Twenty Years of ICPVTR at RSIS: A Continually Evolving – and Still Relevant – Research Agenda
This article explores the threat trends and patterns which have shaped and defined ICPVTR’s research agenda over the past two decades, including the increasing role of women and youth in terrorism, the emergence of so-called salad bar ideologies, and the interplay between emerging technologies and violent extremism, among others.
Introduction
The International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) was stood up in 2004, at the very time that transnational terror networks motivated by violent Islamist ideology were wreaking havoc in Southeast Asia. This was exemplified by the October 12, 2002 bombings of the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in the Indonesian tourist island of Bali, an attack perpetrated by the Al-Qaeda (AQ)-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network that killed 202 civilians. What was especially material for Singapore in particular was that the Bali bombings were a “Plan B”. A previous joint AQ-JI plan to attack Western diplomatic missions and commercial interests as well as local government targets in Singapore, had been thwarted in December 2001.
The JI arrests in Singapore sent shock waves across the city-state, as evidence was unearthed that linked JI to the horrific AQ attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., just a few months earlier on September 11, 2001.[1] JI, set up in January 1993 by AQ-influenced followers of the older Darul Islam armed separatist movement in Indonesia, had established cells in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore by the 1990s, in a quest to establish a modern Daulah Islamiyah Nusantara, or Southeast Asian caliphate, spanning southern Thailand to Australia, via armed jihad.[2] What was striking about the transnational terrorism threat at the start of the 2000s was that both AQ[3] and JI – before they were each subjected to massive counter terrorist pressure – were at the time relatively well-structured, hierarchical transnational terror networks.[4]
From the Organised Threat Network to the Self-Radicalised “Bunch of Guys”
It could be said that while the organised threat network that the likes of JI and AQ represented grabbed the attention of counter terrorism analysts in and outside government in the early 2000s, by the middle of the decade, the combination of the impact of global counter terrorist operations as mentioned and in particular the rise of social media, had added a degree of complexity to the evolving threat picture. Violent Islamist extremist ideology transcended geographical barriers, becoming more easily disseminated worldwide through a combination of increasingly cheap smartphones and affordable internet broadband access. This led by the late 2000s to an animated and much-followed debate between two leading terrorism scholars.
Hoffman and Sageman argued over whether the centre of gravity of the global jihadist threat had metastasised from a centralised structure with AQ Central still calling the shots, or whether the increasing importance of internet-powered ideological dissemination had given rise to a “leaderless jihad”[5] of semi-autonomous Islamist terror cells – Sageman’s “bunch of guys” – carrying out attacks on their own worldwide.[6] In the leaderless jihad paradigm, such cells shared the same ideology as AQ Central – but acted more or less independently. In any case, this trend towards decentralisation of the transnational terror threat received a further boost by the mid-2010s with the rise of the highly virulent AQ offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS).[7] While IS, like AQ, had a core organisation, it made full use of rapidly developing social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other popular ones to spread propaganda, fostering the worldwide self-radicalisation of vulnerable, especially young, individuals.[8] This trend in turn compelled think tanks and security agencies to collaborate more closely with social media firms and religious/community leaders to better understand and respond to the increasingly obvious emergence of low-tech terrorism potentially perpetrated by so-called self-radicalised lone actors.[9]
The Increasing Salience of Youth Radicalisation
What appeared particularly salient by the 2010s was the importance of youth as targets for recruitment as self-radicalised lone actors. Terrorism researchers Berger and Stern in their book ISIS: The State of Terror (2015) affirmed that IS “actively recruits children” to engage in “combat, including suicide missions”.[10] In Singapore, from 2015 onwards, tracking by local security agencies showed that self-radicalised individuals were the most significant terrorist threat in Singapore, with youth radicalisation in particular becoming more of a concern. Such a trend was reinforced by near-ubiquitous online IS propaganda that promoted the notion of low-tech terrorism, encouraging self-radicalised lone actors to use everyday objects such as knives to carry out terror attacks.[11] As a consequence, the counter terrorism research agenda in Singapore and the region began to take account of the factors that fostered youth susceptibility to violent radicalisation.
