It’s said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Yet, once again, the international community is using the reports of a government in Kabul to build an understanding of the Afghan economy and the tax revenues that the de facto authorities earn. Corruption shaped the economic political fabric of the Afghan Republic and impacted the very data used to measure and analyze the performance of the economy. This all points to the need for a more skeptical view of the official data reported by Kabul, and other administrations in fragile and conflict-affected states. There is, after all, much that takes place on the peripheries of these states that is difficult to monitor and control; it is part of what defines them.
To read the full article, visit Lawfare, where this article was originally published.
I’m Dr Inna Rudolf, a Research Fellow on the XCEPT project, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London (KCL). On the XCEPT project, I mainly cover topics such as identity politics, mobilisation, and post-conflict reconstruction – with a particular focus on social healing and post-conflict recovery.
My current work for XCEPT focuses on Iraq. Along with my colleagues, I’ve been examining an array of issues in the country, including looking at grievances that are currently affecting populations in some of the liberated provinces – with most of our recent research focusing on the province of Nineveh. Our main goal is to understand people’s attitudes towards peacebuilding and recovery, as well as their attitudes towards rebuilding their urban spaces in the post-conflict context.
My colleague, Dr Craig Larkin, and I have been researching the role of competing memory narratives in post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq. This has been an extremely interesting adventure – intellectually, academically, but also socially, as the province is so diverse.
I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with representatives of different Christian denominations, with Shabaks, Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, Yezidis, and Turkmen. We spoke to people about what life was like under the Ba’ath party regime, after the regime fell following the US invasion, and under the Islamic State (IS), as well as following the liberation of Mosul. We are getting a better understanding of the province because of these different perspectives which are, at times, conflicting and contradictory.
It is clear from our research that doubts and prejudices have come to shape people’s perspectives in Iraq. Perceptions of the ethnic or sectarian ‘other’, or of the international community and the role of the federal government, have really helped us understand why certain narratives surrounding peacebuilding and belonging resonate with the local population and others don’t.
In keeping with these doubts surrounding the federal government, we learned that a lot of people perceived the post-2003 Iraqi state as a construct, captured by different self-serving elites who they accuse of corruption and negligence. We learned that feelings of resentment have been building up towards various formal and informal security forces who are perceived as being politicised by ruling elites.
Yes, a lot of our research has been centred specifically on Mosul. One of the important topics we looked at was the issue of rebuilding the city and how this ties into feelings of belonging. The city fell to IS in 2014, and was liberated in 2017, so it’s going through a complex rebuilding and reconstruction process. Our research showed that even before 2014, there were different priorities in terms of what should be rebuilt, how, and when. It also showed us that if you want to “build back better”, you have to first understand what was systematically going wrong before IS captured the city in 2014.
Our research in Mosul also touched on the psychology of spaces and how certain urban sites – even historical, cultural, and religious landmarks – are being reimagined and what kind of reaction this triggers from local populations. For example, some of the initial designs that came from the UNESCO-sponsored architectural competition for designing and rebuilding the famous al-Nuri Mosque triggered backlash because they were seen as too alien and removed from the well-known pre-war designs.
One of the ideas discussed for the mosque was a courtyard designed specifically for people from different communities to sit together and “engage in coexistence”. However, if you were a native Moslawi, you would argue that you don’t need a space artificially designed to encourage you to practice coexistence because, historically speaking, Moslawis are the “Godfathers of coexistence”. What people said was that they wanted instead to see the rebuilding of their mosque in the same way that was familiar to them – as it used to be before all the violence.
This corresponds to the character of society in Mosul – a conservative one, but in a cultural sense, with strong commitment to traditions. Something that needs to be acknowledged is that when people push for rebuilding or reimagining pre-existing structures, different segments of society have to be consulted and engaged in the process. Acknowledging this interaction between separate social groups within Iraq as a necessity, we’ve been focusing our research on understanding the different ways in which both competing and overlapping narratives of the traumatic past impact attitudes towards the reconstruction process.
When speaking about life under IS, interviewees often spoke about what being confined to the city felt like. We heard stories of women who were not able to escape, or who decided to stay because they had elderly family members they needed to care for, so for them it wasn’t really an option to flee.
Many who remained boycotted IS’ ideology in their own ways but feel that they are still being labelled as IS supporters – just because they ended up staying in the city – and this is causing feelings of disillusionment and anger. These are just some of the aspects of our research findings which I think very much contribute to our more granular understanding of Iraqi society, as it’s extremely important to trace both what happened with IS but also the challenges that are still present in the face of rebuilding.
What I really love about the XCEPT approach is the fact that we’re not just looking at violent behavioural patterns and we’re not just looking at the ‘popular heroes’ or practitioners that are driving peacebuilding efforts. We are also looking at the grey mass – the people that did not engage in violence, but that were also not necessarily involved in peacebuilding efforts.
If the overall aim of our research is to understand how trauma can affect the character of a city, hearing how the local population lived and resisted during those years of IS’ capture of Mosul is very important. We learned about underground initiatives that were taking place to preserve Moslawi culture, history, and identity, and the mechanisms that were developed in order to counter IS’ propaganda machinery. This helps us, as researchers, to better understand the context of the city as it is today and tells us about the experiences of those now either engaging in, or indirectly shaping, the trajectory of the rebuilding process.
I also love that within XCEPT we can identify a lot of under-researched, understudied grey areas, and we can conduct field work that allows us to communicate the perspectives of local actors. In one of our latest publications on the controversies of peacebuilding, we covered a lot of criticism by local peacebuilding practitioners in and around Mosul. They were, of course, grateful for any support they were receiving from international donor organisations, but they also shared with us their frustration because of the lack of strategic, forward-looking planning in the way funding is being provided.
What we also heard a lot from local participants is the idea that you can’t expect people to come and discuss very emotionally and psychologically traumatic experiences of violence when they’re not able to provide for their kids. Peacebuilding initiatives need to foster reconciliation and tackle past injustices, but they should also aim to provide broader socio-economic support to improve the livelihoods of Iraqis.
One of the things I sincerely hope that the XCEPT project can contribute is to really understand feelings of longing and belonging in Iraq, but also feelings of alienation and disillusionment towards the state. I think one of the most important tasks of the international community, but also of Iraq’s international partners, is not just to engage in piecemeal projects that help certain local communities, but also to find a more sustainable mode of engagement with ruling elites, like with Iraqi government officials. This could allow them to exert more influence through conditional financial support, thereby improving the management oversight of how funds are being distributed and how donations are being used to actually achieve real good.
International actors should also learn when it makes more sense to step back while pushing the Iraqi national authorities into the driver’s seat. When you provide funding in a way that creates incentives for national authorities to do it right, it can grant you more leverage to hold them to account in terms of how funds are being spent.
