Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements (original) (raw)

Turning Away From Terrorism: Lessons from Psychology, Sociology, and Criminology

Journal of Peace Research, 2014

Although research on violent extremism traditionally focuses on why individuals become involved in terrorism, recent efforts have started to tackle the question of why individuals leave terrorist groups. Research on terrorist disengagement, however, remains conceptually and theoretically underdeveloped. In an effort to enhance our understanding of disengagement from terrorism and pave the way for future empirical work, this article provides a multidisciplinary review of related research from psychology, sociology, and criminology. Significant promise for moving beyond the existing push/pull framework is found in Rusbult and colleagues’ investment model from psychology and Ebaugh’s research on voluntary role exit from sociology. Rusbult’s investment model offers insight into when and why individuals disengage from terrorism, while accounting for individual, group, and macro-level differences in the satisfaction one derives from involvement, the investments incurred, and the alternatives available. Ebaugh’s research on voluntary role exit provides a deeper understanding of how people leave, including the emotions and cuing behavior likely to be involved. The article highlights the strengths and limitations of these frameworks in explaining exit and exit processes across a variety of social roles, including potentially the terrorist role, and lends additional insights into terrorist disengagement through a review of related research on desistance from crime, disaffiliation from new religious movements, and turnover in traditional work organizations.

Individual disengagement from Al Qa'ida-influenced terrorist groups

2012

This report, prepared for the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) in the UK Home Office, presents the findings of a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) into individual disengagement from Al Qa'ida-influenced terrorist groups. The REA was commissioned to inform policy development in relation to the 'Prevent' strand of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy, Contest II. The REA sought to answer two questions: 'What are the psychological, social and physical factors associated with leaving terrorist groups?' and 'What interventions have been employed to encourage individuals to leave terrorist groups, and is there any evidence as to their effectiveness?' As well as reviewing the limited body of literature on leaving Al Qa'ida-influenced terrorist groups, the REA extended to the available literature on leaving street gangs, religious cults, right-wing extremist groups and organised crime groups. These areas of literature might provide lessons that are potentially transferable to leaving terrorist groups, and thus inform policy and practice in relation to the preventative element of the counter-terrorism strategy. This report should be of interest to practitioners and policymakers in national government, local government and other local organisations seeking to prevent terrorism, as well as to those involved in planning and designing evaluation and research in this area. RAND Europe is an independent not-for-profit research organisation that aims to improve policy and decision making in the public interest through research and analysis. RAND Europe's clients include European governments, institutions, non-governmental organisations and firms with a need for rigorous, independent, multidisciplinary analysis.

Disengagement from violent extremism

arts.monash.edu.au

Most people who join radical or extreme groups leave at some stage. In the landscape of violent extremism and radicalisation, the exit phenomenon is not well understood, though it seems there are common elements in the experience of those who leave different types of closed and/or radical groups. In the context of political terrorism, there is an urgent need to better comprehend the factors and processes involved in leaving extreme groups and reintegrating with the wider community. For example, just how easy or hard is it to leave voluntarily? What can be done to minimise further radicalisation if a person is extracted forcibly from a group? What factors promote or hinder reintegration? Issues of identity, belonging and purpose are prevalent in the personal accounts of most ex-members of politically extreme groups. The basic argument of this paper is that social identity mechanisms implicated in radicalisation may also constitute a significant and essential component of disengagement, deradicalisation and reintegrationboth as a cause and as a consequence. Prevention policies and disengagement interventions can only be successful if we understand how and why people leaving violent and extreme groups.

Why They Leave: An Analysis of Terrorist Disengagement Events from 87 Autobiographical Accounts

Security Studies, 2017

A deeper understanding of terrorist disengagement offers important insights for policymakers and practitioners seeking to persuade individuals to leave these groups. Current research highlights the importance of certain “push” and “pull” factors in explaining disengagement. However, such studies tell us very little about the relative frequencies at which these hypothesized factors are associated with leaving in the terrorist population. Using data collected from 87 autobiographical accounts, we find that push, rather than pull, factors are more commonly cited as playing a large role in individuals’ disengagement decisions and that the experience of certain push factors increases the probability an individual will choose to leave. Importantly, disillusionment with the group’s strategy or actions, disagreements with group leaders or members, dissatisfaction with one’s day-to-day tasks, and burnout are more often reported as driving disengagement decisions than de-radicalization. Finally, our results suggest that ideological commitment may moderate one’s susceptibility to pull factors.

