As governments across Europe face the challenge of reintegrating returnees from Iraq and Syria, Dr Joana Cook examines institutional and societal responses to children growing up in violent extremist affiliated families.
Dr Cook talks to Dr Fiona McEwen about the different ways a child’s life can be impacted when a family member is involved in violent extremism, why the narrative of ‘ticking time bombs’ is detrimental to healthy development, and why we need to change the way we engage with these families.
Read more on Joana Cook’s work.
In this episode, Dr Craig Larkin, Dr Inna Rudolf, and Dr Rajan Basra share insights from their research trip to Iraq and discuss the hurdles faced by local practitioners, disillusionment with the ‘industry of peacebuilding’, and the impact that legacies of conflict and violence have had on Iraq’s diverse communities.
*Information is accurate at the time of writing. The escalation of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel along the Lebanon-Israel border continues to develop, and therefore assessment is subject to change.
The ongoing conflict in Gaza has precipitated responses from across the region. In Lebanon, a marked escalation in fighting between Israel and the Shi’a militant group and political party Hezbollah is raising fears of a conflict spillover into regional war.[i] For the over 100 dead thus far, and approximately 75,000 civilians in south Lebanon forced to flee the crossfire, the conflict is having a significant impact.[ii] The effect of the violence, however, extend throughout the country, igniting memories which expand far beyond the south. Amongst the population, the conflict is exacerbating anxieties of an ever-present state of war in Lebanon, as well as threatening to re-open schisms between the country’s already disparate communities. Contextualising the current escalation in the context of Lebanon’s legacy of war memory, it is possible to understand how inherited and first-hand traumatic recollections of violence trigger and inform reactions and fissures amongst the country’s diverse populations.
No War, No Peace
Following Hamas’ attacks of 7 October 2023, Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in a significant military escalation along Lebanon’s southern borders: Hezbollah, alleging it is acting in ‘solidarity’ with the Palestinian people (and its allies, Hamas), and Israel, in defence against its most powerful regional enemy.[iii] Whilst the geographically localised conflict has not yet led to the formation of a second front against Israel, it marks the most significant escalation since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, and this escalation has shown little sign of abating.
At the time of writing, both the range and intensity of the fighting are gradually increasing, well beyond zones previously marked as red lines, and both Hezbollah and Israel are continuing to employ increasingly heavier weaponry. On 2 January 2024, an Israeli drone strike killed a top Hamas official in the Dahiyeh neighbourhood of Beirut.[iv] It has become difficult to discern which military actions constitute a response, and which are intended as a provocation. It has also become difficult to establish at what point the situation becomes not merely an escalation, but a war between two neighbouring countries. For Lebanon, after four years of economic crisis, successive bouts of ’sporadic violence‘, and traumatic conflict, the current escalation threatens the stability of the already weakened state, and risks widening gulfs between communities, where memories of violence are not unifying but polarising.[v]
Conflict memory in Lebanon
Lebanon’s Civil War (1975-90) constitutes the largest scale conflict the country has experienced within recent years, but a significant proportion of the population do not have first-hand experience of the war’s traumatic events. Rather, they have an experience of what Marianne Hirsch has referred to as ‘postmemory’, and what, in the context of Lebanon, Craig Larkin has described as ‘an inherited form of memory, which carries and connects with the ‘pain of others’, suffusing temporal frames and liminal positions.’[vi] The political amnesty agreement which ended the Civil War has had a further impact on the collective memory of the conflict, with the principle of ‘no victor, no vanquished’ facilitating a top-down driven culture of what has been termed ‘collective amnesia’.
For many of the Lebanese population, recent experiences of war with Israel occupy a position of greater proximity in their memory. The current escalation is not isolated; Lebanon has technically been at war with the state of Israel since its formation in 1948 and the formation of the Palestinian militant group Fatah, who conducted operations from rural areas in south Lebanon in the 1970s.[vii] The subsequent period has been punctuated by some of the most violent episodes in Lebanese living memory, including the 1982 invasion of Beirut by Israeli armed forces, and waves of occupation, skirmishes, and post-Civil War interventions.
In 2006, a Hezbollah operation which killed three Israeli soldiers, and saw the capture of two others, led to an exchange of aerial bombardment and a full-scale war which, over the course of 34 days, devastated the south of the country, as well as the capital, Beirut. During the war, 1,200 Lebanese civilians were killed, 4,400 were wounded, and approximately one million were displaced. The extensive damage inflicted on the Lebanese infrastructure was estimated at USD 2.8 billion, triggering a five percent contraction in the country’s economy.[viii]
Military strategists refer to the 2006 war as the ‘Unfinished War’.[ix] Despite the destruction, Lebanon maintained its territorial integrity, while Israel did not achieve its military objective to disarm all militias in Lebanon – explicitly Hezbollah. The UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which marked a ceasefire between the two parties, did not signal a formalised end to hostilities.[x] Within one year, Hezbollah was able to replenish its military capacity, and the bolstered presence of UN forces along the Lebanese southern border has not prevented exchanges of fire between the two parties, which occur every few years. Prior to the current conflict, the most recent exchange occurred in April 2023, when more than 30 rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into Israeli territories, following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinians in al-Aqsa Mosque.[xi]
The legacy of an ‘Unfinished War’ is a conflict suspended in the present. Writing in 2017, Lebanese author Sami Hermez remarked that ’this lack of resolution practically guarantees that past political violence remains a central concern in the present and facilitates the feeling of its reemergence in the future.’[xii] This state of uncertainty – of no war, no peace – has been compounded in recent years by successive episodes of traumatic violence and political instability. Since 2019, Lebanon has been suffering from an economic crisis which has devastated the country, with over 80 percent of the population now living below the poverty line, and a reduction in 98 percent of the value of the national currency.[xiii] This is in addition to the 2019 thawra uprising, which was accompanied by widespread violence, and the explosion at the Beirut port in 2020. Although few Lebanese leaders have yet attempted to reckon with the lasting impact on the civilian population, the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the centre of Beirut’s port constituted the largest non-nuclear blast in history, killing over 200 and wounding more than 6,000.[xiv]
