this violence are contingent upon us treating them as complementary. Limiting ourselves to three frameworks that are perhaps most in tension, we survey the core premises of the rational choice perspective (RCP), the social identity perspective (SIP), and the ideological perspective (IP), identifying opportunities for theoretical integration. We argue that individuals are driven to involvement in this violence by both personal rewards and collective objectives, making both the RCP and SIP frameworks indispensable. We also conclude that SIP interpretations are incomplete without the IP, as ideologies play a pivotal role in constructing and amplifying ingroup and outgroup identities. The RCP is also deficient in the absence of the IP as many rewards that motivate involvement can only be understood through reference to the ideational context in which they are conferred. Systematic recognition and application of this theoretical complementarity is facilitated, we further argue, by the Attitudes-Behaviors Corrective (ABC) Model, which we apply as a heuristic device throughout the article.

This case study provides exploratory research into the personal journeys of forced recruits into Boko Haram, to examine how they entered the organization, the conditions they experienced in camps and settlements, their exits from the group, their subsequent experiences in state hands, and their perspectives about future reintegration. These themes are particularly pertinent given the mass disengagements from Boko Haram in spring 2022, and the extent to which federal and state systems lack the capacity to absorb and handle the large numbers involved. Research was undertaken at Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC), a program established in 2016 by the Nigerian state to provide an off-ramp for members of Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) deemed to be ‘low risk’ by military intelligence. Located at Mallam Sidi on the outskirts of Gombe, the OPSC program houses cohorts of around six hundred clients at any point in time. This report features the findings from thirteen in...

This report focuses on interventions designed to promote and facilitate exits from ideologically justified violence – often referred to as ‘tertiary’ interventions. The beneficiaries of these programmes include individuals convicted of terrorism charges, as well as those who voluntarily disengaged. Relying on the authors’ Attitudes- Behaviours Corrective (ABC) Model of Violent Extremism, and drawing from their extensive professional experiences of providing technical support to such interventions, this report presents a novel framework to help practitioners
develop and implement these programmes.

This research applied the Attitudes-Behaviors Corrective (ABC) Model of Violent Extremism to map personal journeys in and out of al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa. The ABC Model provides a framework through which to analyze individual trajectories in relation to sympathy for and actual involvement in violent extremism.  We selected al-Shabaab as a case study partly because it remains the deadliest violent extremist organization (VEO) in Africa. As the research team had been involved in rehabilitation work with former members of the group, we also chose it for relative ease of access to respondents. Adopting a life history approach, we interviewed thirteen former members of al-Shabaab. Our core objective was to deliver granular insights about their personal journeys to inform the design of interventions to prevent further involvement and to facilitate disengagements from the group.

The concepts of deradicalisation and disengagement and are often applied in parallel, with the former generally interpreted in terms of attitudinal change (i.e. reducing sympathy for such violence), and the latter relating instead to behavioural change (i.e. no longer directly contributing to violence). The number of programmes aiming to achieve these objectives has increased substantially over recent years, including in locations such as Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, and Yemen. While the effects of Preventing / Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) programmes is notoriously difficult to measure, there is a strong case that such initiatives have the potential to deliver greater 'bang per buck' than other intervention types, for the reasons discussed in this paper. Of course, optimising efforts to counter this violence should clearly be of importance to the EU both on moral grounds (in relation to addressing violence in the countries in which interventions occur), and as a matter of 'enlightened self-interest' (as there is a continued threat of this violence being imported to Europe). Of course, the risks associated to such programmes are also prominent, precisely because they provide an existential threat to violent extremist organisations. This paper covers a range of themes relating to disengagement and deradicalisation programmes, including their activities, staffing considerations, facility upgrades, segregation policies, how to determine their success (or failure), and criteria through which to assess suitable locations for such initiatives.

The quality of studies drawing primary data from terrorists and violent extremist respondents varies substantially, with this body of literature exhibiting a variety of repeating methodological issues. For instance, researchers often uncritically accept interviewee responses at face value, overlook key theoretical insights, downplay or neglect potentially important explanatory variables, fail to offer sufficient information about their sampling methods, and deliver findings with inferences beyond what their sample allows. Indeed, certain studies demonstrate a number of these flaws, including the United Nations Development Programme’s recently published Journey to Extremism in Africa report. Within this context, the dual purposes of this article are (a) to discuss ways to overcome these specific methodological problems, and (b) to provide broader guidance for face-to-face research with such respondents.

Prominent frameworks relating to terrorism and violent extremism, including that developed by the NYPD and the popular ‘pyramid’ and ‘staircase’ analogies, tend to oversimplify or neglect the diversity of routes that individuals travel to violence. The Three Pathways (3P) model developed by James Khalil contributes to theory, and provides an effective lens through which policymakers and implementers can evaluate their current and future preventive countermeasures under the countering and preventing violent extremism frameworks.

