ABSTRACT
Threat assessments serve the need to provide a framework for decision-makers and law enforcement to prioritise problems to be addressed and facilitate prevention.1 When assessing security threats from non-state actors, existing analyses have mainly relied on the crime and terror narratives, on a series of cognitive and behavioural indicators – such as ideological motivations – and on measuring violence. However, these approaches tend to neglect the transformation processes that can lead to informal institutionalisations of radicalisation. In the Fergana Valley – a region in Central Asia trisected by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – in particular, there are non-state groups that are hard to analyse within the existing threat assessment templates – for instance, they do not necessarily behave violently – but can yet represent a threat not only for the existing political order but also for the wider international community, while their impact on local communities is ambivalent.2
