Evaluation Capacity
ICCT sees a need for systematic evaluation of past and current counter-terrorism policies and strategies to assess effectiveness, learn from experiences and improve practices. Policies and strategies are often based on untested assumptions, thus running the risk of improper decision-making, which in turn might trigger unwanted and unforeseen dynamics. Though to some degree understandable, political imperatives to act first and reflect afterwards, are unsustainable. Therefore, ICCT aims to improve the feedback loop between policy and practice and will start by taking stock of and evaluate existing counter-terrorism strategies and initiatives.
The Islamic State’s recent losses on the battlefield, including significant casualties within its media and propaganda division, offer a unique opportunity to inject competing and alternative messages into the information space. This paper proposes that the content of such messages should be guided by a linkage-based analysis of existing Islamic State messaging. A linkage-based analysis […]
Since President Trump attempted to ban Muslims from certain countries from entering the United States, the question which Muslims are ‘moderate Muslims’ and which are potential ‘radical Islamist terrorists’ has gained new relevance. While some Muslim leaders deny any connection between their religion and terrorism, it is undeniable that many terrorists claim to act in […]
This Report engages in a comparative analysis of ISIS’s Dabiq and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazines in order to ‘reverse engineer’ lessons for CT-CVE strategic communications. It examines how Dabiq and Inspire deploy messaging that is strategically designed to appeal to its audiences and drive their radicalisation. This study particularly focuses on how […]