This book provides the first empirical analysis of lone-actor terrorist behaviour. Based upon a unique dataset of 111 lone actors that catalogues the life span of the individual's development, the book contains important insights into what an analysis of their behaviours might imply for practical interventions aimed at disrupting or even preventing attacks. It adopts insights and methodologies from criminology and forensic psychology to provide a holistic analysis of the behavioural underpinnings of lone-actor terrorism. By focusing upon the behavioural aspects of each offender and by analysing a variety of case studies, including Anders Breivik, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh and David Copeland, this work marks a pointed departure from previous research in the field. It seeks to answer the following key questions: Is there a lone-actor terrorist profile and how do they differ? What behaviours did the lone-actor terrorist engage in prior to his/her attack and is there a common behavioural trajectory into lone-actor terrorism? How 'lone' do lone-actor terrorists tend to be? What role, if any, does the internet play? What role, if any, does mental illness play? This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism/counter-terrorism studies, political violence, criminology, forensic psychology and security studies in general.

Since 9/11 many books have been published on Islamic terrorism, but few of these have considered the issue from the perspective of strategic studies or in terms of an "insurgency." As a result, much of this literature ignores the process of radicalisation and fails to ascertain why some people turn to terrorism, while others from the same background do not. To counter this trend, Explaining Islamist Insurgencies explains how and why the process of Islamist radicalisation is an important step towards acts of terrorism and in the formation of terrorist organisations by focusing on Poso, a small town in Indonesia that experienced years of armed sectarian conflict between Muslim and Chrisitian communities in 2000-2007. Building on the frameworks provided by previous studies, Muhammed Tito Karnavian employs communications theory to explore the necessary precursors for the legitimising ideology, in this case Salafi-jihadism, to be effectively disseminated.With nearly 20 years of experience in academia and counter-terrorism operations in Indonesia, and as the current Chief of Papua Police, Karnavian employs his unparalleled access to information and individuals to delineate the various stages of the radicalisation of the Poso conflict and how radical organisations, such as al-Jamaah al-Islamiyyah (JI), came to be involved. This unique first-hand account of a counter-terrorist operation concludes by offering general policy implications that will be of use to both academics and practitioners.

Since 9/11 many books have been published on Islamic terrorism, but few of these have considered the issue from the perspective of strategic studies or in terms of an "insurgency." As a result, much of this literature ignores the process of radicalisation and fails to ascertain why some people turn to terrorism, while others from the same background do not. To counter this trend, Explaining Islamist Insurgencies explains how and why the process of Islamist radicalisation is an important step towards acts of terrorism and in the formation of terrorist organisations by focusing on Poso, a small town in Indonesia that experienced years of armed sectarian conflict between Muslim and Chrisitian communities in 2000-2007. Building on the frameworks provided by previous studies, Muhammed Tito Karnavian employs communications theory to explore the necessary precursors for the legitimising ideology, in this case Salafi-jihadism, to be effectively disseminated.With nearly 20 years of experience in academia and counter-terrorism operations in Indonesia, and as the current Chief of Papua Police, Karnavian employs his unparalleled access to information and individuals to delineate the various stages of the radicalisation of the Poso conflict and how radical organisations, such as al-Jamaah al-Islamiyyah (JI), came to be involved. This unique first-hand account of a counter-terrorist operation concludes by offering general policy implications that will be of use to both academics and practitioners.

In recent decades, the taking of hostages has proven to be a particularly effective tactic for Islamic terrorist organizations worldwide, including al Qaeda. The global jihad' movement regards citizens of foreign (mainly western) countries as prime targets for abduction, although in fact local residents have constituted the majority of kidnapping victims. This book analyzes Islamic terror abductions over the last 30 years in the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia), Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines), Africa (the Maghreb, the Sahel regions, and Somalia), and in Russia as a part of the RussianChechen conflict. Discussion also focuses on the abduction by Hizballah of Israeli soldiers, the Second Lebanon War' of 2006, the Mumbai terror attack (2008), the Chechen hostage crisis in Moscow and Beslan (2002 and 2004), the kidnapping of employees of the Algerian In Amenas gas facility by al Qaeda of the Maghreb' in January 2013 and the Nairobi "Westgate Mall" hostage crisis in September 2013. The role of Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, and its patronage of terror organizations that utilize the tactic of abduction to promote Iranian interests in Lebanon and Iraq, is highlighted throughout. Discussion focuses on the challenges faced by countries whose citizens have been abducted by Islamic terror organizations and their reactions to these challenges, and provides theoretical classifications of the phenomenon of terrorism in general and terror abduction in particular.

