Paper presenters
- Findings from an analysis of 20 years of Australian Jihadists - Shandon Harris-Hogan
- Relentless terrorism in the Philippines over the years - Tes Tuason and C Dominik Güss
- The Current Patterns of Radicalization, Violence and Terrorism in South Asia - Mubashar Hasan
Abstracts
Findings from an analysis of 20 years of Australian Jihadists
Shandon Harris-Hogan, Victoria University, and Lorne Dawson, University of Waterloo
The following will detail the key findings from an ongoing study analysing the last 20 years of Jihadist activity in Australia. Along with briefly detailing the demographics of those involved, this presentation will outline how domestic trends have evolved over time, and how the emergence of ISIS has contributed to the rise of a new cohort of Australian Jihadists. This presentation will then outline some preliminary findings from an international study contrasting the Jihadist phenomenon in Australia to a directly comparable sample in Canada. This presentation will conclude by reflecting on how the problem of Jihadist radicalisation is currently being addressed by CT and CVE programs in both Canada and Australia, and whether such programs are appropriately tailored for the cohort of Jihadists being identified.
Relentless Terrorism in the Philippines over the years
Teresa Tuason, Ph.D. & C Dominik Güss, University of North Florida
The Philippines has been a battleground for a relentless war between Christians and Muslims, since the 1980’s. This started with the government’s program to resettle Christians from the north to the south, after WWII, which ended in land grabbing and Muslim customs ignored (Barreveld, 2001). Currently, this war has come in the form of terrorist attacks (Banlaoi, 2006), and possibly communicating the Muslims’ reaction to the neglect and discrimination by the government. The current study analyzes terrorist attacks in the Philippines, in the context of the different presidents and analyzing their frequency, victims, locations, antecedents, and consequences of the attack, from news media sources. Initial analyses show a steady increase of the number of attacks among the different regimes, with the lowest in Marcos’ 21 years of 3 attacks, to an increase in Estrada’s 3 years of 11 attacks, to Duterte’s 2 years of 18 attacks. Most attacks have been made with improvised explosive devices and grenades, in congregations of people such as markets, Cathedrals, buses, and festivals. Additionally, there have been kidnappings of foreign hostages in vacation resorts, and abductions of Filipinos, that have been used to leverage the freeing of Abu Sayyaf militants held captive or for ransom.
The Current Patterns of Radicalization, Violence and Terrorism in South Asia
Mubashar Hasan, University of Oslo
This talk presents a contemporary overview of radicalization, violence and terrorism in five South Asian countries, which are India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Based on a forthcoming edited book titled Radicalization in South Asia: Context, Trajectories and Implications (SAGE 2019, in press), this talk informs the readers about various push and pull factors behind the diverse trajectories of radicalization, violence and terrorism in featured South Asian countries. Through a comparative analysis framework, this talk outlines several push factors such as fault lines within and between South Asian faiths, nationalism, realist foreign policy, rise of strongman leaders, technological advancement and expansion of neo-liberal economy have contributed into diverse faces of radicalism, violence and terrorism. It argues that democracy in South Asian societies was never strong and the current wave of radicalism in five South Asian countries is set to weaken democracy further.