This book assesses President Barack Obama's counterterrorism policy as it evolved throughout his presidency, from the expanded use of drones to the controversial decisions regarding the Syrian conflict. President Obama has achieved the dubious distinction of having been the longest continuous war president in American history, and this title explores how Obama pursued and expanded executive war power in key areas, simultaneously committing to a light footprint approach for U.S. military forces and emphasizing the use of drones, targeted killing of terrorists, and training, advising, and assisting local forces to defend themselves from militant groups such as ISIL. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the defining issue of the Obama counterterrorism strategy: Syria, and his refusal to militarily commit to defeat Bashar al-Assad and support Syria's insurgency. The work concludes with a consideration of counterterrorism policy post-Obama.

This book looks at Salafi influencers and foreign fighters in the Balkans to examine how the origins and dynamics of radical milieus are related to the legacy of the Bosnian War and the Kosovo War. The work seeks to understand if and in what ways these wars influenced the consolidation of radical milieus and whether they impacted the recruitment of foreign fighters. In doing so, the book traces the path of more than 400 individuals that either traveled to Syria or were involved in recruitment locally. Employing a qualitative methodological approach, the book argues that radical influencers are likely to be more evident in postwar societies due to state and societal fragility, which create more power for social actors and constrain efforts to counter extremism. Through the activism of social actors emerging from wars, preceding conflicts resonate through society across different locations and particular postwar radical milieus do not need to be only in the place where war atrocities happened. Thus, radical milieus can spread to various locations including countries hosting postwar diaspora communities. This book will be of much interest to students of radicalisation, terrorism and political violence, Balkan politics, Middle Eastern politics, and IR in general.

First book to look at the issue of extreme-right activists returning from fighting in Ukraine Topical issue amid concerns about right-wing violence Important reading for scholars of terrorism, peace and conflict studies, and right-wing extremism

This book investigates how Uyghur-related violent conflict and Uyghur ethnic minority identity, religion, and the Xinjiang region, more broadly, became constituted as a 'terrorism' problem for the Chinese state. Building on securitization theory, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), and the scholarly definitional debate on terrorism, it develops the concept of terroristization as a critical analytical framework for the study of historical processes of threat construction. Investigating the violent events reported in Xinjiang since the early 1980s, the evolving discursive patterns used by the Chinese state to make sense of violent incidents, and the crackdown policies that the official terrorism discourse has legitimized, the book demonstrates how the securitization, and later terroristization, of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, is the result of a discursive and political choice of the Chinese state. The author reveals the contingent and unstable nature of such construction, and how it problematizes the inevitability of the rationale behind China's 'war on terror', that has prescribed a brutal crackdown as the most viable approach to governing the tensions that have historically characterized China's rule over the Turkic Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the politics of contemporary China, security and ethnic minority issues, International Relations and Security, as well as those adopting discursive approaches to the study of security, notably those within the critical security and terrorism studies fields.

This book fills a gap in our knowledge about the activities of Western supporters and members of Islamic State by examining the experience of their Australian cohort. More than 200 Australian men, women and children travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamist groups and to help establish an Islamic State by force. Dozens more assisted Islamic State by supporting those overseas or by planning or carrying out terrorist attacks in Australia. For all that, little is publicly known about the impact of the Syrian conflict on Australia's radical Islamists. This book provides a well-researched examination of how and why so many Australians travelled to fight for or otherwise supported Islamic State. From the failed attempt to bring down an Etihad passenger plane en route from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, to showing their children holding the heads of Syrian soldiers, Australians were prominent in carrying out Islamic State's directions. Using a range of Australian and foreign court records, social and mainstream media content, this book provides the first detailed look at who these people were, what tasks they carried out, how they came to adopt this radical view of Islam and what long-term legal and security implications are likely to result from their actions. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism, political Islam and security studies.

