[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
115th Congress } Printed for the use of the
1st Session } Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
======================================================================
Countering Radicalization:
International Best Practices
and the Role of the OSCE
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
October 26, 2017
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington: 2017
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
@HelsinkiComm
Legislative Branch Commissioners
HOUSE SENATE
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ROGER WICKER, Mississippi,
Co-Chairman Chairman
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. Maryland
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas CORY GARDNER, Colorado
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARCO RUBIO, Florida
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TOM UDALL, New Mexico
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
Executive Branch Commissioners
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
[II]
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPRATION IN EUROPE
The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the
Helsinki Final Act in Finland on August 1, 1975, by the leaders of 33
European countries, the United States and Canada. As of January 1,
1995, the Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE]. The membership of the OSCE has
expanded to 56 participating States, reflecting the breakup of the
Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings
of the participating States' permanent representatives are held. In
addition, specialized seminars and meetings are convened in various
locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior Officials,
Ministers and Heads of State or Government.
Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the
fields of military security, economic and environmental cooperation,
and human rights and humanitarian concerns, the Organization is
primarily focused on initiatives designed to prevent, manage and
resolve conflict within and among the participating States. The
Organization deploys numerous missions and field activities located in
Southeastern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The
website of the OSCE is: .
ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPRATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as
the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States
Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member
each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The positions
of Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the Senate and House every two
years, when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff assists the
Commissioners in their work.
In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates
relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening
hearings, issuing reports that reflect the views of Members of the
Commission and/or its staff, and providing details about the activities
of the Helsinki process and developments in OSCE participating States.
The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of
U.S. policy regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff
participation on U.S. Delegations to OSCE meetings. Members of the
Commission have regular contact with parliamentarians, government
officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and
private individuals from participating States. The website of the
Commission is: .
[III]
Countering Radicalization: International Best Practices and the Role of the OSCE
October 26, 2017
Page
PARTICIPANTS
Alex Tiersky, Policy Advisor, Commission for Security and
Cooperation in Europe 1
Peter Neumann, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-
Office on Countering Radicalization and Violent Extremism 3
Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director, Program on Extremism, The George
Washington University 6
Matthew Levitt, Fromer-Wexler Fellow and Director, Stein Program on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute 9
Countering Radicalization: International Best Practices and the Role of the OSCE
----------
October 26, 2017
The briefing was held at 2:04 p.m. in Room 385, Russell Senate
Office Building, Washington, DC, Alex Tiersky, Policy Advisor,
Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding.
Panelists present: Alex Tiersky, Policy Advisor, Commission for
Security and Cooperation in Europe; Peter Neumann, Special
Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Countering
Radicalization and Violent Extremism; Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director,
Program on Extremism, The George Washington University; and Matthew
Levitt, Fromer-Wexler Fellow and Director, Stein Program on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute.
Mr. Tiersky. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the U.S. Helsinki
Commission's Chairman, Senator Roger Wicker, and the Co-Chairman,
Congressman Chris Smith, I'd like to welcome everyone to today's
briefing on ``Countering Radicalization: International Best Practices
and the Role of the OSCE.'' I would like to welcome the members of the
distinguished audience. I'd like to specifically recognize Ambassador
Hrle who is here with us, and Ambassador Strohal. Thank you for joining
us from Vienna.
Ladies and gentlemen, as terrorist threats have multiplied in their
scope and scale, the 57 participating States Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, or the OSCE, have sought to play an
increasingly central role in facilitating international efforts to
prevent and combat terrorism, including addressing conditions that
create fertile ground for terrorist groups to recruit. The extent of
the problem, of course, is in many ways before us every day. I happened
to notice a headline about a week ago from Reuters. The headline read:
``Germany says worried about new generation of Islamic State recruits.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency said on Thursday that minors
returning from war zones in Syria and Iraq could grow into a new
generation of recruits in Germany for the Islamic State group.'' This
demonstrates how relevant an issue this is for us to be discussing
today.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me first introduce our guest of honor, as
it were, who has flown here from London to be with us. Dr. Peter
Neumann was appointed as the OSCE special representative on countering
radicalization and violent extremism by the OSCE's Austrian
chairmanship for this year, represented by Ambassador Strohal. As a
part of Dr. Neumann's mandate, he published an expert report on the
27th of September on the OSCE's activities to prevent violent extremism
and radicalization that lead to terrorism, describing both best
practices and possible areas for additional efforts.
I can't tell you how thrilled I am that Dr. Neumann has readily
agreed to fly transatlantic and present his report in the United States
here with the Helsinki Commission. His extremely impressive biography
is your packets. Let me briefly tell you that Peter directs the
International Center for the Study of Radicalization, which he founded
in 2008, at the Department of War Studies, Kings College, London. He's
a regular commentator across the media and academic landscape, the very
definition of a thought leader on this subject matter.
I can also say, now that I've introduced the guest of honor, that
equally honorable are two Washington-based commentators and scholar-
practitioners who we have asked to join us to reflect and react to
Peter's report. A first reaction will come from Seamus Hughes, to my
left. Seamus is the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at
George Washington University. He formerly served at the U.S. National
Counterterrorism Center, and as senior counterterrorism advisor for the
U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. It's
always a great pleasure to welcome back a Hill staffer.
I will add that Seamus is not just a former Hill staffer. He has
testified in front of a number of committees and on a number of
occasions as an expert on this subject matter. I have challenged Seamus
to provide a kind of a counterpoint to Peter's report. Peter will,
rightly, focus on some of the best practices that he's discovered in
his travels. I've asked Seamus to talk to us in some sense on worst
practices and what those practices might have for the fight against
radicalization.
Our third speaker today is Matthew Levitt who serves as Fromer-
Wexler fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Stein Program
on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Matt formerly served as deputy
assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S.
Department of the Treasury, as a State Department counterterrorism
advisor, and as a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI.
He's extremely well placed to give us an overview of where U.S. policy
is on this issue and how it evolved from the last administration to
this one.
Let me just point out an excellent report that Matt edited. It was
a study group at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Matt
led this bipartisan report on defeating ideologically inspired violent
extremism; these were policy notes for the Trump administration. I'll
be very interested to hear to what extent he thinks his policy notes
have been followed thus far.
Let me set one ground rule for the speakers; this is a subject that
can rapidly become technical, particularly among the experts that are
gathered here. If there's terminology that I think may not be clear for
the audience, I might interrupt you. I will only flag, for the
audience, one of the favorite acronyms that I have discovered since
joining the world of work in the OSCE, which is VERLT, which may be
thrown around on this panel. It is ``violent extremism and
radicalization that lead to terrorism.'' But of course, this
definitional issue and the issue of terminology is one that Peter
covers quite well in his report and I think will come up today as well.
So now I look forward very much to hearing from Peter a
presentation of his expert report on countering radicalization and the
OSCE. Peter, please.
Dr. Neumann. All right. Well, thank you very much, Alex, and thank
you to everyone who's taken time to come here to listen to me and to
listen to all of us debate.
I'm not going to read out the executive summary of the report. This
is something that you can download and read at your leisure. What I
want to talk about briefly is how this report has come about, what it
represents, and perhaps what it recommends. And perhaps this will give
enough meat for discussion.
This report came about because late last year, the Austrian
chairmanship--by the way, it is Austrian National Day today, so happy
Austria--the Austrian chairmanship approached me and asked me if I
wanted to be a special representative. And I found this remarkable
because for any Austrian politician, it is a very brave thing to
appoint a German to any position, and a risky endeavor. And they did it
nevertheless. So thank you, again, for giving me the pleasure of
working with you for nearly a year.
And the idea of the Austrian chairmanship was to make this issue--
countering terrorism, countering radicalization in particular--to make
it a focal point of their presidency. And that meant that I attended,
of course, a lot of meetings and conferences and workshops. But they
also asked me to produce a report which would contain recommendations
on what the OSCE can do better, and perhaps what the specific niche of
the OSCE is to contribute to countering violent extremism.
