Communities Defeat Terrorism: Post-9/11 Community Engagement Strategies

Abstract

Upstream community engagement and downstream rehabilitation are novel strategies essential to fight the contemporary wave of terrorism. In the first decade following 9/11, Western counter terrorism strategies failed adequately to recognize the importance of engaging the communities that produce terrorists and supporters. The West and the rest of the world are unlikely to win the fight against Muslim terrorism without winning over the Muslim communities. The global counter terrorism policy and strategy is Western-led. As such, both practitioners and scholars from the US, Europe and Australia should invest time and energy identifying and sharing best practices in community engagement and rehabilitation. A few countries in Asia and the Middle East have built well structured and ad-hoc programs that can be shared with the rest of the world. Both community engagement and rehabilitation requires an understanding of the affected societies and communities at risk of producing terrorists and extremists. It requires the governance and community structures to partner in creating new platforms for community engagement and terrorist disengagement and deradicalization. This new frontier in fighting terrorism requires visionary leadership, sustained resources, and partnerships between the political structures, the community elite and the private sector. To influence the human terrain, the range of stakeholders includes government and community working with the media, religious establishment and educational authorities.