Read Dr Rudolf’s policy briefing on post-IS reconciliation in Iraq
This Q&A was originally published on the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) website.
In 2014, Islamic State (IS) took over the city of Mosul in Iraq. Thousands of people were killed, and almost one million were displaced. IS also attacked Mosul’s proud history of co-existence among its diverse communities, destroying churches, mosques, shrines, and heritage sites.
IS has now been pushed out of Mosul, but with memories of conflict embedded in the walls of the city, how can Moslawis begin to move forward?
Read Dr Inna Rudolf’s and Dr Craig Larkin’s policy briefing on post-IS reconciliation in Iraq.
Generally, you don’t have violent conflicts linked to pastoralism in Cameroon. There is a very organised system of managing transhumance. The timing of this seasonal pastoral movement, including movement of Nigerian pastoralists crossing into Cameroon, is controlled by the Ministry of Livestock. During the designated period of transhumance, farming activities along transhumance corridors, around watering points and in mixed farming zones are halted. If there is destruction of crops within that period, pastoralists are not liable.
Cameroonian pastoralists have complained that cross-border pastoralists come with diseases, but compulsory vaccination reduces this problem, which might otherwise result in conflict.
In cases where the movement of pastoralists does lead to disputes, there are also mechanisms in Cameroon to prevent and resolve conflict. Where crops are destroyed during transhumance, the Agro-Pastoral Commission, which is a state organ, intervenes to resolve the dispute between farmers and herders.
There are also dialogue platforms which facilitate dialogue between the aggrieved parties to resolve disputes. What is good about these is that the conflict is often resolved at the community level without the involvement of the police or the law courts. Where both parties agree on the findings of the dialogue, this has helped to bring about peaceful coexistence between the farmers and pastoralists.
In the public discourse in Nigeria, the way the media talks about pastoralism and transhumance is negative. They have a blanket term, ‘Fulani herdsman’, which is used widely in the media as a negative stereotype. In Cameroon, the term ‘Fulani herdsman’ isn’t used. If there is destruction, it’s not put on a tribal basis. In Nigeria, the blame is on cattle owners. In Cameroon the blame is more on the herdsman for leaving the cattle loose. When the blame is shifted people understand, they don’t attack whole communities and fewer farmer-herder conflicts are recorded.
When we’re talking about pastoral movements it’s important to understand the context and history. Before the partition of Africa by the colonial masters, there were no borders between Nigeria and Cameroon, there were just kingdoms. So, pastoralists feel that this is their land and that they can graze their livestock anywhere they wish. They also have kinship relationships with other pastoralists across national borders. In my case, the majority of my clan are in Nigeria. But with independence and the creation of states this movement across the borders by pastoralists and their livestock is being restricted.
In the last eight years, pastoralists have started moving in greater numbers from Nigeria into Cameroon and subsequently into the Central African Republic (CAR).
In the past, the population density in Nigeria was much lower. Today, high demographic pressure, coupled with the mechanisation of agriculture, means that more land is needed for crop production and grazing land is being taken away. Land grabbing by elites in traditional grazing areas has worsened the situation. Pressure on land, reduced pasture and watering points, in combination with violent farmer-herder conflicts are pushing pastoralists to move into Cameroon and the Central African Republic. In CAR there is less pressure on land; there are still vast rangelands, water and good pasture.
Some of the pastoralists we interviewed said that CAR is better than where they’d come from even though there is an armed conflict going on. They told us that they can negotiate with armed groups and pay an annual tax to graze their livestock. Nevertheless, at times the conflict in CAR can be disruptive to pastoral activities – when there is difficulty in Central Africa they come back into Cameroon, then when the situation normalises, they go back to Central Africa.
Although pastoral movement is well managed in Cameroon and is generally peaceful, the increase in the number of pastoralists coming in from Nigeria is adding to pressure and tensions in some areas. In the Northern region of Cameroon, where we did part of our fieldwork, availability of land is decreasing. The region is a population hotspot, and with the crisis of Boko Haram, many more people have migrated there from the Extreme North of Cameroon, around Lake Chad. There are also other pressures on land. As more pastoralists cross the border into Cameroon from Nigeria the potential for tension increases.
One source of tension is between migrant herders and agro-pastoralists, who are semi-settled, and who have a little livestock around their farms. They often complain that migrants’ animals come with diseases and sometimes destroy crops. This is a potential source of conflict with agro-pastoralists and with sedentary farmers. If the influx of livestock from Nigeria continues in large numbers, it may lead to violent conflicts in the future.
Recently a lot of mining has been happening along transhumance corridors and around national parks. This is also a cause for concern as mining pits are a death trap for livestock. There is also industrial agriculture, with foreign companies buying up large chunks of land or elites grabbing land along corridors. Palm, cocoa and tea plantations are being created, reducing the available rangelands and pushing more local pastoralists towards Central Africa.
In addition to all the negative impacts, there are positives. Migrant pastoralists have brought wealth to local economies. They have driven down the prices of beef in Cameroon, they buy crops from farmers and stimulate business activities. They also pay taxes to the councils.
Firstly, I think there should be better regional policy to encourage and support cross border transhumance. There is the ECOWAS protocol and African Union Charter on pastoralism, which include rules governing transhumance, but these should be properly enforced. Governments, and individual states, should also be encouraged to have bilateral and trilateral protocols.
There is also an urgent need to improve pastoral infrastructure, particularly in Nigeria. This is where donors and international NGOs can support. Lack of pasture and watering points are the main push factors for pastoralists moving out of Nigeria but a big bore hole in one area can save thousands of migrating cattle. This infrastructure will reduce movement, or at least help with managing movement. This in turn would reduce conflict. It is important that livestock development projects listen to pastoralists’ concerns and priorities and not be determined by the political priorities of elites. Governments should also be encouraged to preserve and restore pastoral zones and support livestock production.
This article was originally published on Conciliation Resources’ website.
I’m Dr Rajan Basra, and I’m a post-doctoral researcher on the XCEPT team at King’s College London (KCL). My research focus is on terrorism, especially how prisons manage offenders who are suspected, or convicted, of terrorism offences. Over the last two years, I’ve been interviewing ex-prisoners, and I’ve been looking at what this can tell us about the role prisons might play in radicalisation.
Since starting work on XCEPT, I’ve also been interviewing people who have been affected by terrorism, specifically the families of men who were kidnapped by jihadist groups in an incident in Lebanon in 2014. That’s been incredibly eye-opening. To date, most of my research has focused on the perpetrators. I’ve been so much more interested in the people behind the violence. What’s motivating them? What’s their life story? Why are they doing this? How are they doing this? Shifting attention to looking at people affected by that violence, and to hear their stories, has been fascinating.
