Wietse van den Berge
Wietse van den Berge a Research Fellow at ICCT. He studied political science at Leiden University, specialising in international relations and political philosophy. After graduating in 2002, he joined the Royal Netherlands Air Force and attended the Royal Netherlands Military Academy. A 12-month internship at the academy’s military science faculty followed completion of his officer training, researching military history and military operations. Wietse held several ranks within the Air Force and in 2011-2012 he served as a military observer for the United Nations in the Middle East. He was triggered by personally witnessing the Arab uprisings in that region to return to his academic career. Since joining Leiden University’s the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) in 2013, his focus centres on political violence in contemporary Middle Eastern conflicts. Within ICCT, Wietse is involved in a project concerning foreign terrorist fighters.
This paper synthesises research on post-incident communications from a range of fields – including terrorism, crisis communications, mass-shooter incidents, serial offenders, and suicide studies – to identify guidelines for the development of a post-terrorist incident communications framework. Key Findings and Recommendations Terrorism is fundamentally a type of violent communication designed to influence audiences broader than […]
This paper aims to provide practitioners and academics with an empirical approach for assessing the current state and future directions of the Salafi-Jihadi Movement’s (SJM) member organisations. Making use of available data, it taps into the Islamic State’s (IS) and al-Qaeda’s (AQ) strategic priorities. Then, the article maps and examines various strategies of the broader […]
Introduction On 10 June, twelve French and two Dutch orphans of Islamic State fighters were repatriated from Syria to France. This followed the earlier repatriation of five orphans from Syria to France in mid-March of this year; a three year old girl whose mother was sentenced to life imprisonment in Iraq was also returned […]