#bordertalks #iftikharfirdous #NationalActionPlan #Pakistan #socialmedia #digitalmedia #Violence #extremism #stakeholders #society #narrativemaking #Challenges #difficulties #arynewslive
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NewsTranscript
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01:41how to actually counter it and come across this because the CVE and PVE space within Pakistan
01:49is something that there is renewed, you know, conversation about and there's a lot of discussion
01:55on how to actually tap into the right answers as well but I'll start with you Dr. McAuley.
02:01Is that how do we differentiate between extremist attitudes and extremist actions and how do these
02:08both converge at some point or is there even some convergence? Well in general my view is that the
02:15relation between extreme ideas and extreme action is weak, it's very weak. I say that because we have
02:24polls and we know that there are many people with extreme ideas, hundreds maybe thousands of people
02:32with extreme ideas for every one person who turns to extreme action. So that means that an attitude
02:41or an opinion or an extreme idea is a very weak guide, very weak predictor of extreme action. And
02:54furthermore, we know that there are many individuals who get involved in extreme action
02:59for personal reasons that have nothing to do with political ideas. Some people join a militant group
03:06because a friend or a relative is already militant and asks them to help. Some join because they are
03:14looking for status and power, kind of people who might say, I always wanted a gun in my hands.
03:21And then there are people who join for escape. They're in some kind of trouble, family problems, legal problems,
03:30problems with the police maybe. And they want to escape from the situation they're in and they join a
03:38militant group to escape. And some people just join because they're in a strange place, they're new in
03:45town, they have no friends, and a militant offers friendship. So these are all personal reasons for
03:53joining a militant group. They're not ideological reasons, they're not extreme ideas reasons. And so on
04:01the one hand, we have few, very few people with extreme ideas ever act. And on the other hand, we know
04:08many people join in extreme action who have not had any extreme ideas. And you put these two facts
04:15together and the conclusion is extreme ideas are only very weakly related to extreme action. And my
04:23conclusion from that is it's not very useful to target extreme ideas in an effort to get rid of or to
04:31reduce extreme action.
04:34So based upon the conversation that Dr. McCauley has, Amishabhan, I'll come to you.
04:40And my question in relation to this is because this looks like a complicated method
04:47to sort of who to take actions against and who not to. And when we look at the CVE-PVE space,
04:54and in its rational existence on when there is actionable data to take action against someone,
05:02you have to come up with perceived plans. And that's where the national action plans actually
05:06come in.
05:07Absolutely.
05:07You've been an expert and you've designed that for multiple countries or helped design them.
05:13How do you see that how do these actors interact within it and how do you
05:18bring it into a cohesive whole so that it can be an actionable plan?
05:22It's an incredibly challenging thing. And as Dr. McCauley described,
05:26the motivations and reasons and experiences that people become involved in extremism are many and
05:31varied. And as a consequence, when we are thinking about things at a national state level,
05:36a nation state level or a society level, we need to have a really diverse range of responses that can
05:42be as flexible to those individual drivers as possible. What we have found at my organisation,
05:48Hedaya, the International Centre for Countering Extremism, is that we need to take a whole
05:56of society approach to prevention. And what that means is that we need to look at how we build the
06:00resilience of the community, the resilience of individuals, particularly those who may be
06:05more at risk of engaging in extremism than others. And of course, we also need to think about how we
06:11rehabilitate and reintegrate people who've been involved in extremism in the past.
06:14A whole of society approach also means that we need to establish a firm base of evidence.
06:20The things that are driving extremism in one part of Pakistan are different than the things that are
06:24driving extremism in Iraq or in Malay.
06:27So what do you mean to say is that one size will not fit all?
06:31One size definitely doesn't fit all. And I think one of the important things is that the process of
06:36making a national framework means that we can come together and build a shared understanding of what is
06:41needed, but it also needs to be quite specific. What are we going to do about it? And I think the best
06:46national action plans don't just write a dream plan, they write a realistic plan. Who's going to take
06:52action? What is the expected outcome? And what do we think will change as a result of this action plan?
06:58It's also really important, I think, that when you take that plan, you use it to communicate to the
07:03whole country. What is it we expect of you? What action are we taking? And why it is in service of
07:09our community and our society? But you're right, it's always got to be contextualized and localized to
07:14the local conditions, because every place and every individual is different.