The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, Second Edition is a highly detailed and exhaustive history and analysis of terror groups that both formed the Iraq insurgency and led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It places heavy emphasis on the history, organization, and personalities of the al-Qaeda in Iraq (now ISIS), the former Baathist regime loyalists, and Shiite insurgents. The book also thoroughly analyzes how Iraq became the center of the ISIS strategy to create an Islamic caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. As terrorism activity proliferates and spreads globally, this timely second edition provides a solid understanding of how the Iraq insurgency was a born after the U.S.-led invasion, which led to the crisis of today. More specifically, the book: Illustrates the political, combat, and religious strategy as well as street-level tactics of the insurgents Reveals what American, British, and coalition soldiers endured in Iraq on the street every day for eight years, and what the Iraqi army and people now endure Demonstrates how the Iraqis employ very specific terrorist acts at particularly auspicious times to meet their strategic political or propaganda goals during a terror campaign Delineates strategies that the enemy saw as critical in forcing U.S. and coalition forces to withdraw, and the terrorist strategy that besieges the Shiite government that was left behind Includes three new chapters on the evolution of ISIS from al-Qaeda in Iraq (2011-2014), a revised history of al-Qaeda in Iraq (2005-2011), and updated geopolitical intelligence predictions The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, Second Edition offers an unbiased examination of the myriad of Iraqi terror groups and the goal of expanding the Islamic State across the Middle East. The book shares knowledge that will hopefully limit the killing machine that is the Iraq insurgency and someday bring about a stable partner in the Middle East.

This book offers a guide to interpreting available statistical data on terrorism attacks around the world. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) now includes more than 113,000 terrorist attacks, starting in 1970. By analyzing these data, researchers demonstrate how a very small number of terrorist attacks have had an outsized effect on attitudes and policies toward terrorism. These attacks, referred to as 'black swan' events, are difficult to predict but have an enormous impact on human affairs for years to come. The book discusses terrorist attacks, such as 9/11, possibly the most high profile 'black swan' event in living memory, by putting them into context with thousands of less publicized attacks that have plagued the world since 1970. Historically, the study of terrorism has suffered from a general lack of empirical data and statistical analysis. This is largely due to the difficulty of obtaining valid data on a topic that poses significant collection challenges. However, this book makes use of the fact that the GTD is currently the most extensive unclassified database on terrorism ever collected. While there have been summaries of the research literature on terrorism and important analyses of international terrorism event data, this is the first book that provides a comprehensive empirical overview of the nature and evolution of both modern international and domestic terrorism. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, international security, and political science in general.

This book offers a transnational feminist response to the gender politics of torture and terror from the viewpoint of populations of color who have come to be associated with acts of terror. Using the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, this book revisits other such racialized wars in Palestine, Guatemala, India, Algeria, and South Africa. It draws widely on postcolonial literature, photography, films, music, interdisciplinary arts, media/new media, and activism, joining the larger conversation about human rights by addressing the problem of a pervasive public misunderstanding of terrorism conditioned by a foreign and domestic policy perspective. Deb provides an alternative understanding of terrorism as revolutionary dissent against injustice through a postcolonial/transnational lens. The volume brings counter-terror narratives into dialogue with ideologies of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and religion, addressing the situation of women as both perpetrators and targets of torture, and the possibilities of a dialogue between feminist and queer politics to confront securitized regimes of torture. This book explores the relationship in which social and cultural texts stand with respect to legacies of colonialism and neo-imperialism in a world of transnational feminist solidarities against postcolonial wars on terror.

