Terrorist Recognition Handbook 344
| Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition | |
| author | Malcolm Nance |
| pages | 480 |
| publisher | CRC |
| rating | 10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-1420071832 |
| summary | Perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition. |
The
main theme of the book, as detailed in chapter 1 is
critical
awareness.
The book notes that criminal investigators spend years
studying criminal behavior to better understand and counter
crime. Nance writes that the
field of terrorism is no different as it is a specialized subject that
requires serious study and requires that those in the front line of defense be
as knowledge as possible.
In
a later chapter, Nance gives the Iraq war as an example of a group of leaders
that were not as knowledge as possible and ignored the advice of those that
were as knowledge as possible.
Had the Bush administration consulted Nance, a trillion
dollars and thousands of lives could have been saved in the Iraq
debacle.
The
book is divided into 5 sections comprising 21 heavily-detailed
chapters. Each chapter is a
progression in detailing, understanding and identifying
terrorists. In chapter after
chapter, the book details every aspect of terrorism and indentifies all of the
various elements. The various
aspects of different guns, explosives, and other elements are described and
categorized in detail.
In
the section on suicide bombers, an important point the book makes is that
contrary to popular belief, suicide bombers are rarely
insane. They are most often
intelligent, rational individuals with beliefs that those in the West finds
difficult to comprehend.
Nance does not for a second rationalize the actions of
such groups and individuals.
But notes that it is critical to understand why they do it
in order to prevent future attacks.
Chapter
8 is quite valuable in that it provides a comprehensive overview of how
terrorist cells operate and are organized.
While the cell is the fundamental unit of a terrorist
group; cell operations and their members are the least understood part of
terrorism. Their operations
are always secret and never seen, until they
attack. The chapter details
the many types of terrorist cells, operative membership pools, and how cells
and leadership communicate.
Chapter
19 is a fascinating primer on al-Qaeda and the global extremist
insurgency. The chapter
details how al-Qaeda divides its enemies into two categories:
Far Enemies and Near
Enemies. The terms are taken from the Islamic concept of the
community and those who oppose it.
While the far enemies of al-Qaeda are the USA, Australia,
UK, Europe and Israel, the near enemies are those Moslem's or nations that
al-Qaeda sees as corrupted governments or apostate
rules. These include the
governments of over 20 countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh,
India and many more comprising billions of people.
While
the post-9/11 attacks from coalition forces have indeed hurt al-Qaeda and
killed many of its top leaders, Nance notes that al-Qaeda now acts a terror
strategy consultancy. This
transformation of al-Qaeda is in response to the loss of its base of
operations in Afghanistan and the displacement of its leadership to the
Pakistani border.
The most significant
changes were a shift of operational responsibility from the regional terror
commanders, who executed a long awaited plan for jihad operations, to a more
radical and difficult to detect posture: jihadist who were self-starting and
worked independently from al-Qaeda.
The
most significant changes al-Qaeda's structure occurred when it was able to
co-opt the Jordanian Salafist group Tawhed Wal Jihad and organize the foreign
fighters into Iraq into al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
AQI changed the structure of the military committee's
roles dramatically and Iraq would become the cornerstone of al-Qaeda's global
operations. Much of the
invasion of Iraq was premised on a link between Iraq and
al-Qaeda. There was never
such a link, but the war turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as al-Qaeda
is now a mainstay in Iraq.
The
book writes that it is important to note that contrary to popular belief,
al-Qaeda is not a single terrorist group, rather a collection of like-minded
organizations that cooperate and receive funds, advice and orders from Osama
bin Laden and his supporters. al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a physical
chain of terrorist training camps to a virtual network that uses the Internet
to create a network centric information and advisory
body. Nance therefore notes
that al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a global terrorism operation into a
terrorism management consultancy.
The 6 main aspects of this
consultancy are that al-Qaeda: provides inspiration, contributes finances,
shares collective knowledge, provides weapons resource and contacts, accepts
responsibility and releases video propaganda.
