Belgian theater director Luk Perceval: ′We should see multiculturalism in a positive light′| DW.COM

2016/03/31 Leave a comment

Interesting interview but too simplistically links marginalization to violence. As others have noted (e.g., Gurski), the backgrounds of extremists and terrorists vary, although marginalization does play a role:

The great power of theater is that we don’t only recognize ourselves on stage, in one of the characters, but that we also feel included. On stage, questions are asked that every person deals with: questions of love, death, war, everything that we don’t know or are unsure of in life. The moment when we feel this sense of not knowing, this insecurity in the group, and we can laugh or cry together about it – that’s when a feeling of community is created.

Art is suspending for a moment people’s feeling of being alone. It is feeling that we are all part of humanity and we have the same problems and doubts.

To what extent should theater deal with current social issues?

I grew up in Belgium, a country that has seen so many wars in the past and has become a kind of thoroughfare for Europe. Here you’re confronted with so many cultures and languages. That’s why I personally feel the need to tell people to watch out and not erect fences. They won’t help with anything.

Should theater always send that message? I don’t know. Only if there is an honest commitment behind it. But after Paris and Brussels, it’s necessary to talk about our shock. And I think it’s important for theater to create space where people can discuss their feelings.

How optimistic are you about the future? 

I’m afraid that this is just the beginning of something horrible. I hope that the peace talks in Syria can achieve constructive results. Diplomatic solutions must be found for this war. It’s not just about the criminals in Brussels. Salah Abdeslam was able to hide in Brussels for four months. That shows how powerful the network behind him is. The fundamental question is, though, to what extent terror is also linked to tremendous injustice in the world – particularly in the Arab World.

I really am concerned that things will escalate as long as the gap between rich and poor – not just in Brussels, but worldwide – doesn’t change. Until then, I’m afraid these murders won’t end.

Source: Belgian theater director Luk Perceval: ′We should see multiculturalism in a positive light′ | Arts | DW.COM | 29.03.2016

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The Obama Doctrine: Why Islamism Isn’t Like Communism – The Atlantic

2016/03/31 Leave a comment

Thoughtful:

In one of my recent conversations with Obama, he dilated on this point in an interesting way. (“The Obama Doctrine” contains many thousands of words of Obama’s thoughts on foreign policy. However, I could not, for reasons of space, include all of what he had to say. In the coming weeks, I will be highlighting some of the things he told me that did not make it into the original article.) Obama made these particular comments during a conversation about Ronald Reagan’s influence on Republican thought. His main argument here is that rhetoric that could legitimately be deployed against an ideology like communism cannot be similarly deployed against the world’s second-largest religion.

Obama first praised Reagan’s “moral clarity about communism,” saying, “I think you can make a credible argument that as important as containment was in winning the Cold War, as important as prudence was in winning the Cold War, that at a time when perhaps the West had gotten too comfortable in the notion that, ‘Look, the world is divided and there’s nothing we could do about it,’ Reagan promoting a clearer moral claim about why we have to fight for freedom was useful and was important.”

The danger comes, Obama told me, when people apply lessons of the struggle against communism in the struggle against Islamist terrorism.

“You have some on the Republican side who will insist that what we need is the same moral clarity with respect to radical Islam. Except, of course, communism was not embedded in a whole bunch of cultures, communism wasn’t a millennium-old religion that was embraced by a whole host of good, decent, hard-working people who are our allies. Communism for the most part was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries but wasn’t organic to these cultures.”

He went on to say, “Establishing some moral clarity about what communism was and wasn’t, and being able to say to the people of Latin America or the people of Eastern Europe, ‘There’s a better way for you to achieve your goals,’ that was something that could be useful to do.” But, he said, “to analogize it to one of the world’s foremost religions that is the center of people’s lives all around the world, and to potentially paint that as a broad brush, isn’t providing moral clarity. What it’s doing is alienating a whole host of people who we need to work with us in order to succeed.”

Obama said that the manner in which a president discusses Islam has direct bearing on the fight against Islam’s most extreme manifestations. “I do believe that how the president of the United States talks about Islam and Muslims can strengthen or weaken the cause of those Muslims who we want to work with, and that when we use loose language that appears to pose a civilizational conflict between the West and Islam, or the modern world and Islam, then we make it harder, not easier, for our friends and allies and ordinary people to resist and push back against the worst impulses inside the Muslim world.”

Source: The Obama Doctrine: Why Islamism Isn’t Like Communism – The Atlantic

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Where should we put Canada’s counter-radicalisation programme? Gurski

2016/03/28 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski is right on this one. Better to have this outside of Public Safety. Canadian Heritage, now that the Multiculturalism Program is back, is likely the better home (Economic and Social Development, while another alternative, is simply too large a department to provide effective oversight).