Before joining XCEPT, my research focused mostly on jihadis in Europe. For my PhD, which I completed in the Department of War Studies at KCL, I was looking at people who were part of the jihadist movement and who had histories of criminality. Sometimes they’d also spent time in prison for criminal offences – what you’d consider ‘regular’ criminal offences – and had been radicalised in prison, or they’d networked with extremists there. I wanted to see what influence criminality has on jihadist extremism/radicalisation. I found that it can affect the narratives people tell, and also the spaces (prison) where radicalisation occurs.
It’s a fascinating area of study, but my interest was really sparked in 2011. I was traveling in the Middle East, and it just so happened to coincide with the Arab Spring. I spent a month in Syria, and I was lucky enough to meet some of the very first protestors in the country. These people were literally protesting for 5 or 10 minutes after Friday prayers, and even doing that was such an act of defiance because they were risking their lives, risking arrest and torture or disappearance. By chance, I had the opportunity to speak with some of these people. I remember meeting one man in Syria, and I said to him, ‘So what do you do?’, and he said, ‘If you’d asked me a week ago, I would say that I’m an architect, but if you asked me today, I’d say that I’m a revolutionary’.
After leaving Syria, I kept a close eye on what was happening in the country, in the very towns that I had visited, and as I saw that conflict descend into a civil war, and then the emergence of IS, I decided I wanted to take a closer look to understand what was going on. That led me to do an MA in Terrorism Studies at KCL, and then I stayed on to do my PhD.
This interest isn’t exclusive to me though. You see how popular true crime is as a genre. I think everyone has this curiosity – maybe even a morbid curiosity – about how human beings can treat other human beings, even if that’s in really depraved and horrific ways. People want to understand what drives someone to do that, to want to kill another person, and terrorism is all about that. Terrorists are not just killing someone for the sake of killing them. They’re doing it to send a message to a broader audience. I find it so interesting looking at what drives people to commit such acts of violence, examining their motivations, what those messages are, and what they hope to achieve.
This is where it gets a bit tricky, because if you say you understand where someone’s coming from, then people can accuse you of being an apologist, or legitimising a terrorist’s motivation, their cause, or the way they behave. That’s not true, obviously. I do think it’s important to look deeper at the human beings involved, to understand what has happened in their life that’s led them to this point. It’s easy to dismiss someone as simply being ‘evil’, but I think we all start from the premise that no-one is born that way – something has happened that has brought them to this stage. It could be a combination of many different things, such as someone’s environment or personality, or cultural or situational factors.
One of the holy grails in terrorism studies is to better understand it so you can help prevent it, but preventing terrorism is so multi-faceted and so complicated, just like the whole phenomenon is. If we can better understand the circumstances that have led someone to engage in terrorism, then maybe it is possible to improve prevention, and that’s why I think it’s so important to try and make sense of these motivations.
I hope that the work we’re doing on prisons will help to fill a gap in existing literature. A lot of research on the subject looks at the experience of prisoners through the lens of court documents, policy documents, and media reports, but rarely does it involve speaking with people who have been through it. To speak to people who have actually lived through the experience, and know what it’s like to be in an IS prison wing, is something that’s really invaluable. Prisons have been a running thread throughout the history of terrorism, but within the field it’s still somewhat overlooked. My colleague, Dr Craig Larkin, and I have interviewed dozens of ex-prisoners in Lebanon, and I think this will give a detailed and nuanced look at extremists, or suspected extremists, who live in prison, and how their time inside shapes their experiences and their lives.
I do think prisons can play an important role, because whenever you look at any terrorist movement in history, their members have almost always spent time in prison. If it wasn’t informative in shaping their views, it’s where they ended up after they acted upon their views. Even when you look at history more generally, people have had their ideas shaped by their time spent in prison. Hitler, for example, wrote Mein Kampf while he was incarcerated. Jihadi propaganda often talks about freeing prisoners, and the issue of imprisoned comrades is a strong cause for militant groups around the world, regardless of ideology or location. Clearly, it’s an important issue, and that’s why I think our research is so important, as I hope it will shed some light on what it’s actually like to be inside prison, and why it matters so much.
For me personally, my fieldwork interviewing victims of terrorism in Lebanon has been some of the most satisfying work that I’ve ever done. To get the opportunity to speak to people who have lived through these incredible experiences, both good and bad, has been a real privilege. I do consider it a genuine honour to have been able to sit down with people and listen to their stories. That’s been the most interesting, and the most challenging, part of working on XCEPT.
I’m really proud of everything our team is doing, and the promise of being able to contribute something new to current understandings of the intersection between conflict, trauma, peacebuilding, and violence is really exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next few years bring.
Find out more about Dr Basra’s research into prisons
As the conflict in Syria passes its 12th anniversary, one civil society body is trying to pave the way to peace. The Council of the Syrian Charter calls for social cohesion built around a common social heritage that transcends political affiliation.
Listen to the podcast here.
In a speech given on Hezbollah’s 11 November Martyrs’ Day in 2021, the group’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, stated that “it was with the blessing of these martyrs” that there exists “passion, nostalgia, love, adoration, psychological solace, and a lively spirit in Lebanon”.[i]
Ideas of ‘martyrdom’ in the Middle East first rose to prominence in academic scholarship in the mid-2000s, when the term became incorporated into the War on Terror zeitgeist, due in part to the perceived “numerous religiously motivated suicide-attacks in conflicts all over the world where the recourse on martyrdom discourses has been made prominent”.[ii] The vast amount of literature on martyrdom in the context of Muslim theologies and societies – its connection to radicalisation, jihad and suicide bombing, the use of the martyr as a weapon, and Western perceptions and receptions to martyrdom as a “an Islamic culture of death” – sought to construct a totalising Islamic martyrdom institution in order to find solutions to the threat of terrorism.[iii]
Yet, contrary to popular studies of radicalisation and extremism, martyrdom is not a priori. An individual does not become a martyr solely through having died and/or suffered, but is constructed as such by the societies, institutions, and other individuals who memorialise them, as part of a continuation of a lineage of centuries of theological and societal memory practice. In Lebanon, a country constituted by diverse ethnic and religious identities with a long history of intra-community conflict, martyrdom continues to be one of the most significant and mobilising carriers of memory in contemporary discourse. Narratives expand and re-shape according to cycles of violence: the martyr as hero, victim, national icon, resistance fighter; the ‘everyday’ man and the holy representative.
Most writings on political Lebanon and memorialisation acknowledge the “walls continually adorned with banners, posters, portraits immortalising iconic images and infamous slogans, an informal cornucopia of the ‘living dead’”, and “the legions of martyrs on the walls”.[iv] Yet, not many young Beirut residents could tell the story of the memorial at the centre of Martyrs’ Square, the focal point of Downtown Beirut. Why, then, are some martyr figures and narratives highlighted in memory, and others demoted? To what extent is this shifting? Whilst diverse in their representation, contemporary conceptualisations of martyrs in Lebanon serve three major functions: identity construction, legitimation and mobilisation.