Hence, research has taken on an increasingly multi-disciplinary focus, with the stock aim of seeking to find better strategies for reducing youth psychological vulnerability to violent extremist appeals. A significant plank of such research has highlighted the importance of policy measures to foster stable families. Mental health professionals have warned about emotional deprivation in dysfunctional homes stunting the psychological maturing of young people. A related risk is that in their search for role models and “father figures” to fill their emotional void, they are left vulnerable to the lure of charismatic foreign extremist preachers. Research has also pointed out the importance of providing access for such youth, where relevant, to authoritative religious education promoting inclusivity rather than exclusivism, as well as facilitating their participation in peer networks fostering not just digital literacy, but healthy norms of masculinity.[12]
The Role of Women
At the same time, by the late 2010s – following apparent rethinking by IS ideologues in particular concerning the permissibility of women engaging in combat – an increasingly noticeable effect on evolving terror trends was observed: violent Islamist extremism was no longer an utterly male-dominated enterprise. Previously, as Winter has observed, jihadis “have coalesced around the view that women should not engage in combat, with exceptions under extenuating circumstances”; and that such a posture was “derived from a doctrine dating back to the early years of Islam, something that has been revisited and revised by Islamic and Islamist scholars many times in the years since”.[13] Even IS in its early years argued that the “fundamental role” of “female Muslims” was to be “wives, child-bearers and homemakers”.[14] However, possibly as a response to battlefield reverses and “territorial collapse”, by 2018, IS propaganda “had lifted the moratorium on female combatants”, asserting an “obligation on women to engage in jihad against the enemies”.[15]
Hence, the counter terrorism research agenda has further broadened to explore gender motivations and violent radicalisation. One key question in this respect is whether women and men are motivated differently when it comes to undertaking violent jihad. Some analysts argue that many women who become suicide bombers for IS have not merely experienced social discrimination, but also feel isolated and unwanted by a male-dominated, conservative patriarchal society.[16] Personal crises, moreover, such as the death of close relatives, create the psychological preconditions for female radicalisation.[17] Yet, other analysts have pointed to female radicalisation being encouraged as a result of the sense of empowerment created by the jihadist leadership’s acknowledgement of women’s roles in the caliphate.[18] Going forward, it seems that the importance of women and youth in violent extremism is a research topic that would require careful analysis.
New Trends in Right-Wing Extremism
While the threat of violent Islamist extremism has occupied policy attention globally and certainly in Southeast Asia in the nearly two decades since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States (US), the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Congress by a mob supporting controversial former US president Donald Trump, appeared symbolic of a wider, emergent trend in political- and religious-inspired violence across the world: extreme right movements, at times fomenting hate crimes, mob violence and even terrorism. In this connection, three types of extreme right movements have increasingly appeared to be of particular research interest: white supremacist, Buddhist and Hindu extremism. According to influential London-based think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the extreme right comprises groups and individuals that espouse “at least three of the following five features: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy and strong state advocacy”; while the far right represents the “political manifestation of the extreme right”.[19]
The key point for research purposes is that due to the process of mainstreaming, non-violent far right political figures and parties do appear ideologically related, albeit distantly, to the relatively more violence-prone extreme right. For example, the white supremacist conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement” – which posits a “white genocide” is underway in Western nations, perpetrated by non-white European migrants and minority out-groups like Jews, Hispanics and Muslims – is a driver of violent extreme right attacks such as the New Zealand mosque shootings in 2019.[20] However, such ideas have been increasingly mainstreamed into political discourse, with far right political parties in Europe, for instance, portraying themselves as the “defenders of European values, culture, and civilisation”, while slogans such as “Europe for Europeans” have been increasingly prevalent.[21]
Similarly, Buddhist extreme right figures and mass organisations that have been implicated in anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka have influenced far right-oriented political parties in those countries.[22] A similar nexus can be seen in India, where the Hindu far right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has remained very much in sync with the broader extreme right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) social movement, characterised as “the holding company of Hindu supremacism”, or “Hindutva” ideology.[23] Going forward, a potentially important and rich research agenda for think tanks and academia is further teasing out how extreme right ideas once considered fringe are becoming increasingly mainstreamed into general political discourse globally. This seems especially pertinent given the electoral success, for example, of far right political parties in Europe in recent years.[24]
Another potentially significant trend worth watching research-wise is the phenomenon of so-called mixed, unstable or unclear (MUU) ideology, where the ideological narrative of particular terrorists comes across as hard to categorise, as it seems to draw haphazardly upon elements from both Islamist and white supremacist extreme right narratives, for instance. That this cannot be ignored is attested to by the fact that in 2021 and 2022, the majority of referrals to the United Kingdom (UK) authorities were classified as MUU.
