Diaspora Communities

Canada Afghan: The authors examined four diaspora communities in Canada — Afghan, Somali, Syrian and Tamil — and found them to be willing allies for rooting out extremism among their often young and isolated members. "More resilient diaspora communities represent the best line of defence against violent extremism," says the March 30 report, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act. "Some unfortunate things happened towards the end of the Harper government that kind of maligned the trust we had built with communities and put us back a few steps." "Diasporas are not a threat, as some of the mainstream discourse on counterterrorism has often implied, but rather Canada most valued asset in the fight against terrorism." The authors found a mutual distrust between these communities and security agencies, driven partly by news media and academics who have "framed diaspora communities as partly complicit in terrorist activity, a source of threat for host countries like Canada." "It has fostered suspicion and even discrimination against certain diaspora groups." The research says security agencies such as the RCMP and CSIS need to build trust, especially among Muslim groups in Canada who can often alert police to potential terror activity. "Dispelling Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination should be a centrepiece of any community engagement strategy surrounding anti-radicalization, as it has fuelled distrust of the state and wider Canadian society in Muslim diaspora communities." Helps restore balance The $180,000 study for Public Safety Canada was carried out over a year by the Kitchener, Ont.-based Security Governance Group, a private consultant firm, according to Huffington Post Canada. Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst Phil Gurski, a specialist in homegrown radicalization, applauded the findings, saying they can help restore the balance between "hard security" — surveillance, arrests and charges — and "soft security," or building trust within ethnic communities. "We had the balance fairly good a couple of years ago, and then some unfortunate things happened towards the end of the Harper government that kind of maligned the trust we had built with communities and put us back a few steps," Gurski said in an interview. "More resilient diaspora communities represent the best line of defence against violent extremism." Among those setbacks was the government removal of Hussein Hamdani in April 2015 from the Cross Cultural Roundtable on National Security, after a Quebec blogger alleged Hamdani harboured terrorist sympathies. The research, ordered by the Harper government in 2014, appears to repudiate Conservative measures that alienated Muslim communities in the months before last year election. The removal resulting from "baseless allegations" was "the biggest blow to the government relationship with the Muslim community," said Gurski, who was Hamdani colleague and friend. "It had a chilling effect." The incident was followed by last summer niqab controversy, in which the Harper government pressed to have Muslim women remove their face covering at citizenship ceremonies, and the Oct. 2 announcement by Conservatives Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander of a "barbaric cultural practices tip line," allowing citizens to call RCMP anonymously with allegations about their neighbours. Sara Thompson, who teaches criminology at Toronto Ryerson University, said the report findings parallel her own work with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society. "Our findings are remarkably consistent: on the whole the communities under examination should not be viewed as 'suspect' but rather as important allies in efforts to prevent radicalization," she said. "Community-based tripwires are often activated via a concept known as 'leakage' — the tendency among radicalized individuals to broadcast their views and intentions to commit violent acts in advance, typically to friends, family, acquaintances and/or community members." Counter-radicalization office to be established The Trudeau government campaigned last year on a promise to create an Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-radicalization Co-ordinator, working with provinces and others to build bridges to Canada ethnic communities. Not too late Gurski, who was a CSIS officer from 2001 to 2013 and then with Public Safety until retirement last year, said it not too late to rebuild trust. "The communities are willing to play ball again, despite the disappointments they had toward the end of the Harper government," he said. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.