In the course of doing my research I visited 15 countries, from
Kyrgyzstan to the United States. I engaged with all the executive
structures of the OSCE. And, as I said, I attended lots of events and
workshops, including two in Sarajevo in Bosnia. Before I start telling
you what I came up with, I think it is important to emphasize how good
the timing was. And it is, of course, also important to point out that
the OSCE is opposed to all forms of terrorism, whether it is coming
from the far right, from the far left, or, indeed, ethnic separatists.
But one concern that is shared by all member states of the OSCE, the 57
of them, is, of course, jihadist terrorism, particularly right now in
the form of ISIS.
What we've been witnessing, of course--and this is nothing I need
to brief you about--is the end, the destruction of the territorial
projects of the so-called Islamic State, the so-called caliphate that
was declared in 2014. And you can never say often enough that this end
of the physical caliphate is not an end of terrorism. It does not
signal an end even of ISIS. It is really the end of phase one. And what
exactly phase two will consist of is something that experts like
ourselves are debating vigorously right now. No one can say exactly
what it is going to entail. What's certain is, is that by definition
because of the destruction of the physical caliphate, this movement
that sits behind it--the jihadist movement--will be less concentrated.
To some extent, it will spread out.
And that means that at least in the short to medium term, and
perhaps paradoxically, this means actually that the threat from
terrorism may increase, in particular for countries that were not part
of the physical manifestation of that so-called caliphate, including
all 57 member states for the OSCE. So, in a sense, the physical
destruction of ISIS could actually, in the short to medium term, entail
more threats from terrorism rather than less. And so it is a good point
at which to think about what the OSCE can do and how member states can
prepare themselves for what is going to preoccupy us, probably for many
years to come.
What I want to do now is to first of all tell you very briefly
about the conclusions that I came up with, and then perhaps also
express some of the reservations and concerns that I still have. First,
the conclusions. It is important to recognize, of course, that the OSCE
is a complex organization consisting of a lot of different members. And
despite its name, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
it actually includes Russia, all the former Soviet states, and of
course also Canada and the United States. The numbers are very large.
Politically it is a very diverse organization. And it has field
operations, I think, in 13 different countries.
So on the one hand, you could say this is a mess in the making, you
will never be able to get this kind of organization to do anything, it
is too complicated, in many ways too political. And it's certainly true
that no one in their right mind, not even anyone at the OSCE, would
think of the OSCE as the sole or central actor in counterterrorism or
in countering violent extremism.
But a lot of the things that I've just talked about, a lot of the
things that seem like weaknesses can in fact also be strengths. And
this is what my central conclusions were. The diversity of membership
means, of course, that the OSCE includes a lot of countries that have a
lot of experience with fighting terrorism and some countries that do
not have very much experience with fighting terrorism. It includes
countries that have very high capacity when it comes to countering
violent extremism and a lot of countries that do not.
In a sense, the OSCE could be a hub for exchanging best practices,
experiences that countries have had, and helping other countries to
build up their capacities perhaps more quickly. And one of the central
recommendations in the report is to boost and to bolster and to make
more sophisticated the Action Against Terrorism Unit [ATU], which is
one of the units at the OSCE, which is specifically charged with
facilitating the exchange of best practices. I'm in fact happy to
report that shortly after my report was published, the Austrian
chairmanship confirmed that it was ready to contribute to making the
ATU more important and to precisely pursue this idea of building that
unit into a more sophisticated and perhaps the most interesting and
innovative hub for exchanging best practices across the 57 member
states. So there's momentum behind that idea.
The second recommendation, or central recommendation that I made,
was to strengthen the field operations And this is particularly
important because a lot of the countries that I've traveled to,
especially in the Balkans--for example, in Bosnia when I went there, a
lot of people told me that they were quite fed up with the fact that a
lot of international organizations were engaged in this field, they
were coming to Bosnia for a couple of days trying to run workshops,
were leaving after workshops and were never to be seen again. So the
engagement was often duplicated, and it was also in many respects quite
superficial.
Now, the advantage of the OSCE is, of course, that it has these
field operations. It is on the ground. If you go to Bosnia, for
example, you will see this is an organization with 250 people on the
ground who know local conditions, who know what's going on within that
society, who know the key stakeholders who are really important within
that society. I do believe that, especially in the Balkans and Central
Asia, two areas and two regions that are strategically important when
it comes to countering violent extremism, I do believe that the OSCE
could play a lead role in facilitating international engagement on
countering violent extremism. It has a unique position, value added,
that no other organization can deliver, because they simply do not have
the presence on the ground that the OSCE has.
So these are my two central recommendations. And when it comes to
these best practices, in fact, I've made an effort in my report to
highlight existing best practices, showing that it's not something that
needs to be invented from scratch. There's no need to reinvent the
wheel. If countries like, let's say, Kyrgyzstan or Macedonia do want to
have a disengagement program or a program that engages women and
mothers encountering violent extremism, they do not have to invent
that. There's plenty of programs that exist across the OSCE. And to be
able to tap into those experiences could be something that could be
very useful. And in fact, the report lists a lot of these best
practices--by no means an exhaustive list but one that could perhaps
inspire some of the work that I hope will be done.
Now, to conclude, I want to highlight some of my continued
concerns. I think it is important not to underestimate the difficulties
that are involved. This one year of engagement with the OSCE for me has
been a one-year journey into international diplomacy in which I've
learned a lot, including a lot of the difficulties and obstacles that
exist, especially in this area. I've found, especially at many
meetings, that it is very easy for countries to talk about the problems
of other countries. It is very easy to point fingers. It is much more
difficult to talk about your own problems.
One narrative that I've discovered is that when it comes to
speaking about the causes of terrorism in your own country, countries
always like to talk about ideology and like to talk about external
influences that have somehow come to materialize, typically by foreign
countries, in their own country.
When it comes to other countries, they're very quick to identify
structural causes, injustices that exist in those societies,
inequalities. There's a funny discourse where everyone points the
finger at others and is very good at identifying problems in other
countries, but very bad at speaking about their own problems.
There is, of course, also a fundamental difference of approach.
There are some countries that are very open to, quote, unquote,
``softer approaches'' towards countering terrorism and radicalization,
that are very open to involving civil society, very open to also talk
about things that are perhaps wrong in their own countries. There are
other countries that are very much focused on intelligence and security
agencies and who probably believe that much of what my report talks
about is basically a waste of time. That is a real divide within the
OSCE that cannot easily be bridged.
And there's no doubt that--of course everyone agrees that terrorism
should be countered. Everyone agrees that ISIS should be defeated. But
once you get beyond these statements, once you get to the nitty gritty,
you realize how difficult it is. One example--perhaps the most obvious
example--is that everyone is against ISIS, but we do not have a joint
coalition fighting ISIS in Syria, because fighting ISIS in Syria is
ultimately tied up with the conflict in Syria. And the ideas about what
caused that conflict and how it can be fought are very, very different,
depending on whether you ask people in Paris or Moscow or in
Washington, D.C.
So while it is true everyone agrees about fighting ISIS, everyone
agrees that it would be a good idea to be against terrorism, once you
get into the nitty gritty there are a lot of problems. And I think it
is almost astonishing that an organization like the OSCE can do
anything at all if you consider all the different assumptions and
different ideas that are floating around.
The important thing to keep in mind is, of course, that terrorism
will not be defeated ever by one thing. There's lots of instruments
that will be used. The OSCE is one instrument of many instruments that
can be used to make a contribution to that. No one ever claimed that
the OSCE would become the sole or central or major actor in this field,
but I do think that there are useful things that the OSCE can do, and I
hope my report makes a contribution to explaining what they are.
Thank you.
Mr. Tiersky. Peter, thank you. That was an excellent overview of
some of your findings. I want to highlight a couple of things that I
hope we'll come back to. I think it's very important to talk about that
diversity of views, which includes a diversity of terminology and
definitional diversity. But also, I think, crucially what you
highlighted for us is a differing of approach. And I think the softer
approaches versus the harder approaches--I hope we'll get into that in
the discussion a bit more.