As with the Civil War, there has been little attempt to constitute a centralised, collective memory of such violent episodes which may be unifying for the country.[xv] At the time of writing, Lebanon has been without a president for one year, and its confessional political system is dominated by competing hybrid sovereignties in the form of sectarian political groups and militias.[xvi] Memory in Lebanon experiences a similar stratification: ‘[t]he past [now] seeps into the present‘,and memorialisation proliferates on a predominantly sectarian basis, driving particular narratives of history and political agendas.[xvii] For Hermez, the combination of past conflict, future threat, and diverging memories imbed a continuous state of uncertainty: ‘[w]hile actual war might not currently afflict any of the interlocutors, they live with the daily expectation of possible future violence, and the recognition of an unsettled past.’[xviii]
‘Is it war?’ Recurring fears and normalising violence
The current escalation of violence at the border is reigniting traumatic memories of conflict with Israel, and raising fears that continued escalation will lead to a repeat of previous military occupation and destruction. For those living within the vicinity of the border, the practical realities of memory are impossible to ignore. Villages, which were considered in 2006 to be populated by part-time ’village guards‘ mobilised by Hezbollah, are today experiencing similar levels of aerial bombardment.[xix] Many locals recall this memory in anticipating a repetition of 2006. In a recent interview with Reuters, one resident of the southern town of Rmeish commented, ’I was here in 2006 – those were terrifying scenes. And the shelling yesterday was very heavy.’[xx]
Some even perceive Israel’s ability to stoke traumatic memory to be a deliberate strategy. One Lebanese social media user shared Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant’s warning that, ’what we are doing in Gaza we can do in Beirut,’ and stated in response, ‘for anyone still not understanding the PTSD provoked by such cyclical threats, wake up,’ claiming that the Gallant was ‘instilling fear amongst the Lebanese population, a fear rooted in recent collective memory.’[xxi]
Although it is difficult to assess the conflict’s impact on collective memories whilst it continues, anxieties around the escalation are already beginning to undergo a process of normalisation. One month after the initial attacks, the resulting tension was becoming incorporated into an ongoing narrative of violence: ‘we are used to it’, or ‘heyk hayetnā’ (this is our life) is the phrase often used by those in Beirut to describe how they are reckoning with the latest development in Lebanon’s climate of no war, no peace.
According to one resident of a village close to the border, ’it has become a normal matter as we have been through many wars.’[xxii] Life continues, but one bank employee revealed that they ‘go into work, but no one’s working.’[xxiii] This process of normalisation is punctuated by events signalling peaks of violence in Gaza and at the border (such as the killing of journalists in shelling in the south, the explosion at the Baptist hospital and the regular speeches of Secretary-General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah). Such events cause the closure of schools, universities, bars, restaurants, and the cancellation of events both at the borders and in Beirut, as many prefer to stay at home. Yet, as Hermez comments, ‘in contexts of protracted conflict, as in Lebanon, we are always already embedded in political violences in such a way that neither the ordinary/normal nor political violence has any meaning without the other’.[xxiv] The current conflict is an actualisation of fears already anticipated through the continuous presence of traumatic memory. In the words of one young Beirut resident, ‘it’s the uncertainty which is hard. Is it war? Or is this just the situation now?’[xxv]
Whose war is it?
Whilst populations in Lebanon, regardless of ‘their political or sectarian persuasion, will often feel the violence and uncertainty of the future’, reactions to the escalation on the border are both polarised and polarising.[xxvi] This is driven by different experiences of the present situation and by past violence: ‘what is feared, how change will proceed, who will be at most risk, these questions are determined differently across groups and become contested sites for political debate.’[xxvii]
Marches for Hezbollah in support of Palestine continue to attract thousands, and Nasrallah continues to invoke historic as well as present aggressions of Israel, but a petition against Lebanon being ’dragged into another cycle of destruction and bloodshed’ has also gained thousands of signatures.[xxviii] Such stark schisms in conflict memory threaten to exacerbate the already strained relations between sectarian groups in Lebanon.
A significant factor contributing to the polarities of conflict memories triggered by the current escalation is the political and geographic proximity to past and present violence. The south of Lebanon, referred to as al-jnūb (the South), has a particular political and cultural identity. It is mostly controlled by Shi’a militia and political groups Hezbollah and Amal, and has been, as a result, disenfranchised and neglected by any centralised statehood. Poverty levels in south Lebanon are now much higher than the national average. According to one resident from the South, ’people with kids left because in 2006, there was no bread, no milk, no medicine. Lebanon is already like that now, so imagine what it would be like if things escalate.’[xxix] This has led to resentment and further distancing of residents of the South from the political centre. ’Okay, you want to start a war. The least you can do is secure the citizens you have, give them protection or food’, remarked another resident from the South.[xxx]
The defining feature of the construction of the South’s identity and its ostracisation from the centre has been its history of violence, which is distinct from other areas of Lebanon, having been under military occupation by Israel between 1985 and 2000 – for most of this time, travel into and out of the South was not possible – and having experienced first-hand the impact of cross-border violence. This collective memory of violence is enshrined even in popular place names, such as the Hojeir Valley, also known as the Martyrs Valley, Leaders Valley, Death Valley, Resistance Valley, Mirkava Cemetery: all references to sites of conflict with Israel.[xxxi] Such physical locations of memory are what Pierre Nora has called lieux de mémoires – their physical proximity means conflict memories are more immediately accessible to the people of the South than to those in other parts of the country, to whom the South was viewed as ‘an ‘other space’, outside state sovereignty.[xxxii]
For those not close to the border, and without ties to the South or militia groups involved in confrontations with Israel, it is possible to marginalise the current situation as an isolated conflict limited only to the South as a site of exception. As Volk described in 2007, ‘[d]espite being officially liberated, al-jnūb continues to loom large in the popular imagination as Lebanon’s inaccessible and embattled borderland.’[xxxiii] In response to the current escalation, memories of past and present conflict are vastly different according to geography and social ties. In an interview with Le Orient, a resident of a southern village commented, ‘[t]he country is at war, but it’s only in the South that we can see this … it’s as if we were a different country.’[xxxiv] The escalation is also articulated by many as ‘someone else’s war’; whether that is between Hezbollah and Israel, Israel and Hamas, or the US and Iran. A resident of the predominantly Sunni town of Dhayra which was hit with Israeli white phosphorus shells, claimed that Palestinians had ‘infiltrated’ the village in order to attack Israel: ‘we’re used to paying the price for the wars that don’t concern us.’[xxxv] In an interview with The Washington Post, another resident of a village attacked by Israel said, ‘I blame Hezbollah,’ cursing the fighters as ‘terrorists.’[xxxvi]
