Conference announcement:
Escalation Processes in Irregular War
On 17 and 18 September 2010, Utrecht University will be hosting a two-day conference on the role of state counterterrorism measures in escalating and de-escalating violent conflict. Speaking at the conference will be both a number of internationally renowned scholars as well as researchers from the 'History of Counterterrorism' project.

For full program details, please follow this link.
Interested parties are kindly requested to send an email to Dr. Duyvesteyn: i.duyvesteyn@uu.nl.

A History of Counterterrorism 1945-2005
Welcome to the homepage of the research project ‘A History of Counterterrorism 1945-2005’. The aim of the project is to investigate escalation and de-escalation processes in irregular war, e.g. terrorism and insurgency. The project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Research Institute of History and Culture of Utrecht University. The project will run until the summer of 2012, when we hope to present our findings. Intermediate products of the project will be published on this website.
The project is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Research Institute of History and Culture of Utrecht University.
Summary of the research project

The initial idea of the research project was to investigate the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures that have been instituted by states since 1945. While the state has several instruments available to deal with terrorist activity, such as the police forces, the army, judicial instruments and political and socio-economic instruments, few studies have asked the question how effective are they for reducing terrorist activity. Early on in the investigations we found that the state itself is part of the conflict dynamics. The main question has developed into: to what extent is the state a cause or catalyst in escalation of struggles that usually start very inconspicuously. While the state, in general, does not seek to intensify armed conflict within its territory, its actions might paradoxically contribute to increases in the levels of violence. A subsequent question will of course be: which factors and causal processes contribute to the de-escalation of these kinds of conflicts.
      Based on a series of non-Western case studies, the project will compare state policies aimed at combating irregular war around the world since 1945. The investigations will dissect, on the basis of historical and empirical evidence, the causal processes that lead to increases and decreases in the levels of violence of irregular wars. The study aims to shift the dominant focus from state centred perspectives and Western cases towards a more historical and, importantly, non-state and non-Western perspective on the development of (counter)-terrorism and (counter)-insurgency.