I also appreciate your highlighting towards the end that the OSCE
is only one instrument. Perhaps we'll be able to get into the OSCE as
opposed to other instruments and the other instruments and the benefits
of using one versus the other.
Finally, you mentioned in your report and again today the
importance of field missions and the potential that they have to really
be key players and unique players because of their presence on the
ground. I'll take the opportunity to trumpet the fact that the Helsinki
Commission will be having another event specifically on the field
missions, concentrating on the western Balkans, on the 1st of November
at 10:00 a.m. in the Senate Visitors Center. So the information on that
event is on our website.
Let me turn to Seamus, please, for a merciless critique of the
report. [Laughter.]
Mr. Hughes. Thank you very much. It's hard to do that as a fellow
with Peter's center, but I will try.
First of all, let me first commend Peter and OSCE for a very
comprehensive report. I mean, we're talking about visiting 15 different
states, a dozen conferences, six field trips. This is the kind of hard
work you need to do in order to determine what we talk about when we
talk about counter-radicalization, countering violent extremism.
So let me first commend that. It's one of the best reports I've
seen on CVE in recent memory, Matt's report excluded.
I was asked to talk a little bit about countering violent
extremism, or CVE, and some potential areas to avoid, or be aware of,
as one develops the program. A little bit of background on myself:
prior to being at the program on extremism at George Washington, for
about three and a half years, my main job was to do community
engagement in the U.S. on these issues--going to a mosque and community
center and talking about radicalization, terrorism, recruitment, and
ways the government and community partners can partner together to try
to prevent this. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the imam of the
mosque calls me and said, you know, Seamus, two of my guys just did a
horrible thing. Can you come and talk to my congregation about
preventing the next two guys from doing this?
And these are very difficult and hard discussions to have with
community partners. So when I'm thinking about developing CVE programs,
I'm always kind of framing it in those conversations I had in the field
in the U.S., in every mosque and community center you can think of, in
the last three years.
With that said, I thought we'd talk a little bit about the nature
of the threat very quickly and then move on to nine points to be aware
of, things to look at as you're developing the CVE program. I think
Peter was right, that we're actually in a new phase of terrorism with
ISIS losing its physical space at a pretty rapid clip. But just this
week, we had a new report out from the Soufan Group of 2,000 returning
European foreign fighters in the last few years. In the U.K.'s context,
you're talking about some 400 people have returned to the U.K., but of
that, only about 50, 52 people have been charged with criminal
offenses. So those 350 are kind of out in the wind--concerns for law
enforcement but also an opportunity for some counter-radicalization and
countering-violent-extremism programs, because it's one thing to know a
guy went to Syria; it's another thing to prove it beyond a reasonable
doubt in a court of law. And I think there's a lot of things that these
countries are trying to grapple with.
And again, we're talking a lot about foreign fighters, but if you
look at the attacks happening in Europe, particularly in Europe, only
20 percent of the 60-plus attacks in the last three years, since the
announcement of the caliphate, have been committed by returning foreign
fighters. It's primarily homegrown violent-extremism attacks. About 70
percent are committed by citizens of their own country.
I put that in context as we look at this, and I would encourage
everyone to read the report pretty thoroughly. There's 22 different
best practices, and I particularly like the fact that they had case
studies to look at from around the world.
A few things to be aware of as we're kind of developing a CVE
program. I think--and the report actually does a very good job at
acknowledging the shortfalls on these things--but first and foremost is
this idea of essentially securitizing the relationship. I said I used
to go to mosques and community centers and talk about these issues, and
the first question would be, ``Why is an intelligence officer talking
to me? I'm not a threat.'' And you have to kind of push through that
conversation and make sure that your first line of communication with
community partners is not, ``Hey, I'm worried about three girls from
Denver jumping on a plane to Syria and Iraq.'' And trying to phrase
that in the right way, I think, is important. The report also says
rightly that in some ways heavy-handed counterterrorism efforts can
feed into a larger narrative or grievance that's out there. We have to
be aware of that.
The other thing--and I think rightly said--was the lack of solid
definitions. It's pretty easy to define terrorism, give or take. It's a
little bit harder for extremism, and it's quite hard for counter-
radicalization. And trying to get 56-plus countries to agree on these
definitions is something, I think, that is worrisome but also something
you have to do if you want to create programs that you can then
transfer that one best practice to the others.
A few other points--we talk a lot about returning foreign fighters,
but there's been a series of different waves of returning foreign
fighters. The guys that left in 2013 and then came back home are much
different than the men and women--and particularly minors--that are
going to be returning in the coming months. And how we address those
threats, I think, is important for this.
Additionally, there's been, frankly, a lack of funding for
countering-violent-extremism programs in general. With some notable
exceptions, it's usually an afterthought. Counterterrorism is the big
gorilla in the room. So if we want to get to a point where we're
talking about prevention, we have to put our money where our mouth is
on these things.
The report also talks a lot about prison radicalization, rightly
so. And I guess in the U.S. context, our concern is, we've arrested
about 600 people for terrorism charges. We've had about 50 to 100
people being released. I've interviewed a number of them. Most of them
have moved on with their lives and are productive members of society,
but that's of their own volition. We haven't provided a systematic
approach for individuals getting out. This is particularly important in
Europe, where we're talking about shorter prison sentences than the
U.S., where we're looking at 20 or 30 years. In Europe, you know, two
to seven is a good day. What does that actually mean for not only
what's happening in prison radicalization and whether to separate so-
called radical individuals from the general population, or whether to
kind of spread them out so they're not planning? These are all things
we need to grapple with.
A few final remarks on this is this idea that community policing is
important. My concern is sometimes community policing gets blurred
quite quickly. And LAPD has a model of community policing in the states
that works with community engagement and things like that, but it's
also run by the counterterrorism division of the Los Angeles Police
Department. What does that mean in general when you're doing the
engagement? They might be the subject matter experts, but there's also
kind of a dynamic playing in there.
There was a discussion, and I think it's very important, this
concept of--and the U.S. Government, I think, is going to be moving on
into this--away from broad-based engagement of what I used to do, which
was 300 people in a mosque, talking about terrorism, towards more
targeted interventions. I've got a kid Johnny, Johnny seems to be on
the wrong path, and what's the kind of safety net we can develop around
that? And I think especially in the U.S. context, you're going to see
that shift away from countering violent extremism in the broad-based
sense to what they would term as terrorism prevention.
Two final points to look at is in terms of internet
radicalization--I thought the report did a very good job of this, but I
want to highlight it. Governments are relatively lazy when it comes to
terrorism content on the internet. Content removal is actually pretty
easy. You can force Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to enforce their
terms of service with a pretty good press release or a gentleman in
Congress standing up in the well of the Senate talking about this. It's
a little bit harder to do alternative or counter-messaging. You have to
actually roll up your sleeves and figure out what messages work, how to
target this. And so I would hope that we don't just revert back to
content removal as being the low-hanging fruit and focus on other
things.
And the final point I think is important for all CVE programs is
this concept of reciprocal radicalization. We've been seeing this play
out not only in the U.S. but also the U.K., that far right feeding off
of the attacks of ISIS. So, a man drives a van outside of a mosque and
kills a number of people. And this reciprocal radicalization feeds off
of each other. If we want to address the issues of ISIS, we're also
going to need to address the larger issues of extremism in general,
because if we don't, we're going to be in this cycle of violence.
With that, I'll stop there and give it to Matt.
Dr. Neumann. Merciless. [Laughter.]
Mr. Tiersky. Seamus, thank you. You put a lot on the table for us
to collectively chew over. I would flag that we've mercifully not used
the terminology VERLT specifically, but we have definitely flipped
between talking about violent extremism, radicalization. We've used the
term CVE in the U.S. context. You've talked about counterterrorism.
You've talked about a terrorist prevention approach. We're already
getting into a definitional--not a morass, but at least I'd like us to
be clear in terms of what exactly we're addressing.