Memory and mobilisation
Yet it is also likely that the current conflict, and its subsequent, but ongoing, memorialisation has the potential to reinvigorate and mobilise popular support for the axis of resistance (known as al-muqwāma, which refers to resistance against Israel as well as against a US-led ‘Western’ front), and for Hezbollah narratives positioning itself as the defender of the resistance, if not the defender of Lebanon, in the absence of a capable centralised Lebanese state. Following the announcement of the 2006 ceasefire, despite a significant asymmetry in material losses between the two sides, Nasrallah announced a ‘divine, historic and strategic victory’ over Israel, which demonstrated that ’no army in the world [was] strong enough to disarm [them]’.[xxxvii] The Hezbollah museum in Mleeta, south Lebanon, is an example of Hezbollah’s utilisation of 2006 conflict memory to establish legitimacy as national protector of the country against Israel.[xxxviii] This was largely successful: the group’s subsequent memorialisation of their 2006 ‘victory’ against Israel earnt them, to an extent, ‘rare cross-sectarian support’.[xxxix] In a recent interview with The Guardian, a Beirut resident whose home was destroyed in 2006 recollected, ‘before 2006, Israel had a free hand in the south … it’s because of that war and the resistance that we can now stand tall in our villages … the war established a rule: you kill one of us, we kill one of you.’[xl]
Since 2006, Hezbollah’s involvement in a series of external conflicts and controversies – the group’s takeover of West Beirut in 2008, their intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and even their suspected negligent contribution to the 2020 Beirut port explosion – has marginalised them amongst Shi’a communities, as well as the general population of Lebanon.[xli] Yet the current escalation, and Israeli military activity in Lebanese territory, is revitalising memories of 2006 resistance, and the pivotal role of Hezbollah. For some, these memories are mobilising. In a recent interview with The National, one 22-year-old resident of Qana, a village in south Lebanon which experienced significant conflict in the 2006 war, affirmed his commitment to military resistance: ‘we will retaliate … My mother is the first to encourage me. She lost her sister in 2006.’ Regarding those who did not support the southern factions’ involvement in the conflict, the interviewee responded: ‘they have not experienced what we have, that’s why.’[xlii]
Conclusion
Although the current escalation between Hezbollah and Israel is situated within a context of cycles of violence, it is difficult to predict at the present moment how it will be memorialised. As Lara Deeb has commented, ‘representations of the past are frequently about the present and hold implications for the future’.[xliii] For some in Lebanon, these implications are already a cause for concern: as a southern resident told journalists, as a missile exploded overhead, ’don’t film those who are fleeing … It’s a bad image of al-janūb.’[xliv]
Today, the appetite for a full-scale confrontation with Israel seems limited. Hezbollah has grown in size and strength since the war with Israel,but in 2024, they are now operating in a very different environment.[xlv] In 2006, following the Israeli Operation Grapes of Wrath and an attack on the village of Qana on a previously unprecedented scale, cross-sectarian groups of Beirut residents joined relief efforts to provide refugees from the south with shelter, food and medical supplies in a show of ’unified national grief and outrage‘, where ’Qana became an important symbol of post-civil war Lebanese unity‘.[xlvi]
In the current context, living in a landscape of memories of the damage inflicted in 2006, combined with the state of the Lebanese economy, such a homogenous response is unlikely. One resident of Hamra district in Beirut said that, due to the economic situation, they were ‘not sure the Sunni of Beirut will take in people [predominantly Shia] from the South, as they did last time’.[xlvii] In response to high-level threats from military officials in Israel to ‘bring Lebanon back to the Stone Age,’ one southern resident commented, ‘[y]ou’re in Lebanon, right? Are we not in the stone age already?’[xlviii]
Whether or not fears of a full-scale war with Israel are realised, it seems likely that the ongoing conflict will further drive the diverging of narratives amongst the Lebanese population. The conflicting memory culture in Lebanon, international and local discourse surrounding the escalation, as well as and developments on the ground, will all shape the way in which the current escalation is experienced by Lebanon’s diverse communities in the present, and the way in which it is understood in the future.
[i] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/30/lebanon-fears-regional-war-as-hezbollah-israel-fighting-icntensifies; https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231123-israel-fm-threatens-regional-war-over-tensions-in-lebanon/
[ii] https://reliefweb.int/report/lebanon/lebanon-glance-escalation-hostilities-south-lebanon-27-december-2023
[iii] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/israel-hezbollah-exchange-fire-raising-regional-tensions
[iv] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/explosion-southern-beirut-suburb-dahiyeh-two-security-sources-2024-01-02/
[v] Larkin, C. (2010). ‘Beyond the war? The Lebanese postmemory experience’. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42(4), 615-635. 415.
[vi] Hirsch, M. (2008). ‘The Generation of Postmemory’. Poetics today, 29(1), 103-128; Larkin, C. (2010).
[vii] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/beyond-hezbollah-the-history-of-tensions-between-lebanon-and-israel
[viii] https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/26/is-lebanon-on-the-brink-of-a-2006-war-scenario/
[ix] Spyer, J. (2009). ‘Lebanon 2006: Unfinished War’. In Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (pp. 157-172). 153
[x] https://peacemaker.un.org/israellebanon-resolution1701
[xi] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/6/israel-intercepts-rocket-fired-from-southern-lebanon-military
[xii] Hermez, S. (2017). War is coming: between past and future violence in Lebanon. 5.
[xiii] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/lebanon/overview; https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2023/06/28/Lebanon-2023-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-Staff-Report-and-Statement-by-the-535372
[xiv] Helou, M., El-Hussein, M., Aciksari, K., Salio, F., Della Corte, F., Von Schreeb, J., & Ragazzoni, L. (2022). ‘Beirut Explosion: The Largest Non-Nuclear Blast in History.’ Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 16(5), 2200-2201.
[xv] https://www.xcept-research.org/martyrdom-in-lebanon-an-evolution-of-memory-making/; As Hermez and others have commented, ““Rather than any state-enforced amnesia or remembering, there was an abrogation of responsibility on the part of the state, which left a narrative of the war open to interpretation. In fact, if the state enforced anything, it was to lead the way to multivocal expressions of memory.” Hermez, S. (2017). War is coming: between past and future violence in Lebanon. 5. 148
[xvi] Fregonese, S. (2012). ‘Beyond the ‘Weak State’: Hybrid Sovereignties in Beirut.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(4), 655-674.
