POINTER Magazine - April 2023

In this issue

The essay views radical Islamic terrorist organisations as anti-fragile systems to understand better the resilience of these organisations and the requirements of a successful counter-terrorism containment strategy. Despite the 20-year Global War on Terrorism, the scourge of terrorism has not been eradicated but has seen a resurgence in recent years globally and in Southeast Asia. Currently, Radical Islamic terrorists form the bulk of terrorist attacks in terms of numbers and geospatial coverage. Compared to other forms of terrorism, Radical Islamic terrorist organisations’ unique characteristic is their singular goal of imposing their radical version of Islamic supremacy. Radical Islamic terrorist organisations are highly resilient and exhibit ‘antifragility’ properties—the ability for systems to benefit when stressed. Systems thinking methodology was applied to analyse the interdependencies of the underlying factors of the political influence of terrorist organisations. The source of their antifragility was identified to be a group of factors which are interlinked in four self-reinforcing loops. By shattering the four loops, the terrorist organisations will lose their political influence, leading to their eventual demise. Radical Islamic terrorist organisations are media savvy and exploit the media and social influence to amplify the factors contributing to their antifragility. Strategies to contain terrorist organisations must account for the media dimension by reducing the terrorists’ ability to exploit the media and increasing the general population’s social resilience to terrorists’ propaganda. Tech companies and governments have attempted to create counter-narratives to reduce the effectiveness of terrorists’ propaganda in the media. For social resilience, a key thrust of Singapore’s counter-terrorism approach is the SGSecure programme which aims to build up vigilance, unity and resilience in Singapore society.