07:18So when Dr. McCauley, I'll come back to you, when she says that you have to connect,
07:23how do you connect? What are the frames of those connections?
07:25Dr. Well, this is my colleague's line, more than mine. But I would say it's useful to start
07:36with the question, how do we consider the psychological origins? What are the psychological
07:45and emotional supports for terrorism or political violence? And to answer that question, I think we have
07:54to start from recognizing that terrorism and political violence is the result of an intergroup
08:03conflict. I say that, which seems kind of obvious, because many people try to analyze terrorists and
08:10political violent perpetrators as if we only need to understand them. But once you understand that
08:18terrorism is an expression of a political conflict, it means you have to recognize that you have to
08:24study both sides. You have to understand the terrorists and you have to understand the government
08:29that they're fighting against. It's a conflict. You can't understand, if you study only one,
08:35any more than you could understand a tennis match by focusing only on one player. And once you realize
08:41that, then the next thing to realize is where does the conflict come from? And psychologically,
08:49it comes from love. Not from hate, but from love. It's the love of your own group, your religion,
08:58your ethnic group, your national group. And then with that love, if you see a threat to your people,
09:06harm to your people, victimization of your people, this produces anger,
09:12some fear, some fear, shame, if you're not doing anything to help your people.
09:20And it's these emotions that power up and escalate the group conflict toward violence.
09:28We'll just take a very short break before I come to you. I'm going to start from where Dr. McCauley
09:34actually left off. And I'll ask you, in terms of how do we connect then? What's the point of connection
09:42between these various parts of the state in order to carve out a strategy? And how much, you know,
09:49weight does narrative building carry? And what should those narratives actually be based upon?
09:54Nazareen, we'll be with you. We'll keep going with Guftagoo.
10:01Welcome back, Nazareen. So the question before we went on the break was how do you sort of gel all of
10:08this in to sort of come up with a plan where you can actually connect with the people? In your experience
10:13and when you look at the context within Pakistan, how will all this come together?
10:19I think that Pakistan has already made a really strong start with their national action plan and
10:26thinking about how you want to address and solve the problem of extremism and violent extremism in
10:31this country. But of course, we always have to start with the answer of no one actor, no one agency
10:36can fix this problem. It is a whole of society issue and it needs a whole of society response. Now,
10:41coordinating a whole of society response is not easy because we need everyone involved, civil society,
10:47teachers, parents, policing, social workers. Everyone has a part to play. So I think really
10:55what is important is that the role that we play is we need to build a shared understanding of the
11:00problem. We need to think about who requires new skills to be able to play a part and build their
11:06capacity and capability to do so. And then, of course, we need to be constantly evaluating
11:13is the impact of the actions that we are taking having the necessary effect?
11:17Is the threat environment changing? You can't write a policy and then be done with it. It needs to be
11:21constantly implemented, evaluated and redesigned. The threat is always changing and so our response
11:26needs to as well. But the one thing that is crucially important is we all need to play our part
11:31and we all need to be accountable to one another for the actions we're taking.
11:34In terms of accountability, when we look at these plans and how they're framed within society and
11:42its actual implementation, technology is a very deeper part of it. And one of the things that
11:49have changed for Pakistan when you look at the Pakistani context is that the violence in the first quarter of
11:55this century was basically much without the use of technology in almost every hand. And I'm referring to
12:05you know, social media as well as tools that are now being used for online, you know, radicalization
12:15and conveying of propaganda from the terrorist side. How would we now at this point instance,
12:26when you go into review, you know, sort of tackle it because some of these plans that were made were
12:34probably like 10 years ago. There has been a review, but technology has been the changer.
12:41The kind of technology that I worry about the most
12:45are videos that can be transmitted on everybody's cell phone. It used to be that there were journalists
12:53who told us what was happening. Now everybody's a journalist. Everybody with a cell phone is a
12:59journalist. And the pictures and especially the videos of people suffering are, I think, the greatest
13:07impetus to action, including violent action. I don't think there's a good way to make those videos go away.
13:17And what that means is that the technology is
13:22powering emotions. Those videos of victims and suffering of the people that we care about.