[xvii] Schudson, M. (1997). Lives, laws and language: Commemorative versus non-commemorative forms of effective public memory. The Communication Review,2(1), 3-17. 15.
[xviii] Hermez, S. (2017). War is coming: between past and future violence in Lebanon. 294.
[xix] Beirut Urban Lab has provided a comprehensive map of ongoing cross-border conflict events during the current escalation: https://aub.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/2a3cd18fa4f4400ba5ee330273117f95; Spyer, J. (2009). 147.
[xx] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-edge-after-deadliest-border-clashes-since-2006-2023-10-10/
[xxi] https://www.instagram.com/p/Czlbyi3Mrsb/?igshid=ODhhZWM5NmIwOQ==
[xxii] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/south-lebanon-town-border-conflict-brings-fear-resignation-2023-10-25/
[xxiii] Researcher’s own fieldwork interviews, November 2023.
[xxiv] Hermez, S. (2017). War is coming: between past and future violence in Lebanon. 15.
[xxv] Researcher’s own fieldwork interviews, November 2023.
[xxvi] Hermez, S. (2017). 87.
[xxvii] Hermez, S. (2017). Ibid.
[xxviii] https://www.change.org/p/lebanon-against-war-sign-the-petition-now
[xxix] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-edge-after-deadliest-border-clashes-since-2006-2023-10-10/
[xxx] Ibid.
[xxxi] https://aoav.org.uk/2018/the-reverberating-cultural-impacts-from-the-use-of-explosive-weapons-in-lebanon/
[xxxii] Nora, Pierre. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.’ Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp. 7–24; Volk, L. (2007). ‘Re-remembering the dead: A genealogy of a martyrs memorial in South Lebanon.’ The Arab Studies Journal, 15(1), 44-69. 47.
[xxxiii] Volk, L. (2007). 50.
[xxxiv] https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1359221/in-south-lebanon-2023-war-scars-evoke-2006-memories.html
[xxxv] Ibid.
[xxxvi] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/19/lebanon-israel-border-hezbollah-gaza/
[xxxvii] https://www.muslimobserver.com/victory-rally-speech-transcript-hasan-nasrallah/
[xxxviii] https://lobelog.com/what-does-hezbollah-want/; On Mleeta, Hezbollah’s Landmark to the Resistance, see: Harb, Mona, and Lara Deeb. ‘Culture as history and landscape: Hizballah’s efforts to shape an islamic milieu in Lebanon.’ Arab Studies Journal 19.1 (2011): 12-45; Meier, Daniel. ‘From Frontline to Borderscape: The Hizbullah Memorial Museum in South Lebanon.’ Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making. Routledge, 2016. 77-86; and Larkin, Craig, and Ella Parry-Davies. ‘War Museums in postwar Lebanon: Memory, violence, and performance.’ Power-Sharing after Civil War. Routledge, 2021. 78-96.
[xxxix] https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/26/is-lebanon-on-the-brink-of-a-2006-war-scenario/
[xl] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/27/fear-and-defiance-in-lebanon-as-the-threat-of-new-war-opens-old-wounds
[xli] https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/26/is-lebanon-on-the-brink-of-a-2006-war-scenario/
[xlii] https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/17/survivors-of-lebanons-qana-massacre-defiant-as-israel-fight-looms/
[xliii] Deeb, Lara. ‘Exhibiting the “Just-Lived Past”: Hizbullah’s Nationalist Narratives in Transnational Political Context.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 50.2 (2008): 369-399. 370.
[xliv] https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1359221/in-south-lebanon-2023-war-scars-evoke-2006-memories.html
[xlv] https://aoav.org.uk/2018/the-reverberating-cultural-impacts-from-the-use-of-explosive-weapons-in-lebanon/#_edn3
[xlvi] Laurie King-Irani, ‘Commemorating Lebanon’s War Amid Continued Crisis,’ Middle East Report Online, 14 April 2005; Volk, L. (2007). 49.
[xlvii] Researcher’s own fieldwork interviews, November 2023.
[xlviii] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/13/israel-hamas-war-sparks-south-lebanon-exodus-as-people-flee-border-areas
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This blog explores what we really mean when we talk about resilience in the context of violent extremism, and challenges some of the assumptions and potential biases of resilience-based interventions. Read more.
Currently much of the world’s attention is focused on the UN’s struggle to achieve a ceasefire and avert humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine. At the same time, another devastating war rages in Sudan, with similarly violent consequences for millions of people and an inability to reach a ceasefire.
Sudan is now the country with the largest number of displaced people in the world – more than 11 million people. Since April alone, 5.4 million people have been internally displaced and 1.3 million have fled to neighbouring countries including Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan. While over half the population – 25 million people (including 13 million children) – urgently need humanitarian assistance.
The toll of the war on civilians continues to worsen, with devastating intercommunal violence and ethnic cleansing across Darfur, huge infrastructural damage, as well as loss of livelihoods and escalating humanitarian strife.
On the surface, the war in Sudan may seem like a typical civil war. Two rivals, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), are fighting for land and power.
The RSF have made gains in Khartoum and Darfur, where they are consolidating control, while the SAF have suffered a series of humbling defeats that seem to have made elements within their leadership more open to negotiations.
An effective partition has emerged in Sudan, with the SAF controlling the east and northeast and RSF controlling much of the capital and west of the country.
Looking at the conflict in Sudan as merely a civil war between two national groups is misleading. Sudan sits at the confluence of four regions, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, and the Arabian Gulf across the Red Sea.
Both the SAF and RSF engage economically, politically, and militarily with a motley of governments and armed groups from these regions (and beyond) to fight their war.
In its pursuit to control the supply chain of gold, the RSF has extended its economic operations beyond Sudan’s borders, selling primarily to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has consequently become a key backer.
The SAF accrue rents not only through taxing exports and imports transiting Port Sudan, but also by receiving support from foreign governments including Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, including via the sale of strategic commodities such as gold and livestock. Economic processes not only connect Sudan to the region, but also facilitate the supply chains that fuel and sustain the conflict.
Sudan sits at the confluence of four regions. Both the SAF and RSF engage with a motley of governments and armed groups from these regions to fight their war.
