Could you share a little about your background and your current work with New Lines Institute?

My background is in terrorism and counterterrorism studies. I was at a couple of think tanks before I was at New Lines Institute. I’ve run a couple of international teams at the Think Tank Civil Society Project at UPenn, a project that was led by Dr. James G. McGann, who sadly passed away November of 2021. If you look at think tank rankings, and their website says that they are ‘number one in this thematic area, or this region,’ the project defined those rankings. I led a team of 12 and then 8, with a range of expertise, from undergrads up to mid-career, and all around the world. We mapped and analyzed about 586 think tanks across MENA.

I then moved to the Institute for Study of War on their Syria and ISIS portfolios, which has become quite relevant in light of recent events.  I did some in-the-weeds research on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Hurras-al-Din, and the Turkistan Islamic Party- essentially the Al-Qaeda ecosystem in northwest Syria.

At New Lines Institute, I, before my current portfolio, led the Non-State Actors Program. We had a few regions of expertise: Central Asia, East Africa, West Africa, and a more broad global approach. This global approach was more geospatial in terms of looking at actors across a landscape. It was very fact-driven: we had a landscape report approach to that. We would do our roundtables, our policy engagements, but these were always after we had done a deep dive into the landscape and the actors operating there.

And I’ve taken that approach and fine-tuned it to a research methodology and a model that I use for all of the work for the portfolio that I currently lead, which is called ‘Priority Sustainable Counterterrorism.’ It’s essentially prevention, but the portfolio is named intentionally for the audience that I’m trying to engage and inform, that being more traditional security policymakers. The intent of all of the engagements and the research that we do is to bring evidence and mapping and local insights to these conversations. The goal is essentially to professionalize the conversation that sits at the intersection of security and development.

This is something that is usually a qualitative conversation in terms of research approaches. How do humans act? How do individuals engage with these groups? It’s a lot of psycho-social analysis, and a lot of things that usually fit in the qualitative realm, but there are ways to map and to bring evidence and data into those conversations. And this reveals a huge gap in the space, one that is hugely necessary to fill, and one that can bring light to any practitioner or policymaker that doesn’t see how something like supporting civil society has anything to do with conflict mitigation.

Saying, ‘Trust us and listen to the story’ is part of it, but there also has to be some tone of evidence to inspire action. So we’ve been leveraging that kind of work in a cross-sector, cross-level approach in terms of who it is that we’re engaging, and then also leveraging multiple facets in the work that we do. We leverage web sources, OS-INT (open source intelligence), academic literature reviews, but also dig into existing NGOs and conflict think tanks. This final process looks into the reports that such organizations are producing, as well as the local consultations and databases that already exist and can be leveraged into the work that we do. Basically, the portfolio is set up to collect as much information as possible, and then bridge existing gaps.

When you approach the integration of psycho-social analysis and the qualitative realm with geospatial analysis, what sorts of tools do you use?

What I am piloting, and what I hope to see others pilot as well, is the idea of geospatial analysis as a methodology past a really ‘in the weeds’ tool. I think more terrorism, conflict prevention, and peacebuilders can engage in this process. When you talk about geospatial tools and GIS, it can be scary to someone that’s not trained in it. There’s only so many people that know how to do the coding and the analysis to produce these products. Geospatial can also be an application; a fact-finding mission. Rather than a tool, it can be a form of work. Whether you’re looking at SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), military equipment sales, or ACLED conflict event data, you’re looking at geospatial data, and these data can be used to make portfolios more robust without applying technical skills.

For my portfolio, I produced two reports about the intersection of security and development policy in the Sahel, and integrated location-based data with qualitative research. I did market research and mapped over 300 civil society organizations across the Sahel, following this up with 10 in-person visits with NGOs at their place of work, and another 60 online consultations with local experts and civil society leaders. These visits were designed based on their location and their size. The research model was a geospatial application of research parameters; essentially, taking a map and focusing on specific areas of conflict that intersect with civil society. The second report was designed for the development sector and produced a conflict analysis on the operations of the Al-Qaeda affiliate in the area. It found that they had a civilian engagement strategy that predated their territorial expansion.

So when I move forward with briefs for policymakers, and I recommend a comprehensive prevention strategy, I’m recommending that in order for U.S. engagement to be more effective, our development and security efforts have to be at the very least coordinated. I can show them two maps, with two applications of geospatial analysis, and overlap them. These two very different buckets of data are able to support my recommendation due to their overlap.

People ask, ‘Where’s the proof?’ They want to know if we’re actually preventing anything at all with these ten-year development strategies. And that’s a fair question. We have to get better at mapping the non-kinetic. Whether that’s the operations of a bad actor, or if that’s mapping the solution landscape, applying a geospatial lens as a form of analysis is a way to professionalize a lot of these very conceptual conversations. And that is a really big opportunity.

Is your audience for these conversations mostly policymakers?

Yes, that is who New Lines Institute usually engages with. We brief policymakers from different parliaments around the world as well as domestically, from the State Department, to the Hill, to the United Nations, and everywhere in between. The portfolio that I run engages those same policymakers in addition to practitioners and local actors, and I weigh them the same. I don’t hold policymakers to a higher weight than I would practitioners because in my opinion, policy implementation is almost more important than policy itself. I also believe that positive change is not only iterative but also a shared responsibility. While we may have some decision makers that lead the charge in terms of policy priority, or, for example, national government funding, I don’t think that them having that responsibility lowers the potential of every single person that is engaged in this space and his/her potential impact.

