Tag Archive for: CVE

Policy, Guns and Money: Virgin Galactic takes off, South African unrest and countering violent extremism

On 11 July, billionaire Richard Branson joined Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed test flight to space. Billionaire Jeff Bezos will soon follow suit on the first Blue Origin crewed flight on 20 July. ASPI’s Malcolm Davis talks with Cassandra Steer from the ANU Institute of Space and the ANU College of Law about the new era for space tourism and its potential implications.

The arrest of former South African president Jacob Zuma sparked mass unrest in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. ASPI research intern Khwezi Nkwanyana speaks to Ibrahim Abraham from the Australian National University about the recent violence and the significance of Zuma’s arrest with regard to corruption and wider stability in the country.

ASPI’s Teagan Westendorf is joined by Peta Lowe from Phronesis Consulting and Training to discuss counterterrorism and the roles of countering violent extremism and preventing violent extremism. They discuss these issues with a specific focus on gender, regional complexities and the cyber realm.

Countering extremist narratives online: competing or cooperating?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Miika Silfverberg

The current conflict in the Middle East isn’t the first in which online communication tools—social media platforms, private messaging apps and alike—have played a role. But the Islamic State’s ability to engage people online is notably complex in its scope and scale, with a decentralised media machine producing content on a scale that rivals mainstream content providers. While IS won’t be defeated online, taking it on in cyberspace is necessary to blunt the effectiveness of its ability to build support and attract recruits using online tools.

Companies such as Twitter and Google have moved to excise extremist accounts only to see similar accounts quickly resurface to broadcast similar content. That’s why coalition states, and their private sector partners, are working to develop and distribute counter-narratives that reduce the credibility of IS’s online propaganda. Several states, including Australia, and other organisations and individuals have pursued this task in recent years with varying degrees of success.

An early attempt was the US State Department’s @ThinkAgainTurnAway, a Twitter account which launched in December 2013 with the intent of exposing the truth about terrorism by undermining a range of violent extremist messages. However, the account was criticised for engaging in petty disputes with IS sympathisers, rather than distilling counter-narratives with reason and maturity. A group of technology, marketing and data experts has since raised ‘serious questions about whether the US government should be involved in overt messaging at all,’ expressing concerns that there was little evidence suggesting the social media campaign had reduced the number of IS recruits.

In January 2016, the account was folded into the US Global Engagement Centre, which provides news and updates about terrorism and efforts to combat violent extremism. The State Department described the move as a revamp of its counter-violent-extremist communications efforts—the centre was charged with coordinating, integrating and synchronising messages to counter those disseminated by violent extremists. The closure of @ThinkAgainTurnAway indicates that criticism has led State to abandon its more direct counter-messaging tactics in favour of a broader approach.

The UK is taking a similar approach with its @UKAgainstDaesh Twitter account. Like the revamped US efforts, it weaves counter-narratives into other information retweeted from Coalition partners, NGOs and journalists in an attempt to undermine the credibility of IS’s propaganda. The UK approach has likely been informed by reflection on the US model, acknowledging that partnership with credible voices, other governments and third parties would be more effective.

Australia’s work in this field has been notably unsuccessful so far. In 2015, the ADF launched the Twitter account @Fight_DAESH, described by then-Minister for Defence Kevin Andrews as a means to correct false information disseminated by IS and its sympathisers. @Fight_Daesh’s first media engagement was a botched and embarrassing BuzzFeed interview, highlighting the inexperience of its administrators. The account also received criticism for its poor command of Arabic, which the ADF said was the result of the transfer of language across IT programs. Not only does poor translation fail to communicate effectively, it also makes it difficult to build trust with target audiences. Given the ADF’s long operational experience in the Middle East, and its efforts to increase diversity, it should have the capability within itself to bring the linguistic and cultural expertise necessary to do so successfully.

Some grassroots initiatives have fared better. One example is Mohamed Ahmed, a Somali-American otherwise known as Average Mohamed, who creates short videos to clarify points of contention in Islam and dispel myths perpetuated by extremists to their own ends. The videos are pitched at eight to fourteen year-olds and they use simple, visually appealing cartoons and peer-to-peer messaging to illustrate counter-narratives with calming language. Ahmed states the efficacy of his project is due to the fact that the videos talk to Muslims, rather than talk at Muslims. While it’s still too early to measure how Ahmed’s efficacy, a centre at the University of Southern California is partnering with Ahmed to better understand the terrorist threat and research successful aspects of grassroots initiatives which could inform best practises.

