Anti-terror strategies ‘unfocused, lack rigour’, says study

Australia’s countering violent extremism industry is unfocused, poorly conceived and may not be achieving its aim, a new study has found.

Australia’s multi-million-dollar countering violent extremism industry is unfocused, poorly conceived and may not be achieving its aim of diverting young radicals from a life of violent extremism, a new study has found.

The research on the effectiveness of Australia’s efforts to counter violent extremism found most programs suffered from a lack of accountability and a poor focus, with practitioners often confused about the ultimate goal of the ­program.

Writing in the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Shandon Harris-Hogan said only “an extremely small percentage of CVE initi­atives have been subjected to in-depth evaluation’’.

“Awkwardly, this almost complete absence of evaluation work has not stopped significant claims of success being made by those associated with a number of prominent CVE initiatives,’’ he wrote.

The rise of Islamic State prompted Western governments to stand up an array of community-based and online programs aimed at countering the influence of radical Islam.

Islamic State’s sophisticated propaganda arm was credited with drawing thousands of Muslims into terror groups and encouraging many more to conduct do-it-yourself terror attacks on the streets of their own cities.

The rush of programs established in the wake of Islamic State’s battlefield success has been criticised by some for lacking rigour.

Mr Harris-Hogan was a researcher at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre and an analyst with the Australian government.

He is currently a consultant on counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism.

His study relied on interviews with 18 policymakers or practitioners of CVE programs.

In his article, Mr Harris-Hogan said in their basic form, Australian programs aimed at countering violent extremism were aimed at reducing the number of violent ideological extremist using “non-coercive means’’.