Counter-terrorism policies in the focus of NATO advanced research workshop

The workshop “The Perseverance of Terrorism: Focus on Leaders” held in Belgrade between April 24 and April 26 gathered together the world experts in the field of counter-terrorism. Among them were distinguished professors and researchers who presented their experiences and opinions, and gave advices and proposals on this topic.

For three days about 40 participants from 25 countries, including both NATO member states and NATO partner states, debated the issues of terrorism leadership and attempted to formulate policy oriented clues and proposals on how the global fight with this security threat ought to be continued.

The workshop was opened with short welcoming addresses of the co-directors, PISM’s analyst Kacper Rekawek and BCSP Researcher Marko Milosevic, followed by a presentation of a representative of the donor, NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme (SPS), Michael Switkes, PhD, who outlined SPS’s funding objectives and spoke about NATO’s role in countering terrorism.

At the first plenary session of the workshop it was noted that lessons of history should not be forgotten while studying terrorism and that we are bound to remain concerned about the complexity of each and every terrorist case studied, as this will inform our future counter-terrorism policy.

Discussion evolved around the pitfalls of terrorism research, and difficulties both academics and experts face while formulating policy oriented proposals. The first terrorism leadership case study was presented, and the infamous Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, one of the greatest strategists of jihadism, was used as the example.

The workshop returned to the theme of terrorist leaders’ ends and the future avenues of research in this very element of terrorism studies. Some of the participants gave the examples of their own countries – one participant presented a peculiar case study of a terrorist leader commanding a friends and family based terrorist organisation.

Interesting was the debate about the ins and outs of the so-called ‘leaderless resistance’ for terrorist groups, organisations and networks. 

The last day of the workshop was presented another type of leader of a terrorist organisation – ideologue or a religious authority. For this was used the example of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.

A run down on the importance of leaders in de-radicalisation and disengagement process of terrorist foot-soldiers and organisations was offered. The examples of terrorist groups from Algeria, Egypt and Libya were used for this.

The workshop was concluded with a wide-ranging summary on types of leaders emerging within the milieu of British jihadism.