Terrorism & extremism, explained.
Police officer from the French Search and Intervention Brigade (BRI). (Amaury Cornu/Hans Lucas/Getty)
The war on terror produced many lessons. Its most important was largely overlooked.
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Terrorism: When the enemy is the stateTerrorism: When the enemy is the state
Twenty-five years after the attacks of 11 September 2001, governments, researchers and security agencies now understand far more about terrorists. They have studied how terrorists think, recruit, finance and fight. Yet one of the strongest predictors of violent extremism has received little attention: the state. (Opens in new window)
Terrorism is usually presented as an intruder. It arrives across an unguarded border, through a foreign-funded preacher, on an encrypted messaging platform or in the luggage of a returning foreign fighter (Opens in new window). Seal the border, silence the propagandist and arrest the recruit, and society can return to normal.
Enormous efforts went into identifying the future terrorist. Few areas of public policy have been studied with such determination. The conclusions are unsatisfying.
It is a comforting fiction. It allows governments to treat extremist violence as something that happens to a country rather than something that emerges from within its politics.
But extremism in South and Southeast Asia is not an alien force entering otherwise peaceful societies. More often than not, it grows out of local political conflicts (Opens in new window). The organisations may change. The grievances do not.
In 2026, the Taliban is once again the government of Afghanistan (Opens in new window). Across South and Southeast Asia, groups that pledged allegiance to Islamic State remain rooted in the same local conflicts that always sustained them (Opens in new window). The pledge offered publicity, prestige and access to a global brand. It did not transform a local grievance into a global cause.
Too often the brand was mistaken for the business.
Axel Houmadi/Unsplash
For 25 years, enormous efforts went into identifying the future terrorist. Childhoods, education, religion, poverty, prisons, internet histories, psychology – few areas of public policy have been studied with such determination. The conclusion is unsatisfying. There is no reliable profile. (Opens in new window) Radicalisation is highly individual, non-linear and shaped by countless personal experiences.
But while predicting who will embrace violence has proved remarkably difficult, identifying where violent movements flourish has become much easier.
The pattern is consistent (Opens in new window). Extremism thrives where unresolved conflict, political repression, human rights abuses, discrimination, corruption, weak state legitimacy and the absence of peaceful avenues for redress create fertile ground for violence. Extremist organisations rarely invent these grievances. They inherit them, weaponise them and, all too often, the state supplies the raw material.
That should not surprise us. Countries most afflicted by violent extremism are also among those experiencing armed conflict, political terror and severe human rights abuses. Repression recruits more effectively than propaganda. While state violence never excuses extremist violence, it often helps explain why extremist organisations continue to find recruits long after their ideology should have lost its appeal.
The state's role extends beyond repression. Sometimes it becomes an active participant.
Popular culture once made this seem almost heroic. In the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, Bond joins forces with Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet troops. The Taliban did not yet exist but the scene now feels like a relic of an era when armed Islamist movements could be neatly divided into "our extremists" and "theirs".
The distinction was always more convenient than real.
States have long funded, armed, sheltered and manipulated violent groups when it suited their strategic interests. During the Cold War, the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported Afghan fighters against Soviet forces. Pakistan (Opens in new window) has long been accused of distinguishing between militant groups that threaten the Pakistani state and those seen as advancing its interests in Afghanistan or India. Across Asia (Opens in new window), governments have at various times tolerated militias, empowered vigilantes or cultivated proxy forces while simultaneously presenting themselves as the defenders of stability.
The relationship between states and violent extremism has always been more complicated than official rhetoric allows.
Sometimes the state is the solution. Sometimes it is part of the problem. Prevention begins with knowing the difference.
That complexity also exposes one of the central assumptions behind the post-9/11 international response. Donors invested heavily in making states better at fighting terrorism (Opens in new window) – training police, strengthening intelligence agencies, improving border management and expanding surveillance. Much of that work disrupted genuine threats and saved lives. But it rested on an assumption that the state itself was a responsible actor.
Capability without accountability may simply make the production of grievance more efficient. An abusive security service equipped with better technology remains an abusive security service. Heavy-handed policing, arbitrary detention, discrimination and political exclusion can operate like an overactive immune system. The response becomes more dangerous than the disease. Rather than isolating extremist organisations, it expands the audience willing to tolerate, support or join them.
None of this suggests governments should hesitate to confront groups willing to murder civilians or destroy democratic politics. They have both the right and the obligation to do so.
But a government cannot repress its way out of a conflict it helped create. It cannot sponsor violent proxies abroad while condemning extremism at home. And it cannot demand loyalty from citizens who encounter the state chiefly through corruption, discrimination or force.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, perhaps the hardest lesson is that violent extremism is not an unwanted growth that can simply be cut out of an otherwise healthy society. It is shaped by the political environment around it.
Sometimes the state is the solution. Sometimes it is part of the problem. Prevention begins with knowing the difference.
About the author
Simon Finley
Simon Finley is an Australia-based strategic adviser with more than two decades of on-the-ground experience across more than 30 countries in Asia and the Pacific.
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