You also mentioned the potential challenge that heavy-handed
counterterrorism efforts--I think was your phrase--could feed into
radicalization, which I think is an extremely important point and one
that I hope we'll come back to, so that we have a sense of exactly what
it is we're talking about when we're talking about heavy-handed
counterterrorism effort. What does that look like, and what
specifically are we trying to avoid in that respect?
With that, let me turn over to Matt Levitt for his views on how
this all looks in the U.S. context.
Thank you.
Mr. Levitt. Well, thank you very much. It's very risky to go last
when you're sitting on a panel with people like Peter and Seamus, but
I'm very glad to be here. And I want to thank the OSCE and the Helsinki
Commission for the work you've done and for making this possible.
I'm going to focus my comments on preventing or countering violent
extremism or terrorism prevention here in the United States, not only
because that was the focus of this report, this bipartisan study that I
led in advance of the election. It ended up being a report for the
Trump administration, but it was intended for whoever would win the
next election, which is something that Washington does every four
years. We're a nonpartisan institute, but every four years we bring
together smart people from both sides of the aisle to think through
some complicated issues. And this year, one of the things we did was
thinking about preventing and countering violent extremism.
And it's an important time to think about this because the Trump
administration has not yet really articulated what its position on this
is going to be so much as it's articulated through action what its
position probably will not be. And that is going to force us to think
about what it is that we're actually trying to achieve. Are we trying
to simply prevent the next terrorist attack? Are we trying to move the
needle as early in the process as possible to prevent the next person
from being radicalized? Are we going to focus on all forms of
radicalization, including far left and far right, or are we most
interested in what some in the administration, including the president,
tend to refer to as ``Islamic extremism'' ? We in the report take issue
with that and prefer the term ``Islamist extremism.'' It might seem
like a very, very subtle distinction, but ``Islamic'' as a phrase--you
know, a little bit of grammar would refer to the religion, its
adherents and its basic practices. And our argument is that this is not
anyone's particular religion. An Islamist is taking that into a
political ideology.
And we argue very much that we should be focusing on all
ideologies, not only because violence from whatever -ism is still
violence and we should be interested in public safety but also because
from our bipartisan perspective--and it's not clear the new
administration agrees with this at all--from our perspective, the
earlier you can move this into the process and the farther out of
Washington, out of the Beltway bubble, you can move this into
communities, whether that's Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live,
or L.A., or anywhere in between, the more effective your efforts will
be.
And they will be more effective because you can treat them in what
you might describe as a public-health style of a model. In public
health, we try and prevent a disease from being able to penetrate a
community at all. Then if we find parts of the community or individuals
that for some particular reason are particularly susceptible, we
address them. And then if we find people have actually gotten sick, we
really address those particular individuals. We deal with it at a
community level, and we deal with it at an individual level. And if you
do that, if you're working in the first instance at a very macro
community level, then you are going to be able with the very same tools
to take action that will effectively counter extremism from whatever
type of ideological background it's coming from.
We think this is very important, and to me it's not at all clear
that the administration is going in that direction. There are several
indications that the administration is moving away entirely from the
term ``countering violent extremism.'' Now, some would say that that's
long overdue. And frankly, most people involved in this field in
communities will be quite happy with that, because for them the term
``CVE''--it's too securitized already. There's a perception among some
that it's just a cover for spying on people in the local community. So
I challenge anyone here in the room or on Facebook Live to show me an
example where local communities--yeah, that's done--where a local
community is using the term ``CVE.''
Some would say moving away from that term is no big deal. And in
fact, in our report, we use the term ``PCVE,'' ``preventing and
countering violent extremism.'' The term that the administration seems
to be moving toward--and you can see this from recent Department of
Homeland Security testimony and from the renaming of some of the
government events that are going on within the Beltway--is ``terrorism
prevention.'' And the only issue I have with that is the basic
question, would all of the absolutely necessary things that we have to
do to truly build cohesive societies, to build resilient communities,
to move the needle earlier in the process so this is not only a law-
enforcement effort, so that the departments of health and human
services and education and others can use the pots of money and
programs that they have and have been using for years to great effect--
there is tremendous money and efforts and effective programming within
HHS, for example, in public safety--would those types of programs and
efforts still fit under the rubric of terrorism prevention, or are we
taking this and putting it wholly on the security, law enforcement,
intelligence side of government? I would argue that would be a big
mistake if only because it would be a poor way to organize ourselves to
use our existing resources and to address the full gamut of issues that
we need to address.
Don't believe Matt Levitt on this. What does he know? Listen to
U.S. law enforcement. If you talk to U.S. law enforcement, they will
tell you, they will beg you--I started my career in FBI--please help
us. They are drinking from the fire hose. We have reports of over 900,
at this point about a thousand, Islamic State cases alone--that doesn't
include al-Qaida or someone not involved with the Islamic States--
across all 50 states in this country. Law enforcement is desperate for
there to be someone who's going to start dealing with people who are
going down the wrong path before they break the law, before they become
a law enforcement problem.
And we don't want FBI dealing with that. We don't want FBI dealing
with people before they've broken the law. But I sure hope someone's
going to, not as a law-enforcement issue but as a cohesive-society
issue. The same way we do counter-drug and counter-gang, we should be
doing this too. And the way things are going to be structured now, it's
not clear we will effectively be able to do that.
Recently I came across a publication called Sheriff and Deputy,
arguably a little bit law-enforcement-centric. And they specifically
talk here--and this is a recent publication from July and August--about
the community-based threat assessments and their role in prevention,
about the need to understand mental health symptoms and stressors.
These are themes that most people in Federal Government now in the
Trump administration are less comfortable with--that's something
someone else should be dealing with. And I would argue this is
something we absolutely must deal with.
I think the other big cleavage issue is this issue of whether we're
only dealing with the Islamic State and other Islamist extremists or
all forms of extremism. We've had some very, very, very difficult times
in this country recently, some not clearly tied to any type of
ideology, at least yet--think Las Vegas--and others absolutely--think
Charlottesville. In the wake of Charlottesville, the Military Times did
a poll, and they polled 1,131 active-duty soldiers, and they asked them
what's the biggest threat to America? And by a small margin, but a
margin nonetheless, they said that white nationalists are a bigger
threat to America than ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That's current U.S.
military. And I think maybe we should take a pause and take a moment to
reflect on that, because if we are going to create cohesive communities
that are resilient and at the most basic level in terms of mayors'
offices--the Association of Mayors is meeting right now--schools,
religious institutions, libraries, places where you can actually see
what's happening in your community and where local police are doing the
real community policing are there, that's where this is going to be
effective if it's going to be effective at all.
We have heard for many, many years about the need to have an all-
elements-of-national-policy effect--all-elements-of-national-power
policy. Let's do that here. And I worry that if it's terrorism
prevention, there'll be many elements of U.S. national government power
we won't be able to bring to the floor. And second, in this particular
area, we need much more than that. We need a whole-of-society effect.
We need to be able to work with NGOs. We need to be able to work with
grassroots organizations. We need to be able to work with mental health
professionals. At the end of the day, to the extent that homegrown
violent extremism becomes one of the next big trends, which is one of
the ways that the battlefield defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq may play
out as the terrorism threat continues, as Peter pointed out in his
opening comments--to the extent that that is true, arguably the most
important people that will be deployed to prevent the next attack will
not be police or FBI agents or intelligence analysts, but they'll be
clinical social workers and they'll be clinical psychiatrists and
psychologists, working in communities.
I'll give you one last final example, and with this I'll close.
We've had several cases--think just about Rahimi in New York, who was
just convicted for the bombings in New York and New Jersey; we had Omar
Mateen in Orlando; we've had other cases, people who had come across
the radar of law enforcement, they were not complete lone wolves, they
were known wolves, if wolves at all--but law-enforcement ran down their
strange behavior and ultimately decided there was no violation of the
law, and so they did the right thing under the law, and they closed the
investigation.