This book contextualizes the Munich massacre as one of the factors that contributed to a re-thinking of security strategies in the early 1970s, a moment in the evolution of modern governments' fight against terrorism. In the early hours of September 5th, 1972, heavily armed members of the Palestinian group, Black September, turned terrorism into a global televisual spectacle for the first time by entering the Olympic Village, where they murdered two Israeli athletes and took nine of their teammates hostage in 31 Connollystrasse. Indeed, terrorism has far-reaching implications on social, psychological, and political levels. Sporting attacks on athletic personalities or mega-events may also seriously affect the reputation of the political leadership, ultimately undermining the state's authority. Hence, 50 years later, this book aims to gather contemporaneous scholarly work that further explores this topic from a variety of perspectives-from security, sociology, media, history, public relations, to the political, ideological, and psychological aspects of sport and terror. This volume will be of great use to scholars and researchers interested in Terrorist and Security studies, political violence, and the Arab Israeli conflict, particularly the collective memory of the Munich Massacre. The chapters in this book were first published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.

The project discusses Hezbollah's political ideology and how it evolves over time and the conditions that lead to the change of ideology. The author also examines Hezbollah's relationship with the patron states, Syria and Iran. In contrast with major arguments in the literature, the book argues that political ideologies are not fixed and they evolve depending on a number of factors such as the change in context, major events like a civil war in the patron state, and, most importantly, when the change of ideology becomes linked to survival of the insurgency. This monograph will appeal to a wide range of audiences such as researchers, scholars, and graduate students in the fields of Middle Eastern studies, political studies, Islamism, and nationalism.

When States Take Rights Back draws on contributions by international experts in history, law, political science, and sociology, offering a rare interdisciplinary and comparative examination of citizenship revocation in five countries, revealing hidden government rationales and unintended consequences. Once considered outdated, citizenship revocation - also called deprivation or denationalization - has come back to the political center in many Western liberal states. Contributors scrutinize the positions of stakeholders (e.g. civil servants, representatives of civil society, judges, supranational institutions) and their diverse rationales for citizenship revocation (e.g. allegations of terrorism, treason, espionage, criminal behaviour, and fraud in the naturalisation process). The volume also uncovers the variety of tools that national governments have at their disposition to change existing citizenship revocation laws and policies, and the constraints that they are faced with to actually implement citizenship revocation in daily operations. Finally, contributors underscore the extraordinary severity of sanctions implied by citizenship revocation and offer a nuanced picture of the material and symbolic forms of exclusion not only for those whose citizenship is withdrawn but also for minority groups (wrongly) associated with the aforementioned allegations. Indeed, revocation policies target not merely individuals but specific collective categories, which tend to be ethno-racially constructed and attributed specific location within the international status hierarchy of nation-states. International and interdisciplinary in scope, When States Take Rights Back will be of great interest to scholars of politics, international law, sociology and political and legal history, and Human Rights. The chapters were originally published in Citizenship Studies.

Anyone who wants to understand what militant Muslims think has to understand what they read-and they read Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of Islamic fundamentalism. Qutb, an Egyptian literary critic and philosopher who was appalled by American decadence, gained prominence in the Muslim Brotherhood, was imprisoned by Nasser, and hanged in 1966. Through his death and prolific writings he became a martyr for the cause of political Islam. His work is virtually unknown outside the Muslim world, but Qutb is at the heart of the intellectual rationale for jihad and violence in the name of Islam.

The Sayyid Qutb Reader is the first collection of his selected works available to the general public. As such, this valuable introduction to Qutb's core intellectual ideas should be read by anyone who wants to understand one of the most important conflicts of our age.