This book considers the theoretical, policy and empirical arguments relevant to the debate concerning the legalisation of interrogational torture. Torturing Terrorists examines, as part of a consequentialist analysis, the nature and impact of torture and the implications of its legal regulation on individuals, institutions and wider society. In making an argument against the use of torture, the book engages in a wide ranging interdisciplinary analysis of the arguments and claims that are put forward by the proponents and opponents of legalised torture. This book examines the ticking bomb hypothetical and explains how the component parts of the hypothetical are expansively interpreted in theory and practice. It also considers the effectiveness of torture in producing 'ticking bomb' and 'infrastructure' intelligence and examines the use of interrogational torture and coercion by state officials in Northern Ireland, Algeria, Israel, and as part of the CIA's 'High Value Detainee' interrogation programme. As part of an empirical slippery slope argument, this book examines the difficulties in drafting the text of a torture statute; the difficulties of controlling the use of interrogational torture and problems such a law could create for state officials and wider society. Finally, it critically evaluates suggestions that debating the legalisation of torture is dangerous and should be avoided. The book will be of interest to students and academics of criminology, law, sociology and philosophy, as well as the general reader.

High performance during catastrophic terrorist events require the ability to assess and adapt capacity rapidly, restore or enhance disrupted or inadequate communications, utilize flexible decision making swiftly, and expand coordination and trust between multiple emergency and crisis response agencies. These requirements are superimposed on conventional administrative systems that rely on relatively rigid plans, decision protocols, and formal relationships that assume smooth sailing and uninterrupted communications and coordination. Network Governance in Response to Acts of Terrorism focuses on the inter-organizational performance and coordinated response to recent terrorist incidents across different national, legal, and cultural contexts in New York, Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London, and Mumbai. Effortlessly combining each case study with content analyses of news reports from local and national newspapers, situation reports from government emergency/crisis management agencies, and, interviews with public managers, community leaders, and nonprofit executives involved in response operations, Naim Kapucu presents an overview of how different countries tackle emergencies by employing various collaborative decision-making processes, thus, offering a global perspective with different approaches. These features make this book an important read for both scholars and practitioners eager to reconcile existing decision-making theories with practice.

The film Fahrenheit 9/11 convinces nearly all who see it--and believe it--that George Bush was unfit to lead on 9/11 and beyond. Fahrenheit 9-12--this book--convinces nearly all who read it that a review of the sources of virtually every frame and every claim in the film reveals that virtually everything in Fahrenheit 9/11 is arguably misleading or inaccurate. Fahrenheit 9-12 is not for everyone--it is just for those intellectually honest people who hate President Bush, as well as for those who do not. The Bush-bashers are doomed to four years of misery and frustration unless the distortions on which they base their bashes will be exposed to them. Fahrenheit 9-12 brings relief to those who have taken Michael Moore's criticisms of President Bush to heart, and who have suffered heartache or heartburn ever since. once they discover the lack of merit of most of the film's assaults on Bush's character, intelligence, and judgment. Readers who saw or boycotted Moore's film can appreciate Reichel's rebuttals enough to want to show his book to--or buy copies for--friends, colleagues, team-mates, teachers, students, and/or relatives who believe that Fahrenheit 9/11--the film--deserves even a fraction of the respect, acclaim and/or popularity it has received, thereby reducing tension in many personal or even professional relationships. Fahrenheit 9-12--this book--replaces ad hominem discord with rational discourse.

Harmon focuses on terrorism and insurgency in the lawless expanse of the Sahara Desert and the adjacent, transitional Sahel zone, plus the broader meta-region that includes countries such as Algeria, Mali, and Nigeria, and to a lesser extent, Niger and Mauritania. Covering such issues as Islamist terrorism, border insecurity, contraband, and human trafficking, this book looks at the interrelated problems of political and social pathologies that affect terrorist movements and security in the region. A valuable publication, it treats a series of related problems on the basis of a broadly defined area, with a special emphasis on the role of Islam as both a moderating and exacerbating factor. The book has a broader appeal than more narrowly focused country studies that derive from the perspective of only one problem such as terrorism or border insecurity.