Besides
a few minor historical errors, some grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and
not a lot of details about cyber-based terrorism,
Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual
for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities is a most
important book in that it avoids all of the hype, politics and bias that come
along with such titles, and simply focuses on its task at hand, to be a field
guide for anti-terrorist and counter-terrorist professionals to use to prevent
attacks.
Such
a title is sorely needed by groups such as the TSA, who still think that
anti-terrorism means having people remove their shoes at
airports. The book notes
that the European approach of guarded vigilance
via a sustained level of anti-terrorism readiness and
awareness is a much better concept than the US approach of spiking to
heightened alert levels.
The
Terrorist Recognition Handbook is a
must-read for anyone tasked with or interested in anti-terrorism
activities. One would hope
that every TSA and Homeland Security manager and employee get a copy of this
monumental reference.
It would change the face of TSA and the Department of
Homeland Security, and might perhaps really enable them to identify
terrorists, and not simply require the elderly to take off their support shoes
at airport checkpoints.
Ben Rothke is the author
of
Computer
Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should
Know.
You can purchase Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:The Sad Part (Score:1, Informative)
Terrorists, noun (Score:1, Informative)
Terrorist: An agent of a sub-national group who uses premeditated, politically motivated violence against non-combatant targets
I would add "violence" or "physical harm" to that defition.
I am strongly opposed to many laws and the politics of many countries including the US. I have YET to use violence against any target, including civilians.
In my opinion war should be fought against the military and exclude civilians, if at all possible. I understand collateral damage, but I don't approve of it as just an excuse.
Belonging to my particular faith is seen by treason and/or terrorism by some governments.
Re:thousands of lives could have been saved (Score:1, Informative)
State Terrorism is a far greater threat (Score:5, Informative)
Then of course there is the famous case of US support for terrorism in Nicaragua, for which the country was condemned by the World Court. The death toll was around 50,000. One of the things the US was condemned for in that case was the mining of Nicaraguan harbours, putting civilian shipping in danger. If Al Qaeda did the same thing, it would be immediately recognised as a terrorist act.
Daniel Pipes? (Score:5, Informative)
Just so we know who we are labeling with the sterile description of "expert."
-Ted
Anti- vs Counter-terrorism (Score:2, Informative)
Anti-terrorism == work to kill the terrorists themselves
Perhaps the usage has changed since I went to my CT training courses in the U.S. Army, but I really, REALLY hope that the TSA isn't conducting anti-terrorism operations! "Sorry, you're on the no-fly list, please step into the euthanasia chamber to your right..."
Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=72
Re:thousands of lives could have been saved (Score:1, Informative)
Daniel Pipe is an expert on propaganda (Score:3, Informative)
He favours profiling and internment of Muslims in the United States.
The Daniel Pipes [sourcewatch.org] entry at sourcewatch is quite a read.
Re:Daniel Pipe is an expert on propaganda (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Terrorism must first be defined (Score:3, Informative)
A terroist action is an action in which combatants actively TARGET non-combatants with physical harm (i.e. civilians, not other soldiers), for political purposes.
Please note that this definition of terrorism:
1. Does NOT include the majority of rebels, freedom fighters, or other revolitionaries thar are respected.
2. Does not include wars.
3. DOES include the CIA itself, as they have admitted to targetting noncombatants in the past.
4. Does include most famous terrorist actions, including the crashing into the World Trade Center.
5. Does not include certain famous actions called terroism by the media, such as dingy attack on the USS Cole. (Cripes man, trying to seek a warship should not be called terrorism. It should be called STUPID.)
6. Does leave certain things to argue about, such as the craahing of the plane into the Pentagon. The pentagon is a military target and the civilians on the plane could be called 'ancillary casulaties', as opposed to being the target of the attack.
This definition does not in any way that I can tell have a geopolitical agenda. As it specifically describes certain actions done by the agency that created it as terrorist actions.