Strategic rehabilitation
Rehabilitation, for the people in Marawi City, requires a lot of work. It requires a holistic approach that is related to the PVE (preventing violent extremism) programs and activities.
What is PVE? Let us define first what is violent extremism. Based on our work in Al Qalam Institute of the Ateneo de Davao University, we learned that it is not easy to define the term violent extremism. Even Andrew Glazzard and Martine Zeuthen believes that “violent extremism’ is rarely defined: neither the United Nations nor the European Union has an official definition.”
Andrew Glazzard is Director of National Security and Resilience Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security (RUSI). He has worked on research projects for DFID, the Home Office, and the Ministry of Defense. Martine Zeuthen, on the other hand, is an anthropologist and CVE consultant currently working for RUSI on an EU- funded CVE program in the Horn of Africa.
They added: “USAID defines it as “advocating, engaging in, preparing, or otherwise supporting ideologically motivated or justified violence to further social, economic or political objectives... (T)his apparently simple and obvious statement conceals a great deal of controversy and uncertainty.”
I agree that this definition is simple and conceals a great deal of controversy and uncertainty. This is because there may be two sides of the coin.
In the eyes of the Maute group, for example, they are fighting for a “justified cause” and they are fighting for the Bangsamoro people’s grievances on historical and social injustices. They raise the ques- tion, “Is violent extremism, by definition, something carried out by non-state actors? In conflict situations, how can we differentiate violent extremists from other, more legitimate conflict actors?
Does violent extremism always have to be ideological – can it, for example, be criminal, or even purposeless? Is “violent extremism” merely a synonym for “terrorism”? More fundamentally, are terms like “extremism” relative –- in which case does “violent extremism” mean different things to different people?
The United Nations Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) emphasizes that violent extremism affects all the four core areas -- peace and security, humanitarian assistance, human rights and development, of the work of the UN. Therefore, all parts of the UN System have to work together on this issue.
Applying a holistic approach, rehabilitating Marawi City will also require international cooperation and plan of action. They are crucial and necessary to achieve lasting impact on the ground and in helping the more or less 300,000 thousand internally displaced persons. Violent extremism is a transnational threat and no country or region alone will be able to defeat this problem and threat to national security on their own.
What we need in Marawi is a comprehensive approach that will cover not only essential security–based counter-terrorism measures but also systematic PVE to address the factors that make individuals join violent extremist groups.--