However, that being said, given that it is in Minister Goodale’s mandate letter rather than Mme. Joly’s, I don’t see this happening.

And Public Safety has funded a number of good research projects under the Kanishka Project (named after the Air India coming of 1985):

This move represents a significant shift in Canada’s CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) approach from the purely hardline emphasis of the Harper government to a more inclusive and more comprehensive one under the new regime (note that the previous government did have a soft CVE aspect, and one in which I worked, but did not fund it adequately and actually undermined it with stupid comments by public officials).  As I have said before, we will always need the hardline tool, but we need to do more in early intervention and counter radicalisation.

One question remains: where should this new office reside?  When I still worked for the federal government it was housed within Public Safety Canada, split between the National Security Policy branch and Citizen Engagement.  In some ways, it should stay there if for no other reason that that department has experienced and capable staff who were part of the amazing success of the shortened efforts under Harper.

But in other, more important ways, it should be moved to another department.  Let me try to explain why.

Aside from getting a brand new start and being able to put the unfortunate mistakes of the previous government behind us, the biggest drawback to leaving Canada’s CVE strategy with Public Safety lies with the very nature of that ministry.  Public Safety Canada is the umbrella department for CSIS, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency.  All of these are staffed by dedicated and professional people but they have one underlying commonality: they are all enforcement/punitive agencies.  CVE needs to be seen as an opportunity to occur before people engage in activities that are the remit of CSIS and the RCMP in order to work.

We have seen in other places like the UK with its PREVENT programme that communities associate CVE with intelligence gathering and enforcement, whether or not that is what is happening.  Having a ministry responsible for the national spy and law enforcement agencies run CVE creates a stigma that can hamper even the best efforts.  If communities do not feel comfortable and have issues of trust with certain partners, they will not want to participate.

What if the government put the new office under the Heritage portfolio?  CVE is all about providing communities with the tools to foster Canadian citizenship and reject the empty and violent promises of groups like Islamic State. It is about being or becoming Canadian.  Another aspect is the debate over narratives.   I have long argued that we need to move away from “counter narratives” to “alternative narratives”.  Alternative narratives are an important part of CVE – what better place to locate them than within Heritage, the department that helps foster the Canadian narrative?  Our narrative is so superior to that of IS that if this were a boxing match the referee would have called the fight years ago.

Of course, those with lots of experience in CVE, especially the RCMP which has a longstanding and robust outreach programme, would be asked to lend its assistance and best practices.  Other partners could also contribute.  Canada is – or rather was – a world leader in CVE and many countries look to us for models on what to do.  We don’t need to reinvent it, we just need to tweak it to make it better.

At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter where the government decides to put CVE.  The important thing is that it cultivate good relations with the communities it hopes to work with, for the best answers to violent radicalisation and extremism are to be found there, not in a government policy brief.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

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Why Foreign Fighters Come from Francophone Countries | Foreign Affairs

2016/03/26 Leave a comment

Interesting take by William McCants and Christopher Meserole (thanks to those who brought it to my attention), and another indicator of the failure of the French (and Belgian) models of integration (and in the case of France, laïcité):

As with the Francophone finding overall, we’re left with guesswork as to why exactly the relationships between French politics, urbanization, youth unemployment, and Sunni militancy exist. We suspect that when there are large numbers of unemployed youth, some of them are bound to get up to mischief. When they live in large cities, they have more opportunities to connect with people espousing radical causes. And when those cities are in Francophone countries that adopt the strident French approach to secularism, Sunni radicalism is more appealing.

For now, the relationship needs to be studied and tested by comparing several cases in countries and between countries. We also found other interesting relationships—such as between Sunni violence and prior civil conflict—but they are neither as strong nor as compelling.

Regardless, the latest attacks in Belgium are reason enough to share the initial findings. They may be way off, but at least they are based on the best available data. If the data is wrong or our interpretations skewed, we hope the effort will lead to more rigorous explanations of what is driving jihadist terrorism in Europe. Our initial findings should in no way imply that Francophone countries are responsible for the recent horrible attacks—no country deserves to have its civilians killed, regardless of the perpetrator’s motives. But the magnitude of the violence and the fear it engenders demand that we investigate those motives beyond just the standard boilerplate explanations.