To what extent are terrorism and development related? What are the relative weights of the economic, political, and social aspects of development? What is the development impact of different responses to terrorism? This volume addresses these crucial questions, synthesizing what we know about the development links with terrorism and pointing out what we do not. Contributors to this volume examine the economic and fiscal costs of terrorism and the response to terrorism. They conclude that the economic costs of terrorism in rich countries are low, relative to the economic costs of combating terrorism; both are likely high in poor countries. They also report evidence on how development affects terrorism. This work supports the hypothesis that political development - political openness and the quality of government - is inversely associated with the emergence of terrorist organizations, but not that poverty per se is directly responsible for terrorism.

This book examines the politicisation of victims of terrorism and the reality of the victimisation experience within the broader field of terrorism and the resulting conflict. Victims of terrorism are a unique group of individuals whose experience is overlooked in the current literature on terrorism. Since 9/11, terrorism has risen to global prominence and has become a key topic of interest with regards to media attention and national security. As a result, many European countries (as well as the USA) have had to take active steps to protect and provide for the victims of terrorism, particularly given the nature of victimisation post-3/11 (Madrid) and 7/7 (London). Recently, we have also seen an increase in the political currency of the terrorist victim; for example, the lobbying activities and political involvement of the victims of ETA terrorism and the exceptionally powerful lobby in the USA that sees the involvement of victims of terrorism and their families in policy-making and law-enforcement transformations. This book is based on extensive field work in Northern Ireland, London and Spain and presents the results, which focus on the needs and experiences of victims of terrorism and political violence, and critically analyses these findings comparatively and in their own right. The aim is to assess the provision of support initiatives in Northern Ireland, mainland UK and Spain and understand if victims' needs are being met by these initiatives but most importantly to construct a picture of the local and international interpretation of the experience of victimisation by terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, victimology, criminology, security studies and IR.

This book explains the origins and nature of terrorism in Pakistan and examines the social, political and economic factors that have contributed to the rise of political violence there.

Since 9/11, the state of Pakistan has come to be regarded as the epicentre of terrorist activity committed in the name of Islam. The central argument of this volume suggests that terrorism in Pakistan has, in essence, been manufactured to suit the interests of mundane political and class interests and effectively debunks the myth of 'Islamic terrorism'. A logical consequence of this argument is that the most effective way of combating terrorism in Pakistan lies in addressing the underlying political, social and economic problems facing the country.

After exploring the root causes of terrorism in Pakistan, the author goes on to relate the historical narrative of the development of the Pakistani state to the theories and questions raised by Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) scholars. The book will therefore make an important contribution to CTS scholarship as well as presenting an analysis of the many complex factors that have shaped the rise of Pakistani terrorism.

This book will be of great interest to students of Critical Terrorism Studies, Asian history and politics, Security Studies and IR in general.

This book traces the evolution of the EU's fight against terrorism from the late 1970s until the end of the first decade after 9/11. This historical analysis covers both EU-internal and international counterterrorism policies and features an in-depth account of the EU's reaction to the terrorist incidents in New York, Madrid and London. In the first few weeks after these incidents, the EU mobilised a complex but also incoherent set of policy measures, which significantly influenced the course of European security over the years. From a theoretical perspective, this volume argues that context-specific factors dominated over functionalist considerations in the EU's fight against terrorism. Building on frameworks from public policy analysis, the author demonstrates that EU institutions played a critical role as policy entrepreneurs, while the many security measures were chosen on the basis of timing rather than significance. Such short-term political dynamics also explain the implementation deficits and persistent imbalances in the EU's counterterrorism policy; limitations which still hinder its fight against international terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of EU policy, counter-terrorism, European security, public administration, foreign policy, and IR in general.

