Walking away from terrorism: Accounts of disengagement from radical and extremist movements

Publisher’s description

This accessible new book looks at how and why individuals leave terrorist movements, and considers the lessons and implications that emerge from this process.

Focusing on the tipping points for disengagement from groups such as Al Qaeda, the IRA and the UVF, this volume is informed by the dramatic and sometimes extraordinary accounts that the terrorists themselves offered to the author about why they left terrorism behind.

The book examines three major issues:

• what we currently know about de-radicalisation and disengagement
• how discussions with terrorists about their experiences of disengagement can show how exit routes come about, and how they then fare as ‘ex-terrorists’ away from the structures that protected them
• what the implications of these findings are for law-enforcement officers, policy-makers and civil society on a global scale.

Concluding with a series of thought-provoking yet controversial suggestions for future efforts at controlling terrorist behaviour, Walking Away From Terrorism provides a comprehensive introduction to disengagement and de-radicalisation and offers policymakers a series of considerations for the development of counter-radicalization and de-radicalisation processes.