These foreign actors also view Sudan as a playground for their own pursuit of regional influence. For instance, the UAE competes against its Gulf rival Qatar, with the former backing the RSF and the latter supportive of the SAF.
The UAE leverages its other regional allies, from Libya’s Haftar to the government of Chad, while the SAF have sought support from Turkey and Iran in providing them with drones to use in the war. These positions have complicated attempts to mediate between the warring parties during the Saudi–US sponsored Jeddah talks.
Many fear that without a swift and durable ceasefire this war could divide the country, with both sides declaring their own governments. If the war becomes protracted then further fragmentation and militarization is likely, including along ethnic lines. This will only worsen the humanitarian disaster and regional spillover.
A sense of growing urgency has driven recent mediation efforts by the regional bloc IGAD, given the limited success of other interventions to date. However, the lack of heft and collective approach needed of the international response has contributed to the inadequacy in resolving the war. This means negotiating not only between the two sides, but navigating all the transnational actors who have a stake in the conflict.
Many conflicts around the world suffer from similar dynamics, but policymakers often engage them as bounded by national borders, excluding the interests and influence of actors who fuel the conflict from other countries.
This is partly a product of the structures of foreign policy and international development. For instance, the UK government has for several years administered Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability (JACS), used to guide the National Security Council Strategies. These JACS are in most cases country-focused, meaning they are based on the analysis of conflict advisors and external consultants who work on the country in question.
What the exercise often misses, however, is analysis from advisors and experts who work on countries that seem geographically distant, but which nonetheless have a stake and fuel the conflict. In such cases, regional JACS should be more central to decision-making. In Sudan, for example, the wide array of country teams which focus on the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Egypt, the Gulf, Turkey, and Iran, should all be part of the analysis of the current conflict.
The gap in the analysis phase extends to both policymaking and programming in these conflicts. Most programmes that deliver aid or offer institutional support (like building hospitals or implementing anti-corruption initiatives) are confined to teams which focus on the country where the conflict has erupted.
However, these initiatives again become susceptible to transnational actors and processes which are not always identified by the country-specific focus. This means that potential spoilers may be present which do not map on the policymakers’ horizon, challenging the sustainability of peace agreements or development projects.
In the Middle East and Africa, armed conflicts that have erupted in places like Sudan are not confined to national borders. These dynamics are also seen in the conflict in Sinjar, Iraq, where armed groups with authority across multiple countries vie for control; or in Libya where the smuggling and trafficking of people from Nigeria across multiple borders fuels conflict along the way; or in Israel and Palestine where regional and foreign governments arm and support one side or the other.
None of these conflicts are isolated from their wider regional and international arenas of interlocking actors, processes, and geographies that transcend the bounded terrain of nation states. Yet, current initiatives by foreign governments or multilateral organizations approach them by doubling down on those national borders.
This includes either closing off or securitizing borders, or focusing conflict response mainly on actors who come from within those borders. While external interests are often understood, solutions are developed largely in national terms, often sidelining the more complicated web of foreign influence.
Chatham House’s XCEPT research works to bridge these gaps and consider how transnational dimensions of conflict fuel and (re)produce armed conflict, often over great distances. This reality is critical to understanding why and how armed violence erupts and, critically, how to achieve more sustainable peace.
Although the roadblocks spanning Somalia are initially easy to disregard as bureaucracy, in practice they are pressure points that connect multiple actors shaping trade networks and political projects across the Somali territories. While researchers already know that terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab value road-blocks, this podcast discussion focuses on lesser-known checkpoints operated by various actors and the impact these roadblocks have upon their surrounding region.
The podcast guests, who have each recently released an XCEPT-funded paper exploring how terrorism, political interests and economic regulation collides in Somalia, come together to untangle the fluid web of roadblocks and checkpoints evolving in Somalia’s ever-changing political landscape.
This podcast has been produced by the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) as part of the FCDO’s Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) Program, a consortium initiative funded by UK Development. XCEPT brings together leading experts to examine how conflicts connect across borders and the factors that influence both violent and peaceful behavior in conflict-affected borderlands.
Lebanon’s difficulties are manifold: deliberate economic depression orchestrated by the country’s ruling elite;[i] political paralysis caused by the Lebanese parliament failing to elect – for the 12th time – a president;[ii] and unhealed psychological scars following the Beirut Port blast in 2020 that ranks as the third largest urban explosion in history, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.[iii] But this veil of despair masks what was once a vibrant undertone of optimism and joy – four years ago, Lebanese people from all walks of life came together to reclaim their bodies, their streets, their city, and their country, in hope for revolutionary change.[iv]
Today, Lebanon marks the anniversary of the October 2019 uprising, alternatively called thawra (revolution) by idealists. On 17th October 2019, Lebanese people from all walks of life coalesced and rose up against a ‘kleptocratic ruling class of sectarian leaders and financiers that had captured and bankrupted the state after fifteen years of civil war (1975-90) and three decades of post-war neoliberal policies’.[i] Demonstrators objected to endemic corruption and demanded instant reforms to an absurdly clientelist and sectarian system ingrained at the heart of Lebanon’s political and economic system.
Four years on, however, the legacy and significance of the uprising remain a matter of controversy. For its critics, the thawra is synonymous with negative emotions and distressing memories, due in part to the internal divisions among protestors, increased state repression, co-optation strategies by the ruling elites, and the ongoing economic meltdown which all characterised the failure of the revolution.[ii] Advocates, on the other hand, argue that the thawra remains an ember of optimism in a gloomy mist of political hopelessness.[iii]
I spent two months in my Lebanese homeland earlier this year to carry out fieldwork for my PhD, which focuses on geographies of emotions within Lebanon’s October 17 protest movement, exploring how spaces, places, landscapes, and memories affect protestors politically and influence their feelings and emotions regarding the thawra and its aftermath. I was able to gather personal testimonies of Lebanese youth who recall complex emotions and painful memories encountered during the thawra. Here are some of their stories.
Amongst the demonstrators in October 2019 was 20-year-old undergraduate student at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Fatima,[1] who is part of both the AUB secular club and organisation Mada, a political network and movement constituting of secular clubs in universities and syndicates across Lebanon.