Functions of martyrdom
The most defining period of contemporary martyrdom construction was Lebanon’s Civil War (1975-1990). The series of sectarian battles, massacres and evictions established a competitive field of discourse, in which martyrdom was established as “a coveted currency that parties strived to display”.[v] The memory of the dead served less as a unifying discourse, but a battleground. Each party and militia claimed to have martyrs of a particular cause, opposing the vision of others. Political leaders took advantage of the emotive memory vector of martyrdom, “not necessarily because they believed in the concept but only as a means to an end.”[vi] Martyrdom posters, now an institution in contemporary Lebanon, became a major competitive industry, carving out schisms between communities. These visual representations constituted “a relentless battle for signs and symbolic appropriation of territory”, marking out allied streets, shops, universities, places of worship and front lines.[vii]
Through martyrdom, memory could be flexed to serve a range of different purposes. Reminders of the sacrifices gave not only new combatants a cause to fight for, but current combatants a reason to continue fighting. Narratives of sacrifice also became a useful tool for parties to reframe their losses, through conceptualising martyrs as heroic defenders of the community and demonstrating the party’s legitimacy. Some parties even provided details about the way their martyrs died in an attempt to prove beyond doubt that they had ‘offered blood’. As Dabbous et al. explain, ”instead of saying ‘We lost four people’, the PLFP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] would say ‘We offered four martyrs’.
Military defeat suddenly became an honourable tribute to the party’s heroism and authority.”[viii] This became particularly significant with the deaths of party leaders. After the death of Progressive Socialist Party Leader Kamal Jumblatt in 1977 and Lebanese Forces leader Bashir Gemayel in 1982, images of the ‘martyred’ leaders became prolific in martyrdom posters, demonstrating the faithful commitment of the party to the vision of their leaders and the preservation of the party after their deaths.
Ironically, the competitive field of martyrdom did not end with the arrival of the Ta’if Agreement in 1991, and the end of the period of conflict. Instead, the combination of state-sponsored “collective amnesia” and continued violence and unrest in Lebanon created a vacuum for a proliferation of martyrdom narratives. [ix] Habitual violence and its memorialisation normalised a “hypertrophy of memory” in the form of martyrdom memorial monuments, posters and billboards, museums, documentaries and social media campaigns.[x]
Although there were various attempts by political leaders and civil society at memorialisation of collective martyrs in the 1990s, there were, and remain, no collective martyrs of the Civil War recognised by a unified Lebanon, only sectarian schisms of memory, competing for the category of martyrs. Currently, there are more than 28 war memorials in Lebanon, and at least four (and counting) different martyrs’ days alternative to that celebrated by the centralised state. [xi]
Although Lebanon has not descended again into full-scale civil conflict, a key function of martyrdom memorialisation in contemporary Lebanon continues to be mobilisation: to remember past sacrifices, revitalised by ‘new’ conflicts and episodes of violence, and to conceptualise the more recent dead as a continuation of the community martyrdom lineage. Political commemorations of martyrdom post-Civil War have as much to do with the present as the past, in an ongoing anticipation of future violence.[xii]
Personalities of martyrdom
The icon of an individual remains an important part of contemporary martyrdom discourse. Rafic Hariri, Lebanon’s former post-war prime minister and the foremost politician to have been killed in the wave of assassinations in 2005, is memorialised as a martyr of the state. His memorial is located in close proximity to the Martyrs’ Memorial statue in Martyrs’ Square and the imposing structure he endowed, the Mohammed al-Amin mosque. Large billboards mark his domain of Downtown Beirut with visual representations of Hariri himself and the slogan “we will not forget [you]”, a continuation of the icons of religious martyrdom and the posters of the dead leaders of the Civil War.
Whilst the positioning of Hariri in the centre of Lebanon’s capital, and as a symbol of post-war unification, suggests an appeal to a national martyrdom, such memorialisations mark an important divisive aspect of the discourse of martyrdom in contemporary Lebanon: competitive legitimacy. Hariri memorialisations often bear the additional slogan, “truth”. There is no tradition for prosecuting and punishing political murders in Lebanon and, as such, the perpetrators of Hariri’s assassination have never been held to account. Martyrdom, in this context, serves the purpose of providing resolution (for not just Hariri in this instance, but also, through his iconisation, the state of Lebanon) and mobilising the population in calling for “truth”.[xiii]
Out of this competitive field, arguably the most prominent owner of martyrdom discourse in contemporary Lebanon is Hezbollah. Utilising the defining moment of the 2006 war of south Lebanon against Israel, Hezbollah industrialised martyrdom to position themselves as sole national defenders of the country of Lebanon. The militia’s perceived ‘divine and strategic victory’ over an Israeli invasion led to a shift in the group’s discourse away from localised militia narratives and into one of national defence. Secretary-General Nasrallah has even commented that “one of the martyrs’ achievements … was preventing a civil war in Lebanon, which is still lasting”.[xiv] In his eyes, Hezbollah gave blood for Lebanon when the state lacked capacity to defend itself.
From this position, post-2006 Hezbollah’s martyrdom ‘industry’ successfully managed to monopolise the martyrdom discourse of Lebanon, with a designated Martyrs’ Foundation and clear designations of categories of martyrdom which informs specific commemoration practices (often observed by party officials to ensure correct observance). In 2010, the group opened its commemorative Tourist Landmark of Resistance to the fallen of 2006, as a means of legitimising its memory narrative using the factualising mode of the museum. In this way, Hezbollah exerts control over how such memory continues to be commemorated and anticipates future violence, whereby the resistance movement includes martyrdom “as a part of its enduring struggle to defend the ‘oppressed’ from the ‘oppressor’”.[xv]
More recently, Hezbollah’s narrative of national defender is being challenged by corruption, crisis, and conflicts of the region, as well as the capacity of social media to broaden and disrupt the playing field of the discourse. The martyrs of Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria are significantly more contentious. Compared with the grandeur of the martyrdom museum of the 2006 war, positioned high on a hilltop and boasting 300,000 domestic and international visitors in its first year of opening, the memorial to the Hezbollah fighters killed in the conflict with Syria, the Garden of Zainab’s Poplar Trees mausoleum, is a relatively modest pale stone building, located in Hezbollah’s heartland of Dahieh.[xvi] There are no infographics, only Hezbollah regalia, and the room is plain and functional for the housing of 200 uniform graves.[xvii] These understated commemorations are memories for solidifying the group, rather than conquering a collective Lebanese martyrdom of national defence.
Martyrdom in an age of mass media
Institutional narratives of martyrdom have not gone unchallenged in contemporary martyrdom. The internet and social media have had a levelling, and rupturing, effect on the discourse, creating new forms of engagement and challenging traditional memory production. Televised documentaries and online media forge a martyr at a pace of minutes rather than days, while martyrdom material on social media can be created in minutes by anyone with a laptop or mobile phone and shared within seconds. The 2006 war prompted a proliferation of martyrdom content, much of it produced not by ‘memory makers’ of the political and social elite, but by the Lebanese population under the age of 30.[xviii] Many younger generations feel the discourse has been highly instrumentalised, with the ‘martyr’s body’ brutalised by political elites.
In 2014, the successful #NotAMartyr social media campaign was prompted by the death of 16-year-old student Mohammad Chaar in a car bomb in Beirut, as a protest against the use of the term which was seen to obscure the need for investigation and punishment of those responsible.[xix] There has also emerged a new wave of martyrs of political corruption, constructed by civil society and society outside of conventional ‘martyrdom makers’ through the use of social media. This includes individuals as symbols of resistance against political corruption (such as newspaper Al-Nahar editor, Gebran Tueni, assassinated in 2005, and co-founder of the Lebanese Civil War archive UMAM, Lokman Slim, assassinated in 2021); as icons of popular resistance (Alaa Abou Fakher, a protestor killed in the October 17 protests of 2019); and also as victims of such corruption (the dead of the Beirut port explosion in 2020).
The individual families of the dead of the Beirut port explosion in August 2020 have become focal points of martyrdom narratives which resist and challenge hegemonic ownership of memory. State attempts to commemorate the memory of the casualties have been largely resisted by the families of the martyrs, who perceive attempts to co-opt their memorialisation as a means of consoling the continued block on an independent investigation into the explosion.
Demonstrations against the lack of progress are a form of martyr memorialisation: held on the fourth day of every month since the explosion, protestors hold posters showing the faces of the dead, with their names proceeded by diverse titles, such as ‘martyr of the state’, ‘hero martyr,’ and ‘martyr of corruption’. These new modes of martyrdom as a means of challenging political corruption through memory pose a threat to hegemonic powers in Lebanon; a memorial wall of the portraits of the martyrs installed by civil society was water blasted unexpectedly in 2023.
Martyrdom continues, and will continue, in Lebanon as a powerful tool for collective storytelling: shaping, passing down, and mobilising trauma through narratives which legitimise, control, and affirm group identity and, more recently, offer avenues of resistance. Whilst social media has opened up a larger, more diverse playing field for the creation and consumption of martyrdom material, the concept is not a new vehicle of memory, but one which is rooted in centuries of historical legacy and continually regurgitates and recycles itself. Martyrdom informs visions of the past, but, in so doing, it shapes the future of cycles of violence, revenge, and sectarianism.
Future martyrdom discourse looks to be even more diverse, prolific, and indeed democratised. According to Nayla Tueni, the daughter of the assassinated Gebran Tueni, “martyrdom itself is a cause that must be restudied; the basis and conditions of which must be specified considering some youths are being deceived. They are being deceived into believing in causes which are not actually patriotic, religious or humane but which actually serve certain parties’ personal aims.”[xx]
This article was originally published on the ICSR website.
Citations
[i] ‘Nasrallah delivers speech on occasion of Hezbollah Martyr’s Day’, Iran Press, 11 November 2021. https://iranpress.com/content/49968/nasrallah-delivers-speech-occasion-hezbollah-martyr-day
[ii] Gölz, “Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East,” 9.
[iii] Khosrokhavar, Afsaruddin, Cook, Understanding and Addressing Suicide Attacks. Janes and Houen, Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-modern to Contemporary Perspectives; Slavicek, “Deconstructing the Shariatic Justification of Suicide Bombings.”; Pape, Dying to Win. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism; Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon; Asad, On Suicide Bombing; Hatina, Martyrdom in Modern Islam. Piety, Power and Politics; Cook, Martyrdom in Islam.
[iv] Larkin, Memory and Conflict in Lebanon, 158; Fisk, Pity the Nation, 93.
[v] Dabbous, Dabbous, and Nasser, “‘Across the Bridge of Death’, the Culture of Martyrdom in Lebanon 1960s-1980s,” 610–11.
[vi] Dabbous, Dabbous, and Nasser, 610.
[vii] Maasri, Off The Wall, 3.
[viii] Dabbous, Dabbous, and Nasser, 610–11.
[ix] Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon, 102.
[x] Huyssen, “Present Pasts,” 3.
[xi] Hermez, War Is Coming, 154–55.
[xii] Hermez, 151–52.
[xiii] Knudsen, “Death of a Statesman – Birth of a Martyr,” 1.
[xiv] ‘Hezbollah leader: Militants ‘won’t surrender arms’,’ CNN, 22 September 2006. https://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/22/lebanon.rally/
[xv] Kızılkaya, “Hizbullah’s Moral Justification of Its Military Intervention in the Syrian Civil War,” 213.
[xvi] ‘Hezbollah-land’ Attracting Jihad Tourists,’ ABC News, 15 July 2010. https://abcnews.go.com/International/Travel/hezbollahland-war-meets-tourism-lebanon/story?id=11173351
[xvii] “Inside the Mausoleums of Hezbollah’s Secret Syria Dead,” TRT World, 27 July 2018. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/inside-the-mausoleums-of-hezbollah-s-secret-syria-dead-19171
[xviii] Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon, 236.
[xix] ‘Outraged Lebanese protest teenager’s death with #notamartyr campaign,’ CNN, 23 January 2014. https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/22/world/meast/lebanon-not-a-martyr-campaign/index.html;
‘#BBCtrending: Lebanon’s #notamartyr selfie protest,’ BBC News, 6 January 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-25623299
[xx] ‘On Martyrdom in Lebanon,’ Nayla Tueni, An Nahar, 3 February 2014. https://english.alarabiya.net/views/news/middle-east/2014/02/05/On-martyrdom-in-Lebanon
I’m Dr Fiona McEwen, and I’m the Survey and Interventions Director for the XCEPT project at King’s College London. I’m responsible for managing a large longitudinal survey and a range of associated data collection, as well as interventions, that we’re doing in Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria/Lebanon.
We know that many people living in conflict-affected zones experience potentially traumatic events and that this can have a significant impact on their mental health. But conflict also has many other effects, such as damaging trust in institutions and decreasing social cohesion. The aim of the research we’re doing at King’s is to understand whether trauma-related mental health problems may have the potential to increase people’s propensity to seek violent, or peaceful, solutions, and how that might interact with a range of other factors. The Impact of Trauma Survey (IoTS) is a huge part of this research. It will collect data on multiple different outcome measures, such as attitudes to reconciliation or the use of political violence, and many different risk and protective factors across time to try and understand how these factors work together.
One thing which is particularly exciting about the IoTS is that it’s longitudinal. There have been lots of studies conducted in difficult contexts like this, but these are often cross-sectional, which means data is collected at a single point in time. The IoTS allows us to explore how changes in a particular factor at one point in time might influence attitudes at a later point. It’s also looking at a much wider range of factors than many studies do. We know that factors at the individual level, like people’s dispositions and personality traits, can have an impact on violent or peaceful outcomes, but conflict exposure, mental health problems, and social factors all play a role too. The IoTS will increase our understanding of the interplay between all these factors and how they feed into cycles of violence.
In this context, the core aspect is that many people will have been exposed to war events, so they may have witnessed a bombing, or seen people killed, or they may have lost family members. There may be multiple other traumas in a person’s life, however, so we’ll also be looking at things like Adverse Childhood Experiences, such as abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence.
We’re working on the assumption that there’s often a cumulative impact of these traumas. So, for example, someone who has had exposure to a major traumatic event during war, but otherwise benefits from protective factors like a supportive family, may not be affected by that single trauma as much as someone who also suffered maltreatment as a child. Where individuals have experienced a series of traumatic events throughout their lives, this can have an additive impact over time, and this is what we’re trying to account for, rather than assuming that, in a war-exposed population, trauma is related only to conflict.
I originally studied biological sciences – neuroscience and veterinary medicine – but then went on to study and do research in developmental psychology and psychiatry. Most recently, I worked as the study coordinator for a programme of research centred on Syrian refugee families in Lebanon. The study was looking at mental health and resilience in these children, who were living in really challenging conditions in informal tented settlements. There were quite a few similarities between that work and the research we’re doing now on XCEPT: we used a longitudinal design to study changes in children’s mental health and behaviour over time, and delivered an intervention aimed at reducing mental health problems in children exposed to conflict and displacement. One thing we found that was really important was being alert to the fact that measures developed in one setting will not necessarily be valid in other settings.
Accounting for different contexts and cultures when carrying out data collection like this is crucial. My colleague, Dr Nafees Hamid, and I were recently in Erbil, Iraq, training the field work team who are going to be collecting the IoTS data in the country, and it was a really useful process as it allowed us to understand how our survey questions might be interpreted differently in different contexts. There can be issues with the way things have been translated or with the concepts we’re exploring. Even within one country, it’s apparent there will be different interpretations according to dialect, for example. Differing experiences across the country may also mean a question could be interpreted in a certain way, or that it may be more sensitive to the interviewees. It’s vital that we understand those differences to make sure our measures are as good as they can be. When we’re interpreting the data, we really need that local input as well to help us understand how people might have been thinking about those issues.
There are so many really exciting things about the work the King’s team is doing for the XCEPT project. It’s rare that there are research programmes doing something so large-scale, and across multiple different countries, which allows you to make comparisons across countries. I was also really keen to join a multidisciplinary research project. To date, I’ve usually been working with psychologists, psychiatrists, and biologists, so it’s been great to have an opportunity to work with people from other disciplines, including sociologists and historians. It’s exposed me to a much wider range of research and ideas than I would have been otherwise. For the team, having all these different experts and perspectives also allows us to do much more powerful research.
Another thing that really drew me to the project was the opportunity to use nested interventions – for example, psychosocial interventions that some people receive between waves of survey data collection. The advantage of this is that, once we’ve hypothesised the mechanisms by which we think something might be happening, it allows us to then manipulate that and measure the response. For example, you can try and reduce someone’s trauma-related mental health symptoms, and then measure to see if that has an impact on other outcomes you think it might be related to, like the propensity to violence. It’s rare that you have studies where you’re combining large-scale observational data with intervention data as well, and it’s great to be a part of this.
One of the core driving questions we’re trying to explore is whether trauma-related mental health problems will have a subsequent impact on people’s behaviour or their attitudes to reconciliation. There’s an assumption that untreated trauma could act as a block on achieving stability post-conflict, but we don’t yet know if that’s true. Because our research allows us to control for lots of factors, I hope we’ll be able to get more conclusive data on whether untreated trauma itself causes a problem, or whether other factors have a bigger influence on people’s attitudes towards reconciliation.
Our work should allow us to understand more about these questions, and I hope this will result in useful policy and intervention implications. This is a very large, complicated project, and it takes a long time to prepare and build, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the data coming in, and then we can get to work running analyses across the team.
Late 2020 saw the beginning of the devastating war in Tigray and the occupation of a disputed region on the Ethiopia–Sudan border – Al Fashaga – by the Sudanese army. These shocks disrupted settled patterns of land ownership and control in both Ethiopia’s volatile north and Sudan’s borderlands, historically the heart of the sesame and oilseed production that is economically vital to both countries.
These seemingly harmless cash crops are now embedded in local, subnational and national political contestations in both countries. Sesame value chains are being reshaped, with power and profits being used to entrench the grip of political and armed actors who are reinforcing new patterns of land control and driving informal and illicit trade – impacting the coping mechanisms of local communities and threatening to fuel further conflict.
Regional rivalries drive contestation over the Ethiopia supply chain
Internal borders between most of Ethiopia’s regions are marked by boundary disputes, which often degenerate into violent conflict. The most important is between the Tigray and Amhara regions. Since the war began in 2020, the Amhara region has annexed vast areas of western and southern Tigray, which the Amhara region claims were taken from them by Tigray 30 years ago, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) dominated ethnic coalition came to power.
Ethiopia’s exports of spices, oilseeds and pulses brought in over half a billion dollars in 2021, roughly a quarter of the country’s total export revenues and second only to coffee. The sector has been rocked by the war in the north, which accounted for much of Ethiopia’s sesame production, with an estimated 500,000 hectares of sesame fields taken out of cultivation during the 2021 growing season. Conflict has exacerbated a steady decline in formal revenues from sesame exports, dropping over $115 million from 2016 to 2021.
Alongside falling production, the previously integrated value chain has been disrupted and decentralized by political fragmentation and land competition between Amharas and Tigrayans. Before the war, the agricultural sector in Western Tigray/Welkait was dominated by Tigrayan business interests, through the TPLF’s regional endowment fund EFFORT, a business conglomerate including subsidiaries such as Guna Trading House, and Hiwot Agricultural Mechanization.
The taking of the area by Amhara forces in late 2020 saw the control over agricultural supply chains shift to actors from the Amhara region, amid contestation between regional officials, businessmen and security actors, backed by political elites. Thousands of displaced ethnic Tigrayan inhabitants of the area have been replaced by ethnic Amharas, enticed to settle there by the Amhara regional government’s offer of grants and leases for land which promise better livelihoods. The sesame they farm is now largely exported through informal and illicit channels, with profits used to reinforce de facto regional control.