Now, to whom were they able to hand over these cases that FBI could
not pursue anymore under the law? But they were pretty strange. Omar
Mateen was saying at one point, I want to be Hezbollah, I want to be
al-Qaida, I want to be ISIS, not understanding that those groups are
fighting each other tooth-and-nail, not knowing the differences between
any of them, not being a particularly religious person himself. There
was the issue of his flunking out of correctional officer school. To
whom could they hand this off, saying, hey, here's a guy who needs help
and who's demonstrated disturbing behaviors? This is not our place.
The answer was nobody, and that's not acceptable. But I don't have
strong opinions on that. [Laughter.]
Mr. Tiersky. Thanks, Matt. I think you very powerfully raised some
important questions. What are we trying to achieve? Who will be tasked
to achieve it? What do we call it? That matters. How do we not exclude
critical agents of prevention, for lack of a better term? That was an
excellent intervention. Thank you.
I also want to thank you for reminding me that I neglected to
mention that we are streaming live on Facebook. And thank you for that.
If anyone's tweeting, you are welcome to use our handle, @HelsinkiComm.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to turn it over to the audience for
the questions and interventions you might have in a minute, but I will
take the moderator's prerogative to ask a first set of questions here.
I would like to ask Seamus and Matt to think through and explain
for us, again, this heavy-handed approach that might be
counterproductive, because as important as it is for us to be reminded
of what it is that we should be doing, we should be reminded of what
may be happening that may not be working very well. If I could ask you
to think that through and maybe give us some thoughts on things that
may not be the approach that you might recommend.
Secondly, what I would ask Peter to respond to is once we've laid
on the table some areas where there might be--it comes up again and
again, that there are differences in approach, there are differences in
definitions, and these things matter. Talk to us a little bit more
about how the OSCE can help get over those differences in definition if
nothing else in order to engender additional areas of cooperation, or
is it possible to cooperate without agreement on definitions, without
agreement on fundamental approaches? Are there still things that can
happen productively through the context of the OSCE? Or if you'd like
to raise a different tool, as we were talking about, please feel free
to do that.
So can I turn it to Matt or Seamus? Who might like to begin with my
first challenge?
Mr. Hughes. The first thing that comes to mind, is less the heavy-
handed approach and more that we don't have the soft-handed approach,
meaning that the fact that in Minneapolis, for example, we've arrested
12 individuals for terrorism charges as it relates to ISIS, but in none
of those cases do we try, or at least have a board set up for
interventions or disengagement or de-radicalization.
So if community partners are looking at these type of things and
they're saying, I have a kid I'm worried about, he clearly likes ISIS,
and the only option they have is the FBI and the only option the FBI
has in turn is an arrest or takedown, that will then feed into this
idea of the us-versus-them narrative.
I think Matt's absolutely right. This idea of off-ramps, this idea
of interventions, which to be fair is not novel except for in the
U.S.--for some reason we still think this is an interesting case to
deal with, but until we get that taken care of, I think it's going to
be an issue. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have a
material-support-to-terrorism clause in the U.S., which for right or
wrong is very elastic and broad, which allows for law enforcement to
arrest an individual who, say, is driving to the airport to go to
Turkey or going to Syria or Iraq. And so that kind of elasticity allows
for law enforcement to intervene in a criminal action in an earlier
stage than, say, our European partners may have the options to. And
that makes us not particularly creative when it comes to prevention
programs.
Mr. Levitt. Yes, I completely agree. Under material support, it's
not just a question of providing money or other types of material. You
could be providing material support by providing yourself. So again,
you drive someone to the airport, you go to training camp, and the
material support was you provided yourself.
The thing is, law enforcement, prosecutors don't want to use that
every single time. They want to have other options. Some kid who really
was about to make a bad decision and maybe shouldn't spend the rest of
his or her life behind bars--the main issue here for me is that if the
face of our best community options is law enforcement, there will be
some coming from a good place and some coming from a bad place. There's
a little bit in this area of ``haters gonna hate'' who will feel that
this is--or fear that it is--a cover for spying.
For example, at one point the FBI had a very, very well-intentioned
effort to work with local communities and create what they called
social responsibility committees that would involve the clinical social
workers and what have you, and that did not go over well because it was
FBI-driven. The idea at its core is a good one. But if you can have
locally driven, nongovernmental-driven elements to work in society that
then could have some connective tissue to law enforcement--as Seamus
said, this is not new. You know, in the U.K. and in the Netherlands,
many years ago they started these types of efforts, and the deal was
that the police would not automatically just open a file on someone who
came up for discussion at all.
On the flipside of the heavy-handed approach, I think we need to be
just as wary as a hands-off approach because there needs to be not just
funding and training support, but there needs to be coordination. So,
for example, in Minneapolis where they have more recently had a judge
who has taken it upon himself as an effort to try and bridge this gap
to bring in someone from Europe to try and do a radicalization
assessment, to see if there could be extenuating circumstances either
in terms of a plea bargain or sentencing, what have you, and that made
prosecutors around the country, even prosecutors who think this type of
an idea is a good one, very uncomfortable because it wasn't the same
across the country. So you're telling me that in Minneapolis in a
particular given situation, you're going to let someone go, or go with
six months or one-year probation, but somewhere else in the country we
don't have that and so we're going to sentence them to seven years in
prison?
We do need to have some very important federal footprint here to
help drive this effectively.
Dr. Neumann. Before I respond to your questions, Alex, let me just
highlight one point that Seamus raised that I think is another good
example of where CVE, countering violent extremism, can be really
important. One point on targeted interventions that's very obvious,
that there is a need for this capability, another area are prisons.
Prisons are the single most predictable thing that is going to become
more important in years to come simply because of numbers.
As part of my official visit, I went to the Netherlands, and I
visited the high-security prison in Vught, which is the place where the
Netherlands keeps all its convicted terrorists. And 10 years ago, the
entire country of the Netherlands had exactly 4 people in that prison,
4 people who had been convicted of terrorism-related offenses. And
that's how it stayed for a long time. Last 3 years, 30 people were
added to those 4 people. They now have not only 1 wing but 3 wings at
the prison that are being populated by people convicted of terrorism-
related offenses, and 20 more are likely to be added just this year.
And for the first time, they actually have to systematically think
about how to organize the prison, who to house with whom without
accidentally re-creating organizational or operational structures, how
to deal with people who are disillusioned. What opportunities exist for
these people to become de-radicalized within prisons? Always
considering what Seamus pointed out, that in a lot of countries where
people have not necessarily killed anyone but are convicted of, for
example, membership in a terrorist organization, which is a criminal
offense in a lot of countries, people have been convicted for three
full years and will be out very soon.
In fact, for example, it was announced only a couple of days ago
that 54 percent of the terrorist prisoner population in France will be
out before the year 2020. This is not something that can be
unaddressed, and it is something that will come up as an issue for
almost every member state of the OSCE. What are countries doing to
prepare themselves for that? To what extent are they learning from
other countries that have more experience with organizing terrorist
prisoners within prison? What opportunities are there to de-radicalize
or disengage people? What opportunities are there for dealing with
people after they are being released? These questions basically should
arise in every single one of the 57 member states of the OSCE, and
that's why it's important to learn from each other.
On your specific question of what scope is there for cooperation
without a definition, I don't think it's likely that within the OSCE
context or within the U.N. context there will be an agreed definition
of terrorism anytime soon. And perhaps that's not necessarily an
obstacle. In fact, within the U.N. context, within the OSCE context,
countries have worked, collaborated, cooperated with each other on
specific groups such as, for example, ISIS on a case-by-case basis. I
think there is an understanding, a working understanding of what the
groups are that you're trying to counter.
However, the absence of definitions of course then does create
problems. To give you two examples--and this is not off the record, but
these are well-stated positions--when I went to Moscow, almost everyone
I talked to asked me, what is CVE? We don't get it. We don't understand
it. Can you explain it to us? And I don't think that was entirely made
up. I think they really fail to understand, and they had the firm
impression--and to some extent this is the fault of the Obama
administration--they had the firm impression that in fact the Americans
wanted to replace counterterrorism with CVE altogether. To make them
understand that this is not a substitute or a replacement but is
complementary to traditional counterterrorism efforts is a point that
no one ever made to them.