13:34Those are very powerful instruments for emotional stimulation. And it's those emotions that I was
13:42referring to earlier. There's anger, there's fear, there's humiliation. And these emotions power
13:50action and move people often, too often, to violence.
13:58So when it becomes so complicated with the use of technology, how do you implement this within
14:05actionable plans? Because you can't just shut down the internet. You can't shut down modes of
14:09communication. That has been, you know, one of the modus operandi that we've seen. But it's had severe
14:16public backlash as well. How do you deal with it? Then do you construct a counter narrative? Do you
14:23construct positive propaganda? What do you do then? I think we need to do a lot of different things.
14:28And every step takes us one step closer. Obviously, there are settings where content moderation is
14:34appropriate. If there is propaganda being published that shows, depicts violence, we might want to take
14:41action against that. And through partnership with organizations like the Global Internet Forum to
14:45Counter Terrorism, which is a technology-based body, there's lots of action being taken to decide what
14:50kind of content should be made harder to source on the internet so that we can protect some users from
14:56exposure to it. But you're absolutely right. Shutting down the internet and content moderation is not
15:01the whole solution. It can only ever be part of it. What we need to do is also recognize the incredible power
15:08of technology for helping those of us who want to build peace and counter extremism to be more
15:14impactful. We have in our hands through social media the ability to connect with people we've never been
15:20able to connect with before. And through new technology such as generative AI, we are seeing new
15:26opportunities open up before us to create content, to simultaneously translate issues, to help us structure
15:33some of our thoughts and ideas. Some recent work that we've done at Hedayah has shown us that there is
15:38incredible power in harnessing these technologies for peace building. But it also needs us to think
15:44twice about the directions we're heading. We need to make sure we keep humans in the loop. Machines can't
15:49make all the decisions by themselves. And we also need to think about how we make these systems as safe as
15:54we can from the very beginning. In terms of, you know, countering propaganda and its psychological effects,
16:02what are the best practices? Well, the best answer that I can offer is we should be trying to argue
16:10against violence in particular. I don't think it's useful to try to convince people that the harm,
16:20violence, the victimization that they see happening to their own people. I don't think it's very useful
16:29to try to persuade the viewers that their people are not suffering. But I think there is some chance
16:37of persuading people that the harm they see is not going to be helped by violence.
16:44But not all, you know, propaganda or terrorists or our counter narratives or counter strategies
16:53can be non-violent. How do you navigate through that then? In terms of communication strategies
17:01in particular, I think one of the things we are is we often focus on counter narratives. The terrorists
17:06say one thing, we say another thing, it becomes an argument. I think that really relies on the idea that
17:11sometimes this is a rational choice and presented with two rational arguments, people will make the
17:16right decision. I think a lot of the time what we actually need to be focusing on is alternative
17:20narratives, recognizing that the reasons that people might become drawn to particular groups
17:25or ideas are often emotional. It's about wanting a sense of belonging. It's about wanting to feel like
17:30they have power over their own lives. As a society, we should also be offering that to people. And one of the
17:37things that we really try and do is work with partners, whether it's law enforcement, governments,
17:41civil society, or even religious leaders, to give them the skills to be online, to be in the places
17:48where people need access to their wisdom and their insight. And I know there are lots of examples from
17:54around the world. There are police officers who have gaming units so that they can meet young people
17:59online where they're most vulnerable. So I think that it's really important, certainly in the work that we do,
18:05to think about the power of people and the power of the alternative narrative that we can offer as a
18:12society. Thank you very much for this discussion.
18:36approach के साथ जो इस प्रोग्राम में कई बार जितने
18:38experts हैं उनने यही बात की है कि वन नेशन
18:41approach के साथ जो है यह बयानिया काम्याबी की
18:44तरफ जो है वो जाएगा जितने भी elements है उन
18:47सब के सब की feedback और उन सब का अपना काम करना जो है
18:50वो बहुत जरूरी है और policy के लिए सबसे important बात
18:54यह है कि वो सिर्फ बनाये ना जाएं बलके उसकी
18:57implementation mechanism सबसे important है प्रोग्राम्स के अंदर
19:01इसी तरह की गुफ्तगू का सिलसला आगे भी जारी रहेगा देखते
19:05रहेगा border talks
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