The Islamic State foreign fighter phenomenon and the jihadi threat to India

Research to-date on so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) or ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s' (ISIS) foreign fighters has mainly covered the movement of these from Western countries to Iraq and Syria. A significant, but under-researched, number of foreign fighters from South-Asian countries have also travelled to IS-controlled regions. It is estimated that around 1,000 foreign fighters from five countries in South-Asia, including China, had departed by 2015. Somewhat surprisingly, India, with the second-largest Muslim population in the world (c.172 million) after Indonesia, has an official count of just 23 foreign fighters travelling to IS-controlled regions in Iraq and Syria, to 2017. The Indian foreign fighter contingent appears tiny in comparison with the European foreign fighter numbers or those of foreign fighters from other nations in the Indian Subcontinent (e.g. Pakistan, Maldives). This thesis thus sought to determine if the Indian foreign fighter count is greater than the official count, how Indian foreign fighters compared with other foreign fighters in terms of individual characteristics, and the threat posed by these to India going forward. It is the first substantive analysis of the Indian foreign fighters in IS. It was found that the number of Indian foreign fighters, including departures for Afghanistan, is 38. Data about these 38 individuals, gleaned from media accounts, court and other official documents, were then subject to analysis. The collected data was categorised according to determinants such as age, gender, home location, education, employment, etc. Comparison between Indian and European foreign fighters was also conducted to find the similarities and differences between them based on these factors. The biggest difference was in relation to foreign fighters’ prior criminal convictions. Many European fighters had criminal backgrounds, whereas only two of the Indian foreign fighters fit this description. Fourteen of the Indians are reportedly dead and just two are returnees, so unlikely to bring about the ‘Islamic State-Khorasan’ in the Indian Subcontinent by 2020 as called for by IS. This thesis nonetheless also explores the threat posed by returned or returning fighters to India

Do Machines Replicate Humans? Toward a Unified Understanding of Radicalizing Content on the Open Social Web

The advent of the Internet inadvertently augmented the functioning and success of violent extremist organizations. Terrorist organizations like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) use the Internet to project their message to a global audience. The majority of research and practice on web‐based terrorist propaganda uses human coders to classify content, raising serious concerns such as burnout, mental stress, and reliability of the coded data. More recently, technology platforms and researchers have started to examine the online content using automated classification procedures. However, there are questions about the robustness of automated procedures, given insufficient research comparing and contextualizing the difference between human and machine coding. This article compares output of three text analytics packages with that of human coders on a sample of one hundred nonindexed web pages associated with ISIS. We find that prevalent topics (e.g., holy war) are accurately detected by the three packages whereas nuanced concepts (Lone Wolf attacks) are generally missed. Our findings suggest that naïve approaches of standard applications do not approximate human understanding, and therefore consumption, of radicalizing content. Before radicalizing content can be automatically detected, we need a closer approximation to human understanding

Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures

Insurgency and guerrilla warfare impose enormous socioeconomic costs and often persist for decades. This paper studies the detection of unobserved coalitions of insur-gent groups in con ict areas, and their main socioeconomic determinants. We present a novel methodology based on daily geocoded incident-level data on insurgent attacks, and provide an application in the context of the Afghan con ict during the 2004-2009 period. We show statistically that the Afghani Taliban are not an umbrella coalition, but rather a highly unied group, and that their span of control has grown substantially beyond ethnic Pashtun areas post-2007

The Terrorism Trap: The Hidden Impact of America\u27s War on Terror

Nearly two decades after the declaration of the War on Terror, global terrorist attacks have increased. Beginning in 2005, the levels of domestic terrorism have drastically increased while international terrorism has not. This is a result of U.S. counterterrorism policy shifting towards “disaggregation” in which the U.S. government would focus on breaking up the global al Qaeda network into disconnected groups and rely on partner states’ militaries to target them. In particular, partner states’ focused their counterterrorism operations on the “ungoverned spaces” on their periphery, regions with a history of conflict with the central government and limited government presence in which it was feared al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliated groups would use as safe havens. Domestic terrorism within partner states rose as a result of revenge attacks from the targeted communities and groups in the periphery in response to the offensive military actions of the state, especially when they resulted in civilian casualties. The increase in domestic terrorism led to further U.S. pressure to expand the counterterrorism operations in the periphery, exacerbating the underlying conditions that led to the outbreak of domestic terrorism. This led partner states to sink deeper into a terrorism trap. This study uses quantitative analysis of a global dataset and case studies of Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, and Egypt to demonstrate and test the terrorism trap theory

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Complex Systems Programme, NIAS Foundation Day, Regular Updates, Events & Publications, Campus Note

Cinematic Kathmandu: Imaginaries of the City

This thesis is an analysis of the relationship between the imagined and material city of Kathmandu as represented in films. It centers on the main argument that cities from the Global South and those in the periphery such as Kathmandu can be studied as cinematic cities. By analyzing the screen depictions of migration and urbanization in Kathmandu, this study proposes to understand ‘new Nepali cinema’ as 'urban popular’ films. However, the twin tropes of maulikatā and nepālīpana attached to ‘new Nepali cinema’ complicate its understanding. These arguments are derived from visual and textual analysis, qualitative interviews, and participant observation. The study also locates the architectural identifiers of Kathmandu and analyses the screen images of Nepali women in films. Furthermore, it traces the history and patterns of film viewing practices in Kathmandu’s cinema halls, multiplexes, film festivals, and digital platforms. This research seeks to address the gap in the study of cinematic cities which is currently dominated by literature on cities from the Global North

The Suffocation of Free Speech under the Gravity of Danger of Terrorism

On July 14, 2005, Ali al-Timimi was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years for acts of pure speech. The United States government contended that Timimi, through his lectures and direct personal appeals, induced and/or aided and abetted local Muslim men to leave the country and pursue jihad training with the intent to defend the Taliban against all potential enemies, including the United States. Buried in nearly 200 pages of jury instructions was a single paragraph that unceremoniously described the law of protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio. At first blush, Brandenburg seemed to unequivocally lay down the rule for advocacy of illegal action, yet it has offered little protection over the years, and has raised more questions than it has answered. The trial of United States of America v. Ali Al-Timimi is an ideal case to probe the protections under Brandenburg. The analysis concludes that the jury did not properly apply Brandenburg because Brandenburg should have protected Timimi’s speech