I do these data-heavy mapping reports for policymakers’ eyes, but in that process, I am essentially fact-checking myself against civil society. I host short-term working groups for civil society organizations, which is a separate project. I don’t mention terrorism or security in those conversations. Rather, they’re focused on localization, policy, and how governments and donors can better engage with youth-led or civil society organizations. While policymakers at the highest levels might be the main audience, I think that how we do our work is just as important. I feel passionately that putting strong attention into one meeting with a civil society organization that has a team of just 5 people in Sahel, or Kenya, or wherever it is that I’m working, can have just as much impact as a briefing at, say, the Office of Counterterrorism.

This is also where geospatial as a framework comes in. Because whether we refer to geospatial as a tool, or technology, or a form of analysis, we’re talking about data. At the smallest level, on a map that has many countries, or many towns, each individual node is implementation. And implementation is all about people. Counterterrorism is all about events that impact people. And so, at the smallest level, the people who we’re engaging with should also be informing and guiding us, or be part of what we’re trying to achieve.

As you know, the Signal Program itself was started as a more traditional conflict surveillance mechanism, and in the past several years has switched almost completely to working with end-users and practitioners. It’s so important that you can look at the differences between these two groups and bring expertise to interacting with both of them. How do you feel your conversations with policymakers versus practitioners are different, and what kinds of things do you weigh more heavily when conducting these conversations?

Every single actor we engage with has their own language and their own priorities. This is really important to consider. Whether I’m developing a partnership with an international NGO or I’m having a meeting with a civil society organization that might not produce a formal partnership, there is information sharing present in both of these relationships, and I have a responsibility to give something back to them. This can simply be a connection, or insight of my own.

With policymakers, although it varies between each departmental office, I have to understand who the person I’m speaking with is beholden to. I have to understand their parameters, priorities, and most importantly, what they can and can’t do. I then have to look at what I am briefing them on, and find the connection point, which is something actionable. That, to me, is what impact is. Impact is studying something and saying something in a way that is able to be heard. A lot of times, when we do work and it lands on ears that don’t understand, or don’t see its relevance, this work does not become impactful in any way.

How do you work with more data-heavy information within these contexts?

Especially on the tech side, things are often hard to translate. It might feel like it isn’t relatable, or it can’t be translated to a more general audience. But there is always a way to have a key takeaway, or to have an insight that translates, even if sometimes you have to take two steps back instead of just one.

Geospatial data is so much more relevant than we give it credit for. There are so many different spaces in this world of prevention, whether we’re between academics, practitioners, or peacebuilders, or between the humanitarian, human rights, and conflict resolution sectors. They have an overarching, shared objective, and some of them may share ideas on how to fix problems, but data is the bridge builder between all of these spaces. I see so much opportunity for the Atrocity Prevention Lab (APL), and for geospatial analysis and data-based approaches in general, to resolve so many of the disconnects that we see today.

The main goal is to change the world. To address, mitigate, and prevent conflict, we need data as a bridge builder.

To conclude, can we hear more from you about your intentions for the Steering Committee, and what you’re excited to bring?

I just see so much opportunity. There has been so much progression in all of these different sectors, from terrorism and counterterrorism, to peacebuilding, to negotiation and mediation. Every single sector and sub-sector has waves of growth and change, and they are all trying to be relevant as discussion and work spaces.

I think there are really just a handful of relevant spaces right now that are at the point of realizing they’re intersecting with other silos. And who knows what brought that on. Maybe it was brought on by us being better connected, like the fact that I can hop on a call right now with someone from Kenya, and then fifteen minutes later I can have a call with someone in Nigeria. How amazing is that? But I think that all these spaces need a general umbrella of addressing and preventing violent events and conflict. Whether that’s positive peace, as the Institute of Economics and Peace has a wonderful framework for, or addressing more kinetic problems, such as the operations of an Al-Qaeda group, I think a common language across so many sectors is data. And right now, we’re all speaking it in different ways.

That’s why I think APL has a really unique opportunity right now to connect so many efforts of so many different entities across the world, on such an important topic. And most importantly, it’s a partner effort. APL isn’t the only one doing amazing things, but being a part of the steering committee, I’m really excited to see how we can be leaders in this space. That’s what everyone is looking for right now.

All the great work that APL and [the] Signal Program has already done is quite clear. So I would like my contribution to be a focus on bringing this work to policymakers. While it’s a really well-done academic and practitioner-focused project, there’s so much that can be gleaned to help guide policy and policy implementation. APL is holding on to so many data-informed reasons that things should be done the right way, and it is my mission to show these reasons to the people that are still deciding. We might look at our work as so obvious, but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of decision makers around the world that don’t see it. We have this bucket of reasons to prioritize sustainable approaches to mitigating and preventing conflict, and this is very much in line with my objectives at New Lines.

Tammy Lynn Palacios is Senior Analyst & Portfolio Manager of the Priority Sustainable Counterterrorism portfolio at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. She is also a 2023-2024 Modern War Institute Research Fellow.

Sophie Hayes is a current MS GIS student in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University and a graduate trainee at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program.