The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is an economic and political alliance of six countries within the Arabian Peninsula namely: Kuwait; Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. This alliance which was established in 1981 promotes security, economic, social and cultural corporation between the six countries and as a consequence holds a summit every year to discuss the progress of the cooperation on handling regional affairs. As a result of their geographic proximity, common social stances, and similar political systems, the immediate objective in forming the alliance was to be able to protect themselves from threats that were emanating from the war between Iraq and Iran (Al Jazeera, 2017).
The complicated and fragile geopolitical realities throughout the countries in the GCC cannot be separated easily - the stances on Israel, Syria, Iran and Yemen- complicated the landscape of threat, efforts to address the success of counterterrorism efforts, and the potential multilateral opportunities for partnership. The fluid and dynamic political situations within the greater Middle East, including the dynamics within the Qatar situation, diverse support mechanisms within Iraq, as well as the long-going war and ongoing humanitarian Yemen Crisis, will significantly continue rake up most of the attention of the top level GCC leadership (Al Jazeera, 2017).
GCC member states should share the responsibilities outlined in the alliance and enable additional support from outside the GCC to the countries that are best equipped to center the focus of the alliance on countering violent extremism from the next generation – civil society, communities, local practitioners, and municipal authorities. Recruitment and radicalization efforts are often on individual levels, localized, and distinctive contextually, and as such efforts at national level should include the creation of operating space for local action targeted towards combating terrorism (Al Jazeera, 2017).
GCC Countries and the Efforts to Address Terrorism within National Borders
There are three main areas where the GCC member states have made mentionable contributions within their national boundaries to address terrorism since the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001: engagement of religious fraternities; Reintegration and rehabilitation; and countering the ongoing financing of terrorism (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Engagement of Religious Fraternities
Religion plays a central role in the communities and societies of the member states of the GCC and as such they have used this platform to engage religious leaders as an effort to counter terrorism and extremism. This is an effort that is against the backdrop of the propaganda that consistently comes from terrorist groups who use religion as an anchor of their nihilistic and barbaric initiative. In Saudi Arabia, as well as other GCC member states, some of the highly ranked religious clerics have been motivated to denounce terrorism, denounce terrorist groups like the ISIS and Al Qaeda, and contest their interpretation of Islam, which they do to their own benefit (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Most of the GCC member states have revised their academic curricula, including the reading materials – this has been a focused effort meant to reverse the harm that had been caused by earlier teachings that contained violence – and intolerance-related content. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also set up various institutions specifically meant to counter terrorist and extremism mentalities. The UAE on the other hand has worked hard towards providing support to the organization referred to as Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, which is composed of Shia and Sunni scholars from the religion of Islam under the leadership of Sheikh Abdallah Bayyah, a well-known sheikh. In this forum, the participants attempt to address the key motivations behind violent extremism and terrorist acts, they also create a platform for religious minorities to be protected, and also support peace builders within the Islamic world (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
These are efforts among other at the local level of the GCC member states that help to monitor and encourage the local religions and their leaders to ensure they are on the positive side of denouncing extremism and terrorism and they have for the longest time acted as critical additions to the platform addressing counter-terrorism. The only challenge within this arena is that sometimes son efforts led by the state might conflict with the religious efforts which sometimes encourages extremism. As well, messaging endorsed by the state that addresses religion-related interventions sometimes ignores the necessity to meet the needs of the citizens which comes off as meaningless and hollow to the audiences who are at risk (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Reintegration and Rehabilitation Efforts
GCC nations, more so Saudi Arabia, reached a realization that the criminals who had been incarnated for terrorism-related crimes as intensive efforts for the War on Terror, would ultimately be freed and they will get back to unite with the rest of the world after the end of their sentences. Notably, every country in the GCC has one or more form of rehabilitation for criminals incarnated for terrorist or extremist related crimes, which makes it possible to rehabilitate them before allowing them back to their communities. For instance, Saudi Arabia has several programs which have been documented and covered in internal press, whose focus is provision of incentives to these offenders to change their behaviors and beliefs. These programs comprise of such activities as counselling, education, financial incentives, reintegration and monitoring. The other member states like UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman have also made investments in rehabilitation programs meant to serve terrorism offenders (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Within this context, there are ongoing debates that question whether these programs need to pay a particular attention to disengagement – no longer participating in extremism or terrorism- or focus on DE-radicalization – reject and replace previously radical ideologies – or a combination of both of them for the best outcomes possible. While adjustments are possible, the approach of reintegration and rehabilitation to prepare former convicts to be rejoined with their communities is a crucial step for GCC member states because it has a higher likelihood of increasing in importance as countries struggle to accommodate foreign fighters who are coming back from abroad. This is because GCC countries have set the stage and acted as an example worth emulating (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Countering the ongoing financing of terrorism