For Fatima, the thawra was a revelation and a conviction that it was no longer a choice to be politically neutral, as she proudly reveals: ‘I was raised in a repressive and infantilising atmosphere where my family attempted to repress my political opinions and silence me, making me this numb machine that succumbs to their political ideologies. This made me feel isolated from what was going on in the world consider[ing] I was being sheltered from something I was going to be inevitably exposed to at university’.
When the protests broke out on 17th October, Fatima was finishing school, and she admits being conscious of certain aspects of her own political ignorance. She witnessed her friends embracing their own political activism, which motivated her to rebel with them. ‘I saw all kind of things happening, especially the teach-ins and heated debates that made me more politically aware. I witnessed violence, I saw people falling in love, I saw people rejoicing, dancing, and cursing politicians. For the first time I got this multi-faceted view of what Lebanon is’.
Four years later, Fatima still views the thawra as part of her daily life. ‘The way we do it for me and for those in Mada and the AUB secular club is that we run for elections, we hold daily discussions, we protest, we hang posters, we invite experts to give a talk, we go on television to speak’. It seems that there is no one dimension or direction to resisting amongst youth today, and there is hope this will bring change. For example, one year after the thawra, thanks tostudents like Fatima, there was unprecedented success for independent secular groups in student council elections, over those aligned with the traditional political parties.[i]
The thawra encouraged many to see another side of Lebanon, and of themselves. ‘This is where my feminist political identity developed,’ Fatima professes. ‘I saw women being at the forefront of the revolution. I saw brave women standing up for themselves and fighting against the sectarian class, like the heroic women that kicked a police officer in the face. Seeing this as someone who was still in school was a steppingstone for my adulthood and shaped who I am. I felt that one day I can be one of those women. In fact, I am now’.
The legacy of the thawra is one of political activism, but also one of distress. Anger and humiliation are common shared sentiments amongst youths I interviewed, as they revealed painful memories of this mass revolt that continue to affect them today. I spoke to 24-year-old graduate, Mona, who worked with think-tanks in the Middle East, researching youth participation in the thawra.
‘The thawra was the first time I participated in a protest movement and will be the last,’ she told me in a dispiriting tone. ‘I was very hopeful at first, I sensed a feeling of solidarity I never experienced before. I felt that people had my back, and we shared the same vision for this country. I started asking political questions when we used to have dinner with my family, which was a taboo back then. I questioned my aunt about the reasons she supports Hezbollah. I am not scared or intimidated to ask questions anymore. I felt the urge to learn and the right to know, unlike in the past where I believed it was too complicated to understand politics’.
Unfortunately, this optimism for change was soon overshadowed by utter hopelessness. Mona shares a painful memory of the march to mark the first anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion on 4th August 2021 which impelled her to distance herself from activism. As protestors expressed their outrage over the political elites’ ineptitude and corruption in the aftermath of the blast that killed 180 people, injured more than 6,000, and caused massive destruction across the city, the Lebanese military used lethal force against them.[i]
‘I had some hope that the Lebanese authorities will be afraid of us as we were well equipped with tear gas to protect ourselves from the brutality of security forces. Like cockroaches they compelled us to leave. I remember this vividly as I was with one of my closest friends. We started crying, we literally failed, there was nothing we can do. Everyone was fleeing from the tear gas and water cannons. I kept crying for feeling hopeless. That night completely changed my perception towards Lebanon. I now separated myself completely from Lebanese politics as a result of [the] hopelessness I felt after that night,’ she cried.
Today, Mona lives in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and works as a senior communications executive. She is one of many who have joined the exodus of Lebanon’s most educated citizens, to search for jobs and education abroad in the aftermath of the thawra, because of the continuing social, economic, and political crisis.[ii]
On the four-year anniversary of Lebanon’s thawra, the impact and significance of this historic event remains unresolved. This transformative moment is also one of the most disputed protest movements in contemporary Lebanese politics. It is crucial to revisit personal testimonies and critically reflect on these competing emotions and painful memories to understand the myriad ways Lebanese youth currently engage with and feel about the thawra, their perceptions of change, and how this influences the actions they will take in the future. The hope, despair, fear, and joy embodied in the diverse Lebanese narratives reflect diverging perspectives and timeframes, but also attitudes to Lebanon’s convoluted past and the quest for a better future.
[i] Human Rights Watch (2020) Lebanon: Lethal force used against protestors [Online] available from https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/26/lebanon-lethal-force-used-against-protesters
[ii] Financial Times (2023) More than half of young Arabs in Levant and north African pin hopes on emigrating [Online] available from https://www.ft.com/content/0ef960d8-1282-4fa9-a009-e24eebeab0e7
[1] Interviewees names have been changed to ensure anonymity.
[i] Arab Reform Initiative (2021) Lebanon’s student movement: A new political player? [Online] available from https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/lebanons-student-movement-a-new-political-player/
[i] Makdisi, K., 2021. Lebanon’s October 2019 Uprising: From Solidarity to Division and Descent into the Known Unknown. South Atlantic Quarterly, 120(2), pp.436-445.
[ii] LCPS (2021) Why did the October 17 Revolution witness a regression in numbers? [Online] available from https://www.lcps-lebanon.org/articles/details/2462/why-did-the-october-17-revolution-witness-a-regression-in-numbers
[iii] LSE (2023) Lebanon Unsettled: The contentious geographies and histories of the October 2019 uprising [Online] available from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2023/07/31/lebanon-unsettled-the-contentious-geographies-and-histories-of-the-october-2019-uprising/
[i] World Bank (2022) Lebanon’s Crisis: Great Denial in the Deliberate Depression [Online] available from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/01/24/lebanon-s-crisis-great-denial-in-the-deliberate-depression
[ii] Al Jazeera (2023) Lebanon’s parliament fails to elect president for 12th time [Online] available from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/14/lebanons-parliament-fails-to-elect-president-for-12th-time
[iii] Al Hariri, M., Zgheib, H., Abi Chebl, K., Azar, M., Hitti, E., Bizri, M., Rizk, J., Kobeissy, F. and Mufarrij, A., 2022. Assessing the psychological impact of Beirut Port blast: A cross-sectional study. Medicine, 101(41).
