Personal Narratives of the Wars in Syria and Afghanistan
with
Noah Tucker
This talk will offer results from a new fieldwork project interviewing both current and demobilized Central Asian participants in the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The dataset, collected in partnership with Sirojiddin Tolibov with support from DAI and GW's Central Asia Program, provides a unique window into the recruiting process and decisions surrounding the ethics and morality of the use of violence through interviews primarily with interlocutors who have demobilized voluntarily and sought asylum or refugee status in in Turkey rather than returning home.
Noah Tucker is research associate at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs Central Asia Program. He was previously Executive Editor for RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service and the Not in Our Name film and television series, the first region-wide project designed to counter violent extremism in Central Asia. Noah has worked on collaborative projects to identify the way social and religious groups affect political and security outcomes and headed a team that tracks social media use by Uzbek violent extremist organizations and their effect on the Uzbek language internet and the way culture shapes the conflict in Afghanistan. Recent publications include “Terrorism without a God: Reconsidering Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization Models in Central Asia” (GWU Central Asia Program September 2019). Noah has worked on Central Asian issues since 2002—specializing in religion, national identity, ethnic conflict and social media—and received an MA from Harvard in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies in 2008. He has spent around six years living and working in in the region, primarily in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and speaks Russian and Uzbek.
The Central Asia Program (CAP) promotes academic and policy research on contemporary Central Asia, and serves as an interface for the policy, academic, diplomatic, and business communities.
