#CVE #PVE #deradicalization #disengagement consultant. Currently working on Somalia, Syria and Iraq. RUSI Associate Fellow. Maya's dad. He/him.
Oct 12, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
‘Correlation does not imply causation’
An example of how this dictum applies to the study of terrorism and civil war
(With apologies in advance to UNDP)
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The UNDP Journey to Extremism in Africa (2017) report compares findings from its core sample of 573 respondents involved in violent extremism to a ‘reference group’ of 145 partially ‘matched’ individuals with no affiliation to this violence
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Jan 6, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
How *NOT* to conduct field research into terrorism and violent extremism
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This thread focuses on UNDP’s “Journey to Extremism in Africa” research as it commits a series of basic methodological errors, and presents its findings with unwarranted degrees of confidence in light of issues with sampling and data reliability.
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Dec 10, 2019 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Understanding Preventing / Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) through the public health model lens.
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PCVE tends to be interpreted in many ways, so attempts to define it often lead to rabbit-holes. Framing PCVE through public health models (partly) alleviates this issue. This involves breaking it down into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary PCVE, as I will discuss in turn.
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Aug 30, 2019 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
To what extent does poverty contribute to terrorism / violent extremism?
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Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush asserted ‘we fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror.’ Similar claims about a link between poverty (or socioeconomic marginalization more generally) and political violence have been made by various other politicians.
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