After the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, the international community set up significant laws, infrastructure as well as policies that denied terrorists from using internationally founded financial systems. In response, GCC member states responded with the creation of financial intelligence units (FIUs), which acted to affirm this cross-border commitments to counter financing of terrorism. One of such units is the Middle East and North Africa Task Force (MENAFATF) as well as efforts meant to disrupt financing of terrorism within criminal justice operations conducted mostly within the gulf area (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Additionally, ministries across the six member states began offering training programs specially meant to ensure that for criminal justice personnel, financial institutions, and even border and customs officials, had appropriate training and had the capabilities to counter financing of terrorist and extremist activities beyond the national boundaries – transnationally. This is an effort that has seen collaboration of GCC member states with the United States and other international partners. There are still institutional weaknesses and vulnerabilities affecting this effort, but increments in the capacities of the member states have led to critical improvements in containing much of the terrorism financing that was going on (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Addressing Terrorism regionally and internationally by GCC member states
International political pressure as well as realities surrounding the concern for security within the GCC member states have sprung GCC and its member governments into action with the focus to address terrorism and violent extremism. Through various international corporation avenues with focus mostly outside their national borders, these internationally and regionally focused efforts have been phenomenal in ensuring that the member states take the responsibility to persist with counter terrorism efforts even if bilateral and cohesion uncertainties within GCC are still eminent (United States Institute of Peace, 2018).
Efforts through the Military
One of the most significant ways in which GCC and its member states are addressing terrorism is through the strengthening of their militaries, and the efforts focused towards capturing and execution of terrorists, denying terrorists groups safety and peace, and liberating any populations that have been placed under terrorist power rule. GCC member states have been active participants in the Coalition to Defeat the ISIS, besides, their efforts extensively focus on assisting each other’s militaries by equipping them with the skills to understand and help in the process of countering terror. So far, the outputs of eliminating terrorism through the strengthening of the military are obvious, but the GCC has insisted that the focus is on how to stop the next pipeline of terrorist group’s recruits (Gross et al., 2017).
Cooperation on the International Scene
The most important progress that has been witnessed within the GCC efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism has come from the cooperation that has been initiated with the international community. To begin with, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia have all been active members of the Global Counter Terrorism Forum, a multilateral, informal platform for counterterrorism whose agenda is to share experiences, good practices, and tools meant to promote a long-term approach for countering terrorism. As a motivation from the GCTF, UAE has also acted to create its own Hedayah Center with an established aim to be the premier operational platform and international center for experience and expertise to counter terrorism through sharing of great practices and expertise. The work of Hedayah extends a great way from training its personnel to the conducting and publishing of research on terrorism (Gross et al., 2017).
In response to this mandate in 2013, United States Institute of Peace (USIP) was phenomenal in helping Hedayah to build capacity on community centered policing with CVE as the baseline. The focus of USIP was to help Hedayah in training law enforcement personnel on an institutional level and as such concentrated on enabling military and police academicians to adopt content that promoted the capability of the police to develop community partnerships and respond to terrorism in a professional manner. This was focused towards the larger agenda of gaining legitimacy and credibility and public service agents, which is a major initiative of the CVE (Gross et al., 2017).
Apart from Hedayah, UAE and other GCC member states have also been part of an international effort to wage war on ISIS within the digital footprint. This is an effort that has been extended through the Sawab Center Digital Communications Hub to Counter Extremist Propaganda. This initiative which has US as a co-founder is staffed and utilized by various nations who are active participants in the coalition to fight and suppress ISIS, and as such focuses on producing alternative and counter narratives to hinder the youth from being attracted to the ISIS (Gross et al., 2017).
Qatar has also made substantial efforts to funding of organizations whose focus is to inhibit the spread and impact of ISIS and terror in general. The GCC member state has donated severally towards the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), which is a public-private partnership which is devoted towards funding efforts at the community level that are geared towards addressing resilience and violent extremism. This is an effort whose significance cannot be stated enough because of the role it plays at the grassroots level. Member states of the GCC have also significantly participated in efforts extended by the UN to make sure that the United Nations Secretariat is able to initiate the effort to establish the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Center (UNCCT) (Gross et al., 2017).
In spirit of the extended effort to partner with international partners, the GCC in May 2017 signed a memorandum with the United States under President Donald Trump by signing a deal meant to oversee the cutting financing of terror. This was following a heated row between the United States and Iran with the former accusing the other of not putting the best efforts to dismantling its “network of terrorism”. This signing which is seen as the highest accomplishment in the direction of committing to not financing terrorist organizations. This is a positive move that will place the GCC back on track after it was accused of transforming from an active role in fighting crime to a symbolic role of just being an advocate for fighting of crime (Gross et al., 2017).