Similarly, in the US in 2020, the FBI Director warned the Senate Homeland Security Committee of the rise of what he termed a “salad bar of ideology”.[25] One suggestion is that social media has “facilitated the ease with which extremists can browse for an ideology which aligns with their underlying needs”.[26] In a sense, one should note that ideological fusion is not a new phenomenon. For instance, the Sri Lankan Buddhist extreme right monk Galagodaatte Gnanasara asserted in 2019 that his “ideology” was influenced by “Hindu right-wing group Shiv Sena, the British National Party, and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen ─ all of whom have made incendiary remarks on Islam and Muslims”.[27] In any case, this area of ideological cross-fertilisation deserves further research.
The Evolving Social Media Landscape and Violent Extremism
Without doubt, the emergence of social media by the mid-2000s, as alluded to earlier, has had a transformative impact on the violent extremism landscape globally and in Southeast Asia. For instance, since its emergence in mid-2014, IS has long promoted the concept of “cyber jihad”[28] and its online activists have readily embraced the increasingly “decentralised nature” of “pro-IS online propaganda and community activities emerging within the expanding digital landscape”.[29] In recent years, social media firms have responded to the exploitation of their platforms by the likes of IS and its myriad affiliates. However, the target remains a moving one. For instance, while the volume of Islamist extremist material on Telegram has declined, it is still accessible online through the “creation of new private channels backed up by bot automation”.[30] Mainstream social media platforms run by Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok also remain “susceptible to infiltration” by jihadist influencers, despite efforts to purge such extremist material.[31] Meanwhile, Islamist extremist communities maintain a “vibrant online ecosystem” ranging across several “small, less-regulated platforms” such as Hoop Messenger, TamTam, Rocket.Chat and Element, all characterised by “minimal content moderation”.[32]
Social media has also been fully exploited by the extreme right. For instance, in recent times the white supremacist extreme right “online landscape” has seen the “continued traction of militant accelerationist platforms” like Terrorgram, a “loose network of white supremacist Telegram channels and accounts” associated with the white supremacist threat groups Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and The Base.[33] Terrorgram promoted “white supremacist and accelerationist ideologies, offering detailed instructions on how to carry out attacks”.[34] Online extreme right “communities propagation of conspiratorial and disinformation narratives” were also increasingly “more prominent on mainstream social media platforms, occasionally leading to violence”.[35] Going forward, it seems clear that the counter extremism research agenda will need to keep track of the rapid evolution of the social media space and the impact on the violent extremism landscape.
