ICPVTR Webinar on COVID-19 and the Evolving Terrorist Threat: Challenge and Response
Webinar abstract
By now, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of life, including politics, health, security and economics. Within the security sector, the contagion’s impact on terrorism and counter-terrorism practices has been swift and pronounced. In the wake of Covid-19, most terrorist groups across the ideological spectrum have intensified their online propaganda to increase recruitment and plan new attacks. This has put many governments in a catch-22 situation, having to split available enforcement and economic resources to cope with both the pandemic and the ever-evolving terrorist threat.
While jihadist militants such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have framed Covid-19 as divine retribution, the right-wing extremists in the West have used it to exacerbate xenophobic attitudes against non-White immigrants and communities, including calling for weaponisation of the virus against public infrastructure and law enforcement. Against this backdrop, this webinar will discuss how the global terrorist landscape will evolve in the post-Covid-19 scenario as well as how the challenge of the coronavirus will impact counter-terrorism policies and practices in different parts of Southeast Asia and the world.
Speakers
Raffaello Pantucci is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is the author of We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain’s Suburban Terrorists published by Oxford University Press. Before joining RSIS, he was based at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London where he is currently a Senior Associate Fellow.
Abdul Basit is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He specialises in insurgency, terrorism and political violence in South Asia. He is also the head of ICPVTR’s South Asia desk and associate editor of the Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, a quarterly open-access policy journal of terrorism and political violence.
Nur Aziemah Azman is an Associate Research Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. As ICPVTR’s Informatics team lead, she monitors, translates, and analyses content in Arabic extremist websites and social media platforms with a focus on Islamic State propaganda and narratives online.
Moderator
Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor, Associate Dean, Research Adviser to National Security Studies Programme and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He has published in numerous internationally refereed journals and co-edited two well-received books on counter-terrorism, The New Terrorism: Anatomy, Trends and Counter-Strategies (2002) as well as After Bali: The Threat of Terrorism in Southeast Asia (2004). He is also the author of numerous single-authored books including Original Sin? Revising the Revisionist Critique of the 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore (2015) and Singapore Chronicles: Emergency (2016).