And I think that's why I spent quite a lot of time in my report on
definitions because I think it is important to lay this out and to
explain that CVE is essentially identical to VERLT and to PVE, as U.N.
calls it. Every organization wants to have its own acronym. And by
doing that, they are creating, in fact, a lot of confusion.
The second example I want to give you is perhaps the more poignant
one, and it highlights that this is not really a debate about
definitions. It's really a debate about political priorities.
When I went to Ankara, when I went to Turkey, they told me, yes,
we're against ISIS. ISIS is a threat to our country. They've killed
people in our country, so we're happy to collaborate. However, we also
have other terrorist organizations that we want to counter. We want to
counter what they call now FETO, the Gulen organization, which they
push very hard at an international level--they consider them to be
terrorists--no one agrees with them, but that's what they do. It's a
terrorist organization for them, and America is protecting it, because
the leader of that organization sits somewhere in Pennsylvania.
And [they told me] the second group that we are against is the PKK.
And in fact, the PKK for us is a more pressing threat than ISIS. They
kill a lot more people in our country. And America in its fight against
ISIS is, according to Turkey, arming, training and equipping the PKK.
So clearly when it comes to speaking to Turkey, for example, about
countering violent extremism, countering terrorism, it's a completely
different narrative, it's a completely different set of priorities. And
I don't think it's very easy to bridge that. Yes, to some extent they
are collaborating on CVE efforts. They are not against it. But the sort
of discourse that we're having here in Washington, D.C. is not the
discourse that they are having in Ankara, and that makes it difficult.
And, yes, you can find areas of collaboration, but ultimately it will
always come to the point where these political differences--these are
not differences about definitions, they are political differences--will
basically make it impossible to go all the way. That's why the OSCE
should not be the sole instrument for fighting violent extremism, but
it can be useful in some respects.
Mr. Tiersky. Thank you, Peter.
Another cleavage that seems obvious to me from what's been said by
the panelist today is a difference of perspectives on the role of civil
society versus the role of the state on some of these questions.
Do we have questions from the audience? Please, if you wouldn't
mind using the microphone for our colleagues on Facebook who might be
watching. Thanks very much, and please identify yourself.
Questioner. Yes, Ismail Royer from the Center for Islam and
Religious Freedom.
I'm wondering if there's something about the difference between
America as a society and Europe as a society that results in this very
different scale and scope and nature of the threat of homegrown
terrorism between these two societies. And if so, obviously we can't
re-engineer European society, but are there some lessons to be drawn
from that?
Thanks.
Mr. Tiersky. It's quite a broad question. Would anyone like to
begin?
Mr. Levitt. I think Peter should try and re-engineer European
society. [Laughter.]
Dr. Neumann. This has often been articulated. There's no question
that Muslims in European societies feel more marginalized and that,
objectively speaking, they are more marginalized, and that it is more
difficult, let's say, to become a true Brit, or true German, or to
truly belong to French society if your first name is Muhammad and you
are from a suburb of Paris, whereas it is easier, even in the first
generation of immigration, to become accepted as an American. And so I
do think that we have something to learn from the American experience.
However, at the same time, it is also true that in America Muslim
immigration has been perhaps more selective and is more spread out
across the country. In fact, the only area within the United States
that is perhaps comparable to the European situation are Somali
communities in Minnesota--James can speak with more authority on that--
and that's where we're seeing a disproportionate number of recruits to
first al-Shabab and then Islamic State. But outside of Minnesota, the
kind of ghettos that you hear about--Molenbeek in Brussels, the suburbs
of Paris, do not exist to the same extent.
So I think, yes, there is something. There is a best practice,
perhaps. But, again--and I'm speaking as a European here--this is
something that is very difficult for politicians in particular to
articulate, to domestic audiences, especially at times when far-right
populists are gaining ground. And to say to people that perhaps we have
to become more willing to integrate Muslim communities that are blamed
for all sorts of things is very difficult.
Mr. Hughes. I would agree with all those points and I would add a
few other things to consider. Just in general, the geographic
dispersion, it's a little bit harder for our folks to get to Syria and
Iraq in general. And the fact that the material support for terrorism
clause allows you to break up folks probably sooner than other
countries.
But probably the most important kind of dynamic is we haven't seen
kind of the in-network, or in-person recruitment that we've seen in
Europe. We don't have a sharia for U.S. kind of playing out here. We
did in the early 2000s with Revolution Muslim, and once that
organization was taken down--for the most part in the U.S. context
you're talking about twos and threes, not fours and fives of
individuals going.
So we talk a lot about this idea of online radicalization or online
recruitment. Minneapolis is a good example of this dynamic. You know,
12 guys get out of Minneapolis and go try to join ISIS. In Columbus,
Ohio, or Lewiston, Maine, or San Diego, with the same kind of similar
demographics, it's zero to one guy, and they all have wi-fi. It's not
really a matter of ease of use of the internet. It has to do with the
fact that the first wave of guys left Minneapolis to go to al-Shabab,
and their brothers and sisters and roommates then were the next wave
that went to ISIS, and they called back their friends. So this in-
person recruitment, this in-person network I think matters a great
deal. And for the most part, we've been fortunate in the U.S. to not
have that kind of growing.
Mr. Levitt. You guys covered all the most important points. I'll
just use this to pivot one little bit, and that is to say you often
hear that America's the greatest melting pot, and therefore that's the
big difference. And there's something to that, but it's limited.
I would take this opportunity to say that while border security is
an important issue, I think there's been a little bit too much of a
focus on the travel issues and travel bans on that as a
counterterrorism issue, because I don't really see it as a
counterterrorism issue, at least a particularly important one. And then
here I would cite two Department of Homeland Security and Senate
Homeland Security Committee reports, both of which conclude or
highlight that at the end of the day, if you look at the cases of
people who've been radicalized, certainly to the point of violence in
this country, to a one, they were radicalized here, including people
who came from abroad but were not radicalized before they came here. So
it's not the case, or it's certainly not just the case, that if we
could address the issue of border security we would address a problem
of radicalization and radical incidents in this country. It highlights
the need for this panel and the need for programs that will be
happening, not from the outside-in but inside, because at a minimum
radicalization also happens here in the United States--even if our
situation is very different from that in Europe.
Mr. Tiersky. Excellent.
Anybody else would like to take the floor from the audience at this
point? Any questions?
Ambassador Strohal, please. If you wouldn't mind using the
microphone.
Questioner. Yes, thank you. Maybe just a comment rather than a
question, if I may.
Mr. Tiersky. Please.
Questioner. Simply thanking you--first of all, it is the Austrian
National Day, and there is no better place than the Helsinki Commission
to spend it, because you are this unique interface between government,
parliament, and civil society. And this debate is a great debate among
super experts, I think, precisely looking at this interface.
And maybe just a couple of points why we have been bringing this
into the OSCE. Peter mentioned a few arguments already. I think the
wider picture is that this is an organization where everybody's there,
all the 57 governments who make up this organization, but also where we
have a very comprehensive security concept. And so where we have been
starting is, as Austrian chairmanship, was looking where are the key
risks and threats our societies are facing together? And if I simplify
a little bit, then we have war, like the one in Eastern Ukraine. We
have other conflicts in the OSCE region, not only outside the region.
We have also grave violations of international law and international
principles which are putting effective multilateralism increasingly
into danger. And we have more specifically radicalization which could
lead to terrorism, as a specific focus we wanted to create and where we
are extremely grateful to not only have found Peter Neumann but to see
that he agreed to work with us throughout this year on what became a
great report. I think you have created not only attention but a great
focus on this issue, and provided a number of very important case
studies and recommendations. And we are certainly looking, at the
moment, with other OSCE states how we can ensure the most meaningful
followup to your report and to your recommendations.