The Subtle Threat of Non-Violent Islamist Extremism
In recent years, analysts have noted a subtle blurring of lines between putatively constitutional, non-violent Islamist political parties/civil society groups and violent Islamist actors. For instance, the Barelvi “radical group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) is entrenched in Pakistan’s Barelvi community, which is 60 percent of the population”.[36] On paper, the TLP “operates in the country’s mainstream politics, participates in elections” and formally “eschews violence”.[37] However, the TLP’s mainstream political participation provides “a semblance of legitimacy to its incendiary ideological rhetoric” – which has “undermined efforts to foster moderation, tolerance, and respect for religious diversity and harmony in Pakistan”.[38] This has prompted some observers to warn that over the longer term, the putatively non-violent TLP will arguably be “more dangerous” than violent Islamist threat groups.[39] In Bangladesh, a similar ideological and institutional porosity between certain Islamist parties and more violent groups was noted in 2023: for instance, elements of the violent Islamist threat group HuJI-B tried to “infiltrate politics by merging with Hefazat-e-Islam, an unregistered but influential Islamist group among Muslim students and teachers in local madrassas”.[40]
Within Southeast Asia, at the current time, perhaps the most concerning example of the blurring of lines between violent threat groups and ostensibly non-violent, constitutional actors has been represented by the ever-evolving JI in Indonesia. In November 2021, Farid Ahmad Okbah, a preacher and chairman of the little-known Indonesian People’s Dakwah Party (Partai Dakwah Rakyat Indonesia/PDRI), Ahmad Zain An-Najah, a member of the Fatwa Commission of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), the nation’s top Islamic clerical body, and Anung al-Hamat, a university lecturer, were arrested. Investigations found that while Ahmad Zain was also a board member of a JI-linked charitable foundation, and Anung headed another foundation providing aid to arrested JI members, Farid was not just the PDRI chairman, but also a member of JI’s consultative council. These arrests suggested that JI seemed to be evolving into a truly hybrid model, adding an incipient political front to its active dakwah and currently latent armed jihad fronts. Importantly, JI members who infiltrate political parties like PDRI exercise the tandzim sirri principle – that is, their actual JI links are concealed. Hence, non-JI PDRI members were likely not even aware of the JI presence within their ranks.[41]
An Indonesian counter terrorism official moreover admitted in November 2021 that it was very possible that JI has “also infiltrated other religious organisations, even sports organisations and bike clubs”, and that since 2010, more than 30 JI-linked civil servants, police officers and military officials had been detained. All of them were reportedly “adept at concealing their true identity”.[42] By some estimates, at least 19 civil servants, eight police officers and five military officials were arrested between 2010 and May 2022 for their JI links.[43] In sum, JI – while generally keeping its violent potential in reserve – appears to be strategically adopting a more cost-effective “long-term strategy”, with the aim to subtly and gradually “change the Indonesian democratic system into a shariah-based one, and influence the policies of the respective government agencies”.[44] Looking ahead, therefore, the subtle but no less important threat of non-violent Islamist extremism – in the form of the blurring of lines between violent threat actors and ostensibly non-violent, peaceful and constitutional entities – bears close watching.
Emerging Technologies and the Evolving Violent Extremism Threat
Finally, it is clear that rapidly developing technologies remain a concern in the counter terrorism space. AI-generated deepfake videoclips on YouTube, for instance, can be exploited, not just by hostile state actors, but equally by terrorist networks, for the purposes of sowing disinformation among vulnerable communities with a view to fomenting social polarisation and conflict. This would create the very societal conditions that violent extremist groups seek to exploit for radicalisation and recruitment.[45] Meanwhile, the spread of 3D printed guns based on readily available online designs,[46] as well as the potential for commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to be weaponised,[47] are also examples of emerging technologies that could act as force multipliers for religiously-motivated threat groups driven to mount mass casualty attacks on populations, both globally and in Southeast Asia. Hence, think tanks and academia focused on counter terrorism policy analysis would need to take careful heed of developments in this domain and their wider implications.
Conclusion
The 19th-century French novelist Alphonse Karr was reputed to have said that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. On reflection, this aphorism seems to well apply to the evolving research agenda of ICPVTR since its founding 20 years ago. In 2002, scholars from the then Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies[48] argued that to deal with the “new”, religiously-motivated terrorism represented by AQ, it was important to not merely deal with the terrorist cells and leaders themselves, but at the same time, address the underlying political, economic, social and ideological causes that gave rise to the former in the first place.