This volume is based on a multidisciplinary approach towards biological and chemical threats that can, and have been previously used in bioterrorism attacks around the globe. Current knowledge and evidence-based principles from the fields of synthetic biology, microbiology, plant biology, chemistry, food science, forensics, tactics, infective medicine, psychology and others are compiled to address numerous aspects and the complexity of bioterrorism attacks. The main focus is on biological threats, especially in the context of synthetic biology and its emerging findings that can be observed as possible threat and tool. The book examines microorganisms and their possible use in forensics, i.e. as possible detection tool that could enable fast and precise detection of possible treats. A number of plant derived components are also discussed as possible agents in bioterrorism attacks, and in relation to infectious disease pathology. Another integral part is food safety, especially in terms of large food supply chains, like airline caterings, institutionalized kitchens etc. Food can be observed as a possible mean of delivery of various agents (biological and chemical) for bioterrorism attacks. Steps on how to recognize specific critical points in a food supply chain, along with proposed corrective activities are discussed. Examples from around the globe, along with the methodological approach on how to differentiate bioterrorism attacks from other epidemics are provided. However, epidemics are also discussed in the context of migrations, with the special emphasis on the current refugee migrations that affect not only Europe, but also the United States. The book will be of interest to experts from various fields of science as well as professionals working in the field. The book encompasses examples and tools developed for easier, more specific, and faster detection of possible bioterrorism treats, along with proposed actions for some aspects of a bioterrorism attack.

This book examines contemporary jihad as a cult of violence and power. All jihadi groups, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or not, are characterized by a similar bloodlust. Murawiec characterizes this belief structure as identical to that of Europe's medieval millenarians and apocalyptics, arguing that both jihadis and their European cousins shared in a Gnostic ideology: a God-given mission endowed the Elect with supernatural powers and placed them above the common law of mankind. Although the ideology of jihad is essentially Islamic, Murawiec traces the political technologies used by modern jihad to the Bolsheviks. Their doctrines of terror as a system of rule were appropriated by radical Islam through multiple lines of communication. This book brings history, anthropology, and theology to bear to understand the mind of jihad that has declared war on the West and the world.

This edited collection aims to analytically reconceptualise the Syrian crisis by examining how and why the country has moved from a stable to a war-torn society. It is written by scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, all of whom make no attempt to speculate on the future trajectory of the conflict, but aim instead to examine the historical background that has laid the objective conditions for Syria's descent to its current situation. Their work represents an attempt to dissect the multi-layered foundation of the Syrian conflict and to make understanding its complex inner workings accessible to a broader readership. The book is divided into four parts, each of which elaborates on the origins and dynamics of today's crisis from the perspective of a different discipline. When put together, the four parts provide a holistic picture of Syria's developmental trajectory from the early twentieth century through to the present day. Themes addressed include Syria's postcolonial development efforts, its leap into socialism and then into neoliberalism in the late twentieth century, its politics within the resistance front, and finally its food and health security concerns.

This book explores the challenges of creating a secure and stable Iraq in the wake of the military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Analyzing the impact of the fight against ISIS, the collection provides answers to questions relating to both political and humanitarian considerations in Iraqi post-war recovery. In their analysis, the editors and authors develop policy recommendations for the international and Iraqi political communities. It is essential reading for those interested in politics, international relations, post-war recovery, counter-terrorism, Middle Eastern studies and Iraqi studies scholars.

The Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents, Volume 2: Pathogens, Mid-Spectrum, and Incapacitating Agents, Third Edition provides rapid access to key data to response professionals and decision-makers on a broad range of agents and pathogens. This volume presents information on a wide range of chemical and biological agents. Chemical agents detailed in this volume are those that were developed specifically for their non-lethal potential. The biological agents described are militarily significant pathogens that could be weaponized to pose a threat to people, animals, or crops and other agricultural interests. Mid-spectrum agents, materials that do not fit clearly into either the Chemical or the Biological Weapons Conventions, include toxins and bioregulators. Entomological agents, the final class of agents discussed in volume, are arthropods that could pose a significant threat to a country's agriculture infrastructure and be used to devastate its economy. They were proposed for inclusion in the Biological Weapons Convention but never adopted. In addition to a discussion of each of these classes of agents, coverage includes detailed information on a broad spectrum of individual agents that have been used on the battlefield, stockpiled as weapons, used or threatened to be used by terrorists, or have been otherwise assessed by qualified law enforcement and response organizations and determined to be agents of significant concern. The information presented in this edition has been updated and expanded to contain more information on toxicology, health effects, presentation of diseases, advances in medical care and treatment, as well as protective actions needed at the scene of an incident. Key Features: Focuses on the key information needed during an emergency response Provides updated toxicology, exposure hazards, physical-chemical data, and treatment of casualties Profiles the presentation of diseases in people, animals and plants Presents updated protective action distances, decontamination, and remediation information All data compiled is gathered from numerous sources and arranged into the current, easy-to-access format. In order to ensure accuracy, all data has been cross-checked over the widest variety of military, scientific and medical sources available. The Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents, Volume 2: Pathogens, Mid-Spectrum, and Incapacitating Agents, Third Edition remains the gold-standard reference detailing the widest variety of military, scientific, and medical sources available.