Another example is Abdullah X, a YouTube channel created by an anonymous former extremist. His cartoons provide Abdullah’s ‘robust narrative in order to give viewers pause to reflect’ on why they’re considering violent extremism. The cartoons also reinforce the harsh realities of life under IS in Syria, which recruiters may gloss over when recruiting individuals to the Caliphate. Both initiatives use animation, popular culture references, authentic Muslim voices and Arabic language emphasising Islam as a religion of peace to communicate their messages.

Engaging people who are often already distrustful of western governments through institutional social media accounts with no personally identifiable owner is a tall order. Grassroots initiatives can quickly build credibility with communities as they come from within them. More authentic, credible and relevant messages rooted within the Muslim community appear to be more effective; and governments should engage and support them, rather than compete for influence and eyeballs. That requires a significant rethink of how organisations like the ADF engage in the digital fight against violent extremism, both alone and with Coalition partners. But such thoughtful coordination is likely to make a more significant impact than we’ve seen from recent and current government-led campaigns.

New measures to counter radicalisation in Australian schools

In recent times we’ve seen young Australians commit acts of violent extremism on home soil.

The Turnbull government recently announced it was introducing further measures give educators and parents more help to support school-aged youth at risk of radicalisation. In December last year the Council of Australian Governments also made a commitment to better resource schools and students to tackle this issue.

The new schools measures will provide classroom resources to build students’ resilience to violent extremist influences; awareness training for school staff on understanding radicalisation and student referral opportunities; and develop mechanisms for school communities and parents to receive and share information. A series of local community youth forums will provide young people with the opportunity to explore the problem.

These welcome new measures are important because schools play a crucial role in developing our young people and fostering their sense of inclusion in the Australian community—a key bulwark against radicalisation.

Teachers are in a position to notice behavioural changes in students, and enhance the effectiveness of counter radicalisation messaging. Where a student’s behaviour indicates they’re beyond the capabilities of a school’s support system, then teachers will need to be able to refer cases to trained professionals for intervention.

It makes sense to build awareness about radicalisation and extremism amongst school teachers who have regular contact with young people. That means providing them with useful information about how to recognise and respond to radicalisation. Better equipping teachers here will assist parents to raise and discuss their concerns with their children’s schools.

Last year a federal government radicalisation awareness kit provided useful basic information to schools about the early warning signs of radicalisation and how to help students at risk.

The kit was widely lampooned on social media because it linked green activism and alternative music to terrorism, but it isn’t a bad resource to assist schools in understanding radicalisation and how it could affect students.

It’s also useful that the government has recognised that efforts must go beyond providing factual information.

Teachers are certainly going to have to be trained in recognising early warning signs and ways in which they can reach out to at-risk youth, just as they do now with drug and alcohol abuse, the dangers of paedophilia or mental health.

As noted above, teachers will also need opportunities to discuss concerns with trained professionals across social services, health, and child protection agencies, and be empowered to refer those cases that need more formal management. New South Wales has already established a phone line for teachers to access this kind of expertise.

It’s also useful that the government is working to counter online radicalisation of young people by working with social media companies to take down extremist material. Such public–private collaboration to combat radicalisation is increasingly happening around the world.

One further step that should be taken as part of the government’s efforts to safeguard young people from violent extremism is to introduce more comprehensive study about different religions to help students distinguish between religion and ideology.

This doesn’t happen now. The Victorian government, for example, has placed special religious instruction in government schools outside class time to during lunchtime and after school which in effect, results in scrapping them.

For this to be effective, however, we’d need appropriate support for teachers to ensure they have a solid understanding of different religions: many teachers currently don’t have sufficient training to instruct on the world’s major religions. Very few universities in Australia have studies in religion programs. Representatives from a range of faiths could be involved in teaching on comparative religion. The best place for including religious and secular worldviews in the general school curriculum is in terms of cultural diversity and through looking at religious diversity as an example.

A common objection to more comprehensive teaching about religion in Australian schools is that Australia is a secular society and so teaching religion in schools simply isn’t appropriate.

But the word ‘secular’ means different things to different people: from a benign understanding of the concept of the separation of religion and the state to anti-religious dogmatism. The important historical separation of Church and State concerns matters of governance:  the Church should not run the State, and the State should not run the Church.

It’s better in this context to talk not about Australia as a secular society, but as a civil society where there is freedom of religion and separation of religion and state. Australia’s future is as a multi-faith nation as opposed to a secular nation.

Education ministries speak about secular education because of the mantra ‘free, secular and compulsory’ but I’d suggest that teaching comparative religion should be just a normal part of the school curriculum. The model of separation we follow in Australia is a fairly moderate model, unlike the French (laïcité) approach.