But there is also contestation within the Amhara region over the land and sesame supply chain between sub-regional elites from Gojjam, Gondar and indigenous Welkaites. Welkaites, who were marginalized under TPLF rule, believed that by aligning themselves with powerful Amharas they would reclaim land and influence. But this has not been fully realized, with the local administration reliant on Amhara region subsidies, rather than the federal budget. With little support from the federal government, local Welkait officials are strengthening their ties with Eritrea.
At the national level, regional contestation over the control over Western Tigray/Welkait feeds into shifting political alliances between the Amhara, Tigrayans and Oromo which threaten the sustainability of the peace agreement struck between the federal government and TPLF in November 2022 – despite efforts by the government to defer the thorny issue.
While the constitutional return of the land to Tigray remains unlikely anytime soon, there is a feeling that Amhara control over Western Tigray/Welkait is no longer certain. The Ethiopian government’s pursuit of peace with Tigray may lead it to turn away from the Amhara region, despite their alliance during and before the war, which could result in a renewed showdown between Amhara and Tigrayan forces.
The prospect of losing territory could also heighten Amhara nationalist claims on Al Fashaga – the loss of which was partly offset by gaining Western Tigray/Welkait – leading to renewed conflagration with Sudan, outside of federal direction. Eritrea’s presence and alliance with Amhara militias remains a concern, given Asmara’s demonstrable ability to inflame tensions.
Sudan’s securocrats battle over resources to entrench political power
The war in northern Ethiopia was also used opportunistically by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to take control of the fertile Al Fashaga borderland. This roughly 250 sq km area had been awarded to Sudan when the boundary was initially demarcated by the British in 1903, a ruling that remained contested by Ethiopia. An uneasy truce had seen Ethiopian farmers cultivate the land under nominal Sudanese administration; a settlement that collapsed in 2020 when thousands of predominantly Amhara farmers were evicted.
Local Sudanese farmers have also lost out – with some not compensated for the loss of lands to their own military, with land given to people from other parts of the country, and through lost relationships with Ethiopian farmers, labourers and investors.
The Sudanese military now allegedly controls more than 90 per cent of the disputed areas and security-linked companies and investors have moved into the lucrative sesame sector, re-routing the supply chain, which used to flow largely through Ethiopian markets. These companies are connected to Sudan’s Military Industrial Corporation, a vast conglomerate of business subsidiaries controlled by SAF – which is headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
The commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo (or Hemedti), also has interests in agriculture, through his family business Al-Junaid. Both sit at the top of Sudan’s Sovereign Council. Hemedti’s competition with Burhan has seen him develop relations with Ethiopia’s prime minister – counter-balanced by recent rapprochement between Abiy and Burhan – as well as senior Amhara leaders, including over business activities.
Moreover, competition between Sudanese security actors fuels volatile political rivalries, and further entrenches military control of economic resources, undermining civilians at a time when pro-democracy forces are seeking to restore a reform-minded government. One of the key challenges for a new civilian government will be to quickly build up a domestic revenue base to compete with the economic heft of the country’s prominent security institutions, which will demand taking on military-controlled holdings in civic sectors such as agriculture, including sesame.
Informal and illicit trade reinforces conflict dynamics
This context has driven the informalization of trade, with cash crops such as sesame increasingly exported outside of formal channels and connected to other illicit cross-border activities between Ethiopia and Sudan. Indications are that sesame production in Western Tigray/Welkait has recovered significantly during the current 2022/23 harvest season. However, rather than contributing much needed currency to soften Ethiopia’s forex crisis, the Amhara elite-controlled supply chain is primarily being used to secure a variety of regional interests.
Uncertainty is a condition that all individuals experience, and it is something that we all, to differing extents, encounter every day. There are some situations and incidents, however, that might elicit intense and long-lasting feelings of uncertainty in people. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us experienced uncertainty at a much higher level than we were used to. Job security, access to medical care, and daily routines all came under attack as governments worldwide sought to cope with the constantly evolving virus and the body of scientific knowledge that grew alongside it. For those who have experienced conflict, however, enduring intense trauma and uncertainty can be a common part of life.[i] Individuals from conflict-affected places who have, for instance, also experienced violence, are often subjected to displacement, and to a sudden and dramatic change in their lives, which can be accompanied by a dearth of information.[ii]
As part of the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, a multi-disciplinary team of experts at King’s College London is seeking to understand the factors that shape violent and peaceful behaviours in conflict zones. We know that uncertainty plays a role in shaping both social functioning and susceptibility to violent ideologies.[iii] In conflict-affected populations, where uncertainty is prevalent, it is therefore crucial to examine how this process takes place in order to help stop it.
What Do We Mean by Uncertainty?
When analysing the implications of uncertainty on individuals’ behaviours and decision-making, it is important to differentiate between the diverse theories around uncertainty, among which we can identify two prominent ones. The first is uncertainty-identity theory, a social psychological theory that focuses on how individuals perceive their roles in society. Individuals’ identities are shaped in significant part by the roles they perform in society, such as being a daughter or a son, a husband or a wife, or being defined by the job they do. When individuals experience losses in their positions – losing a job or a partner, for example – their identities are threatened, and they become unsure of who they are. This uncertainty makes them vulnerable to organisations characterised by highly defined in-group/out-group boundaries, norms, goals, and traditions; these groups hold significant power as they provide individuals, who are experiencing uncertainty, with specific identities. People’s choice of joining, for instance, an ultra-fundamentalist religion, or an extremist group, is indeed heavily influenced by their social ecology and group dynamics.[iv] Consequently, the core idea of uncertainty-identity theory is that individuals identify with social groups in order to reduce feelings and perceptions of uncertainty related to themselves, their identity, and future life situations.[v]
On the other side, research has largely focused on Intolerance of Uncertainty (IoU), namely a stable and permanent personality trait that, in contrast to uncertainty-identity, does not arise from specific circumstances or changes.[vi] Instead, individuals with IoU find strongly disturbing those circumstances where they lack the power to predict and control the occurrences around them, such as conflicts or wars, whereas they can conduct normal lives when able to exert control over events in their lives.[vii] This tendency has also been significantly related with diverse anxiety disorders, such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).[viii] Individuals with high levels of Intolerance of Uncertainty are more prone to engage in maladaptive behaviours – this is also the case with individuals experiencing uncertainty-identity – in the attempt to reduce uncertainty and to increase their control over the circumstances around them.[ix] Joining an extremist group or a cult can reduce this distress and difficulty due to the feelings of community, purpose, values, and coherence that those groups bring.[x] In the context of conflict, it is also important to note that experiences of war can create trauma which leads to more uncertainty intolerance, thus creating situations where people who are intolerant to uncertainty find themselves living in extremely uncertain circumstances.
