This book offers a detailed and practically oriented guide to the challenges of conducting terrorist fieldwork. The past decade has seen an explosion of research into terrorism. However, field research on terrorism has traditionally been surrounded by many myths, and has been called anything from "necessary" and "crucial" to "dangerous," "unethical" and "impossible." While there is an increasing interest among terrorism specialists in conducting such research, there is no single volume providing prospective field researchers with a guideline to such work. This edited volume aims to fill this gap and offers a collection of articles from experienced authors representing different risk groups, disciplines, methodological approaches, regional specializations, and other context-specific aspects. Each contributor provides a road-map to their own research, describing planning and preparation phases, the formalities involved in getting into conflict zones, gaining access to sources, managing contacts, interviewing militants in the field, detailed discussion on the risks involved, ethical dilemmas, translation issues, effective interviewing and rapport-building steps, and other practical aspects of conducting field research. The text will also help researchers set realistic expectations of how the process of interviewing militants and secretive government sources in conflict zones is organized, what the likely outcomes are, and assist with many other practical issues such as how to navigate through challenges posed by government forces unsympathetic to researchers, how to reduce risk of physical harm when travelling in conflict zones, how to behave at hostile checkpoints, how to answer specific questions militants tend to ask prior and during interviews. The end product is a 'how to' guide to field research on terrorism, which will be of much value to terrorism experts and novices alike, providing detailed insights into the challenges and obsta

This book explores the innovations and advances in terrorist tactics and technologies to help fill the gap in the contemporary terrorism literature by developing an empirical theory of terrorist innovation. The key question concerns the global historical trends in terrorist innovation, as well as the critical factors responsible for the differences in practices among terrorist organizations.
The first part of the book provides an overview of the tactics and technology used by terrorists in the last century and identifies the key trends for the future. The second part compares four differing terrorist organizations with the aim of identifying key factors in producing innovative tactics and weaponry. The volume provides a historical explanation of the trends in terrorist innovation and also has policy relevance, as the ability to identify signature characteristics of innovation-prone terrorist organizations is a critical element in predictive threat assessment.
Understanding Terrorist Innovation will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies and political science in general.

This book explores the innovations and advances in terrorist tactics and technologies to help fill the gap in the contemporary terrorism literature by developing an empirical theory of terrorist innovation. The key question concerns the global historical trends in terrorist innovation, as well as the critical factors responsible for the differences in practices among terrorist organizations.

The first part of the book provides an overview of the tactics and technology used by terrorists in the last century and identifies the key trends for the future. The second part compares four differing terrorist organizations with the aim of identifying key factors in producing innovative tactics and weaponry. The volume provides a historical explanation of the trends in terrorist innovation and also has policy relevance, as the ability to identify signature characteristics of innovation-prone terrorist organizations is a critical element in predictive threat assessment.

Understanding Terrorist Innovation will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, security studies and political science in general.

This book offers a detailed and practically oriented guide to the challenges of conducting terrorist fieldwork. The past decade has seen an explosion of research into terrorism. However, field research on terrorism has traditionally been surrounded by many myths, and has been called anything from "necessary" and "crucial" to "dangerous," "unethical" and "impossible." While there is an increasing interest among terrorism specialists in conducting such research, there is no single volume providing prospective field researchers with a guideline to such work. This edited volume aims to fill this gap and offers a collection of articles from experienced authors representing different risk groups, disciplines, methodological approaches, regional specializations, and other context-specific aspects. Each contributor provides a road-map to their own research, describing planning and preparation phases, the formalities involved in getting into conflict zones, gaining access to sources, managing contacts, interviewing militants in the field, detailed discussion on the risks involved, ethical dilemmas, translation issues, effective interviewing and rapport-building steps, and other practical aspects of conducting field research. The text will also help researchers set realistic expectations of how the process of interviewing militants and secretive government sources in conflict zones is organized, what the likely outcomes are, and assist with many other practical issues such as how to navigate through challenges posed by government forces unsympathetic to researchers, how to reduce risk of physical harm when travelling in conflict zones, how to behave at hostile checkpoints, how to answer specific questions militants tend to ask prior and during interviews. The end product is a 'how to' guide to field research on terrorism, which will be of much value to terrorism experts and novices alike, providing detailed insights into the challenges and obsta

Understanding the Lord's Resistance Army Insurgency provides a concise overview of the LRA, which has, for almost 30 years, conducted untold atrocities across the central African nations of Uganda, Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. This book examines the LRA's emergence and evolution, the ideology, strategy and tactics behind it, motivational aspects of its recruitment, its engagement in peace processes, and a detailed description of leadership and group dynamics. This work is based on a wide range of written sources and extensive interviews with individuals intimately related to the group including top LRA commanders, government sources, victims, child soldiers, abductees and wives of Joseph Kony. Moving past stories of unimaginable brutality, forced recruitment, and the group's mystical belief system, the book provides a well-grounded analysis of the different stages of the LRA's development. It demonstrates how the group represents an obscure case study that challenges many of the common assumptions about the operational dynamics of terrorist organizations.Written to fill a gap in academia in relation to African- and Christianity-based terrorism, this book is suitable for students, researchers and practitioners in political sciences, war, conflict and terrorism studies, African politics and international relations and development.

This book is about the role of negotiation in resolving terrorist barricade hostage crises. What lessons can be learned from past deadly incidents so that crisis negotiators and decision makers can act with greater effectiveness in the future? What are the lessons the terrorists are learning and how will they affect the dynamics of future incidents? What can we learn about the terrorist threat, and about preventing the escalation of future terrorist hostage-taking situations? While there are many trained crisis negotiators around the world, almost none of them has ever had contact with a terrorist hostage-taking incident. Further, the entire training program of most hostage negotiators focuses on resolving crises that do not take into consideration issues such as ideology, religion, or the differing sets of strategic objectives and mindsets of ideological hostage takers. This is especially true with regard to the terrorists of the "new" breed, who have become less discriminate, more lethal, and more willing to execute hostages and die during the incident. Further, many of the paradigms and presumptions upon which the contemporary practice of crisis negotiation is based do not reflect the reality of the "new terrorists." The main focus of this book is on the detailed reconstruction and analysis of the two most high-profile cases in recent years, the Moscow theater and the Beslan school hostage crises, with a clear purpose of drawing lessons for hostage negotiation strategies in the future. This is an issue of top priority. Terrorist manuals from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq reveal that terrorist organizations are very closely observing and analyzing the lessons learned fromthese two incidents, suggesting that we are likely to see this type of "new" terrorist hostage taking involving large numbers of suicide fighters and executions of hostages at some point in the future. This raises a wide array of questions about appropriate responses and negotiation strategies. From the first glance, it is clear that we are not prepared.