Source: Why Foreign Fighters Come from Francophone Countries | Foreign Affairs

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Malcolm Turnbull: multiculturalism and tolerance will combat terrorism| The Guardian

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

Welcome change in language from his predecessor and strong message regarding the contribution that multiculturalism and inclusion can make to reducing the risks and extent of radicalization:

Malcolm Turnbull has nominated Australia’s cultural tolerance and multicultural society as reasons the country is well-placed to deal with terrorist threats.

In sharp contrast to the rhetorical tone of his predecessor, Tony Abbott, who repeatedly warned Australians that the “Daesh death cult” was “coming after us”, Turnbull said while no government could “guarantee the absolute absence of terrorism” Australia was “better placed than many of our European counterparts” in dealing with the threat “because of the strength of our intelligence and security agencies, our secure borders and our successful multicultural society; one that manages to be both secure and free”.

“Terrorism is designed to make us turn on each other,” Turnbull said in a lecture to the Lowy Institute on Wednesday evening. “That is why my government works hard to promote inclusion and mutual respect, ensuring that all communities and all faiths feel part of ours, the most successful multicultural society in the world.”

“Strong borders, vigilant security agencies governed by the rule of law, and a steadfast commitment to the shared values of freedom and mutual respect – these are the ingredients of multicultural success,” he said.

He said “early signs” indicated the Brussels attacks had been inspired or planned by Islamic State in Syria and this underscored the importance of Australia’s military contribution in Syria and Iraq.

Source: Malcolm Turnbull: multiculturalism and tolerance will combat terrorism | Australia news | The Guardian

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Anti-immigrant politicos in U.S. and Europe begin exploiting Brussels attacks

2016/03/25 Leave a comment

Predictable:

The terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Brussels that left 34 people dead are being exploited for political gain by many European politicians and parties, but especially so by right-wing, anti-immigration populists.

Belgium’s own right-wing party from Flanders, Vlaams Belang, has seen its popularity on social media soar since the attacks after its leader called for a “waterproof border policy,” according to Vocativ.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the France’s National Front, called on French authorities to carry out sweeping raids on minority neighborhoods and “empty the basements [of terrorists], the laxness has gone on for too long.”

Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo from the Law and Justice party said her country could no longer take the 7,000 refugees it agreed to accept in negotiations with the European Union because of the deadly attacks, Reutersreported.

In the United Kingdom, the Independence Party, which is backing the British exit from the European Union known as Brexit, used the attacks to push their agenda.

SEE ALSO: Germany’s far-right is rising up against Merkel and immigration

American right-wingers chimed in, too.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump used the attacks to reiterate his stance on torture as an appropriate response as well as his plan to close U.S. borders while labeling Brussels “disaster city.”

Source: Anti-immigrant politicos in U.S. and Europe begin exploiting Brussels attacks

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Belgium’s big problem with radical Islam – The Washington Post

2016/03/24 Leave a comment

One of the better pieces I have seen, although over-mechanically emphasizes some of the causes of radicalization:

Of all the countries in the West, Belgium has produced the greatest number of foreign jihadists per capita who are fighting in Syria. The actual figure, according to researchers, is variously estimated at 470 to 553. Roughly a third of those who left to fight in Iraq and Syria have returned; many have not faced prosecution, with authorities struggling to prove that the fighters joined violent organizations such as the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL.

According to an analysis by the Royal Institute for International Relations, or Egmont, a Brussels-based think tank, the majority of Belgian jihadists are young (ages 20 to 24), have lower-than-average education levels and are mostly of Moroccan heritage.

The prevalence of Islamist extremism in Belgium predates the incidents of the past year, as well as the advent of the Islamic State. And this is not the first time an Islamic State proxy has struck on Belgian soil: In May 2014, a gun-wielding French national who had spent time in Syria killed four people in the Jewish Museum of Brussels.

The root causes of radicalization are largely familiar: high unemployment, marginalization, discrimination and a sense of alienation from the wider society.

BuzzFeed’s Joshua Hersh spent time in Molenbeek and came away with this picture of a downtrodden, disgruntled community:

“Unlike the infamous banlieues of Paris — the rundown high-rise suburbs that symbolize France’s failure to integrate its own Muslim immigrant residents — Molenbeek is practically in the middle of Brussels; it’s just two metro stops west of the central train station. Still, Molenbeek can feel deeply isolated. The immigrants of Brussels, most of them Muslim and of North African descent, are highly concentrated there — the schools they attend, shunned by white Belgian families, are disparagingly referred to as “concentration schools,” after the high percentage of immigrants enrolled, and the poor conditions. “I didn’t believe it was this bad when I first started,” said a teacher who works at a mostly immigrant school near Molenbeek. “The schools, all they do is accentuate the problems the students face in their daily lives.””