What is the Relationship Between Uncertainty and Extremist Violence?
Research around both uncertainty-identity theory and Intolerance of Uncertainty has found that individuals largely attempt to reduce uncertainty around their perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours.[xi] They do not, however, always embrace positive methods to do this.[xii] Consequently, a new avenue of research has started investigating whether experiencing uncertainty, or having high levels of uncertainty intolerance, can influence individuals’ endorsement of extremist ideologies. This is particularly relevant when individuals are from conflict-affected areas, as terrorist and extremist groups can exploit the chaos and societal instability in these regions in order to acquire power and control, through recruitment of new members, propaganda, and the use of violence.[xiii]
While researching the paramount role of group identification, psychologists Hogg and Adelman found that individuals experiencing uncertainty about themselves were more prone to engage in criminal and extremist activities in an attempt to increase their feelings of certainty.[xiv] Another study similarly found that, when individuals are experiencing acute and chronic uncertainty, they can become significantly attracted to extremist groups and their ideologies, as the latter provides certainty around how an individual needs to behave and what to believe in.[xv] It is also believed that, when individuals experience a crisis, they can become more vulnerable and susceptible to new ideologies and beliefs. Wiktorowicz labels this process ‘cognitive opening’, whereby a personal, economic, or religious change leads someone to attempt to make sense of their life and identity.[xvi] Extremist groups can be attractive in these situations, as they provide individuals with a powerful and strongly defined sense of themselves, as well as with a rigorous structure and leadership.[xvii]
Uncertainty may play a crucial role in the endorsement of violent ideologies, and thus potentially of violent behaviours, as individuals are likely to become vulnerable to extremist groups in their attempts to reduce uncertainty.[xviii] This becomes even more relevant in the context of conflicts, where high levels of uncertainty may be prevalent due to the distressing and violent environments that individuals find themselves in, and where extremist groups are more likely to find shelter, due to the unstable and chaotic security and political situation. When deciding what interventions should be put in place to support individuals in conflict-affected areas, therefore, it is vital that policymakers consider the role that uncertainty may play in a person’s life. Yet, they should also note that uncertainty can manifest in different ways. Where someone has uncertainty-identity, interventions that help to restore a person’s role in society may be beneficial. If an individual has Intolerance of Uncertainty, they can be taught techniques which improve their ability to make decisions in moments of distress. Ultimately, however, policies at the individual level must go hand in hand with interventions to help improve the underlying socio-structural issues which cause instability and uncertainty in the lives of so many, such as in fragile and conflict affected states. Together, this may help turn people away from violent ideologies and extremist groups and create a more secure peace.
[i] Nickerson, Hoffman, J., Keegan, D., Kashyap, S., Argadianti, R., Tricesaria, D., Pestalozzi, Z., Nandyatama, R., Khakbaz, M., Nilasari, N., & Liddell, B. (2023). Intolerance of uncertainty, posttraumatic stress, depression, and fears for the future among displaced refugees. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 94, 102672–102672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2023.102672
[ii] Nickerson, Hoffman, J., Keegan, D., Kashyap, S., Argadianti, R., Tricesaria, D., Pestalozzi, Z., Nandyatama, R., Khakbaz, M., Nilasari, N., & Liddell, B. (2023). Intolerance of uncertainty, posttraumatic stress, depression, and fears for the future among displaced refugees. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 94, 102672–102672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2023.102672
[iii] Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., et al. (2014). “Threat and defense: from anxiety to approach” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. eds. J. M. Olson and M. P. Zanna, vol. 49 (San Diego, CA, US: Elsevier Academic Press), 219–286; Hogg, M. A. (2012). Self-uncertainty, social identity, and the solace of extremism. In M. A. Hogg & D. L. Blaylock (Eds.), Extremism and the psychology of uncertainty (pp. 19–35). Boston, MA: Wiley- Blackwell.
[iv] Hogg, A. M., and Wagoner, A. J. (2017). “Uncertainty—identity theory” in International encyclopedia of intercultural communication. ed. K. Young Yun (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc), 1–9.
[v] Hogg, A. M., and Adelman, J. (2013). Uncertainty–identity theory: extreme groups, radical behavior, and authoritarian leadership. J. Soc. Issues 69, 436–454. doi: 10.1111/josi.12023
[vi] Carleton, R., Norton, M., & Asmundson, G. (2007). Fearing the unknown: A short version of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. Journal Of Anxiety Disorders, 21(1), 105-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.03.014
[vii] Buhr, K., & Dugas, M. (2002). The intolerance of uncertainty scale: psychometric properties of the English version. Behaviour Research And Therapy, 40(8), 931-945. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7967(01)00092-4
[viii] Carleton, R., Norton, M., & Asmundson, G. (2007). Fearing the unknown: A short version of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. Journal Of Anxiety Disorders, 21(1), 105-117.
[ix] Shihata, S., McEvoy, P. M., & Mullan, B. A. (2018). A Bifactor Model of Intolerance of Uncertainty in Undergraduate and Clinical Samples: Do We Need to Reconsider the Two-Factor Model? Psychological Assessment, 30(7), 893–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000540
[x] Hogg, A. M., and Wagoner, A. J. (2017). “Uncertainty—identity theory” in International encyclopedia of intercultural communication. ed. K. Young Yun (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc), 1–9.
[xi] Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., et al. (2014). “Threat and defense: from anxiety to approach” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. eds. J. M. Olson and M. P. Zanna, vol. 49 (San Diego, CA, US: Elsevier Academic Press), 219–286.
[xii] Hogg, M. A. (2014). From Uncertainty to Extremism: Social Categorization and Identity Processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 338 342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414540168
[xiii] United Nations. (2020). A new era of conflict and violence. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2020/01/un75_conflict_violence.pdf
[xiv] Hogg, A. M., and Adelman, J. (2013). Uncertainty–identity theory: extreme groups, radical behavior, and authoritarian leadership. J. Soc. Issues 69, 436–454. doi: 10.1111/josi.12023
[xv] Hogg, A. M., and Wagoner, A. J. (2017). “Uncertainty—identity theory” in International encyclopedia of intercultural communication. ed. K. Young Yun (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc), 1–9.
[xvi] Wiktorowicz, Q. (2005). Radical Islam rising: Muslim extremism in the West. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
[xvii] Hogg, M. A. (2014). From Uncertainty to Extremism: Social Categorization and Identity Processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 338 342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414540168
[xviii] Ozer, & Bertelsen, P. (2019). Countering Radicalization: An Empirical Examination From a Life Psychological Perspective. Peace and Conflict, 25(3), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000394
