Prof. Rohan Gunaratna
Rohan Gunaratna is an international terrorism expert and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He served as counter terrorism instructor for GIGN, CTSO, D88, US NAVY SEALS, Swiss Federal Police, NYPD, and the Australian Federal Police, and conducted field research in conflict zones including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Colombia. Author and editor of 12 books including Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (Columbia University Press), Gunaratna is also the lead author of Jane’s Counter Terrorism, a handbook for counter-terrorism practitioners. He also serves on the editorial boards of the journals Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Terrorism and Political Violence.
Whereas video releases have been central to the Islamic State’s efforts to represent itself to its audiences, an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of these sources over a longer period of time is still lacking. This paper therefore provides an overview and analysis of the entire corpus of official videos released by the Islamic State […]
The former self-declared caliphate of the Islamic State (IS), once the size of Britain, has collapsed. Its attractiveness to the global jihadi movement also became evident in Germany. The German Federal Domestic Intelligence Service (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) estimates that more than 1.050 Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have left Germany for Syria and Iraq of whom, to […]
This policy brief examines the role former extremists and former combatants have in countering violent extremism (CVE). ‘The former’ as a special category of actor in CVE activities, including in peacebuilding settings, has gained significant attention in recent years. Various organisations and governments have utilised formers in CVE activities yet it remains unclear if and […]