This book is the first to elaborate on radical and extreme right movements in contemporary Australia. It brings together leading scholars to present cutting edge research on various facets and manifestations of Australia's diverse far-right, which has gained unprecedented public presence and visibility since the mid-2010s. The thematic breadth of the chapters in this volume reflects the complexity of the far-right in Australia, ranging from the attitudes of far-right populist party voters and the role of far-right groups in anti-mosque protests, to online messaging and rhetoric of radical and extreme right-wing movements. The contributions are theoretically grounded and come from a range of disciplines, including media and cultural studies, sociology, politics, and urban studies, exploring issue of far-right activism on the micro and macro level, with both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

In February 2014, al-Qaida issued a statement that shocked the entire Jihadi movement. For the first time in its history, the group declared that a local affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq, was no longer part of al-Qaida. The renegade Iraqi group, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had expanded its operations to Syria, taking over the regional branch Jabhat al-Nusra; but in the process, the group had defied orders from al-Qaida's amir, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Islamic State's actions, and increasingly aggressive posture towards fellow Jihadis, eventually ignited a Jihadi civil war--a period defined by internal tensions that ultimately turned global. With devastating impact, this fitna left the Jihadi movement more polarised and fragmented than ever, seriously threatening its internal cohesion. 'Jihadi Politics' presents the first exhaustive account of infighting within the global Jihadi movement. Based on years of digital anthropology, hundreds of primary documents, and interviews with Jihadis, it offers an unprecedented glimpse into historic and current conflicts between and within Jihadi groups. This thorough examination of the years 2014-2019 offers a more nuanced understanding of the current state of Jihadism, with important insights into its future evolution--including Islamic State's role in Afghanistan.

* Explores everything from self-belief to climate change denial and the anti-Vaxx movement, navigating readers through the functions of doubt, from the everyday to the extreme. * Looks at how doubt is dispelled, how it can be 'weaponised', and how both the proliferation and absence of doubt can lead to harmful belief systems. * Features interviews with Nobel prize winners, former terrorists, world class athletes, famous artists and coaches to explore how doubt functions in the lives of transformational thinkers and figures of popular interest.

'How many Europes?' is a critical question that led to several attempts to analyse European crises and transformations globally. This book builds upon the argument that Europe cannot be reduced to a singular dynamic, identity or vision, but rather provides a four-fold taxonomy: Thin, Thick, Parochial and Global Europe. The book contributors aim to respond to the emerging necessity to incorporate both the parochial dynamics unmaking Europe and the globalist dynamics decentering Europe into the analysis of European crises and transformations in diverse sectors ranging from security and foreign policy to the rule of law and democracy. Accordingly, this book is unpacking Europe in a time of severe crises facing the EU-such as Brexit, the Syrian refugee crisis, Catalan secessionism, the rise of far right, and terrorism-, which have accelerated the resurgence of formerly marginalized and repressed dynamics as influential trends in national, regional and global politics. It reveals an ongoing hegemonic struggle over the representation of Europe among 'many Europes' involving two separate integrationist models of regionalization -or 'Europe-making'- and two distinct dynamics that have sought to fragment and de-centre the European Union through nationalism and globalism respectively. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Politics and Society.

