Dissuade: An Ounce of Prevention and the Sociology of Anti-terrorism

• Author: Craig Forcese; Kent Roach
• Pages: 449-493

449

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dissuade: An Ounce of Prevention and

the Sociology of Anti-terrorism

I. INTRODUCTION

The Foreign Terrorist Fighter

Damian Clairmont went through many dierent phases in his short life.

Friends said that at one point he had “looked like a rapper in a ball cap and

baggy baske tball clothes.” en he outtted himself like a fash ion model. As

a Roman Catholic, he wore a crucix. He had ambitions to join the military.

But he fought depression, dropped out of high school when he was four-

teen years old, and tried to kill himself by drinking antifreeze when he was

seventeen. After that, he stayed in a group home, took medication, and was

treated by a psychiatrist. At one point, police arrested him for attempting to

buy e cstas y.

Friends said, “It seemed like he was trying to nd h imself.” He turned to

Islam, renaming himself Mustafa. Initially, this seemed to bring him peace.

But Clairmont was soon “preachy and judgmental,” calling on friends to con-

vert. He urged one to avoid a military career, claiming that “the Canadian

military wa s killing Muslims like him.” He became secretive and ar gumenta-

tive, propounded / conspiracy theories, and made claims about anti-Muslim

media bias. Unemployed and on disability benets, he began hik ing with his

prayer group and spending time in the gym. He also talked about moving to

a Muslim country to study Arabic, naming Egypt as a possible destination.

And despite predictions that Clairmont — a “big talk er” — would never

follow through, he did leave Canada and his Calgary home. Christianne

FALSE SECURITY

450

Boudreau, Clairmont’s mother, only found out that her son was in Syria

when CSIS ocers arrived at her door in December . CSIS had been

watching Clairmont as part of a two-year investigation into an extremist

group.

Clairmont may rst have joined the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida aliate

listed as a terrorist group in Canada. He seems to have joined ISIS (Islamic

State of Iraq and Syria) sometime in , adopting the nom de guerre Abu

Talha al-Kanadi (“e Canadian”). While with ISIS, his infrequent com-

munications with the outside world suggest an increasingly radicalized reli-

gious worldview, a hostility to Muslims with views diering from his, and a

general contentment with his lot.

In January , t he twenty-two-year-old Clairmont was reported killed,

defending his base in Syria.

The Foreign Terrorist Fighter’s Mother

Since that time, his mother, Boudreau, has campaigned tirelessly for various

community-based counter–violent extremism (CVE) programs, but with

little apparent assistance from the federal government.

She has spearheaded an eort to bring Germany’s Hayat (Arabic for

“life”) model to Canada.Hayat is a German-based CVE program initiated

by the Centre for Democratic Culture and aimed at families and friends of

those at risk. It has enjoyed some success and participates in a twenty-four-

hour helpline nanced by the German Oce for Immigration and Refugee

Aairs. Hayat’s edgling Canadian version focuses on family counselling. It

has no government support and relies entirely on charitable donations. It has

not yet been able to implement a twenty-four-hour helpline.

Boudreau is also part of a multinational group named Mothers for Life,

which issues pleas through social media for sons and daughters to return

from foreign terrorist ghts and hopes to assist them in their subsequent

reintegration into civil society. Its appeals should not be dismissed: the group

relies on both the ability of mothers to prevail on their children and reli-

gious reasoning — “remember that even the Prophet Muhammad (peace

and blessings be upon him) said: ‘Paradise lies at the feet of your mother.’”

When asked to comment on Mothers for Life, a spokesperson for Prime

Minister Harper ass erted that returning foreign ghters would be prosecuted

and that if they were dual nationals, their citizenship would be revoked.

Boudreau rejoined, “at’s not an answer. ere are other ways — better

ways, we believe — to make us safe. A nd Europe is seriously exploring them.

I hope Canada will be part of that.”

Chapter Thirteen: Dissuade

451

Are we? And if not, should we be? In this chapter, we address these ques-

tions, focusing on the anti-terror tool left unaddressed in earlier chapters:

dissuade. In Chapter , on our “threat escalator” tool, we portrayed dissuade

as the broadest and least coercive response to the threat of terrorism — and,

more specically, radicalization to violence. As we discuss below, CVE ob-

jectives are also consistent with t he “prevent” prong of the government’s 

anti-terrorism policy.

II. THE HIGH AND LOW POLITICS OF CVE PROGRAMS

Given its signicance as a rst-level response, it may seem puzzling that we

have left this topic to the penultimate chapter. We have done so for two

reasons. First, CVE initiatives may be the best “exit strategy” from many of

the shortcomings of other tools that we have discussed in this book. Watch,

share, interdict, restrain, interrupt, and even prosecute get you only so far.

ey are temporary solutions even when they involve criminal convictions

that may endure for years. We need an endgame, one best discussed at the

end of a book.

The Fog of CVE Strategies

e second reason is that while CVE strategies may be the last, best hope

for many of our security dilemmas, they are both embryonic and opaque,

especially in Canada. ey depend on sociological research that is under-

developed and on practical experience that is slender. e government grey

literature in the area is lled with models, best practices, diagrams (often

triangles like the one we use in Chapter ), and checklists. e research lit-

erature is lled with caveats and calls for more close inquiry to esh out the

theories or limited empirical samples (often focusing on terrorists without

control groups). Indeed, empirical literature on the topic is comparatively

sparse, creating the risk of an echo chamber in which policy conclusions are

extrapolated from a slender experiential foundation.

is means that the discussion in this chapter is the most provisional

of any in this book. It is the new frontier. is is especially true in Canada,

which, as will be seen, has ye t to implement a full-edged CVE program — let

alone evaluate it and then adjust it in response to slowly evolving knowledge

about what works, what does not, and what may even be counterproductive.

As present, there is much talk of the need for “community engagement,”

but this underestimates the diversity of Canada’s Muslim communities.

ere is also a focus on security that asks much of these communities but