scholarly journals THROUGH THE PRISM OF PREDICTIVE АNALYTICS: CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL TRENDS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE PROBLEM OF TERRORISM

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
L. L. FITUNI
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Predictive Analytics ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Impact

The article is an attempt to predict the main trends of the political, cultural and ideological development of the Middle East in the  medium and long term, taking into account the impact of  international terrorism. To provide optimal solutions possible the  author identifies a number of core components. Basing this selection  he offers his vision of the likely behaviour of key state and non-state  actors as well as the forthcoming fate of the objects of their attention. In preparing the scenarios, the main methods of  predictive analytics were used: statistical analysis, intellectual  analysis of data, analysis of patterns and models conducted within  the framework of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research project  “The Phenomenon of the Islamic State” in the context of the development of a modern Eastern society. “The article is based  on an interpretation of the main conclusions and results of using those methods and methodologies. The article asserts that the recent growth of radical Islam in the East and political populism  in the West are close root causes. Despite all the differences in the  rhetoric and the outward forms, they represent a defensive response  on the part of those segments of Eastern and  Western societies that have failed to adjust to rigid paradigms of  globalization. Intra- and inter-confessional conflicts may become the  prevailing form of military threats in the region, beginning around  the 2020s. Their heralds are already visible in conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and, to a lesser extent, in Lebanon, Bahrain and on the east  coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Interstate Shiite-Sunni contradictions have so far been limited by political-ideological  confrontation and diplomatic demarches, sometimes accompanied by various embargoes, such as the recent Qatar crisis. Even the physical destruction of the selfproclaimed Islamic pseudo-state in MENA will take some time. Under favorable circumstances, ISIS units may be squeezed out of the important settlements of Syria and Iraq  within a year. This will not mean the end of ISIS. The experience of  the war with terrorist groups in Libya, Algeria, West Africa, Somalia,  Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia shows that even when driven out  into the desert or sparsely populated areas, fragmented but linked  groups of terrorists continue for quite some time to inflict harassing attacks on government forces and objects, to make long  sorties and to arrange spectacular acts of terrorism. Most likely, the  forces interested in maintaining the problems of international terrorism high on the agenda will not sit idly by but will  undertake spectacular and noteworthy actions to keep terrorism  issues in the limelight. As a result, the intensity of terrorist attacks in  the West may increase, since even limited terrorist attacks in  Europe cause more media coverage in the world media than any acts of terrorism in the Middle East. To achieve these goals, new channels and forms of imple mentation of terrorist attacks will  be used, such as terrorist acts involving children, ordinary means of  transport, during the course of mass and symbolic political events, elections, etc.

The Impact of Evolving Jihadist Narratives on Radicalisation in the West

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akil N. Awan
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Foreign Fighters ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the role Jihadist narratives have played in the radicalization of young Muslims in the West towards violent extremism, and how these narratives have changed over the years as Islamic State (ISIS) has trumped Al-Qaeda in becoming the organization of choice for most Western Jihadists today. The chapter explores the biographies of numerous individuals drawn to violent extremism, including those who have travelled abroad as foreign fighters or conducted home grown domestic terrorist attacks. The study finds that radical narratives only have potency when they intersect with structural conditions or the lived experiences that individuals may find themselves in. The chapter explores the role of religion, identity, altruism, and socio-economic marginalization in helping to account for increasing recruitment to Jihadism, suggesting fruitful avenues for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) measures.

Russia's Syria intervention will empower jihadists

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Military Support ◽  
State Group

Significance Russia is primarily attacking the Syrian opposition, forcing rebel groups to rely more heavily on Syrian al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) for military support. Meanwhile, Russia is launching relatively few strikes on Islamic State group (ISG), which is emphasising its hostility towards Russia in order to recruit, and to advance militarily. Impacts Russia's escalation will prolong Syria's civil war for several years, thereby promoting further radicalisation. Its continuation will ensure numerous extremist groups, including ISG, retain sanctuary in Syria. Russia will use ISG-linked terrorist attacks in the West to justify its expanded military presence in the Middle East. ISG will likely increase efforts to develop regional affiliates to gain strategic resilience. Russia will increase its leverage internationally, even as it exacerbates the security threat posed by ISG and al-Qaida.

The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

scholarly journals Terrorist campaigns and the growth of the Muslim population: a reply

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Clara Egger ◽  
Raul Magni-Berton
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A recently published paper in this journal (Choi, 2021) establishes a statistical link between, on the one hand, Islamist terrorist campaigns – including terrorist attacks and online propaganda – and, on the other the growth of the Muslim population. The author explains this result by stating that successful campaigns lead some individuals to convert to Islam. In this commentary, we intend to reply to this article by focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on religious conversion. We first show that Choi's results suffer from theoretical flaws – a failure to comprehensively unpack the link between violence and conversion – and methodological shortcomings – a focus on all terrorist groups over a period where Islamist attacks were rare. This leads us to replicate Choi's analysis by distinguishing Islamist and non-Islamist terror attacks on a more adequate timeframe. By doing so, we no longer find empirical support for the relationship between terror attacks and the growth of the Muslim population. However, our analyses suggest that such a hypothesis may hold but only in contexts where the level and intensity of political violence are high.

