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Promoting Cognitive Complexity Among Yezidi Youth Impacted By Isis In Kurdistan, Iraq, Sara Savage, Jessica Francar, Kristin Perry
Promoting Cognitive Complexity Among Yezidi Youth Impacted By Isis In Kurdistan, Iraq, Sara Savage, Jessica Francar, Kristin Perry
Journal of Strategic Security
This article reports on the results of an intervention to promote the reintegration of Yezidi children and youth in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, who had been in ISIS captivity or were displaced by ISIS, by increasing their cognitive complexity through experiential learning. The article explores the challenges faced by this demographic, including trauma and exclusion. It looks at the impact of a group-based curriculum designed to increase cognitive complexity (measured by integrative complexity), and discusses how the intervention addressed socio-cognitive needs in order to support reintegration. The intervention was piloted with young people associated with ISIS and those displaced …
Networks Of Threats: Interconnection, Interaction, Intermediation, Julien Theron
Networks Of Threats: Interconnection, Interaction, Intermediation, Julien Theron
Journal of Strategic Security
The rapidly changing global security environment requires to constantly adapt our understanding of threats. The findings of this paper confirm that threats interact with each other on three levels. Security, conflict, war, and strategic studies converge to build a new qualitative theoretical framework for threat analysis. Shaping the global security environment, threats communicate on three levels. Firstly, the interconnection of agents with similar ideological and/or strategic motivations connects threats. Secondly, interaction exacerbates incidental threats through cooperation, competition, and convergence. Thirdly, intermediation occurs between antagonistic threats trying to achieve common intermediary objectives. These networks are driven by agents maximizing their impact …
Continuity And Change In The Operational Dynamics Of The Islamic State, James L. Regens, Nick Mould
Continuity And Change In The Operational Dynamics Of The Islamic State, James L. Regens, Nick Mould
Journal of Strategic Security
In this article we estimate the influence of leadership changes on the operational dynamics associated with terrorist attacks conducted by the Islamic State and its predecessors. Because the focus of our research is empirical, the study uses data for 2,131 successful attacks between October 2002 and December 2014 to examine differentials in operational tempo, attack severity, primary tactics employed, and principal targets. The data are aggregated on a monthly basis to estimate the probabilities associated with specific attack sequences in terms of the following primary tactics: (1) firearms, (2) explosives, (3) hostage-taking/kidnapping, and (4) attacks involving combinations of (1), (2), …
Understanding Radicalization And Engagement In Terrorism Through Religious Conversion Motifs, Neil Ferguson, Eve Binks
Understanding Radicalization And Engagement In Terrorism Through Religious Conversion Motifs, Neil Ferguson, Eve Binks
Journal of Strategic Security
Although research into the processes and outcomes of radicalization has yielded significant discoveries regarding antecedent risk factors and the role played by societal circumstances and individual variables, research regarding the process of radical conversion remains in its infancy. We believe that the psychology of religion may hold the key to unlocking new insights into this conversion process. As a result of assessing both Lofland and Skonovd’s religious conversion motifs and Rambo’s integrative model of religious conversion, we suggest that issues of culture, society and the individual which are prevalent in first-hand accounts of conversion to terrorism provide crucial insight into …