This book examines reason and unreason in the legal and political responses to terrorism. Terrorism is often perceived as sheer madness, unreasonable use of extreme violence and senseless, futile political action. These assertions are challenged by this book. Combining 'traditional' thought (by Kaplan) on reason and unreason in terrorism with empirical explorations of post-modern terrorism and its use of communication platforms (by Weimann) the work uses interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary dimensions to provide a multidimensional picture of critical issues in current politics and a deeper examination of their implications than previously available. The book looks at various aspects of modern politics, from terrorism to protest, from decision-making to political discourse, applying the perspective of philosophical thought. To do so, political issues and actions are examined by using concepts such as reason, emotions, madness, magic, morality, absolutism, extremism, psychopathology, rationality and others. The analysis is rooted in theories and concepts derived from history, philosophy, religion, art, sociology, psychology, and political science. This book, which was mostly written by the late Abraham Kaplan, an American philosopher, and edited and updated by Gabriel Weimann, will be of much interest to students of political violence/terrorism, philosophy, war and conflict studies and political science in general.

This book offers a wide-ranging and critical examination of recent counter-radicalisation policies, using case studies from several countries. Counter-radicalisation policies, such as the UK 'Prevent' strategy, have been highly controversial and increasingly criticised since their introduction. In this edited volume, voices from disciplines including sociology, political science, criminology and International Relations are brought together to address issues across the global roll-out of counter-radicalisation agendas. In so doing, the book critically interrogates: (i) the connections between counter-radicalisation and other governmental programmes and priorities relating to integration and community cohesion; (ii) the questionable dependence of counter-radicalisation initiatives on discourses and assumptions about race, risk and vulnerability to extremism; and, (iii) the limitations of existing counter-radicalisation machineries for addressing relatively new types of extremism including amongst 'right-wing' activists. Through examining these questions, the book draws on a range of contemporary case studies spanning from counter-radicalisation in the UK, Germany and Denmark, through to detailed analyses of specific preventative initiatives in Australia and the United States. Conceptually, the chapters engage with a range of critical approaches, including discourse theory, autoethnography and governmentality. This book will be of much interest to students of radicalisation, critical terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, sociology, security studies and IR in general.

Expanding the influence of auto/biography studies into cultural criminology, Radicalization: The Life Writings of Political Prisoners addresses the origins, processes and cultures of terrorist criminality and political resistance in a globalized world. Criminologists and penologists have long been aware of the sheer volume of autobiography emerging from our prisons. Political prisoners, POWs, freedom fighters and terrorists have been consistently and strongly represented in this corpus of work, including such authors as Bobby Sands, Wole Soyinka, Nelson Mandela, Moazzam Begg, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Angela Davis, George Jackson, and Aung San Suu Kyi among others. For many of those who have been detained for ostensibly politically motivated crimes, life writing has proven to be indispensable in explaining the causes and processes which account for their situation. Embedded with these life writings are narratives of radicalization or resistance. Melissa Dearey here undertakes an international and comparative analysis of such narratives, where the 'life story' is considered as a mode of expressing and transmitting 'radical' cultural values.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing Rohingya crisis, this book takes a close and detailed look at the rise of militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, and especially at the issues of 'why' and 'how' around it. We are well aware of Christian fundamentalism, militant Judaism and Islamist Salafism-Jihadism. Extremist and violent Buddhism however features only rarely in book-length studies on religion and political violence. Somehow, the very idea of Buddhist monks as the archetypical 'world renouncers' exhorting frenzied mobs to commit acts of violence against perceived 'enemies of the religion' seems to be outright ludicrous. Recent events in Myanmar/Burma, but also in Thailand and Sri Lanka, however indicate that a militant strand of Theravada Buddhism is on the rise. How can this rise be explained, and what role do monks play in that regard? These are the two broad questions that this book explores.

