Violence and Security

Al-Qaeda Affiliate Shows Strong Resilience in Syria

April 19, 2018

US military and intelligence experts are warning about the threat of "the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11," in the form of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaeda affiliate that has used IS practices to establish control of large swathes of territory in northwestern Syria and whose goal is the conquest of Damascus and establishment of a sharia state.
Story of American IS Wife Highlights Repatriation Challenges

April 19, 2018

The story of the struggle for repatriation to the US by the American wife of an Islamic State (IS) fighter in Syria highlights the challenging legal, security, and personal dimensions of a general phenomenon confronting US security officials.
UN Chief Seeks Focus on Societal Causes of Terror

April 19, 2018

At an advisory board meeting of the UN Counter-terrorism Centre in Saudi Arabia, UN Secretary-General António Guterres promoted a "root cause" approach to terrorism prevention, seeking an initial focus on "prolonged unresolved conflicts, lack of the rule of law and socioeconomic marginalization" to counter radicalization efforts.
UN Mission: Facebook Played Key Role in Rohingya Flight

April 19, 2018

Members of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission has warned that the social media platform Facebook played a "determining role" in spreading "hate speech" in Myanmar that led to the religious cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims since August last year.
French President Aims to Reform Islam

April 18, 2018

French President Emmanuel Macron is facing skepticism regarding his ambitious project to reform Islam, drawing on historical examples of French state efforts to centralize control over religion and working with a controversial French Islamic cleric to build a national French Islam free of foreign Islamist radical influence and opposed to the use of violence.
American IS Children Face Legal Limbo

April 18, 2018

Many US citizen children whose parents fought for the Islamic State (IS) now languish in refugee camps and detention centers with no clear legal path for a return to America and escape from the IS horror to which they were subjected unwillingly as minors.
UNICEF Warns of Broad Threat of Boko Haram

April 18, 2018

Figures from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) indicate that the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has abducted over 1,000 children in northeastern Nigeria, killed nearly 2,300 teachers, and destroyed over 1,400 schools in its campaign to impose sharia law across West Africa.
UN Hosts Forum on Countering Extremism Among Youth

April 18, 2018

The UN recently hosted a forum at its headquarters in New York to focus on how governments and other actors must invest in youth who are at risk of "disempowerment and alienation" and thereby susceptible to violent extremist narratives, including through social media.
Spain Files Terrorism Charges over Bar Brawl

April 18, 2018

Amnesty International has criticized the charging of eight people in Spain on terrorism charges over their participation in a bar brawl, warning the charges are part of a trend of overbroad use of a Spanish counter-terrorism law to "criminalize behaviour that is far removed from any threat of terrorism."
IRS Tax Laws Could Counter Islamist Extremism in Universities

April 17, 2018

Recent commentary explains how America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) codes offer a potentially untapped set of legal tools for preventing the spread of Islamist extremist sympathies in the American higher education system.