The general point, however, is that knowledge about, and respectful encounter with, religion may reduce the risks that our young people will be caught up in the web of violent extremism.

CVE in Southeast Asia: Australia’s role behind the scenes

Brick wall

National security interests and international obligations are aligned in prompting Australia to do more to legislate against travel in support of terrorism and to counter violent extremism (CVE). Doing so domestically is difficult; effective progress in Southeast Asia will be even harder. What follows is a summary of the challenges and some pointers to opportunities.

Australians joining terrorist organisations such as Islamic State has inspired a legislative flurry from the Government. One purpose of recent and pending legislation is to build barriers that prevent people from traveling to places like Syria to fuel the conflict—and to prevent them from leaving the conflict to spread the fight elsewhere. Australia’s approach is in line with its international responsibilities, notably United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178.

Resolution 2178 builds on previous resolutions and specifically obliges UN member states to establish offences for anyone who recruits, equips, incites, transports, finances, prepares or organises acts of terrorism. There’s a requirement to establish laws to prosecute people traveling or attempting to travel in support of terrorist acts. Furthermore, the Security Council also ‘calls upon’ member states to take CVE measures. This is a lesser obligation than the establishment of criminal offences (the Security Council ‘decides that Member States shall’), but still provides strong encouragement to Australia and the states of Southeast Asia.

Resolution 2178 is a strong brick in a leaky wall. Progress in Southeast Asia will be a major challenge. Regional rhetoric has been politically powerful but legislation is lagging. Governments’ powers and will to prevent such travel vary tremendously from country to country. It appears that hundreds of people have travelled from Southeast Asia to fight with Islamic State, just as previous generations took an interest in the Afghan war. There’s a big risk that history repeats itself, but not as farce: it’s highly likely that some experienced and motivated terrorist cells will return to Australia’s nearby neighbours and prepare attacks.

A survey of national legislation gauged against 2178 shows common, wide holes for terrorists to fly through. In terms of risks, the most important countries in the region are Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In terms of their implementation of the legislative requirements of Resolution 2178, these countries span a spectrum. At one end there are strong legislative foundations; at the other, law enforcement officials are severely limited in their powers. Australia has moved to offer assistance to legislative drafting. This is useful but will only become relevant once the government and society in each country is ready to join Australia. It’s therefore important to contribute to non-government networks advancing local debates towards legislative change, who can take into account valid human rights concerns and invalid support for violent extremism. This highlights the harder challenge of CVE in its broader sense.

The Australian Government has generally absorbed the lesson that it cannot ‘lead’ CVE efforts in the region. The battle will be won or lost by elite and grassroots coalitions in each country. Supporters from Australia are not generals in the fight, but more like specialist logisticians delivering funds and advice behind the scenes. For Australia to contribute to the strategy and provide some critical supplies, there’s a need for careful analysis and careful selection of points of intervention. That means strong involvement in the field from political officers and development planners, with connections to local coalitions.

Members of coalitions can be motivated by narrow interests, such as tourism operators protecting their revenue streams. Cobbling together such interests is useful, but insufficient in the medium term. Ultimately, local coalitions will need to be inspired by a more principled desire to advance their way of life and defend their communities’ cohesion against violent extremists. Strengthening that inspiration is a broad goal. For Australia, the challenge is choosing how to influence it.

The good news is that Australia already has multiple tools to do so. Aid, education exchanges, business investment and public communications can all be helpful. The bad news is that few of these tools have been calibrated and sharpened for CVE effect. As Anthony Bergin and Sarah Hately have suggested, there are opportunities to examine more effectively how our international aid impacts on CVE interests. The same applies to business activities, labour migration and communications campaigns. Understanding these interactions in Southeast Asia will illuminate pathways to progress in protecting locals and Australians, increasing resilience to violent extremism—and implementing Resolution 2178. Legislative walls will be part of the puzzle, but they will only work if they’re built with willing hands.

Australia’s development assistance program and CVE

Relief supplies for Solomon Islands

Ahead of a high-level countering violent extremism (CVE) meeting planned for the margins of the United Nations General Assembly next month, our Strategic Insights paper released today, Security through aid, argues that CVE and terrorism are international security and development issues: they’re both increasingly relevant to poverty reduction.

Poverty doesn’t make people into terrorists, but poor people in poor countries are the group most affected by terrorism: only a small percentage (around 5%) of the more than 100,000 deaths (PDF) from terrorist attacks over the past 15 years have occurred in OECD countries.

