The Associated Press
By Brian Murphy
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Security officials around the world need more grass-roots strategies to understand the “radicalization process” and win over extremists with brains-over-brawn outreach such as moderate clerics, said a report Monday at an Interpol gathering in Qatar.
The paper — compiled by former counterterrorism experts from agencies including the CIA and FBI — urges authorities to expand traditional intelligence and investigation work to include programs that directly challenge the ideology of groups such as al-Qaida and other factions.
Such efforts are not new. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Indonesia use various methods to try to sway the views of Islamic extremists. The U.S. military also tried to win over captured insurgents in Iraq.
But the study by the Qatar International Academy of Security Studies, a Doha-based think-tank, concluded that security agencies generally are falling short. It urged officials to dedicate more resources toward undermining the recruitment efforts of extremist groups and persuading jailed radicals to reject violence once they are freed.
Steve Kleinman, a former U.S. military senior interrogator, said security officials have to recognize and counter the “narrative” of extremists groups, such as al-Qaida leaders describing their fight against Western “crusaders.”
“It’s very clear a driving force — if not the driving force — that would take someone down the road from benign existence to violent extremism is … being presented with, and ultimately buying into, a narrative to take up arms for a specific cause,” said Kleinman…
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