It was suggested that while dealing with the physical threat required a hard, shorter-term kinetic approach, this had to be calibrated to ensure that it meshed well with a softer, longer-term approach aimed at addressing underlying grievances as well.[49] Twenty years on, it seems that this mixed approach arguably remains relevant, even as the threat, as this volume shows, has continued to mutate and take on newer forms.
In the final analysis, therefore, paraphrasing and adapting the views of General Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner and Director of Operations (1952-54) during the Malayan Emergency (1948-60), in dealing with the ever-evolving threat of transnational terrorism, one does not really need to be constantly searching for new counter terrorism methods. One just needs to become much better at implementing the old, tried and tested ones.[50]
About the Author
Kumar Ramakrishna is Professor of National Security Studies, Provost’s Chair in National Security Studies, Dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), as well as Research Adviser to the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. He can be reached at [email protected].
Citations
[1] Kumar Ramakrishna, Radical Pathways: Understanding Muslim Radicalization in Indonesia (Westport: Praeger Security International, 2009), pp. 1-2.
[2] The Jemaah Islamiyah Arrests and the Threat of Terrorism (Singapore: Ministry of Home Affairs, 2003), p. 4.
[3] Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
[4] Yanina Golburt, “An In-Depth Look at the Jemaah Islamiyah Network,” Al-Nakhlah, Fall 2004, Article 2 (2004), https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/aln/aln_fall04/aln_fall04b.pdf.
[5] Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the 21st Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
[6] Bruce Hoffman, “Review Essay: The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism: Why Osama Bin Laden Still Matters,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 3 (2008), pp.133–138, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20032656.
[7] Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS (London: Corgi Books, 2016).
[8] Lisa Blaker, “The Islamic State’s Use of Online Social Media,” Military Cyber Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 2015), https://doi.org/10.5038/2378-0789.1.1.1004.
[9] Ramadi to Marawi: Proceedings of the Conference on Peace and the Prevention of Violent Extremism in Southeast Asia (Manila: Philippine Centre for Islam and Democracy, 2018).
[10] Kumar Ramakrishna, “Countering the Challenge of Youth Radicalisation,” RSIS Commentary, No. 110 (2023), https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/countering-the-challenge-of-youth-radicalisation/.
[11] ABC7 I-Team Investigation, “ISIS Propaganda Urges Terrorists to Stage Knife Attacks,” ABC7 Chicago, October 11, 2016, https://abc7chicago.com/isis-propaganda-knife-atacks-stabbings/1548969/.
[12] Kumar Ramakrishna, “Commentary: Understanding and Countering the Challenge of Youth Radicalisation in Singapore,” TODAY, August 10, 2023, https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/commentary-understanding-and-countering-challenge-youth-radicalisation-singapore-2230191.
[13] Charlie Winter, “ISIS, Women and Jihad: Breaking with Convention,” Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, September 13, 2018, https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/isis-women-and-jihad-breaking-convention.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Tina Susman and Caesar Ahmed, “The World,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2009, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-feb-12-fg-iraq-women12-story.html.
[17] Margot Badran, Women and Radicalization (Denmark: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2006).
[18] Rafia Zakaria, “Women and Islamic Militancy,” Dissent Magazine, Winter 2015, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/why-women-choose-isis-islamic-militancy/.
[19] Jacob Davey and Julia Ebner, The Great Replacement: The Violent Consequences of Mainstreamed Extremism (London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2019), https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Great-Replacement-The-Violent-Consequences-of-Mainstreamed-Extremism-by-ISD.pdf.
[20] Kumar Ramakrishna, “The Growing Challenge of the Extreme Right ,” RSIS Commentary, No. 011 (2021), https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/icpvtr/the-growing-challenge-of-the-extreme-right/.
[21] Sertan Akbaba, “Re-narrating Europe in the Face of Populism: An Analysis of the Anti-immigration Discourse of Populist Party Leaders,” Insight Turkey, Vol. 20, No. 3 (2018), pp. 199-218, https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA549337212&sid=googleScholar.