[iv] Cornet, L. (2022) An Emotional Diary of the Lebanese Revolution [Online] available from https://phmuseum.com/news/an-emotional-diary-of-the-lebanese-revolution
The UK Aid-funded Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme seeks to better understand conflict-affected borderlands, how conflicts connect across borders, and the factors that shape violent and peaceful behaviour, to inform effective policy and programme responses. Led in part by Chemonics UK, XCEPT hones in on the behavioural dimensions of conflict in partnership with King’s College London (KCL), who explore how memories, motives, and trauma and mental health affect pathways to violent/peaceful decision-making over time.
The Chemonics XCEPT team and our local research partners undertook a mixed methods field study in northeast Syria in late 2021. As part of this work, we sought to better understand the impacts of conflict and violent extremism on adolescents in the region. We also considered potential drivers of vulnerability to violent extremist sympathy, as well as factors that may support adolescent resilience. Our field research findings echo wider academic research on violent extremism. There is no single, linear pathway toward radicalisation. Instead, a variety of contextual factors, individual incentives, and other enablers emerged as relevant to consider, but which should not be seen as determinative.
XCEPT programme research underway through KCL further examines potential linkages between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and vulnerability to violent extremism, among other potential negative outcomes. In our field research, negative outcomes we observed include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other manifestations of trauma, and vulnerability to violence, criminality, and drug abuse. Other research with Syrian children and adolescents has demonstrated very high rates of mental health problems, with over half of 8-16-year-old Syrians living as refugees in Lebanon meeting the criteria for PTSD, depression, anxiety, or externalising behaviour problems. Many children met criteria for more than one disorder, better characterised as complex trauma reactions driven by chronic adversity as well as past exposure to conflict. These findings highlight the importance of addressing adolescents first and foremost as victims of conflict and avoiding stigmatisation as potential violent extremists.
Adolescents in northeast Syria are growing up in a context where social cohesion has frayed, with the conflict upending traditional sources of individual and community resilience. The normalisation of violence has shaped adolescents’ behaviour. Displacement is a near-universal experience that prompts feelings of loss, hardship, and isolation. Ineffective local authorities oversee an uneven recovery, with a worsening economic crisis and disrupted education constraining adolescents’ hopes for the future. A sense of uncertainty and despair permeates the adolescent experience, alongside a widespread desire for a return to ‘normalcy.’
Our research found that access challenges, quality constraints, and safety risks all undermine education services in northeast Syria. Older adolescents in particular are increasingly dropping out of school as their families struggle to make ends meet. For boys, this often means looking for work, while for girls this frequently results in early marriage. Local authorities are unable to grant accredited certifications, and the costs of private tuition and travel to regime-held areas for official examinations are prohibitive for many families. Insecurity on the journey to/from and within schools further reduces attendance and affects adolescents’ mental health.
Based on the findings of XCEPT’s research, Chemonics and partners designed an informal educational curriculum and delivered a ten-week pilot programme for adolescents and youth aged 12-18 in northeast Syria (Deir Ez-Zor and Raqqa). The pilot programme incorporated constructs identified as relevant by the research, including social and emotional learning (SEL), instilling a sense of agency, and critical thinking skills. The pilot curriculum emphasised a life skills-based, informal educational approach, incorporating methods such as arts and self-reflection activities that resonated with adolescents in the fieldwork. At the end of the pilot, the programme observed statistically significant increases among adolescent participants across all domains.
Taken together, the learnings from the successful pilot programme and the findings from our study yield important considerations for the design and delivery of interventions that aim to strengthen adolescent resilience:
Visit UKFIET, where this article was originally published.
Peripheral Vision: Views from the Borderlands is the programme’s bi-annual news bulletin, exploring new and emerging issues across our focus regions.
Localisation in the humanitarian and development sector involves shifting power and resources into the hands of local actors and delivery partners to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and ownership of humanitarian action. A core objective of XCEPT’s Local Research Network, is to emphasise the need for local knowledge and analysis to be reflected in international responses to conflict and support to peacebuilding. Engaging with and amplifying ground-level research supports a more nuanced understanding of complex conflict contexts, counteracting state-centric policymaking that can end up neglecting the needs of communities in border regions. Local knowledge is critical for building reliable and robust datasets that accurately reflect the experiences and perspectives of local communities. In this podcast, The Asia Foundation’s Nathan Shea speaks to three researchers undertaking data collection and analysis in Bangladesh, Somalia and Syria. They share their experiences working in conflict-affected border regions, discuss methods for engaging with local populations in challenging contexts, and share their insights on how to improve localization efforts in the research sector.
Disclaimer: The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of XCEPT.
Speaking at a memorial event 10 years on from 9/11, then President of the United States, Barack Obama, said that the past decade told the story of America’s resilience. The faith, the belief, and the will of Americans had been tested, but not broken. Losses were mourned, and legacies commemorated, but the American experience endured, and, President Obama observed, ‘where the World Trade Center once stood, the sun glistens off a new tower that reaches towards the sky’.[i]
The events of 9/11 showed the world the strength of the American people, but it also brought another focus on resilience. With concerns over ‘home-grown terrorists’ and the mounting threat of future attacks, Western governments adopted more pre-emptive strategies, turning to resilience as a strategy to counter violent extremist beliefs.[ii] Policies started focusing on building societal and individual abilities to resist radicalisation and withstand the impact of terrorist attacks. The aim was to enhance personal strengths and mental robustness to prevent extremist ideologies from spreading among communities.[iii]
How does resilience work?
The term ‘resilience’ actually originates from physics, where it was used to explain the ability of metals to absorb energy and return to their normal state when the energy had been released. Over the years, it has come to be used in a variety of disciplines.[iv] In ecology, resilience represents an ecosystem’s ability to alter in response to unanticipated external disruptions without losing its basic identity or capabilities.[v] In medicine, it denotes patients’ recovery from physical injuries. In psychological and social studies, resilience refers to an individual’s ability to rebound from adversity, or to tolerate major chronic and severe stressors without developing mental health problems.[vi]
When it applies to terrorism and violent extremism, resilience takes on a larger meaning. It relates to societies’ and individuals’ abilities to reject extremist beliefs, to avoid radicalisation and terrorist threats, and to recover from their repercussions.[vii] As a result of its broad applicability, resilience has become a buzzword in the field of countering violent extremism (CVE), receiving substantial interest from both scholars and policymakers.[viii]
The underlying premise of resilience to violent extremism is that terrorism is fuelled by social, economic, and political inequities, and that those who are disadvantaged or isolated are particularly susceptible to radicalisation.[ix] Resilience-focused strategies therefore aim to prevent terrorism by developing strong, connected, and adaptable individuals with mental strength, who can reject extremist beliefs and recover from attacks.
The Flaws in Resilience
Governments have focused on assisting individuals in building cognitive abilities such as critical thinking, encouraging certain personal characteristics like empathy, and promoting ideals such as tolerance and openness to discussion of contentious subjects.[x] A more critical evaluation of the notion of resilience, however, exposes its limitations and potential pitfalls.
Resilient Until Not
One of the fundamental flaws of the concept of resilience to violent extremism is that there is no such thing like inherent and absolute resilience to political violence. The Turkish community in Belgium, for example, is often considered resilient to jihadism compared to the Moroccan community, but is this because they are inherently resistant to political violence, or because of their commitment to other strong political movements, such as support for Erdogan or Kurdish separatists?[xi] This presents an important question: is there a general resilience that makes an individual unlikely to engage in violence, regardless of the political cause?[xii] Another hypothetical example can be observed in populations living in Western democratic countries, who are usually defined as highly resilient to violent extremism and ideologies. If Western citizens were to become willing to fight and die for liberal democracy, would they start being labelled as non-resilient?
Dominant Norms Dictate Resiliency
Narrowly defining resilience as resistance to violent extremism presents an even more complex challenge. What is not considered violent extremism today may become so under different circumstances. The strong values and identity of the Turkish community in Belgium may have buffered them from involvement in jihadist-linked radicalisation, but this doesn’t mean they would be deterred from engaging in violence in support of other causes.[xiii] If the dominant norms that dictate what constitutes a healthy reaction to threats (or, in this case, to violent extremism) were to change, a community, or an entire population, may quickly become non-resilient.[xiv]
Shifting Responsibilities to Local Actors
Additionally, by prioritising the building of resilient communities, there is the risk of shifting responsibilities from the government to local actors.[xv] The emphasis on the person should not eclipse the need to address the social, economic, and political issues that fuel radicalisation.[xvi] Take poverty – it is as if, in the context of worldwide disparity in wealth distribution, rather than addressing the root causes of poverty, initiatives focused on making disadvantaged communities more resilient to the consequences of poverty. This should not happen in the context of violent extremism. If vulnerability to radicalisation is often caused by external causes like discrimination or abuse, governments should focus on creating social changes to tackle these causes, and not just on making the individual stronger in the face of difficulties.
Imposition of Western Perspective
It is also important to recognise that resilience frameworks constructed from a Western perspective might fail to account for the cultural and contextual factors that drive extremism in non-Western or tribal countries. Syria and Iraq, for example, have endured long-lasting wars, and their populations live in hostile circumstances that necessitate high degrees of resilience. Substantial financial difficulties, political instability, restricted access to healthcare, and massive social unrest are all characteristics that can foster an environment highly vulnerable to extremism. Approaches to CVE in such areas necessitate tailored solutions that address these specific issues. Consequently, the efficacy of resilience-based interventions varies greatly among cultural contexts, and a generic approach would likely fail to tackle the unique issues encountered by marginalised or conflict-affected populations.
In conclusion, while the idea of resilience has received significant attention in the fight against violent extremism, a closer examination reveals its ambiguities and limitations. It is important to question what we mean when we say a community or group is resilient. As policies and interventions to promote resilience are developed, it is also critical to recognise the potential biases inherent in dominant norms and to investigate alternate perspectives. Societies can build stronger and more successful counter-radicalisation tactics, as well as foster a more inclusive and peaceful society, by acknowledging these critical perspectives and taking a balanced approach.
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[i] The White House. (2011). Remarks by the President at “A Concert for Hope”. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/11/remarks-president-concert-hope
[ii] Jore. (2020). Is resilience a favourable concept in terrorism research? The multifaceted discourses of resilience in the academic literature. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13(2), 337–357. https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2020.1733788
[iii] Christodoulou, E., 2020. Boosting resilience’ and ’safeguarding youngsters at risk’: critically examining the European Commission’s educational responses to radicalization and violent extremism. Lond. Rev. Educ. 18 (1), 18–34. https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.18.1.02;
Home Office. (2021). Building a Stronger Britain Together.
[iv] Davidson, Jacobson, C., Lyth, A., Dedekorkut-Howes, A., Baldwin, C. L., Ellison, J. C., Holbrook, N. J., Howes, M. J., Serrao-Neumann, S., Singh-Peterson, L., & Smith, T. F. (2016). Interrogating resilience: toward a typology to improve its operationalization. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 27–. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08450-210227; MacKinnon, D., and K. D. Derickson. (2013). From Resilience to Resourcefulness: A Critique of Resilience Policy and Activism. Progress in Human Geography, 37(2): 253–270. doi:10.1177/ 0309132512454775.
[v] Jore, 2020.
[vi] Bourbeau, P. (2018). A Genealogy of Resilience. International Political Sociology, 12(1): 19–35. doi:10.1093/ips/olx026.
[vii] Jore, 2020.
[viii] Wimelius, M.E., Eriksson, M., Kinsman, J., Strandh, V., Ghazinour, M. (2018). What is local resilience against radicalization and how can it be promoted? A multidisciplinary literature review. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 1(18). https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1531532.
[ix] Ellis, & Abdi, S. (2017). Building Community Resilience to Violent Extremism Through Genuine Partnerships. The American Psychologist, 72(3), 289–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000065
[x] Stewart, S. (2018). Building Resilience to Violent Extremism. A cultural relations approach. British Council.
[xi] Hamid, N. 2018. The Road to the Paris November 2015 and Brussels March 2016 attacks. Artis International.
[xii] Stephens, & Sieckelinck, S. (2021). Resiliences to radicalization: Four key perspectives. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 66, 100486–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2021.100486
[xiii] Hamid, 2018.
[xiv] Anholt, R., 2017. Governing Humanitarian Emergencies, Protracted Crises, and (In)Security through Resilience. Retrieved from Amsterdam. https://research.vu.nl/ ws/portalfiles/portal/12946141/ISR_Governing_Insecurity_Through_Resilience_Research_Report_2017.pdf
[xv] Anholt, 2017; Christodoulou, 2020.
[xvi] Evans, B., Reid, J. (2013). Dangerously exposed: the life and death of the resilient subject. Resilience, 1(2), 83–98.
