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Abstract:
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What should an effective counter-terrorist strategy look like? Can any lessons be drawn from past
European experiences? How does terrorism end? Having answers to these three questions would be of
great help to both practitioners and scholars interested in the disbandment of home-grown terrorist
groups. Preventing processes of radicalization and, if at all possible, enabling the reverse process of
de-radicalization has become a priority objective for EU Member States. And yet, there is a curious
gap in the literature with respect to the precipitants and facilitators of terrorist disengagement. This
paper provides a qualitative analysis of how four Western European states – Italy, Germany, Spain,
and the UK – dealt with groups employing political violence and terrorism, and what lessons can be
learned from these policies that can be applied towards future counterterrorism campaigns. The
disbandment of two ethno-nationalist groups - the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the politicalmilitary
branch Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA-PM) - and two revolutionary groups - the Red Army
Faction (RAF) and the Red Brigades (RB) – are examined in order to identify some of the policies that
facilitate abandonment, defection, decline or defeat. |