Between 2011 and 2014 the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI)’s Kenya Transition Initiative implemented what was essentially a pilot program of the new Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) concept. Aiming to counter the drivers of ‘violent extremism’ (VE), this operated through a system of small grants funding activities such as livelihood training, cultural events, community debates on sensitive topics, counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder, and so on. This paper delivers lessons from the program, generated via an independent evaluation, offering insights of relevance to the broader CVE community of practitioners. A first overarching conclusion is that programming decisions would have benefitted from a more comprehensive understanding of VE in the local context. For instance, subsets of the population more narrowly ‘at-risk’ of being attracted to VE should have been identified and targeted (e.g. potentially teenagers, ex-convicts, members of specific clans, and so on), and a greater focus should have been placed upon comprehending the relevance of material incentives, fear, status-seeking, adventure-seeking, and other such individual-level drivers. A second conclusion is that the KTI team would have profited from additional top-level guidance from their donors, for instance, providing direction on the extent to which efforts should have been targeted at those supportive of violence versus those directly involved in its creation, the risks associated with donor branding, and contexts in which the pejorative term ‘extremism’ should have been pragmatically replaced by neutral terminology. As a priority donors and the wider community should also provide suitable definitions of the CVE concept, rather than leaving practitioners to construe (undoubtedly inconsistently) it’s meaning from the available definitions of VE.

This article develops and elaborates on three core points. First, as with research into other social science themes, it is argued that it is necessary to apply the logic of correlation and causality to the study of political violence. Second, it highlights the critical disjuncture between attitudes and behaviors. Many or most individuals who support the use of political violence remain on the sidelines, including those who sympathize with insurgents in Afghanistan (reportedly 29 percent in 2011), and those supportive of “suicide attacks” in the Palestinian Territories (reportedly reaching 66 percent in 2005). Conversely, those responsible for such behaviors are not necessarily supportive of the ostensible political aims. Third, it is argued that the motives that drive these attitudes and behaviors are often (or, some would argue, always) distinct.While the former are motivated by collective grievances, there is substantial case study evidence that the latter are commonly driven by economic (e.g., payments for the emplacement of improvised explosive devices), security-based (i.e., coercion) and sociopsychological (e.g., adventure, status, and vengeance) incentives. Thus, it is necessary for the research
community to treat attitudes and behaviors as two separate, albeit interrelated, lines of inquiry.

Academics and military analysts regularly attempt to distinguish terrorists from insurgents through focusing on the extent to which these adversaries (a) adopt nonviolent methods, (b) apply uncompromising forms of violence, (c) generate local support, (d) recruit and maintain manpower, and (e) control territory. In contrast, this article argues that attempts to distinguish between these adversaries inevitably fail, firstly, as they arbitrarily impose binary distinctions upon continuous variables (e.g., in levels of support, manpower figures), and secondly as there is a lack of agreement across these supposedly identifying characteristics. Thus, contrary to common wisdom, it is concluded that there is no contradiction in simultaneously labeling groups such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda as both terrorists and insurgents. Indeed, a complete understanding of these groups requires an assessment of their activities at both the tactical (as terrorists) and strategic (as insurgents) levels.

The first objective of this article is to provide conceptual clarity regarding the term ‘support’ in the context of insurgent campaigns. While it is commonly claimed that insurgent and counterinsurgent forces compete for the support of the populace, there is often ambiguity as to whether this refers to a voluntary preference for a group of armed actors (attitudinal support), or a set of actions that provide direct benefits to one of these groups (behavioural support or collaboration). Furthermore, while a number of academics and practitioners focus upon the former on the assumption that it translates into the latter with sufficient consistency (Lawrence ‘of Arabia’, Mao, etc.), others maintain a contradictory stance (Kilcullen, Kalyvas, etc.). The findings from research undertaken into the 1996–2006 conflict in Nepal suggest a more complex reality in that certain forms of collaboration (e.g. provisions of information) seemingly necessitate supportive attitudes to a greater extent than others (e.g. supplies of food). The second objective is to evaluate the various approaches used by the Maoist insurgents to generate these distinct forms of support. While their ideology largely failed to resonate with the populace, attitudinal support was obtained through various ‘popular appeals’, including land reform, an opposition to an increasingly repressive monarchy, and campaigns to empower certain marginalised sectors of society. In contrast, the development initiatives of the Maoists, and their nationalist rhetoric in opposition to US and Indian influence were substantially less effective. Each of these initiatives were undertaken to obtain collaboration via attitudinal support, but the former was also generated directly through the use of coercion against specific non-combatants.