Counter-terrorism and civil society: Post-9/11 progress and challenges

This book examines the intersection between national and international counter-terrorism policies and civil society in numerous national and regional contexts. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) against the United States led to new waves of scholarship on the proliferation of terrorism and efforts to combat international terrorist groups, organizations, and networks. Civil society organisations have been accused of serving as ideological grounds for recruitment of potential terrorists and a channel for terrorist financing. Consequently, states around the world established new ranges of counter-terrorism measures that target the operations of Civil society organisations exclusively. Security practices by states have become a common trend and have assisted in the establishment of a ‘best practices’ among non-liberal democratic or authoritarian states, and are deeply entrenched in their security infrastructures. In developing or newly democratized states (those still deemed democratically weak or fragile), these exceptional securities measures are used as a cover for repressing opposition groups considered by these states as threats to their national security and political power apparatuses. Previous studies on the impact of counter-terrorism have focused on the effects of these policies on human rights and civil liberties. There is a dearth of literature on the link between global security practices, specifically counter-terrorism policies, and civil society in general in spite of some research emerging a few years after 9/11, signaling the need for both broader and deeper treatment of the interplay of counter-terrorism and civil society. This book, therefore, serves as a critical discussion accounting for the experiences of civil society in the enforcement of global security measures by governments in the America’s, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, Europe (Western, Central, and Eastern), and the Middle East.