Moreover, as my colleague Michael Birnbaum reported, Belgium’s pronounced linguistic divisions between Dutch-speaking Flanders, the largely French-speaking city of Brussels and the region of Wallonia to the south have made it difficult for some immigrant groups to assimilate. This is particularly true of those living in Flanders, where far-right Flemish nationalist parties hold real sway and inveigh against the dangers of Islam.

“The Islamic State is giving them what the Belgian government can’t give them — identity, structure,” Montasser AlDe’emeh of the University of Antwerp told Birnbaum. “They don’t feel Moroccan or Belgian. They don’t feel part of either society.”

According to the Egmont report, the current crop of Belgian extremists are significantly younger than earlier generations, which went off to join the ranks of al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups. That radicalization is driven less by religious fervor than by more local factors, and it is shaped also by ties to gangs and other criminal activity:

“Their acquaintance with religious thought is undoubtedly more shallow and superficial than their predecessors’, as is their acquaintance with international politics. Geopolitics is less important to them than it once was to their predecessors, who felt motivated by the struggle against the superpowers. Injustice was often a starting point with their predecessors’ journey towards extremism and terrorism. This has now largely been overshadowed by personal estrangement and motives as the primary engines of their journey.”

Source: Belgium’s big problem with radical Islam – The Washington Post

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Hoping to escape stigma, mother of Islamic State militant leaves Canada

2016/03/23 Leave a comment

Sad, given her courage in going public to encourage more open discussion on the radicalization process and related efforts to help reduce the risks (see Mother of fallen Canadian jihadi launches de-radicalization effort):

A Calgary woman whose son was killed while fighting for the Islamic State in Syria has left Canada, saying she was labelled “the mother of a terrorist” and unable to find full-time work.

Christianne Boudreau said she moved to France two months ago, hoping to escape what she called the stigma linked to the activities of her oldest son, Damian Clairmont, 22. His reported death in January, 2014, prompted Ms. Boudreau to ask questions in hopes of understanding his slow slide into extremism. She has done multiple media interviews and spoken with researchers delving into radicalization.

She also needs to work again to pay the bills that piled up during her bereavement. In search of a full-time job, Ms. Boudreau said she was met with a recurring theme: She would call for an interview and leave her name, only to be told there was nothing available – a possibility given Alberta’s slumping economy. But when she did secure an interview, she was told hours later that the company had changed its mind.

Ms. Boudreau hired a headhunter to find her work in Calgary and elsewhere across the country, but the results were no better.

“The headhunter told me it was because I was seen as the mother of a terrorist. [Companies] would say, ‘Something’s come up. We’ll call you back later.’ They’d be, ‘Yes, we know who you are. We’ve heard you on the radio,’” Ms. Boudreau said. “I never went through anger with that. I think it was more fear and frustration, not knowing where to turn next.”

What did happen was most unexpected. Ms. Boudreau was contacted by Eileen Thalenberg, a writer/director at Stormy Nights Productions in Toronto. She was looking to do a documentary on how young Canadians were being recruited to renounce their heritage and take up arms with the Islamic State or other smaller militant groups. In the pursuit of her story, Ms. Thalenberg looked to the families for answers. The only person who would talk was Ms. Boudreau, who is a central figure in an upcoming television documentary called A Jihadi in the Family. It airs Thursday night on CBC’s Firsthand.

“I started looking at questions: How vulnerable are we? What are we talking about, the number of kids going over there?” Ms. Thalenberg said. “And I went and looked at who I could speak to in terms of families, and nobody would speak to me, except Christianne. She is the only Canadian from the families who has spoken out about their kids going overseas.”

Source: Hoping to escape stigma, mother of Islamic State militant leaves Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Liberals vow to review Canada’s poor record jailing Islamist fighters returning to country

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Reasonable approach as part of the overall review under-way:

Canada’s poor record at jailing Islamist fighters returning from Syria and Iraq will be scrutinized as part of the government’s overhaul of the nation’s security apparatus.

The commitment Tuesday by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, responsible for Canada’s chief spy agency and the RCMP, follows news that about 60 individuals in Canada are suspected to have returned from foreign battlefields and the ranks of the Islamic State, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

None have been charged, though Parliament in 2013 created four new criminal laws against leaving the country or attempting to leave to engage in terrorist activities. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believes about 180 others from Canada are currently fighting with, or aiding, extremist movements overseas.

The numbers were revealed Monday by CSIS Director Michel Coulombe, testifying before the Senate’s committee on national security. The principal concern is that some of those who survive and return to Canada could use their combat skills to launch attacks here or become terrorist recruiters, fund-raisers and domestic organizers.

