Foto: coronavirus/Nursing Schools Near Me/CC BY 2.0
Morten Bøås and Viljar Haavik
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
The COVID-19 pandemic is directly and indirectly affecting governments’ ability to prevent violent extremism effectively and presents core challenges to the counter-terrorism community globally. According to renowned anti-terrorist expert Professor Magnus Ranstorp, ‘COVID-19 and extremism are the perfect storm’. The pandemic reveals state weaknesses, amplify frustrations directed at the state, and enables extremist groups to take advantage of governments’ preoccupation with public health crises and economic downturn.
In light of this, many of PREVEX’ partners have provided short briefings on COVID-19 and violent extremism in several of the project’s selected case countries. These are presented in a short and easily accessible form, and we believe they represent important insights that concerned stakeholders need to be aware of. We will not attempt to reproduce the empirical richness and insight that they represent, but we would like to point out a few general trends.
One of the major fallouts of the pandemic is the economic downturn and disruption following the implementation of drastic measures leading to the loss of millions of jobs. Such rapid and negative social change creates fear, uncertainty, and anger that extremist groups are able to exploit as they tend to flourish in areas where significant mistrust exist between a government and its population. The extremist groups use the opportunity to promote their ideologies, recruit, and incite hatred and violence.
Salafists-extremists interpret the pandemic as a divine punishment against infidels and the destruction of Western societies. Particularly al-Qaeda and the Islamic State aligned groups encourage their followers to exploit the pandemic to perform terrorist attacks. In Mali and Niger, attacks by jihadist insurgents have continued unabated by the pandemic. However, some of the country briefs also show that not all Salafists insurgents succeed in exploiting the pandemic to their benefit (see the Algeria and Morocco briefs) nor do they all seek to incite violence during this crisis (see the Bosnia and Herzegovina brief). This suggests not only that countries and societies display very different levels of resilience to violent extremism and that an enabling environment does not have to be ignited, but also that the field of Salafism is wide and involves a number of actors, both non-violent and violent. These are important research themes that lie at the heart of the PREVEX research agenda.
It is equally important to recognise that far-right extremists also exploit the opportunities presented by the pandemic by promoting conspiracy-theories, voicing anti-minority sentiments and inciting violence. In the Balkans, and particularly in Serbia, the COVID-19 exacerbate the problem of reciprocal radicalisation where the actions of far-right extremists may trigger a response from Salafists and vice versa.
The country briefs demonstrate that, to varying degrees, extremist movements and insurgents are exploiting the situation to acquire and consolidate political legitimacy, while governments are struggling with the societal, economic and political consequences of the pandemic.
The briefs so far contain reports from the Balkan and North Africa and the Sahel, but we will soon also include briefs from several Middle East countries where PREVEX is active with research.
