A Clarification on Some Thoughts on the Kandahar Jailbreak

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

I wanted to clarify something from my previous post that has come up in a couple of comments.  I think I wasn't exactly clear in either what I wrote or how I wrote it pertaining to both the efforts of TF 134 under Maj. Gen. Stone or Ashour's research on the de-radicalization of jihadis.  The two are not, and were not in the previous post, intended to be linked in a way that implied that TF 134 was engaging the de-radicalization that Dr. Ashour has researched and written about.  Ashour's work focuses on both Egyptian and Algerian Islamic movements that have become either radicalized or reactionized and utilized violence to achieve their ends and how they either did or did not give up the use of violence to achieve their goals.  The process involves the movements and the state authorities -military, civilian, law enforcement, and intelligence services - interacting to produce the process he delineates and the outcomes he describes.

TF 134 was interested in disaggregating the actual extremists from the non-extremists within the detainee population.  Once that was done the central goal was to rehabilitate and reconcile the non-extremists and get them back into Iraqi life.  While there was interest in doing the same for the extremist elements, and some of it was accomplished, they were not engaging in what Dr. Ashour would call de-radicalization of jihadis.  Given that the de-radicalization process, as described by Ashour, requires the active participation of the incarcerated leaders of the extremist movements, and by and large they weren't in TF 134's control in Iraq, the process could not have been attempted even had TF 134 been aware of it.

I apologize for any confusion.

*Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College and/or the US Army.