Countering ISIS in Southeast Asia

By Fergus Hanson

The Perth USAsia Centre is proud to announce the launch of our new Strategic Insights Series with an excellent piece by Fergus Hanson, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. In ‘Countering ISIS in Southeast Asia: The case for an ICT offensive’, Fergus discusses the Islamic State’s success in using social media and other communications technologies to recruit fighters from the Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and Australia. An array of laws, policing strategies, and intelligence resources are employed by governments in the region to intercept returning fighters, but Fergus says what’s missing is a coordinated response aimed at disabling one of the Islamic State’s most potent weapons: its use of communications technology.

The following report aligns with the PerthUSAsia’s Southeast Asia Program.