INTELWIRE Weekly Brief, 1/23/2015

Fate Of Japanese Hostages Unclear After Islamic State's Deadline Lapses

The fate of two Japanese hostages threatened with death by the self-styled Islamic State is unclear after the expiration of a 72-hour deadline imposed by the militants for Japan to pay $200 million to secure its citizens' release.

Japanese Mock ISIS with Internet Meme
Japanese Twitter users are defying their country's hostage crisis by mocking ISIS with a nationwide Photoshop battle of satirical images.

Peer pressure not propaganda crucial to IS recruitment: experts

John Kerry: Half of ISIS leaders killed by Iraq and allies

Iraq and its allies have made significant gains in battling militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), killing thousands of fighters and 50 percent of the group's top commanders, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday as an international coalition promised stronger efforts to stop the group and squash the spread of its extremist ideology.

British Jihadist who faked death admits terror offences

A British jihadist who spent six months in Syria and faked his death in an attempt to return to the UK undetected has admitted four terrorism offences.

Europe to announce new steps to counter terrorism

French and European officials will unveil new counter-terrorism measures Wednesday in Brussels, including possible changes to the bloc's Schengen visa-free travel zone, in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris.

US maintains intelligence relationship with Houthis

Senior US intelligence official Michael Vickers said Jan. 21 that the United States is continuing attacks on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) despite ongoing violence in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and has an intelligence relationship with the Houthi insurgent group that has seized much of the capital since September.

Greece arrests over Belgian 'jihadist terror plot'

Religious versus sacred in extremism
"The popular media and many in academia often overstate the role that religion, and its supposedly unique qualities, has played in recent acts of terror. In this article, the author argues that the notion of religious violence is unhelpful and that there is a more useful concept that we can utilize to draw out the values and ideas that play a role in the move to violence in both religious and secular groups. ... This framework uses the concept of non-negotiable (or “sacred”) beliefs. It is as applicable to secular as it is to religious groups, and can show us much more about how such beliefs can contribute to violence."

Why We Radicalize
University of Maryland researchers aren’t content with the what of terrorism — they want to tackle the why. It’s the same question that has prompted journalists’ detailed explorations of the Paris attackers' paths to radicalization. A team of three full-time staff members at the terrorism center are trying to move beyond anecdote. They've amassed a data set of more than 1,500 people radicalized to violent and non-violent extremism in the United States since World War II and put them into three categories: Islamist, Far Right, and Far Left. The database — which hasn’t been released publicly — has detailed information about the terrorists' lives and backgrounds, including criminal records, social networks and histories of abuse. The researchers believe it's among the first of its kind.

Ambivalent Warriors: What Americans Think About the Fight Against ISIS
On January 8, the Brookings Project for U.S. Relations with the Islamic World (IWR) convened a panel of Middle East scholars and political experts to discuss American views on the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The analysis centered on the findings of a two-part poll uncovering American perspectives on Middle East conflicts. Also from Brookings this week, a report on CVE in Pakistan.


Pre-order ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger. Buy J.M. Berger's book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam