This PhD explores the growth and spread of the global jihad movement in the West and its success in radicalising Western Muslims. In order to explain this phenomenon it analyses the work of one of the movement’s most influential English-speaking ideologues, Anwar al-Awlaki. This will reveal how he “Westernised” global jihadist ideology so that it could be made more accessible to his audience. The primary aim of this study is to demonstrate how Awlaki’s success in making the key tenets of global jihadist ideology accessible to Westerners impacted upon the radicalisation process of homegrown jihadists. In the first instance, this study will place Awlaki in the context of a decades-long effort by global jihadist strategists to create a social movement capable of appealing to audiences around the globe. In order for this strategy to succeed in the West, the movement required an effective interpreter and the thesis will show how Awlaki was able to fulfil this role by pursuing a number of processes related to social movement leadership. The subsequent analysis of Awlaki’s work will shed light on both his own radicalisation from non-violent Islamist to global jihadist and his later efforts to spread this violent ideology in the West. Following this, a number of individual cases of Western Muslim radicalisation will be analysed, showing how Awlaki influenced their decision-making process. This approach will allow the author to highlight the importance of an increased emphasis on the connection between extremist ideas and violent action, which it will be argued lies at the heart of homegrown jihadist radicalisation in the West.

Following 9/11, the prevention and pre-emption of acts of terrorism has become a priority at domestic and international level. The immediate legislative and political responses of countries such as the US and the UK are illustrative of the preference for more expansive national security policies over effective protection of individual human rights and civil liberties. In this context, national security has become much more strongly associated with pre-empting and preventing acts of terrorism. Expansive counter-terrorism programmes such as the high value detainee programme including extraordinary rendition were developed in order to facilitate this push for pre-emption and prevention. Extraordinary rendition in its post 9/11 construct has become a euphemism for the irregular transfer of individuals across borders for the purposes of their incommunicado detention and enhanced interrogation in conditions that constitute multiple violations of human rights, including the right to be free from torture. It is, thus, a complex phenomenon, comprising of grave and multiple violations of international obligations, and severely challenging the perception that international human rights law has the capacity to effectively protect individual rights and particularly to uphold the absolute, jus cogens character of the prohibition against torture. However, while certain elements of the international and human rights frameworks may have lend themselves to hyper legalistic exploitation for the purposes of the ‘War on Terror’, human rights adjudicatory bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have tried to resist the challenge posed by expansive counter-terrorism practices and have shown the strength within the human rights framework.

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The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 had a significant impact upon how governments counter terrorism. The UK introduced and implemented an array of measures, each taking a pre-emptive and preventative approach, to tackle terrorism. The change in counter-terrorism law and policy post-9/11 has, as this thesis will show, increasingly become reliant upon fear-based risk and uncertainty rather than evidence-based guilt. This thesis will examine some of those UK measures used post-9/11, which were seen as some of the more controversial measures. When analysing each measure there will be an assessment of the human rights issues associated with those measures, specifically under Article’s 5 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The assessment of these rights with each measure will provide a legal understanding of the wider academic and legal implication of those measures, these include the right to a fair trial. Having assessed the human rights implications of each measure, a risk assessment is undertaken. This enables further analysis of each measure and holistically identifies the wider risk implications of such counter terrorism measures. Such risks may include negative perceptions of the police, the UK or provide indirect support for the radicalisation of new terrorists. This process is developed within the thesis and becomes known as the ‘tri-relationship'. Throughout, the measures examined will be seen to erode those human rights principles ordinarily guaranteed by the criminal justice system, for example liberty. Instead, the measures give way to a new counter-terrorism justice system which has become increasingly normalised by the measures introduced and accepted by the courts. This is despite the implications on human rights and risks involved. This thesis will show that the measures introduced by the UK to achieve securitization, fail to achieve the long-term protective aims of the UK Counter-Terrorism Strategy.

This thesis theorises a disengagement framework to disengage French individuals engaged with the militant salafi-jihadi movement and criticises the French government’s response to this growing phenomenon. To make sense of disengagement, engagement must first be made sense of. Engagement is examined through Social Movement Theory, especially via incentives, frames, networks, and the repertoire of action. Specifically, this thesis makes sense of why and how French individuals engage with the pan-Islamist movement through the Salafi-quietist and Tabligh movements. Then, it makes sense of French individuals engagement with the militant salafi-jihadi movement, namely, via a focus on the Algerian Groupe Islamique Arm´e, al-Qaeda, and Daesh. The pan-Islamist movement is seen as the phenomenon’s inception: a movement proselytising individuals to turn againstWestern society. While the pan-Islamist movement is non-violent, the militant salafi-jihadi movement is a violent sub-movement. The French government has only responded, since the 1980s, by force towards the militant salafi-jihadi movement but has not responded to the pan-Islamist movement. In fact, some politicians have been reticent to prevent, even criticise, the pan-Islamist movement’s spread. With the phenomenon’s evolution, especially the Syrian jihad, the French government’s hard counter-terrorism approach is inadequately adapted. It has created a soft approach in 2014. Yet, it follows the controversial notion of mental manipulation that neither counter-acts the pan-Islamist movement nor the militant salafi-jihadi movement. Via the examination of engagement, this thesis can both critically analyse the French hard and soft approaches and uncover lessons for disengagement in the hopes of establishing a disengagement framework. That is, a soft social approach. This is not a social approach through job creation and improvement of socioeconomics. Rather, this is a framework wherein individuals are given the chance to belong and participate into society. That is, they are engaged into the French Social Contract. If needed, disengagement programmes can be included. Overall, this thesis aims at a policy recommendation for the creation of a nationwide disengagement framework and an adaptation of France’s counter-terrorism strategy.

The phenomenon of terrorism in the Middle East historically has involved violent confrontation not only between governments and politically disaffected groups and movements but also between ethnically and ideologically differentiated communities. More recently governments both within and without the region have had to reckon with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which under certain conditions has led to terrorist acts motivated by strict religious prescription. Terrorism carried on by adherents of a religious sect in response to divine ordinance is not new in the region; the assassin movement, springing from a branch of Isma'ili Shi'ism, thrived from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Members of this group, the fedai, believed that the killing of the unrighteous was a holy act meriting salvation. This study focusses on the Shi'a of Lebanon; it analyses their resurgence as a consequence of the clash between the confessionalism of the modern Lebanese political system and their own traditional feudal organisation, and seeks to establish the linkage between their perception of religious prescription and current terrorism in the Middle East which, it is argued, is employed to obtain sectarian objectives.

This study analyses the effects and threats posed by revolutionary and ethnic terrorism to the Turkish democracy and also explores possible solutions to the problem within a framework of democratic pluralism. In doing so, this thesis intends to contribute to general debates on prevention of terrorism in democratic countries as well as to the position of the Kurdish Community in Turkish society. It first explores these issues by way of a conceptual and structural analysis of terrorism and democracy, playing particular emphasis to the causes of terrorism. The analysis establishes the following hypotheses: that democracies can accommodate the religious, political and ethnic differences which terrorists seek to exploit; that a participative form of democracy has a greater chance of success because the general population would be more willing to contribute and co-operate with anti-terrorist government programs; and that the approach any country takes in response to terrorism will depend, in part, on its own peculiar socio-cultural and economic history. The thesis then proceeds to examine these hypotheses in the light of the Turkish state's experience of and dealing with ideological and ethnic-separatist terrorists, in particular the PKK. The author submits that the hard-line and uncompromising approach of the Turkish state to terrorism has been generally unsuccessful. This has been due to its limited understanding of democracy, which has limited democratic participation to all but the ruling elite, and its insensitivity towards the reasons and motives behind terrorist actions. As a result, the thesis offers a new approach - the third way - which takes into account the multi-dimensional nature of terrorism, by stressing participation, co-ordination, co-operation rather than domination, as a means of dealing with the problem. It submits that an anti-terrorist package that has popular backing, which is gradually implemented, and which works in conjunction with social and economic reform, is more likely to be successful in combating terrorism in Turkey, and perhaps, in combating terrorism further afield.

How can we understand the major contradiction that seems to exist between the unilateral global strategies of certain actors and a world which is now, for the first time, largely interdependent. This question has undoubtedly been among the key themes of the globalization debate in the post 9/11 world. While writers on globalization have tended to focus their attention on the incoherencies and eventual failures of the Bush Administration's policies, the structural role that the 9/11 terrorist attacks played in the whole process has been largely overlooked by systematic scholarly research. This Master's dissertation attempts to explore the mechanism of social change that is implicit in the latter perspective. Building on Anthony Giddens' methodology of episodic characterization, global events are defined and studied as starting points of contingent, unpredictable and highly strategic sequences of structural transformation. The exploratory framework is applied to the study of the realization and aftermath of the Madrid 2004 terrorist bombings in order to give a flavour of how global event episodes can be individually characterized. The London 7/7 terrorist attacks episode is also explored, with the aim of outlining a program of comparative research towards a possible theory of the 'global event'.

This study employs Alexander George's 'structured, focused comparison' methodology for small-N comparative analysis, in an attempt to address some of the gaps in the theoretical literature on state terrorism. An examination of that literature, both in the historical and social science traditions, highlights various attempts to theorise about the processes by which states attempt to influence the behaviour of their domestic populations through violence. However, these have overwhelmingly concentrated upon the question of why state terrorism occurs. The question of how states terrorise has rarely been considered. This study, then, is a heuristic evaluation of the process of terror after the decision to initiate it has been taken. It is suggested that solutions that will help to ameliorate the human suffering and destabilisation caused by state terrorism are likely to emerge from within the international community. However, in order for the various governmental and non-governmental international organisations to tackle the issue they must fully understand the dynamics of terrorist states. A definitional model of state terrorism is developed, building upon existing concepts of state and sub-state violence. The model is then used to identify appropriate cases for further examination. A number of potential cases are highlighted, with Indonesia and East Timor (1975-1995) and Guatemala (1978-1995) finally being selected. A research design is formulated to examine the cases in the context of existing theory. In conducting the case studies according the research design it is postulated that while the initial impetus for state terrorism must come from the regime, the most effective means of ensuring an efficient terror campaign is to create semi-autonomous units with a direct overlap of responsibility. These units are then allowed to innovate in their selection of targets and tactics. It is noted that states are sensitive to pressure from the international community, and will often respond by disbanding offending units in an attempt to de-escalate violence. However, the perpetrators of human rights violations are rarely punished. Impunity is the engine of state terrorism. It is concluded that the broader realist tradition of international relations provides a revealing framework to assist our understanding of how states react to extreme challenges to their domestic authority. It is argued that in conducting wars against their own populations states mimic the conditions of the international environment. Likewise, the most powerful players in the international community (other states) respond according to concerns of power politics. It is concluded that only by providing independent international bodies to tackle impunity, such as an International Criminal Court, can state terrorism be undermined.

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