Counterterrorism, also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism.
The Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT) is a bureau of the United States Department of State. It coordinates all U.S. Government efforts to improve counterterrorism cooperation with foreign governments and participates in the development, coordination, and implementation of American counterterrorism policy.
Rik Coolsaet is a Belgian academic. He is professor emeritus of International Relations at Ghent University (Belgium) and Senior Associate Fellow at Egmont Institute, Brussels.
Hisham A. Hellyer is a British scholar, historian and analyst on geopolitics, security studies, political economy, and belief. His geographic areas of study include the modern Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Radicalization is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalization. Radicalization can result in both violent and nonviolent action – academic literature focuses on radicalization into violent extremism (RVE) or radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. Multiple separate pathways can promote the process of radicalization, which can be independent but are usually mutually reinforcing.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a political advocacy organization founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies (CSS). From 2005 to early 2007 he was a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he served both as a senior official within the department's terrorism and financial intelligence branch and as deputy chief of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. From 2001 to 2005, Levitt served the Institute as founding director of its Terrorism Research Program, which was established in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Previously, he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counter-terrorism operations at the FBI, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. During his FBI service, Levitt participated as a team member in a number of crisis situations, including the terrorist threat surrounding the turn of the millennium and the September 11 attacks.
Jytte Klausen is a Danish-born scholar of politics who teaches at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts as the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of International Cooperation in the Department of Politics. Klausen has also served as an affiliate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard, among other positions.
Erroll G. Southers is an American expert in transportation security and counterterrorism. He is the author of Homegrown Violent Extremism (2013). Southers is a Professor of the Practice in National & Homeland Security, the Director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies and the Director of the Safe Communities Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is also the research area leader for Countering Violent Extremism at the DHS National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) and managing director, counter-terrorism & infrastructure protection at TAL Global Corporation. He was assistant chief of the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) police department's office of homeland security and intelligence. He is a former special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was deputy director of homeland security under California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2009 he was nominated by President Barack Obama to become head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), but Southers withdrew.
Richard Martin Donne Barrett CMG OBE is a former British diplomat and intelligence officer now involved in countering violent extremism. Barrett is a recognised global expert on terrorism who frequently appears as a panellist in related conferences and whose commentary is regularly featured in the press.
The Global Center on Cooperative Security is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit research and policy institute based in New York, Washington D.C., London, Brussels, and Nairobi. The Global Center works to improve multilateral security cooperation through policy research and issue-area projects throughout the world.
Rommel C. Banlaoi is a Filipino political scientist, security analyst, an international studies expert, counterterrorism scholar, and a sinologist. He was nominated and designated as a Deputy National Security Adviser with the rank of Undersecretary in July 2022 to lead in the transition process at the National Security Council Secretariat. But he has returned to his work as an independent scholar and a non-government subject matter expert on geopolitics, peace and security studies; counterterrorism research; and, China studies. He is a celebrity professor and policy influencer known for his scholarly works on international terrorism, South China disputes, foreign affairs and geopolitical issues. He is the Chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research (PIPVTR) and President of the Philippine Society for International Security Studies (PSISS), both academic and non-governmental organizations.
The White House released the United States' first strategy to address "ideologically inspired" violence in August 2011. Entitled Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, the eight-page document outlines "how the Federal Government will support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism." The strategy was followed in December 2011 by a more detailed Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States. The National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners and the strategic implementation plan (SIP) resulted from the identification of violent extremism and terrorism inspired by "al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents" as the "preeminent security threats" to the United States by the 2010 National Security Strategy and the 2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism. Regardless of the priorization of the threat from al-Qaeda's ideology, both the strategy and SIP are geared towards all types of extremism without focus on a particular ideology.
Edwin Bakker is head of the knowledge and research department of the Netherlands Police Academy and professor of Terrorism Studies at Leiden University.
Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views often conflate with religious and political violence, and can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics, religion, and gender relations.
Rachel Briggs OBE was Founding Executive Director of Hostage US, the first Director of Hostage UK and was awarded an OBE in the 2014 Honours List for services to hostages and the families of victims kidnapped overseas. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, an expert on foreign and security policy and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh is an Iranian-American researcher, university lecturer, and United Nations consultant in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, counter-terrorism, and radicalization, best known for her work in "Human Security" and for contributions in the republics of Central Asia and Afghanistan, as cited by the New York Times and other publications as well as hundreds of scholarly publications. Currently, she is a lecturer at Sciences Po, researcher, and consultant to the United Nations.
The International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, also referred to as The IIJ or Malta Institute, is an International body, which aims to improve governance within underdeveloped countries, with its main focus on counter-terrorism. The IIJ was founded in 2014 by twelve founding nations and is based in Valletta, Malta. It is often referred to as a Global Counter-Terrorism Forum inspired institution. The founding nations include the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, the United States and the EU. It also partnered with a number of International federations, such as the United Nations and the EU.
Online youth radicalization is the action in which a young individual or a group of people come to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject, or undermine the status quo or undermine contemporary ideas and expressions of a state, which they may or may not reside in. Online youth radicalization can be both violent or non-violent.
Misogynist terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by the desire to punish women. It is an extreme form of misogyny, the policing of women's compliance to patriarchal gender expectations. Misogynist terrorism uses mass indiscriminate violence in an attempt to avenge nonconformity with those expectations or to reinforce the perceived superiority of men.
