Community perspectives on preventing violent extremism

Western Balkan researchers have taken a growing interest in the phenomenon of violent extremism (VE) in recent years, particularly since the region has been in the international spotlight due to its position as Europe’s top exporter per capita of volunteers fighting for radical and extremist armed organisations. Their findings and policy recommendations to date have informed various country strategies and shaped legal measures to counter or prevent violent extremism (C/PVE). Thus far, most C/PVE interventions have focused on top-down security approaches, with little community involvement. Researchers have not identified specific entry points for complementary interventions that would link central institutions with local actors such as schools and religious communities, in order to detect radicalisation leading to violent extremism in time and offer preventive measures to strengthen resilience at the community level. This comparative report presents insights from a collaborative research project combined with community dialogue initiatives carried out in 2017/18 in four Western Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia. Arguably, the four countries scrutinised in the study have many similarities rooted in shared historical grievances, but also linked to underperforming economies, bad governance and administrative dysfunctionality, national and ethnic tensions and unresolved identity issues. The research project focused on the meso-level and sought to identify factors of community vulnerability and resilience to violent extremism, and to formulate and test recommendations drawn from peacebuilding for effective prevention of violent extremism (PVE). In order to identify and understand what makes communities resilient to violent extremism, researchers analysed communities’ characteristics in a given socio-economic, ideological and political context. Affected and unaffected communities were the main ‘target’ of the research, which aimed to explore and identify what makes a certain community stand out in its ability (by chance or choice) to prevent or resist the threats of violent extremism, or be influenced by ideological and/or physical forms of violent extremism. It quickly became clear that communities are neither fully affected nor completely unaffected – an unaffected community might still share the same ‘breeding ground’ traits as affected municipalities and an affected community could still display some features of a resilient community. The research also explored the complexity of applying the concept of community resilience to the study of violent extremism, and identified three factors enhancing community resilience – awareness, action and attitude. Moreover, the research teams examined the link between PVE programming and peacebuilding, reconciliation and social cohesion, and found that viewing PVE research through a peacebuilding lens also implies the need to invest in systemic conflict analysis tools specifically tailored to transforming violent extremism. The need to engage in more detailed and contextual analysis of how drivers of conflict and violence relate to drivers of violent extremism and related fields of resilience became obvious during this research. Finally, this comparative report draws up a set of recommendations for local and national policymakers and for the international community already involved in studying and supporting the prevention of violent extremism in the Balkans and beyond.