[22] Ramakrishna, “The Growing Challenge of the Extreme Right.”
[23] Samanth Subramanian, “How Hindu Supremacists Are Tearing India Apart,” The Guardian, February 20, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks.
[24] Jon Henley, “How Europe’s Far Right Is Marching Steadily into the Mainstream,” The Guardian, June 30, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/30/far-right-on-the-march-europe-growing-taste-for-control-and-order.
[25] Ross Paton, “All ‘Mixed’ Up: Understanding Mixed, Unstable and Unclear Ideology,” Lobo Institute, July 10, 2023, https://www.loboinstitute.org/all-mixed-up-understanding-mixed-unstable-and-unclear-ideology/.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Adrian Lim, “Political Movements Misusing and Abusing Religion: Academic,” The Straits Times, July 25, 2019, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/political-movements-misusing-and-abusing-religion-academic.
[28] Christina Schori Liang, Cyber Jihad: Understanding and Countering Islamic State Propaganda (Geneva: Geneva Centre for Security Policy, February 2015), https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/189426/2015%202%20Cyber%20Jihad.pdf.
[29] Benjamin Mok and Saddiq Basha, “Digital Shadows: Key Trends in Online Extremist Narratives and Activities in 2023,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2024),
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] ICPVTR research.
[33] Mok and Basha, “Digital Shadows.”
[34] Ibid.
[35] Julia Ebner, “From Margins to Mainstream: How Extremism Has Conquered the Political Middle,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, August 10, 2023, https://www.icct.nl/publication/margins-mainstream-how-extremism-has-conquered-political-middle.
[36] Jawad Syed, “Barelvi Militancy in Pakistan and Salman Taseer’s Murder,” in Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan, eds. Jawad Syed et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 231-272.
[37] Abdul Basit, “Pakistan,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2024).
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Kumar Ramakrishna, “Jemaah Islamiyah 20 Years After the Bali Bombings: Continuity and Change,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, Vol. 14, No. 5 (2022), pp. 1–6, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48687391.
[42] Kumar Ramakrishna, “JI Adopting Communist ‘United Front’ Tactics,” The Straits Times, December 23, 2021, https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/ji-adopting-communist-united-front-tactics.
[43] Nivell Rayda, “Jemaah Islamiyah Infiltrating Indonesian Institutions: Senior Counter Terror Official,” Channel News Asia, November 23, 2021, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/jemaah-islamiyah-infiltrating-indonesian-institutions-terror-group-2332941.
[44] V. Arianti, “Jemaah Islamiyah After the 2002 Bali Bombings: Two Decades of Continuity and Transformation,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, Vol. 14, No. 5 (2022), pp. 17–28, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48687393.
[45] Algorithms and Terrorism: The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence for Terrorist Purposes (New York: United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism, 2021), https://unicri.it/News/Algorithms-Terrorism-Malicious-Use-Artificial-Intelligence-Terrorist-Purposes.
[46] Rajan Basra, “The Future is Now: The Use of 3D-Printed Guns by Extremists and Terrorists,” Global Network on Extremism and Technology, June 23, 2022, https://gnet-research.org/2022/06/23/the-future-is-now-the-use-of-3d-printed-guns-by-extremists-and-terrorists/.
[47] Thomas G. Pledger, “The Role of Drones in Future Terrorist Attacks,” Association of United States Army, February 2021, https://www.ausa.org/sites/default/files/publications/LWP-137-The-Role-of-Drones-in-Future-Terrorist-Attacks_0.pdf.
[48] IDSS became RSIS in January 2007.
[49] Kumar Ramakrishna, “Countering the New Terrorism of Al Qaeda Without Generating Civilizational Conflict: The Need for an Indirect Strategy,” in The New Terrorism: Anatomy, Trends and Counter-Strategies (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002), pp. 207-232.
[50] For more on Templer, see Kumar Ramakrishna, “’Transmogrifying Malaya’: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2001), pp. 79-92.