Recommendations to Make the GCC more Effective in Fighting Terrorism in the Future
To expand and improve on their current engagements and activities meant to counter terrorism and extremism, GCC member states can devote more resources and attention towards countering and preventing violent extremism by concentrating on the factors that might contribute to the emergence of terrorists in the future. Governments within this alliance should devote much of their attention by ensuring individuals within the civil society are enabled because they can understand the vulnerabilities at the local levels better and hence are in a better position to perform actions which will fully address the eminent conditions within the society (Cordesman, 2018).
As such, these member states are in a great position to advance systematic steps aligned to counter underlying political, social, governance, economic, development and culturally related conditions that encourage individuals to engage in radicalization and communities to be motivated to joint terrorist and extremist groups. Majority of these mechanisms that would be critical in crafting and implementing these better practices are already available. Advancing from examining the various sources of radicalization to assisting leaders within the civil society to address violent extremism within their local communities, progress can achieved to reduce the constantly evolving and highly dynamic terrorism threat (Cordesman, 2018).
One of the most promising directions that will be instrumental in addressing the threat of terrorism in future is through conducting empirical research. If contextualized and locally driven, this research provides a firm foundation to address terrorism and extremism. It offers an opportunity for local citizens and outsiders to access information and data needed to arrive at decisions critical to countering terrorism. Research can help to underline the most appropriate interventions for various situations (Cordesman, 2018). By advancing this logic, USIP made the first move by forging a partnership with RESOLVE which is incubated within the State Department which is the synonym for Researching Solutions to Violent Extremism. Presently, RESOLVE is helping policy makers and researchers to analyze and uncover the trends and the factors that contribute to the spread and growth of terrorism and extremist organizations. RESOLVE is pushing ahead the effort to put empirically logical insights and locally-fed research to the attention of international and national policy makers creating an environment for development of policy recommendations which promote action to improve CVE and counterterrorism actions (Cordesman, 2018).
Secondly, there is need to change the thinking towards fighting terrorism by advancing non-violent action approaches. The current thinking regarding recruitment and radicalization is mostly based on deductive approaches. In this case, the logic is that if terrorism experts are able to understand what terrorists use in advancing their recruitment efforts, then those who act upon this information like governments are able to address these issues, and as a consequence communities and individuals will be less likely to associate themselves with terrorist groups (Cordesman, 2018).
While this is a positive way to look at it, non-violent movements and campaigns would be effective as well since they present people with opportunities to contribute to the greater course, create social bonds in a meaningful way, and have the power to collectively address the concerns raised. Such non-violent approaches to addressing terrorism like through boycotts, strikes, satire and demonstrations would achieve major success in countering extremism and terrorism. Additionally, non-violent approaches would present opportunities to engage religious leaders beyond changing their ideologies. It will also spearhead improvements within the security sector and enable the populations within the GCC to have a crucial stake in the future (Cordesman, 2018).
Conclusion
There is a lot of complexity involved with the ability to understand, uncover and address the myriad of factors mentioned as contributing, in different proportions, to every individual or group joining a terrorist or extremist organization. However, that has not been a hindrance to GCC which has made recommendable progress on the local, national and international platforms (Cordesman, 2018). Research conducted in 2016 by Community of Democracies which examined liberal and terrorism democracies found out that weak political legitimacy, weak institutional capacity, and inconsistencies within the social construct linking governments and citizens were major contributors to the development of terrorism and extremism. As such, preventing recruitment, radicalization, and the advent of the next Al Qaeda or ISIS must be extended beyond countering the propaganda and messages, to address financial flows. Countries can possibly empower their citizens and the civil society as a whole, initiate reforms within the government, allow inclusiveness within politics, and respect the basic human rights of their citizens. In a nutshell, despite the commendable progress on the approach to counter extremism and terrorism such as religious engagement, military efforts, and cooperation within the international framework, GCC member states still have an opportunity to achieve more success within their defined objective (Cordesman, 2018).
References
Al Jazeera. (2017, December 04). What is the GCC? Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/gcc-171204094537378.html
Cordesman, A. (2018, October 24). Gulf Security: Looking Beyond the Gulf Cooperation Council. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://www.csis.org/analysis/gulf-security-looking-beyond-gulf-cooperation-council
Gross, J. A., Toi, Issacharoff, A., Ahren, R., Superville, D., Colvin, J., . . . JTA. (2017, May 27). US, Gulf States, sign deal to end financing for terror. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-gulf-states-sign-deal-to-end-financing-for-terror/
United States Institute of Peace. (2018, May 04). Grading Counterterrorism Cooperation with the GCC States. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/04/grading-counterterrorism-cooperation-gcc-states
