Economic rehabilitation of terrorists: What can be learned from disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes?

Rehabilitation of terrorists and violent extremists has recently emerged as a new field of policy and practice in the counterterrorism discourse as well as the discourse of countering violent extremism (CVE). Terrorist rehabilitation refers to a long-term process of transforming a terrorist's radical religious and ideological worldview and attendant attitudinal and behavioural patterns that drive terrorism and violence (Gunaratna 2011). The theory and practice of terrorist rehabilitation are premised on the proposition that punishing terrorists and extremists and alienating them from the rest of the society, for instance with imprisonment, cannot successfully deradicalise and disengage them from the terrorist networks and ideologies they held. Rather evidence suggests that imprisonment of terrorists has become a facilitator of radicalisation or re-radicalisation by fellow terrorist inmates (Mulcahy, Merrington and Bell 2013). A rehabilitation programme happening outside of a prison is, therefore, incredibly necessary. It is this proposition that has given impetus to the idea of community-based rehabilitation. A number of dilemmas surrounds the rehabilitation of terrorists and violent extremists. The first is the dilemma of participation; that is the debate and contention around who should be involved in the rehabilitation programme: the terrorists and extremists, their families and community members in addition to the government and security personnel. Recognising that rehabilitation is a multi-dimensional process, recently it has been argued that the role of family and community in terrorist rehabilitation cannot and should not be overlooked (Gunaratna 2011).