State Violence and the Execution of Law examines how law plays a fundamental role in enabling state violence and, specifically, specifically, torture, secret imprisonment, and killing-at-a-distance. Analysing the complex ways in which the U.S. government deploys law in order to consolidate and further colonial and imperial relations of power, Joseph Pugliese tracks the networks that enable the diffusion and normalisation of the state's monopoly of legitimate violence both in the U.S. and transnationally. He demonstrates how these networks of state violence are embedded within key legal institutions (US Department of Justice), military apparatuses (U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), civic sites (McCarran airport, Las Vegas), corporations (Boeing), carceral architectures (CIA Salt Pit, Kabul, and Guantanamo), and advanced technologies (unmanned aerial combat vehicles). Law's violence, it is maintained, is always preoccupied with the body: its torture, extortion or extermination. The exercise of state violence, it is argued, must be considered in situated locations that evidence the enmeshment of the body within geopolitical configurations of bio and necropower. For it is in these locations that law plays a foundational role in enabling and legitimising regimes of racialised violence. Drawing on poststructuralist, feminist, queer, critical legal, whiteness and anti-colonial theories, State Violence and Execution of Law brings into focus the contractual imbrication of the state with arms corporations and the contemporary military-industrial complex.

This edited volume describes various analytic methods used by intelligence analysts supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as members of the Iraq and Afghan Threat Finance Cells-interagency intelligence teams tasked to disrupt terrorist and insurgent funding. All contributors have deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and detail both the bureaucratic and intellectual challenges in understanding terrorist and insurgent finance networks and then designing operations to attack such networks via conventional military operations, Special Forces kill/capture targeting operations, and non-kinetic operations such as asset freezing or diplomacy. The analytic methods described here leverage both quantitative and qualitative methods, but in a language and style accessible to those without a quantitative background. All methods are demonstrated via actual case studies (approved for release by the U.S. government) drawn from the analysts' distinct experiences while deployed. This book will be of interest to current or aspiring intelligence analysts, students of security studies, anti-money laundering specialists in the private sector, and more generally to those interested in understanding how intelligence analysis feeds into live operations during wartime at a very tactical level.

This book offers the first detailed, in-depth account of how and why some Arab foreign fighters subsequently became involved in Islamist terrorism. Drawing on a personal dataset of 3,010 Arab foreign fighters compiled using biographies, martyrdom eulogies, and postings on 'jihadi' websites, Terrorist Movements and the Recruitment of Arab Foreign Fighters suggests that the subsequent involvement in Islamist terrorism by some Arab foreign fighters is primarily forged in the crucible of defensive jihad.

Too often, existing literature has conflated the discourses that enabled the 'War on Terror', ignoring the contextual specificities of the states that make up the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Australia's 'war on terror' Discourse fills this gap by providing a full and sustained critical analysis of Australian foreign policy discourse along with the theoretical synthesis for a specific model of critical discourse analysis of the subject. The language of then Prime Minister Howard is the primary focus of the book but attention is also paid to the language of key ministers, political opponents and other prominent actors. The voices of those who challenged the dominant discourse are also considered to shed light on the ways in which discourses can be destabilised. Kathleen Gleeson shows how Howard successfully invoked narratives of identity and sovereignty that resonated with his audience and promoted his reworked narrative of Australia whilst facing dissent from many actors who voiced their opposition most successfully when they capitalised on inconsistencies within the discourse.

This study revolves around the jihad ideas of 'Abd Allah 'Azzam - an iconic figure in the study of militant jihad in the 20th century, history of Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union, Al-Qaeda and current threat of terrorism.This study has several objectives:some of 'Azzam's jihad ideas diverge from dominant ideas held by current jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda and these could potentially be used to counter contemporary jihad ideas and practices of jihadists.

This book explores the communicative practices of the Italian radical group Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse, or BR), the relationship the group established with the Italian press, and the specific social historical context in which the BR developed both its own self-understanding and its complex dialectical connection with the society at large. The BR s worldview and the dominant ideology(ies) mediated by the press are treated as competing responses to structural issues of Italian history: the structural weakness of the nation state, the contradictions of an uneven economic development, and the consequent struggle of the bourgeois class to achieve hegemonic rule."