Perspectives on terrorism

Over the course of two-decades-long counterterrorism campaigns in different parts of the world, al-Qaeda and—since 2014—the Islamic State, have proven capable of adjusting to setbacks and surviving as transnationally operating organizations. Given their continued resilience against military counterterrorism efforts: what are the prospects for non-violent containment strategies, and how could these look in practice? This question provides the point of departure for a new special issue in Perspectives on Terrorism, guest-edited by DIIS PhD Candidate Dino Krause and DIIS Senior Researcher Mona Kanwal Sheikh.

The special issue contains six articles in total, including an introduction co-authored by Dino Krause and Mona Kanwal Sheikh, in which they discuss different conceptualizations of transnational jihadism as well as the question whether transnational jihadist actors can be considered exceptional.

The first contribution to the special issue is authored by Emy Matesan from Wesleyan University, who investigates how different transnational characteristics of jihadist groups affect the prospects of conflict termination. Her case study of the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah and its links to al-Qaeda illustrates both challenges to, but also opportunities for, de-escalation.

Second, Dino Krause examines to what extent groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have themselves operated transnationally. His study further provides an overview of the foreign fighter recruitment of these groups, finding substantial differences between groups on both these dimensions.

Third, Mark Juergensmeyer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, compares three groups, two of them jihadist, finding that all of them were internally destabilized over time, as they lost resonance among their target audiences.

The fourth study of this special issue, which focuses on the ideological dimension of transnational jihadism, is contributed by DIIS Postdoc Saer el Jaichi and DIIS Visiting Researcher Joshua Sabih. They show how two former Salafi-jihadi ideologues countered jihadism through the adoption of a restorative approach.

Last, in a co-authored article, Mona Kanwal Sheikh and Isak Svensson (Uppsala University) outline perspectives for how to integrate research from the two practice-oriented fields of Conflict Resolution Research and Countering Violent Extremism frameworks.