Goodale and RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, appearing before the Commons public safety committee Tuesday, said the paucity of foreign fighter prosecutions — there has been just one — reflects the high evidentiary standards in Canada’s criminal courts. (Five other men have been charged in absentia, but two have reportedly been killed fighting in Syria.)

Gathering incriminating intelligence in a far-flung combat zone, then turning it into evidence to satisfy guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is tough. What’s more, CSIS has no law enforcement powers and terrorism-related criminal charges are up to the RCMP.

“It’s a challenge to be able to get the evidence that’s required to prove our cases to our standards here in Canada,” Paulson told reporters. “We have been improving collecting that evidence, but it is fundamentally an evidence-collection issue.”

Increasingly, police and other authorities are using heavy surveillance, immigration law, detentions, peace bonds and disruption tactics to watch, remove, control and thwart the activities of those who have returned.

Both Goodale and Paulson flatly rejected the notion of lowering criminal law thresholds.

Instead, Goodale said the issue will be included in the government’s promised review of Canada’s national security framework.

“How do you make that important transition from intelligence information to prosecutorial evidence? All of that is part of what we will be examining,” he said.

Source: Liberals vow to review Canada’s poor record jailing Islamist fighters returning to country | National Post

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Why stripping citizenship is a weak tool to fight terrorism: Roach and Forces

2016/03/07 Leave a comment

Usual good analysis and assessment:

First, even assuming that citizenship revocations produced the removal of dangerous people from Canada, that strategy would amount to anti-terrorism NIMBYism. More concretely, Canada would embark of a policy of catch and release – setting up today’s convicts as tomorrow’s foreign fighters, with travel to foreign locales facilitated by the Canadian government. It seems unlikely other countries would embrace the “return” of people converted to violence in Canada, and deposited on their doorstep because of a potentially tenuous residual link of nationality.

Nor would it be sensible to assume that deported former Canadians would thereafter be unable or uninterested in engineering acts dangerous to Canada and Canadians. Operating far from Canada and its security services, they would enjoy a greater freedom to do so than would those kept closer to home, under watch and potentially more invasive strictures, such as peace bonds.

Second, the provisions only applied to dual nationals. The rationale for this focus was simple – making someone stateless would violate Canada’s international obligations. But this focus on a small subset of Canadians encouraged the dangerous delusion that terrorism is (or can be made into) a foreign threat and problem. The so-called Toronto 18 plot, the terrorist attacks of October, 2014, and the 1985 Air India bombing underline the fact that terrorism is a Canadian phenomenon. Some of those plotters were dual nationals, others were not. In almost all of the recent terrorism cases, the violent radicalization of plotters was made-in-Canada, not the product of residence in some foreign locale.

Citizenship revocation for dual nationals is at best a capricious and close to arbitrary tool, focused not on a class of people who are the most objectively dangerous, but on a population most legally vulnerable to the extraordinary revocation power.

Third, the law now being repealed would in most cases commit Canada to long and costly battles about whether it can deport a convicted terrorist to countries such as Iran without the person running the risk of torture. This is a path we have been down before, with the infamous (and to date fruitless) security certificate disputes – legal proceedings that have consumed millions of taxpayer dollars and have yet to result in the removal of any of the five foreign-born men accused of terrorism and subjected to removal orders after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The costs here stem not only from the extensive litigation but also from the reputational hit Canada incurs when it risks complicity with torture. The O’Connor and Iacobucci inquiries into the role of Canadian authorities in contributing to the maltreatment of Canadians in foreign jails are now a decade old, but their lessons remain acute. Stripping someone’s nationality before sending him to a foreign jail in a torturing country does not change in the least the ethical or legal implications of such conduct.

Fourth, the prospect of deporting terrorists who have served their prison terms provides Canada with another excuse not to dedicate resources to problems of prison disengagement from terrorism and rehabilitation. The Western world is slowly awakening to the reality that many people convicted under broad, post-9/11 laws enacted to prevent terrorism before it happens will eventually be released. The idea of citizenship stripping encourages the illusion that Canada can displace the risk of terrorism, rather than take responsibility for fighting it through programs that counter violent extremism, including for people convicted of terrorist plots.

All of these points condemn citizenship revocation even without considering questions of constitutional law and principle. But those, too, are ripe – not least, the issue of whether our courts would have followed their U.S. counterparts and condemned citizenship revocation as an underhanded supplemental punishment for things a citizen did, while still a citizen.

Source: Why stripping citizenship is a weak tool to fight terrorism – The Globe and Mail

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