Pardeep Nijjar

Pardeep has over 10 years of practitioner expertise around issues of identity, belonging and radicalisation, working with young people with challenging backgrounds.

Pardeep graduated from the University of Leeds with a BA in Arabic and International Relations, and has since split his time between living and working in Europe and the Middle East. This has included researching civil society’s contribution to the demise of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and the wider implications for the Arab Spring, in conjunction with The International Crisis Group, and for the Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem, where he worked on projects in the West Bank. Pardeep also spent a year living in the town of Fes, Morocco as part of his Arabic studies. In 2016, Pardeep graduated from the University of Nottingham with a MA in Diplomacy.

9/11: The Al Qaeda attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington on 11th September 2001, which triggered President George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and the  wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

7/7: The co-ordinated bomb attacks on London by four young British men in the name of Al Qaeda, on 7th July 2005, which killed 52 people.

Al Qaeda: Terrorist group founded in 1988 by Osama Bin Laden, which committed the 9/11 attacks.

Islamic State (Daesh/IS/ISIS/ISIL): Terrorist group formed after the fall of Saddam Hussain in Iraq and the civil war in Syria. It is the most prominent recruiter of Westerners to its mission to establish its own state.

CONTEST & the ‘4 Ps’: The British Government’s Counter Terrorism strategy initiated in 2006, revised in 2011, consisting of 4 strands: Prepare, Protect, Prevent and Pursue.

Prevent: Aiming to stop (prevent) individuals from supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists.