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This book explores the history of the Somalia based Al Harakat Al Shabaab from 2005 to 2012, offering the first in-detail history of one of the most important Al-Qaeda affiliates today and the first to conquer large territories. It anchors the organization in its local context, describing it as set in the nexus of global and local streams of influence, employing terror strategically, often in order to offset diplomatic and military defeats. Al-Shabaab gained popularity because of its emphasis on justice, and its alignment with Somali nationalism, but still was influenced by global trends within Islamism and jihadism. This book follows Al-Shabaab in all its phases: as an early network, through its membership in the Sharia courts, through its guerrilla wars against the Ethiopians, through its expansion and attempts to govern central Somalia, into the post-2010 phase where it struggles against a superior enemy but still remains an actor to be reckoned with. The book concludes in 2013 and thus gives excellent background the Westgate attack in 2013. A separate chapter tackles the increasing regional influence of Al-Shabaab, tracing the trend back to 2009 when it employed a large number of Kenyans, through the gradual increase of Swahili propaganda, and the wave of terror attacks inside Kenya since Kenya intervened in Somalia In 2011. It also studies Al-Shabaab activities in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.

The American War in Afghanistan is a full history of the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2020. It covers political, cultural, strategic, and tactical aspects of the war and details the actions and decision-making of the United States, Afghan government, and Taliban. The work follows a narrative format to go through the 2001 US invasion, the state-building of 2002–2005, the Taliban offensive of 2006, the US surge of 2009–2011, the subsequent drawdown, and the peace talks of 2019–2020. The focus is on the overarching questions of the war: Why did the United States fail? What opportunities existed to reach a better outcome? Why did the United States not withdraw from the war?

The Building and Breaking of Peace considers the role of corporate firms in building peaceful societies. Examining the corporate motives for peacebuilding and then the implications of these activities for preventing violence and conflict resolution creates a holistic picture of the peace and conflict process. The book examines variation in corporate engagement as a product of corporate culture and shifts in government capacity, as well as threats to the ability to conduct business. Corporations engage in peacebuilding when there is a gap in the state’s capacity to enforce laws creating the demand for engagement but when there is stability that enables firms to supply peacebuilding. The book then considers the implications of corporate engagement for preventing and ending violence. Building on the rational choice theory of civil war and drawing from business research, The Building and Breaking of Peace examines the role of corporate firms in building peaceful societies. While firms are uniquely situated in their ability to raise the cost of violence, an active private sector acts as an additional veto player in the bargaining process, making it significantly harder to reach an agreement. The findings suggest that corporations help to prevent violence but not resolve it. These arguments are tested on original cross-national data of peacebuilding efforts by firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 2000 to 2018 and in-depth case analyses of corporate actions and outcomes in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Tunisia.

Why do nations break into one another's most important computer networks? There is an obvious answer: to steal valuable information or to attack. But this isn't the full story. This book draws on often-overlooked documents leaked by Edward Snowden, real-world case studies of cyber operations, and policymaker perspectives to show that intruding into other countries' networks has enormous defensive value as well. Two nations, neither of which seeks to harm the other but neither of which trusts the other, will often find it prudent to penetrate each other's systems. This general problem, in which a nation's means of securing itself threatens the security of others and risks escalating tension, is a bedrock concept in international relations and is called the “security dilemma”. This book shows not only that the security dilemma applies to cyber operations, but also that the particular characteristics of the digital domain mean that the effects are deeply pronounced. The cybersecurity dilemma is both a vital concern of modern statecraft and a means of accessibly understanding the essential components of cyber operations.

How do rebels give up arms and return to the political system that they once sought to overthrow? Policymakers often focus on incentives like cash and jobs to lure rebels away from extremism. From the rebels’ perspective, however, physical safety is more important than these livelihood options. Rebels quit extremist groups only when they know that they can disarm without getting killed in the process. This book shows that retiring Maoist rebels in India believe that they could lose their lives after they disarm, targeted either by enemies they made during their insurgent career or by their former comrades. However, the Indian state would lose nothing if it failed to keep its side of the bargain and protect disarmed rebels. This creates a problem of credible commitment, which, in the absence of institutional mechanisms, is addressed locally by informal exit networks that emerge from grassroots civic associations in the gray zones of state-insurgency interface. Maoist retirement is high in South India and low in the North due to emergence of two distinct types of exit networks in these two conflict locations. By showing that the type of exit network depends on local social bases of an insurgency and the ties of an insurgent organization to society, this book brings civil society into the study of insurgency in a theoretically coherent way.

The end of the Cold War and economic liberalization in India marked a new turn in Indian diplomacy. The ‘Look East’ policy promulgated in the early 1990s entailed several strategic and economic initiatives aimed at deepening India’s ties with Southeast Asia, which had been neglected earlier. Despite the launch of the programme a decade and a half ago, India’s involvement with the region proved to be fitful. With the ‘Act East’ initiative, which was launched in 2014, there appears to be a renewed emphasis on forging working relationships with various states in the region. This volume, part of the Oxford International Relations in South Asia series, presents an overarching assessment of the contents, successes, and failures of India’s Southeast Asia policy, with important pointers to how this relationship could be steered in the future. The contributors to the volume dwell on three critical areas—trade, security, and environment—and outline the existing ties of India’s northeast with Southeast Asia and the prospects of their expansion.

This path-breaking volume reveals a little-known aspect of how Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a jihadist terrorist group, functions in Pakistan and beyond by translating and commenting upon a range of publications produced and disseminated by Dar-ul-Andlus, the publishing wing of LeT. Only a fraction of LeT's cadres ever see battle: most of them are despatched on nation-wide "proselytizing" ("dawa") missions to convert Pakistanis to their particular interpretation of Islam, in support of which LeT has developed a sophisticated propagandist literature. This canon of Islamist texts is the most popular and potent weapon in LeT's arsenal, and its scrutiny affords insights into how and who the group recruits; LeT's justification for jihad; its vision of itself in global and regional politics; the enemies LeT identifies and the allies it cultivates; and how and where it conducts its operations. Particular attention is paid to the role that LeT assigns to women by examining those writings which heap extravagant praise upon the mothers of aspirant jihadis, who bless their operations and martyrdom. It is only by understanding LeT's domestic functions as set out in these texts that one can begin to appreciate why Pakistan so fiercely supports it, despite mounting international pressure to disband the group.

Attribution — tracing those responsible for a cyber attack — is of primary importance when classifying it as a criminal act, an act of war, or an act of terrorism. Three assumptions dominate current thinking: attribution is a technical problem; it is unsolvable; and it is unique. Approaching attribution as a problem forces us to consider it either as solved or unsolved. Yet attribution is far more nuanced, and is best approached as a process in constant flux, driven by judicial and political pressures. In the criminal context, courts must assess the guilt of criminals, mainly based on technical evidence. In the national security context, decision-makers must analyze unreliable and mainly non-technical information in order to identify an enemy of the state. Attribution in both contexts is political: in criminal cases, laws reflect society’s prevailing norms and powers; in national security cases, attribution reflects a state’s will to maintain, increase or assert its power. However, both processes differ on many levels. The constraints, which reflect common aspects of many other political issues, constitute the structure of the book: the need for judgment calls, the role of private companies, the standards of evidence, the role of time, and the plausible deniability of attacks.

In the wake of its "Caliphate" declaration in 2014, the self-described Islamic State has been the focus of countless academic papers, government studies, media commentaries and documentaries. Despite all this attention, persistent myths continue to shape--and misdirect--public understanding and strategic policy decisions. A significant factor in this trend has been a strong disinclination to engage critically with Islamic State's speeches and writings--as if doing so reflects empathy with the movement's goals or, even more absurdly, may itself lead to radicalization. Going beyond the descriptive and the sensationalist, this volume presents and analyses a series of milestone Islamic State primary source materials. Scholar-practitioners with field experience in confronting the movement explore and contextualize its approach to warfare, propaganda and governance, examining the factors behind its dramatic evolution from failed proto-state in 2010 to standard-bearer of global jihadism in 2014, to besieged insurgency in 2018. The ISIS Reader will help anyone--students and journalists, military personnel, civil servants and inquisitive observers--to better understand not only the evolution of Islamic State and the dynamics of asymmetric warfare, but the importance of primary sources in doing so.

The book provides a comprehensive account of Islamist terrorism in Europe from 1994 until 2015, and a detailed background for understanding the current and future threat. In contrast to existing research, which has emphasized social explanations, failed immigration and home-grown radicalization, the book highlights transnational factors. It shows how jihadi terrorism in Europe is intrinsically linked to, and reflects the ideological agendas of, armed organizations in conflict zones such as Al Qaida and IS, and how entrepreneurial jihad-veterans facilitate the transnationalization of militancy.

Since the 1970s, there have been three challenges to traditional, homogeneous ‘national’ identities across the Western world: political and socioeconomic inequality; neoliberal globalization; and more diverse, multicultural societies. As in the US and elsewhere in Western Europe, the decline of an old, masculinized national identity has now begun to open a new, dark era for Britain. Ever since the ‘war on terror’ was added to the mix, ‘others’ in Britain have been brutally demonized. Muslims, routinely presented as the source of society’s ills, are subjected to both symbolic and actual violence. Deep-seated and structurally racialized norms amplify the isolation and alienation impeding Muslim integration. Both these ‘left-behind’ Muslims and white-British groups who perceive themselves as the true nation are under pressure from ongoing geopolitical concerns in the Muslim world, as well as widening divisions at home. Tahir Abbas argues that, in this context, the symbiotic intersections between Islamophobia and radicalization intensify and expand. His book is a warning of the world that results: a rise in hate crime, the institutionalization of Islamophobia, and the normalization of war and conflict.

Jihadist narratives have evolved dramatically over the past five years, driven by momentous events in the Middle East and beyond; the death of bin Laden; the rise and ultimate failure of the Arab Spring; and most notably, the rise of the so-called Islamic State. For many years, Al-Qaeda pointed to an aspirational future Caliphate as their utopian end goal - one which allowed them to justify their violent excesses in the here and now. Islamic State turned that aspiration into a dystopic reality, and in the process hijacked the jihadist narrative, breathing new life into the global Salafi-Jihadi movement. Despite air-strikes from above, and local disillusionment from below, the new caliphate has stubbornly persisted and has been at the heart of ISIS's growing global appeal. This timely collection of essays examines how jihadist narratives have changed globally, adapting to these turbulent circumstances. Area and thematic specialists consider transitions inside the Middle East and North Africa as well as in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. As these analyses demonstrate, the success of the ISIS narrative has been as much about resonance with local contexts, as it has been about the appeal of the global idea of a tangible and realized caliphate.

Policing is not a popular topic of serious scholarly research. Although a vast literature on policing exists, it is mostly technical in nature and only rarely analytical. Even the police forces of Western Europe and North America have rarely been investigated in depth as far as their history and functioning goes. In particular, the politics of policing, and its political economy, have been largely neglected. This book is a study of a police force in a developing country that is also undergoing a bitter internal conflict, further to the post-2001 external intervention in Afghanistan. It discusses the evolution of the country’s police through its various stages but focuses in particular on the last decade. The chapters review the ongoing debates over the future shape of Afghanistan’s police, but seek primarily to analyse the way Afghanistan is policed relative to its existing social, political, and international constraints. The book observes the development of the police force from its early stages, starting from what was a rudimentary, militia-based, police force prior to 2001.

This book explores contemporary civil-military relations in the United States. Much of the canonical literature on civil-military relations was either written during or references the Cold War, while other major research focuses on the post-Cold War era, or the first decade of the twenty-first century. A great deal has changed since then. This book considers the implications for civil-military relations of many of these changes. Specifically, it focuses on factors such as breakdowns in democratic and civil-military norms and conventions; intensifying partisanship and deepening political divisions in American society; as well as new technology and the evolving character of armed conflict. Chapters are organized around the principal actors in civil-military relations, and the book includes sections on the military, civilian leadership, and the public. It explores the roles and obligations of each. The book also examines how changes in contemporary armed conflict influence civil-military relations. Chapters in this section examine the cyber domain, grey zone operations, asymmetric warfare and emerging technology. The book thus brings the study of civil-military relations into the contemporary era, in which new geopolitical realities and the changing character of armed conflict combine with domestic political tensions to test, if not potentially redefine, those relations.

This book explores terrorism as a strategic choice-- one made carefully and deliberately by rational actors. Through an analysis of the terrorist groups of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, this book charts a series of different strategic ‘scripts’ at play in terrorist behavior, from survival, to efforts in mobilizing a supporter base, through to the grinding attrition of a long terrorist campaign. The theme that runs through all the organizations is the unbridgeable gap between their strategic vision, and what actually unfolds. Regardless of which script terrorists follow, they often fall short of achieving their political ambitions. And yet, despite its frequent failure, the terrorist strategy is returned to time and again-- people continue to join such groups, and to commit mindless acts of violence. Scripts of Terror explores the reasons behind this. It asks why, if terrorism is so rarely successful and so hard to pull off, its approach remains an appealing one. And it examines how terrorists formulate their strategies, and how they envisage achieving their ambitions through violence. Most importantly, it explores why they so often fail.

The Human Terrain System (HTS) was catapulted into existence in 2006 by the US military's urgent need for knowledge of the human dimension of the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its centrepiece was embedded groups of mixed military and civilian personnel, known as Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), whose mission was to conduct social science research and analysis and to advise military commanders about the local population. Bringing social science — and actual social scientists — to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was bold and challenging. Despite the controversy over HTS among scholars, there is little good, reliable source material written by those with experience of HTS or about the actual work carried out by teams in theatre. This volume goes beyond the anecdotes, snippets and blogs to provide a comprehensive, objective and detailed view of HTS. The chapters put the program in historical context, discuss the obstacles it faced, analyze its successes, and detail the work of the teams downrange. Most importantly, they capture some of the diverse lived experience of HTS scholars and practitioners drawn from an eclectic array of the social sciences.

Ever since independence, revolts and riots in North Africa have structured relations between society and the state. While the state has always managed to restore order, the unexpected outbreak of the Arab Spring revolts has presented a real challenge to state stability. Taking a long-term historical perspective, this book analyses how public authorities have implemented policies to manage the Maghreb’s restive societies, viewed at first as ‘retrograde’ and then as ‘radicalised’. National cohesion has been a major concern for post-colonial leaders who aim to build strong states capable of controlling the population. Historically, North African nations found colonial oppression to be the very bond that united them, but what continues to hold these communities and nation-states together after independence? If public interest is not at the heart of the state’s actions, how can national loyalties be maintained? Luis Martinez analyses how states approach these questions, showing that the fight against jihadist groups both helps to reconstruct essential ties of state belonging and also promotes the development of a border control policy. He highlights the challenges posed by fragile political communities and weak state instruments, and the response of leaders striving to build peaceful pluralistic nations in North Africa.

How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement’s extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban’s external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which have affected the Taliban’s military campaigns and internal politics. Secondly, this is the first full-length study of the Taliban to acknowledge and discuss in detail the movement’s polycentric character. Here not only the Quetta Shura, but also the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s other centers of power, are afforded the attention they deserve. The Taliban at War is based on extensive field research, including hundreds of interviews with Taliban members at all levels of the organization, community elders in Taliban-controlled areas, and other sources. It covers the Taliban insurgency from its first manifestations in 2002 up to the end of 2015. The five-month Battle of Kunduz epitomized the ongoing transition of the Taliban from an insurgent group to a more conventional military force, intent on fighting a protracted civil war. In this latest book, renowned Afghanistan expert Antonio Giustozzi rounds off his twenty years of studying the Taliban with an authoritative sitrep detailing the evolution of its formidable military machine.

A global society has come into being, but possesses as yet no political institutions of its own. In his book, Faisal Devji argues that new forms of militancy, like that of Al Qaeda, achieve meaning in this institutional vacuum, while representing in their various ways the search for a global politics. From environmentalism to pacifism and beyond, such a politics can only be one that takes humanity itself as its object, hence militant practices are informed by the same search that animates humanitarianism, which from human rights to humanitarian intervention has become the global aim and signature of all contemporary politics. This is the search for humanity as an agent and not simply the victim of history. To the militant, victimized Muslims represent not their religion so much as humanity itself, and terrorism the effort to turn this humanity into an historical actor – since it is after all the globe’s only possible actor. For environmentalists and pacifists as much as for our holy warriors, a global humanity has in this way replaced the international proletariat as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ of history.

The 9/11 attacks fundamentally transformed how the U.S. approached terrorism, and led to the unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism strategies, policies, and practices. While the analysis of these developments is rich and vast, there remains a significant void. The diverse actors contributing to counterterrorism increasingly consider, engage and impact women as agents, partners, and targets of their work. Yet, flawed assumptions and stereotypes remain prevalent, and it remains undocumented and unclear how and why counterterrorism efforts evolved as they did in relation to women. This book examines how, where and why women have become visible in the discourses and practices related to counterterrorism through the lens of US efforts since 2001. Drawing on extensive primary source interviews and documents, A Woman's Place traces the evolution of women's place in U.S. counterterrorism efforts through the administrations of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, examining key agencies like the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of State, and USAID. In their own words, Joana Cook investigates how and why women have developed the roles they have, and interrogates U.S. counterterrorism practices in key countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Analysing conceptions of and responses to terrorists, she also considers how the roles of women in Al-Qaeda and ISIS have evolved and impacted on U.S. counterterrorism considerations. It argues that it is imperative to meaningfully engage and consider women in every aspect of counterterrorism as actors, partners and targets of this work.