This book examines ten reasons for global jihad today. Specifically, the reasons are (1) radicalization, (2) group dynamics and socialization, (3) social alienation, (4) religious motivations, (5) legal motivations, (6) political motivations, (7) a Clash of Civilizations, (8) economic conditions, (9) transformative learning, and (10) outbidding and internal rifts. To investigate these points, all chapters include the historical background, specific case studies (both past and current), statistics, and theoretical approaches to the subject of global jihad. The main purpose of jihad is to achieve global domination-through any means, including violence-and establish the Caliphate. The Caliphate is a Muslim system of world government that seeks to establish a new world order by overthrowing the current order, effectively creating an all-encompassing Islamic state.

This book develops a detailed, disaggregated theoretical and empirical framework that explains variations in mass killing by authoritarian regimes globally, with a specific focus on Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Using a combination of game-theoretic, statistical, and qualitative approaches, this project explicates when civilians within nondemocratic states will mobilize against the ruling elite, and when such mobilization will result in mass killing. In doing so, it illustrates the important role urbanization and food insecurity historically played, and will continue to play, in generating extreme forms of civilian victimization.

This book analyzes policy and programming challenges for gender mainstreaming in counter-terrorism, with examples from comparative case studies of countering violent extremism programming. Interest in the issue of gender in security policy and programming has grown over the past several years, often with increasing pressure at the international and national levels to ensure commitment to inclusion of women or a gender lens. This book provides in-depth investigation of how gender can be effectively understood and included in the security process. Firstly, it adds a timely and effective contribution to the academic conversations around gender in security and how counter-terrorism programming can be implemented with human security goals. Secondly, it offers recommendations for policy makers and practitioners seeking to improve the effectiveness of countering violent extremism program design, implementation, and evaluation. A gender analysis framework is built across the chapters, drawing from various feminist analytical perspectives used in International Relations theory. The learning from this comparative gender analysis is encapsulated in the last chapter through some recommendations to help move counter-terrorism policy toward more transformative gender mainstreaming strategies. This book will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism studies, countering violent extremism, gender studies, security studies, and International Relations.

'An instant classic. Sabir is an inspiration' Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming! What impact has two decades' worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? The Suspect draws on the author's experiences to take the reader on a journey through British counterterrorism practices and the policing of Muslims. Rizwaan Sabir describes what led to his arrest for suspected terrorism, his time in detention, and the surveillance he was subjected to on release from custody, including stop and search at the roadside, detentions at the border, monitoring by police and government departments, and an attempt by the UK military to recruit him into their psychological warfare unit. Writing publicly for the first time about the traumatising mental health effects of these experiences, Sabir argues that these harmful outcomes are not the result of errors in government planning, but the consequences of using a counterinsurgency warfare approach to fight terrorism and police Muslims. To resist the injustice of these policies and practices, we need to centre our lived experiences and build networks of solidarity and support.

Drawing on unique first-hand data from Russia's North Caucasus, this study is the first of its kind to detail the causes and contexts of individual disengagement of various types of militants: avengers, nationalists, and jihadists. It aims to considerably enhance our theoretical understanding of individual militants' incentives to abandon violence.

Identifies the various national security threats and details the numerous U.S. and key allied intelligence services that work and collaborate to mitigate such threats Reviews the types of intelligence-outlining intelligence collection methods and intelligence tradecraft Explores how to determine the value of the intelligence collected, explaining the various methods of intelligence analysis and optimal methods to present conclusions

Identifies the various national security threats and details the numerous U.S. and key allied intelligence services that work and collaborate to mitigate such threats Reviews the types of intelligence-outlining intelligence collection methods and intelligence tradecraft Explores how to determine the value of the intelligence collected, explaining the various methods of intelligence analysis and optimal methods to present conclusions