And certainly the main thrust of this in terms of preventing things
from happening is bringing us also very much to all our domestic
situations in Europe, which indeed are different. And just to give you
a couple of figures, Austria is a country of less than 9 million
people, but we calculate that there about 300 people who have left for
ISIS. Hundred probably are dead, hundred are still there and a hundred
have come back. If you take a country like Belgium, the proportions are
even higher. So this is a real daily concern in all our countries and
all our societies. So the focus we will be creating in terms of
exchanging not only best practices but enhancing cooperation across all
57 on these issues has been greatly facilitated by Peter Neumann and
certainly also discussions like this one here today. And I hope we can
see more of them.
And thank you once more.
Mr. Tiersky. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, and thank you for this
excellent intervention and thank you especially for sharing your
National Day with us. That's very much appreciated.
Ladies and gentlemen, I certainly have more questions. I want to
make sure there's an opportunity for the audience. I see two in the
back here.
Yes, please.
Questioner. Hello. I'm--[inaudible]--journalist from Lebanon.
Well, let me speak about radicalization. You need funding for it.
And isn't it a double-standard sometimes to fight radicalization and be
friends with nations that are funding these groups? Okay, there is
ideology, we understand. This idea was here we cannot fight it
overnight, but can a state fight--nations are funding these groups,
like in ISIS, for example, the border, like early days, how ISIS start
growing by receiving money and the Turkish border and in Syria--well,
of course, the war posed a lot of problems, like ISIS was moving
around, selling oil and gas to Turkey. I mean, just an example I'm
giving here. Qatar, you know, in WikiLeaks, it was very obvious that
they were funding some groups or extremists, and these groups used the
money to organize people.
This question probably you can also answer. Do you understand, the
state, how they treat if there is racism--probably, you know, some
people feel like they don't belong to a society. They try to find
groups that can host them. And probably these extremist groups--and
U.S. are not going so much into societies, but in France, we know there
is a high tension of racism against Arabs. Probably sometimes they feel
they're left alone from the community and some groups like extremists
like ISIS, that's why they recruited many people from France or also
from North Africa, like from Tunis and Morocco. But my major concern
here, isn't it a double standard when we're trying to fight radicalism
and recruiting young people or poor people from neighborhoods or
whatever, and we're not fighting the funding of these groups that are
making them become bigger and bigger?
Thank you.
Mr. Tiersky. Thanks very much.
I'd like to take the next question as well at this time, please.
Questioner. Hi. I'm Erika Schlager with the Helsinki Commission
staff, and I'd like to start by thanking everyone on the panel for
being here today. This kind of event is extremely helpful for us in
informing the work that we do at the Helsinki Commission. So let me
start with that.
I work on human rights issues, and this is a little bit outside my
box. But when Mr. Hughes mentioned the material support statute, I was
reminded how a number of human rights groups in the United States have
sometimes been critical of the way the material support statute has
been used or have been critical of conspiracy charges in certain
instances where some NGOs have said that's really tantamount to a
thought crime.
My question is, how do you ensure, when you do the work that you're
doing, that you're adequately factoring in the human rights
perspective? And I say that mindful that human rights grievances can
sometimes itself be a driver for radicalization.
Thanks.
Mr. Tiersky. I think that the panel is in consensus that Matt will
take the first crack.
Mr. Levitt. I've been thrown under the bus--not the last or first
time.
This is a great opportunity to show how things should work when
people don't fight with each other to the point of radicalization.
Peter and I agree on a great many things, especially on this topic. We
have a disagreement on some terror financing issues which we have
competing articles in Foreign Affairs, and we've both been, I think,
quite proud of how the example we've set on Twitter--which is not known
for polite discussion and debate--at how we've handled that. So I'll
just say a quick comment and then, Peter, you should feel free to
disagree if you like.
Look, the issue of ISIS financing is exceptional and unique. The
amount of foreign funding that the Islamic State got from individuals,
which happened--or from countries, which happened less--was quite
small. The massive amounts of money that it got, that enabled it to do
all the things that we know about, atrocities and more, is primarily
from being able to raid banks, somewhere between 500 million and a
billion dollars in Mosul alone, and then control of territory. And by
virtue of controlling territory, it was able to exploit local
resources, whether it was oil or other things, and even just taxation.
And they taxed everything that you could possibly imagine.
In that sense, by the way, while the threat from the Islamic State
is not over, as Peter pointed out in his opening comments, the Islamic
State will have, on the one hand, far reduced economic needs--because
it's not running a quote-unquote country, but also have far, far fewer
resources--arguably more than enough resources to be able to provide
seed money to terrorist attacks--which cost very little money--and
maybe it won't even need that because most homegrown violent extremists
who are inspired by the Islamic State will finance attacks through
crime or their own bank accounts. We're talking small amounts of money.
The issue of the double standard is complicated, and maybe an OSCE
event is a good place to discuss that, because the end of the world, we
need to be a little bit of realpolitik. And if you want to be able to
effect change in what's happening in Syria, you're going to need to
work with Turkey.
Turkey was pretty upset when then-President Obama got up in front
of cameras after repeated U.S. Government attempts to try and get
Turkey to shut down a very large portion of its border that was not
shut down. Turkey was very upset when President Obama got up and said
publicly you haven't shut down this border and you're effectively
facilitating the activities of the Islamic State. They were very upset,
but they then shut down, gradually, that border. So partly the double
standard; this is how we have to behave sometimes in the real world.
You know, there are some counter radicalization, counternarrative
institutions in the Gulf, for example, some of which are doing some
quite good work. Many people are critical of that saying, well, hasn't
radicalization come, at least in the past, maybe even currently from
Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, and the answer is, first of all, there's
been some progress and change. And second, we need to work with people.
Arguably, Muslims in the region will have more credibility on issues
related to the Islamic faith than maybe an American government
official. So on the double standard, I would say that.
On the issue of the human rights question, I'd simply say that
there is a very large element here of ``haters going to hate,'' and
there's also some absolute important truth to this as well. The big
issue here is entrapment and whether people are being entrapped into
actually doing something, which ultimately is what has to happen for
there to be a material support or a conspiracy charge. And I think that
law enforcement has gotten very, very good, and there are lots of
really specific things put in place to make sure that entrapment
doesn't happen. The fact that entrapment defense has not worked in a
whole lot of cases, in courts that are not unsympathetic to that claim,
I think is telling.
And so I would challenge the idea that ultimately what's happening
here is a thought crime, a thought police type of situation. I am very
sensitive, however, to the fact that when it gets to CVE/PVE, before
someone is charged with an actual material support, that that's the
sensitive spot. We don't want, as I said, FBI or other law enforcement
to be involved in that pre-crime space because we don't want them to be
thought police. But there has to be someone who legitimately, from a
nonprofit, from a social cohesion, local community perspective, the
same way social workers and high schools will get involved when they
see a kid who's got a problem having nothing to do with violation of
the law will be able to get involved. And I am--and I hope others--are
sensitive to this issue of doing it in such a way that people will feel
comfortable participating and not have to think, well, maybe I
shouldn't get involved because maybe this is somehow involved with
spying and thought police. That's where I come to that particular
issue.
Mr. Hughes. Maybe one last point on Matt's point. In the U.S.
context, I think actually transparency matters a great deal, too. And
so when I seek re-engagement, part of that was to kind of explain
systematically what the material support of terrorism clause was so
people understood what the right and left lines are on it. And then
it's especially important when it comes to the online space. You know,
the idea of countering alternative messages is great except for if
folks don't want to do that because they're worried if they talk to a
known or suspected terrorist they're going to hit against a terrorism
statute. And so providing some level of guidance for community
practitioners on what's OK online I think is incumbent on Department of
Justice and others like that to do that.
And then finally--and there are other kinds of low-hanging things
that we should be able to do, which is, what is the requirement for--in
the U.S. context for a religious leader who tries an intervention but
the individual gets arrested. Do they have to be a witness in a
terrorism trial? If they try intervention and it goes south, and that
young man stabs a bunch of people in a mall, are they civilly liable
for these things? These are kind of easy-ish questions to wrap our
heads around, that if we got enough lawyers in a room and took away the
food, we could figure this out. And I think it's incumbent on us to
figure that out.
