Reply to Marie Breen-Smyth, “Theorising the ‘suspect community’: counterterrorism,security practices and the public imagination”

Marie Breen-Smyth’s recent contribution to the “suspect community” debate misunderstands and misrepresents my own and suffers from several other difficulties besides. I’m grateful to the editor of Critical Studies on Terrorism for the opportunity to make this brief reply.     

国大党联盟政府执政的问题和对策

印度自2 0世纪90年代以来,其政局进入了多变动荡期,第十四次大选虽由国大党联盟执掌印度政局,但它却面临着诸多的问题和严峻的挑战。国大党联盟政府为稳固自己的执政地位,制定了相应的对策。     

Counterterrorism Killings and Provisional IRA Bombings, 1970–1998

Counterterrorism strategies involving the killing of terrorists are a prominently used but controversial practice. Proponents argue that such strategies are useful tools for reducing terrorist activity, while critics question their effectiveness. This article provides empirical insight into this strategy by conducting a series of negative binomial regression and Tobit estimations of the impact of killing Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) terrorists as well as members of the Catholic community on counts of PIRA bombings and targeting activity in Northern Ireland for the period 1970–1998. We consider the impact of discriminate and indiscriminate killings (where only PIRA militants are killed versus those in which both militants and civilians are also killed) on subsequent PIRA improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. Our findings illustrate that while total and discriminate counterterrorism killings have little to no effect on PIRA IED attacks, indiscriminate counterterrorism killings increased PIRA bombings overall and prompted the Provisional IRA to specifically target civilians in IED events. We conclude by discussing the scholarly and policy implications of these findings.     

Effective but inefficient: understanding the costs of counterterrorism

This article analyses state counterterrorism (CT) policy on two dimensions: its effectiveness and its efficiency. It points out that CT is likely to be effective but inefficient. The material weakness of terrorist groups in relation to their state opponents, and different organisational dilemmas, increases the probability of an effective CT policy. However, states frequently overreact to terrorist attacks, which are valued in normative instead of strategic terms. Hence, they spend more resources on CT than justified by the threat posed by the terrorist groups. The article concludes that CT should be framed as an allocation of scarce resources that could be used in other important contexts.     

Balancing tolerance,security and Muslim engagement in the United Kingdom: the impact of the ‘Prevent’ agenda

In this article, we consider how engagement with Muslims by the state has been conducted under the UK government's counter-radicalisation ‘Prevent’ agenda. New Labour's ‘hearts and minds’ approach to Prevent emphasised, and innovated, engagement with Muslim ‘communities’. This approach was widely criticised, however, particularly in the way it merged Prevent with ‘Community Cohesion’. By contrast, the current Coalition government's new Prevent strategy operates with a much thinner conception of engagement and stipulates that in future, Prevent and cohesion work will be kept separate. This new strategy signals less community engagement and a hardened line on the types of Muslim groups that can be engaged with. However, local actors driven by operational or normative concerns are pursuing somewhat different objectives, often outside of central funding streams. Such unintentional localism may sustain more participatory and inclusive modes of engagement with Muslims.     

The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism? 1

In political disputes, issue frames set parameters for debate and shape which view dominates. This study expands issue framing research to examine the influence of frames on the perception of future terrorist threats as well as subsequent support for related counterterrorism policies. We test several hypotheses using data from an experimental field poll. We find that issue frames clearly influence perceptions of threat. However, our frames, which posit specific terrorism threats, only have a limited influence on respondent preferences for counter-terrorism policies. We consider a variety of explanations for these results and provide direction for future research.     

Beyond norms: the incomplete de-securitisation of the Russian counterterrorism frame

This article analyses the tentative de-securitising move of the Russian counterterrorism frame under Medvedev’s presidency. It suggests that de-securitisation involves a normalisation process that articulates three main points: terrorism as a result of internal troubles, counterterrorism seen as a “positive process” and Islam not being stigmatised. It nevertheless shows that this process remains far from complete, given the embedding of framing into cultural and normative contexts that make security, integrity and sovereignty leading norms. On the contrary, the ambiguities that shape framing entail a (re-)securitisation of social and societal issues that were not previously directly related to the root causes of terrorism.     

Torture and terrorism: an interview with Moazzam Begg

This article presents some of the findings of research on issues surrounding teaching terrorism and political violence at UK higher education institutions. It reports the results of a survey of UK institutions of higher education on their responses to government and other pressures in relation to terrorism. The data show a minority of universities have developed systems, policies or procedures for ‘preventing violent extremism’, while a significant number have developed close cooperation and collaboration with state counterterrorism policies raising potential issues of academic freedom. This article then examines three high-profile cases – incidents where universities, lecturers and students have come under political and legal pressures over the content of terrorism courses or accusations of ‘radicalisation’ on campus. It suggests that these pressures can be and sometimes are resisted, but that they have on occasion effectively narrowed the scope of academic freedom in practise with the danger that a further chilling effect follows in their wake.     

‘No one speaks for us’: security policy,suspected communities and the problem of voice

This article examines some of the detrimental consequences of post-9/11 counterterrorism and security policies on Muslim minority groups in the United Kingdom. Drawing on empirical data from a qualitative study conducted in the north-west of England involving young British Pakistanis, it is argued that both political discourses and specific security policies have unjustly targeted Muslims and fuelled a wider public climate of suspicion and hostility. Three focal issues raised by participants in the study are prioritised. First, we discuss the process of collective attribution through which Muslims are generically treated as a suspect community. Second, a series of experiential ‘safety gaps’ – resulting in part from the pre-emptive turn in counterterrorism regulation – are considered. Third, critical ‘speech gaps’, which have important ramifications for future policy-making, are elucidated.