Disengagement from Terrorism and Violent Extremism

2013

Structured professional judgement tools were specifically created to measure risk related to violent extremism. But there is no instrument that measures disengagement and deradicalization program. The result of an action research realized in parallel of the follow-up of 450 French jihadists enabled the creation of a trial of a specialized protocol, named NOORAPPLI 3D 1. It is intended for professionals who take charge of jihadists. Its main aim is to measure how disengagement/deradicalization programs manage to change attitudes associated to violent extremism. It fills practitioners' need of deepening in order to measure the exit of radicalization and to fight recidivism. This practical guide helps professionals to consider the meaning of the radicalized individual's engagement (engagement motives with promises of a better world and/or self), to detect his needs which were compensated by the radical discourse (psychological, socio-political…), to evaluate his level of "paranoid perspective" (rigid and persecuting emotional dimension), his level of "socialization in terrorism" (relational dimension) and his level of adhesion to the utopia of a perfect world with divine law (ideological dimension) as well as the evolution of the cognitive change provoked by these three dimensions (dichotomic thought causing an inversion of the perpetrator/victim status and the dehumanisation of victims). This article aims at submitting to critics this trial of exit of jihadist radicalization protocol. It presents a method which led to the creation of items allowing a follow-up individual to be replaced in his own trajectory of radicalization. NOORAPPLI 3D relies on results of a scientific research on contemporary jihadism but incorporates them transversely, to help professionals to measure concretely follow-up individuals, on the basis of objective facts and not according to subjective representations nor principled positions. NOORAPPLI 3D items are organized into three chapters corresponding to the three dimensions of the radicalization process (emotional, relational, ideological). For each of these items, four levels of answers are proposed. The professional will check the closest answer to the concerned subject's situation. The items are formulated so that the professional will gather precise information on each matter: either after a discussion or by the observation of the radicalized individual's behaviour, with a risk of dissimulation. The following items must be adapted and experimented. It will also be necessary to adapt them to help professionals of other countries because they are built upon the exit of radicalization of French jihadists who were largely recruited by French extremist leaders in the French language and tested by teams of French professionals within and outside prisons. FOREWORD: The question of assessing and taking charge a potential perpetrator of a terrorist attack forms a major societal issue. According to me, the present work represents an important action research given an examination of the international literature and the meeting of numerous concerned participants. This attempt of operationalisation of criteria which is compulsory in terms of evaluation and motivation, constitutes an important advance. The pursuit of such a work should foresee the deepening of relations between the defined criteria, their internal consistency, the recoveries of profiles in a same individual, as well as gender comparisons, often neglected internationally speaking. These joint analyses with relapse factors described in the international literature, will clear the specified fields of surveillance and the targets for an individualized support".

Disembedding Terrorists: Identifying New Factors and Models for Disengagement Research (2014)

This paper forms part of a wider MINECO-funded study on pathways out of terrorism entitled ‘‘Rules of Disengagement: Individual and Collective Ways Out of Terrorism in Spain’’. It aims to synthesise current knowledge on exiting terrorism whilst also researching what more can be learned about the topic from neighbouring fields by identifying relevant concepts and processes. In order to do so it draws on literature from the fields of criminology, armed conflict, labour trends and electoral studies. These key concepts are inserted into a wider discussion which tries to explain disengagement from terrorism from three different levels of analysis: macro, meso, and micro, in turn. This approach was found to be limiting in providing a more parsimonious explanation of exit and so the paper suggests the use of a multi-level analysis model taken from business research and adapted to this context. The use of this layered concept of ‘embeddedness’ would permit more rounded analysis of the dynamics of disengagement and so several recommendations for further research are made at the end of the paper.

Walking away: the disengagement and de-radicalization of a violent right-wing extremist

This article presents a case study of one individual’s trajectory through violent right-wing extremism in the USA. Drawing on an in-depth in-person interview conducted with ‘Sarah’, we trace the influences affecting the nature and extent of her involvement, engagement and disengagement. We focus on delineating the complexity of Sarah’s disengagement from violent extremism. Her account supports several claims in the literature. First, there is rarely any single cause associated with individual disengagement. Rather, the phenomenon is a dynamic process shaped by a multitude of interacting push/pull factors, sunk costs and the perceived availability of alternatives outside the group. Second, as this case illustrates, prison affords physical separation from the violent extremist group and with it, time to reflect which may be critical to sustaining disengagement. Third, this account illustrates how de-radicalization may be a long-term process, and may in some cases supersede rather than precede one’s exit, even where disillusionment precedes disengagement. Finally, Sarah’s case suggests the successful adoption of a new social role and sense of identity as a potentially important protective factor in reducing the risk of re-engagement.

DERADICALIZATION/ DISENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES: CHALLENGING TERRORIST IDEOLOGIES AND MILITANT JIHADIS

in Laurie Fenstermacher, Special Rapporteur and Anne Speckhard, editor (2011) Social Sciences Support to Military Personnel Engaged in Counter-Insurgency and Counter-Terrorism Operations: Report of the NATO Research and Technology Group 172 on Social Sciences Support to Military Personnel , 2011

I've been studying terrorists and extremists for years now trying to understand their motivations and what puts them on, and can take them off of, the terrorist trajectory. In regard to Chechen terrorism, I worked with Nadya Tarabrina after the Moscow incident with the hostages and then worked with Khapta Akhmedova developing psychological autopsies of Chechen suicide terrorists by interviewing their family members and close associates to learn about their life history and what events and experiences led to them becoming terrorists. I also made field research in the West Bank and Gaza studying suicide bombers again using the psychological autopsy method. We spoke with mothers, brothers, sisters, friends and asked “When did they change?” “What signs did you see?” “What about the last will and testament?” I also interviewed terrorists their family members and their associates, their hostages and their supporters in the United Kingdom, Belgium and France, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Russia. My research is based on interviews and case studies and analyzing basic statistics. My talk today will be on prison deradicalization efforts: looking at attempts by various nations – including my own – to design and carry out programs in prisons to take individuals off of the terrorist trajectory.

The Phoenix Model of Disengagement and Deradicalisation from Terrorism and Violent Extremism

Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 2021

Improving our understanding of how disengagement and deradicalisation from terrorism and violent extremism occurs has critical real-world implications. A systematic review of the recent literature in this area was conducted in order to develop a more refined and empirically-derived model of the processes involved. After screening more than 83,000 documents, we found 29 research reports which met the minimum quality thresholds. Thematic analysis identified key factors associated with disengagement and deradicalisation processes. Assessing the interactions of these factors produced the Phoenix Model of Disengagement and Deradicalisation which is described in this paper. Also examined are some of the potential policy and practice implications of the Phoenix Model, as are avenues for future research in this area.