ACKU hosted a research presentation on “Understanding the Face of Insurgency, a panel discussion on violent extremism on January 17th, 2016. Representatives from organizations like- The Liaison Office TLO, Research Institute for Women Peace & Security RIWPS, Cooperation for Peace and Unity CPAU and The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit AREU participated and presented their findings of research about this subject.
Mr. Idrees Zaman, moderator of the program, in his opening speech said that “the main reason of gathering in this summit is to have a discussion about violent extremism so that in the end we are willing to have a national strategy against violent extremism.”
Mr. Najib Sharifi, one of the panelists representing Afghanistan New Generation organization, pointed on some elements that could help extremism grow wider, the first was the current social and political situation (poverty and insecurity); second, the encounter between the western and Islamic countries which helps strengthening the claim of extremists on not to give up; third is lack of youth with goals.
Mr. Rahmatullah Amiri, a panel member representing TLO, said that there is some cultural believes as well which is all violent extremism, what I noticed during my research, there are people in some parts of Afghanistan that feels proud to be a good fighter who everybody afraid to speak with, and some does not understand if extremism Jihad, proud, power or whatever. So extremism needs to be translated into simple words to make these people understand to avoid it.
Mr. Mirwas Wardak, a panel member representing PTRO mentioned that he noticed two assumptions during their research about extremism, first was the existence of foreign forces which they thought that Islam is under international attack and they felt responsible to move for Jihad in order to defeat them, and second was the corrupted government or bad governance that made people turn to the enemy group.
The program was lasted after two hours with questions by the audience and responses from panelists.