scholarly journals The North African “Extremistan” of the Islamic State Caliphate

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-13
Author(s):  
Adrian Cosmin Basarabă ◽  
Maria-Mihaela Nistor
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
North African ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The North ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Cellular Matrices

Abstract This article aims at presenting ISIS expansion in North Africa in the first quarter of 2016, with its subsequent implication in the wider framework of Jihadist proliferation worldwide. It can be argued that, while losing real estate in the Middle East, ISIS has started a permanent search for extra-cellular matrices or an ongoing process of de- and reterritorialization. The allegiance and support pledged by other African-based terrorist groups or organizations such as Boko Haram, al-I’tisam of the Koran and Sunnah in Sudan, al-Huda Battalion in Maghreb of Islam, The Soldiers of the Caliphate, al-Ghurabaa, Djamaat Houmat ad-Da’wa as-Salafiya and al-Ansar Battalion in Algeria, Islamic Youth Shura Council, Islamic State Libya (Darnah), in Libya, Jamaat Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Jund al-Khilafah and Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem in Egypt, Okba Ibn Nafaa Battalion, Mujahideen of Tunisia of Kairouan and Jund al-Khilafah in Tunisia and al-Shabaab Jubba Region Cell Bashir Abu Numan in Somalia is an alarming hypothesis of Jihadism reaching “the threshold of inevitability”- syntagm existent in the network theories of David Singh Grewal- turning a whole region, continent of even world into what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call Extremistan.

Contemporary terrorism against religious entities and buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
pp. 154-168
Author(s):  
Paweł Lubiewski
Keyword(s):  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Current Strategy ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Church ◽  
Main Change

In the era of a clear intensifi cation of terrorist attacks, as well as of the threat posed by them, changes in the current strategy of terrorist groups or persons identifying themselves with their ideology are noticeable. The main change is to focus the attacks on causing the greatest possible fear by increasing the size not so much of the damage, but of the human victims. Unfortunately, such a tactic is very effective. So far, the greatest attention of the so-called Western societies has been focused mainly on very spectacular attacks on public, commonly accessible places, where a dramatic spectacle of death was created in front of hundreds of people. However, the incident in 2016 carried out by attackers who identifi ed themselves with socalled the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria took place during the celebration of the Mass, where the clergyman conducting the celebration was killed and people attending the Mass were seriously injured, including the nuns, makes us look at the problem from a different perspective. What makes us refl ect on the above is that there were not many people in the church, but it was also not a random attack target. This event inspired the author to take a deeper look at the scale of threats that modern terrorism generates to celebrants or other clergy, as well as religious buildings.

Monsters in the “jihadi revolutionary atmosphere”

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Marco Pinfari
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Palestine Liberation Organization ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

This chapter continues with the analysis of the terrorist “actor” by highlighting how the establishment of a “revolutionary atmosphere” through the use of political violence has been a goal of several insurgent and “terrorist” groups in the Middle East, from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to al-Qaeda in Iraq to the Islamic State. First, it focuses on the reception of European left-wing “terrorism” and third-worldism in the Middle East, especially within the Palestinian nationalist movement. Then, it explains why, in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, several ideologues affiliated with al-Qaeda (including Abu Musab al-Suri) have recommended the use of brutal fighting techniques for establishing what al-Suri described as a “jihadi revolutionary atmosphere.” Finally, it considers the extent to which the impersonation of the prototype of monstrosity (either in its entirety or in its individual components) can help explain the modus operandi of the Islamic State.

scholarly journals The Wane of Command: Evidence on Drone Strikes and Control within Terrorist Organizations

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
ANOUK S. RIGTERINK
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Aerial Vehicles ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Better Than

This paper investigates how counterterrorism targeting terrorist leaders affects terrorist attacks. This effect is theoretically ambiguous and depends on whether terrorist groups are modeled as unitary actors or not. The paper exploits a natural experiment provided by strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) “hitting” and “missing” terrorist leaders in Pakistan. Results suggest that terrorist groups increase the number of attacks they commit after a drone “hit” on their leader compared with after a “miss.” This increase is statistically significant for 3 out of 6 months after a hit, when it ranges between 47.7% and 70.3%. Additional analysis of heterogenous effects across groups and leaders, and the impact of drone hits on the type of attack, terrorist group infighting, and splintering, suggest that principal-agent problems—(new) terrorist leaders struggling to control and discipline their operatives—account for these results better than alternative theoretical explanations.

Social networks could counter lone-actor terrorism

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
State Group

Subject Lone-actor terrorist motivations. Significance Recent lone-actor terrorist attacks in Orlando, Nice, Munich and elsewhere have made this threat salient for the public and policymakers alike. The number of lone-actor attacks has almost trebled since 1990 -- from a base rate of 5-6 per year, according to recent research. Yet the authorities find these types of attacks difficult to detect and disrupt ahead of time. Impacts Lone-actor attacks are likely to recur in the West while authorities struggle to respond. Islamic State group (ISG)-inspired lone-actor attacks may incentivise far-right lone actors to respond violently and vice-versa. The rise of encrypted messaging services and the dark net will fuel the debate around policing this problem without curbing free speech.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document