Violent extremism and terrorism can impact the overall growth rate of a nation through impacts on tourism, financial markets and the attractiveness of a nation for foreign direct investment.

Anti-development terrorist groups, like Islamic State, attack schools and violently restrict the rights of women.

In responding to terrorism, states often have to divert resources away from basic services to improve security. Fragile and conflict-affected states provide an enabling environment for terrorism.

Australia’s foreign aid should be used to strengthen resilience to violent extremist ideologies. Improving governance in weak states can deny terrorists the easy recruiting grounds of lawless communities. This includes security and justice institutions, but is also broader than that.

We should be setting realistic specific CVE goals in our aid program and pursuing those goals in the Indo–Pacific, where we can make a difference and where we’d be most appreciated.

There’s several ways to better leverage our foreign aid program to counter terrorism and violent extremism.

Where a clear need has been identified, implement direct CVE aid programs

If the threat of terrorism or violent extremism is identified, and shown to adversely impact on development, then a dedicated Australian aid program to target violent extremism or efforts to reduce violent extremism through existing initiatives may be justified.

These interventions will target communities at risk of violence with the goal of strengthening resilience against violent extremism.

Australia might consider piloting some small-scale CVE programs in at-risk nations in the Indo–Pacific, such as Bangladesh, or possibly Kenya.

Apply a CVE and counterterrorism ‘filter’ to our aid programs

Even if terrorism and violent extremism aren’t identified as having a significant impact on the target country or community, we should still ensure that any existing Australian aid projects don’t have negative and unintended consequences that might assist terrorist groups. Our aid program should adopt a ‘do no harm’ approach when it comes to CVE and terrorism.

In some settings, development and CVE should be mutually supporting; our aid programs in areas such as civil society development, security and justice, and strengthening the rule of law should ensure they have a positive effect on CVE.

Develop targeted reporting on CVE aid programs

DFAT’s Office of Development Effectiveness should examine the extent to which the impact of aid funding on CVE has been considered. Given that many dedicated CVE aid projects will be small-scale, typical methods of measuring effectiveness may need adjustments from that of larger and more traditional aid programs.

Use InnovationXchange to explore avenues for implementing CVE into the aid strategy

In March, Foreign Minister Bishop launched DFAT’s InnovationXchange to act as a catalyst for new approaches to development assistance.

We should use InnovationXchange to explore avenues for implementing CVE into our aid strategy.

Share information on CVE and aid

As the evidence of the contribution development assistance can make to CVE is limited, we should share information with like-minded nations and others that provide aid for the purpose of CVE.

Lead the debate to modernise official development assistance (ODA) reporting

Australia should lead the debate to modernise ODA reporting when it comes to CVE.

An OECD Development Assistance Committee task team is currently exploring how to modernise ODA directives, including the aid eligibility of security assistance.

Rather than our aid program adapting to new parameters, we should argue for a change to make it explicit that CVE programs can be reported as ODA.

Unfortunately, violent extremism is now becoming an increasing part of the context where development practitioners operate; in the longer term, our aid can promote the right kind of environment to make it more difficult for terrorists and those espousing extremist violence to find footholds.

But we’ll need to recognise that while there are benefits in our security and development sectors working more closely together, there’ll be some tough trade-offs between traditional development and CVE programs to ensure that the aid tool can be used to create the maximum effect in the long-run.

Strengthening Australian policy to counter violent extremism

Soccer

Fairfax Media’s Deborah Snow points out that, while the federal government has made much of its commitment to programs aimed at diverting young Muslims who might be on the path to radicalisation, the Lebanese Muslim Association isn’t yet on board, with push-back also coming from the Arab Council of Australia.

Snow suggests that it’s a perceived imbalance in government priorities that’s driving Islamic community scepticism:

The Living Safe Together program has just $1 million to disperse among Muslim community groups to come forward with ideas for “helping individuals move away from violent extremism”, with grants up to a maximum $50,000 and for one year only, with no promise of future funding…[T]he Lebanese Muslim Association is saying little about the reasons for its effective boycott of the program…But one source says the paltry funding for this latest initiative and lack of ongoing financial commitment from Canberra were key factors.

The Arab Council Australia…is assessing this latest proposal with some scepticism. “There needs to be a level of sustainability, not just piecemeal projects that begin and end within 12 months,” chief executive Randa Kattan says. “We are madly researching this to see what might work …but we are really hoping that the government will have more of a holistic approach in delivering wrap-around services that would make a difference to the community, rather than piecemeal services in silos.”

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