Dr. Neumann. I can briefly particularly respond to the first
question. And in fact, I agree with everything that Matt said.
Mr. Levitt. I'm done. [Laughter.]
Dr. Neumann. But I want to add a couple more points. The first is
particularly delicate because of course the question that was raised is
one that often if not always comes up. I agree with Matt that the
direct funding that comes from Gulf countries to organizations like
ISIS is perhaps a little bit exaggerated. However, if you go to
different OSCE countries, if you travel across Central Asia, you go to
Kazakhstan, you go to Kyrgyzstan, you go to the western Balkans, you go
to Bosnia, for example, what people will tell you--and I'm not saying I
agree or I don't agree, I'm just telling you what people tell me in all
these places--they say while at some point Saudi came in and started
paying for mosques, and four or five years later we started having a
problem. And they believe that this is not a coincidence.
And it is of course true that the Saudi form of Islam--whether you
call it Salafism or Wahhabism--the kind of activity that Persian Gulf
countries have sponsored is not directly aimed at creating terrorist
groups, but you can easily see how some people, a minority of people
who then follow these tendencies, then pervert this kind of already
rigid form of Islam and then end up supporting terrorist groups. In
fact, I'm saying this because that's exactly what the crown prince of
Saudi Arabia said only two days ago when he in fact said at a
conference that mistakes have been made, that his country overreacted
to the Iranian revolution in 1979 and that they want to now return to a
more moderate form of Islam. And so in that sense, he confirmed what a
lot of people have suspected. That's one problem that has been
identified in many OSCE countries.
The second one is related to what's happening in the Middle East. I
think sometimes people underestimate quite how tectonic the changes are
that are currently happening in the Middle East. I'm absolutely
convinced that in 100 or 200 years we will be reading about this period
in history books. And while we are very focused on Islamic State
because they are the ones threatening us, the reality in the region is
that there are a number of conflicts going on. There is sectarian
conflict between Sunni and Shiites. There is a regional power conflict
between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There is a domestic conflict between
military authoritarian rulers and the Muslim Brotherhood. And there is
of course the rise of jihadism. And all of these things are happening
at the same time.
And I think it is obvious that at least at the beginning of the
Syrian conflict, there was a widespread view amongst Sunni powers in
the region, that they would support whoever was fighting against what
was perceived as a Shiite conspiracy led by President Assad supported
by Hezbollah and backed by Iran, and that countries were not
particularly discriminating, at least at the beginning, when it came to
supporting groups, some of which took an extreme turn and ended up
essentially becoming jihadist groups. And that's what explains, to some
extent, why you can make a connection between some of the support that
went into that conflict, supported armed groups as part of that
conflict, that ended up with groups like Islamic State.
It was not so much intentional. It was, I think, a case of neglect
and carelessness. And I hope that countries in the region are going to
be more discriminating and more careful and more considering the
consequences of some of the groups that they support, thinking that
they are supporting one or the other side in a particular conflict. It
is very complex, and I do think that explains to some extent what's
been happening in the region.
Mr. Tiersky. Thanks very much.
We have a question in the back. I think this will be the last
question before I ask our panel to provide their concluding thoughts so
that we can finish on time. Please.
Questioner. Sherry Hartley [sp], Congressman Hastings' office.
Peter, I'm wondering if you could expand on the OSCE Action Against
Terrorism Units and specifically if they're collaborating on
counterproliferation. And I'm looking towards WMD dual-use
technologies, emergent technologies, if you uncovered any of that
aspect.
Dr. Neumann. I can answer that very briefly. Yes, it is amongst the
list of things that they do, but it's probably fair to say that in the
last three or four years that was not one of their priorities. There
were not a lot of activities in that area even though it is within
their remit. And if there was a lot of interest from member states,
they would start doing that again. But right now, there's not a lot of
activity.
Mr. Tiersky. Let me ask our panelists for their final thoughts, and
maybe I'll frame this this way: At the risk of asking you for a
forecast, I'm going to ask you for a kind of a forecast. What's the
best-case scenario for international cooperation on countering
radicalization? And what's the worst-case scenario? What are the
consequences therein?
Well, we'll have Peter be our final speaker on this, so I'll ask
Seamus or Matt, take us to your thoughts.
Mr. Hughes. OK, so what's the best-case scenario? Best-case
scenario, everything works out. No, the best-case scenario is some sort
of patchwork of CV programs where what works in Austria can then be
translated to what happens in U.K. and having some level of that type
of information sharing in a more systematic and comprehensive way.
The worst-case scenario is kind of what I lined out in my opening
statement, which is CV becomes the cause of and solution to all the
world's problems and it becomes this catch-all phrase where the issues
that Peter laid out in Turkey become tenfold in other countries too,
and we see that play out, whether you're looking at Russia or other
places like that. And so this question of definitions and this question
of kind of all singing from the same sheet of music I think is quite
important when it comes to CV.
Mr. Levitt. The bottom line is that this is not a situation that we
can arrest, shoot or kill our way out of alone, and so in a best-case
scenario we are brave enough to try and fail, and learn from those
lessons and try again. I see many more examples of that in Europe than
I do here. And if I can be perfectly blunt, it's largely because on
Capitol Hill there isn't much of an appetite on any side of the aisle.
It's just not our political culture in this country for tolerance of
failure. When our report came out and we briefed all kinds of
committees and we briefed the departments, when we briefed the
committees in particular, a lot of them said, well, can you show me
metrics of success. I said, well, we'd need to actually try something
which we could then measure. So, well, why should I fund something that
I don't know will work? And I said why do we ever. We do things. And it
was a little bit of a circular process, and that funding has not been
forthcoming.
And so, to date, what's working is private funding, local funding.
And I think it's a big problem that what little federal funding has
picked up, has since been cut, the CVE federal grants in particular.
But if we did well, we would learn these lessons learned, we would
share them, and we would tailor them, because what happens not just in
a given OSCE country to another OSCE country, but what happens in
Washington, D.C., is not going to be exactly the same as the way it
works in Minneapolis, or L.A., or Boston, or what have you. It's not
going to be one-size-fits-all. That's if it goes well, and it will be a
long slog and a messy process. That's if it goes well.
If it doesn't go well, we decide that it's too complicated or
perhaps we say that CVE/PVE, choose your nomenclature, it's just too
soft. And our job is to stop terrorists, not to coddle them. And if we
find someone anywhere in this field, we should use the material support
statute in every single case, and if someone has a problem they should
go talk to their mommy. And we will do CT, thank you very much, and the
rest of it is not what we do. That would be a colossal mistake, not
only from a counterterrorism and violence prevention perspective, but
from a perspective of social cohesion and community resilience as well.
Mr. Tiersky. Peter, final thoughts other than of course the best-
case scenario being that we adopt all of your commendations in the
report, please. [Laughter.]
Dr. Neumann. Exactly. That's what I was going to say.
I do think that there is a case to be made for a more systematic
lessons-learned process, exactly as Seamus mentioned. I do think that
you can imagine more cooperation, but I think there needs to be an
awareness of the limits of what is possible. I think sometimes people
working in international organizations are overambitious, and I think
we need to recognize--everyone needs to recognize--that CVE is only one
part of the puzzle and that the OSCE is only a very small part of the
CVE/CT puzzle. As long as we all recognize that, I do think good things
can come out of that. But the worst enemy of progress is being
overambitious and then failing and then turning in the opposite
direction and thinking nothing works. I hope we can have a nuanced,
sensible understanding of what works and what doesn't work.
Mr. Tiersky. Well, I think certainly good things have come out of
your willingness to come here and present your report and, Matt and
Seamus, your willingness to come and provide us your expertise. As one
of my colleagues have said, this type of event is extremely helpful for
us to help staff our members in the broader community here that's
interested in the issues that we're all working on together. Thank you
all for being here. I'd like to thank the audience for your excellent
questions. And if everyone could please thank our panelists in the
customary manner. [Applause.]
A transcript of this briefing should be available within a few days
on our website. Thank you. This concludes the event.
[Whereupon, at 3:32 p.m., the briefing ended.]
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