“We have thousands of ISIS fighters that we want Europe to take, and let’s see if they take them,” President Trump told reporters at the beginning of the month. “If they don’t take them, we’ll probably have to release them to Europe.”[1] By Anne Speckhard & Ardian Shajkovci At aContinue Reading
Of all the love stories from inside the ISIS Caliphate that we have learned about firsthand in the course of interviewing 168 ISIS defectors, returnees and imprisoned ISIS cadres to date, none has been so surreal as that involving the German ex-rapper Denis Cuspert, aka Deso Dogg, and the AmericanContinue Reading
How to Recover the Lost Children and Spouses of ISIS[1] Thirty-two-year-old American Samantha Elhassani, together with her four children—two brought into ISIS and two born there – is now awaiting her fate in a People’s Protection Units (YPG) camp near al-Hasakah, Syria. In 2014, she took her two small AmericanContinue Reading
My Journey Towards Jihad is the 19th counter narrative video clip in the ICSVE Breaking the ISIS Brand series. It features Abu Albani, a Kosovar foreign fighter who went twice to Syria; first to join and fight with the Free Syrian Army and later to join and fight forContinue Reading
Click here to see the video Today, ICSVE releases Rewards of the Islamic State, the 18th counter narrative video in the ICSVE Breaking the ISIS Brand series, videos which can be found both on the ICSVE website and on the ICSVE YouTube Channel. By Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. ICSVE Breaking the ISIS Brand counter narrative videos feature the 78 ISISContinue Reading
The Need for Rehabilitation & Reintegration Programs & Restoring Security and Justice By Anne Speckhard, Ph.D., Grace Wakim & Ardian Shajkovci Allah Akbar (meaning God is Greatest) is a colloquial expression commonly used by Muslims, especially in the Arab world, to praise God and express commitment to the religion ofContinue Reading
Murky federal plans, and odd bedfellows between law enforcement and counseling professionals, currently threaten to create ethical dilemmas for those in the helping professions—psychologists, counselors, imams and doctors—who may be called upon by the FBI in upcoming months to report on citizens in behalf of national security interests as theyContinue Reading
Once again ISIS cadres have penetrated from Syria into Turkey and carried out an assault on those brave enough to speak out against them. Monday evening (April 10th), thirty-six year-old Syrian journalist, Muhammed Zahir al Serkat, was shot in the center of Gaziantep (a Turkish town near the border ofContinue Reading
Salah Abdelslam – believed to be one of the November 13, 2015 Paris attackers in which one hundred and thirty persons were killed, was apprehended in a police takedown yesterday in Molenbeek, a neighborhood in Brussels. Abdelslam, a twenty-six year old French national, born and raised in Molenbeek (Brussels) had been theContinue Reading
The shock and awe campaign being waged by ISIS is one we did not predict when we orchestrated our own variety of shock and awe over Bagdad. And while debate about the effectiveness of airstrikes against ISIS continues, those of us focused on the narrative battle are pretty muchContinue Reading