"Is a peaceful future in Syria realistic? Can power be shared among the rebel groups ? How could other Islamist groups such as the Islamic State benefit from the current situation? ZDFheute live speaks with terrorism researcher Hans-Jakob Schindler from the transatlantic think tank Counter Extremism Project (CDP) and Phoebe Gaa in Gaziantep, Turkey, on the border with Syria."

“Parts of the HTS alliance in Syria are clearly extremist and Islamist, even if their leader appears moderate, explains extremism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler.”

 

"Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, an international organization formed to combat the threat from extremist ideologies, said the main US concerns revolve around whether the HTS would seek stable governance, or continued insurgency."

“Until two weeks ago, the Syrian civil war maintained a certain stability of status quo. Dictator Bashar al-Assad ruled in the south, the Kurds ruled in the northeast, and a Turkish- backed militia controlled the northwest… "The choice between Mr. Assad and HTS is almost like choosing between the plague and cholera," says terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler. If HTS does actually prevail, it would be bad news both for the ethnic minorities in Syria and for terrorism prevention in Europe. Schindler is Senior Director at the Counter Extremism Project and previously coordinated the monitoring of ISIL, Al-Qaida and the Taliban for the UN Security Council. Regarding his assessment of HTS, he points out: "There are already the first videos of people from the HTS environment who want to build a caliphate."”

“The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded the lightning offensive against the capital, is an Islamist movement that has controlled Syria's northwestern areas for several years… Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the international research institute Counter Extremism Project (CEP), believes that there is no reason to remove the blacklist. "If you have to ask permission from al-Qaeda's leadership before breaking ties with al-Qaeda, the sincerity of the ideological reorientation is questionable," he told AFP. – There is absolutely no doubt that they should still be listed as a terrorist group, he claims.”

"The regime of President Bashar al-Assad has collapsed after a lightning rebel offensive that began less than two weeks ago. The alliance of opposition groups is led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Hans-Jakob Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project talked to DW about support for the rebels among the Syrian public."

CEP Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy writes: "Really, Prevent’s statistics tell us more about those making the referrals than they do about the nature of the terror threat to Britain. Prevent uses the public sector — especially education — as its main vector of delivery, which will always skew referrals towards the kinds of people with whom those institutions and services interact. This has led to confusion and mission creep even among Prevent practitioners who, as William Shawcross warned in his 2023 review of Prevent, have viewed terroristic radicalisation primarily through a lens of vulnerability."

CEP Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy interviewed: "EXCLUSIVE: Over half of all counter extremism referrals are children. Counter terrorism expert Liam Duffy: "Very few of those referrals will go on to be channel cases... Prevent was turning into a bit of a clearing house, where any kind of vulnerability is referred."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Thanks to a new National Audit Office report on jail capacity, we now know that prison is awful — but there’s also not enough of it. This paradox sits at the heart of the present overcrowding crisis."