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Pirates, warlords, guerillas, criminal organizations, drug cartels, apocalyptic religious extremists, police agencies, terrorists: these are classic insurgents whose past, present, and future is dissected in this important book. Contributing writers including Martha Crenshaw, T. X. Hammes, Russell Howard, Gene Cristy, Yosef Kuperwasser, and academics from Naval War College, Marine Corps War College, and Stanford University, explore important insurgency-related issues such as domestic terrorism, globalization of armed groups, children on the battlefield, religious influence on armed fights, and more. This rich anthology offers scholars and citizens a new way to think about national and international security—as it stands today, and its future.
The threat of terrorism has become an ever present preoccupation, necessitating the constant review and updating of defensive strategies to counter it from national governments and policymakers. This book presents selected articles based on some of the lectures delivered at the NATO Centre of Excellence – Defence against Terrorism (COE – DAT) Advanced Training Course (ATC) Future Trends and New Approaches in Defeating the Terrorism Threat, held in Algiers, Algeria, in October 2011. Subjects covered by these articles include an overview of terrorism; respecting human rights in the countering of terrorism; suicide terrorism; terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction; bioterrorism; terrorism, media and public information; strategic communications in the defence against terrorism; the challenges posed by non-state armed groups; and sources of instability. This collection of articles will be of interest to all those involved in countering the threat of terrorism worldwide.
Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative represented an unprecedented effort by Washington to stabilize fragile democracies in Latin America by shoring up the Colombian and Mexican security forces, respectively. From Peril to Partnership evaluates the extent to which the US government achieved its stabilization objectives. US assistance was more helpful to Colombia than Mexico, which adopted a more militarized approach. This book highlights the importance of the private sector, party system, and security bureaucracy in facilitating progress-and how their absence obstructs it.
When Joint Special Operations Command deployed Task Force 714 to Iraq in 2003, it faced an adversary unlike any it had previously encountered: al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI’s organization into multiple, independent networks and its application of Information Age technologies allowed it to wage war across a vast landscape. To meet this unique threat, TF 714 developed the intelligence capacity to operate inside those networks, and in the words of commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, USA (Ret.) “claw the guts out of AQI.” In Transforming US Intelligence for Irregular War, Richard H. Shultz Jr. provides a broad discussion of the role of intelligence in combatting nonstate militants and revisit...
Smuggling is typically thought of as furtive and hidden, taking place under the radar and beyond the reach of the state. But in many cases, governments tacitly permit illicit cross-border commerce, or even devise informal arrangements to regulate it. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the borderlands of Tunisia and Morocco, Max Gallien explains why states have long tolerated illegal trade across their borders and develops new ways to understand the political economy of smuggling. This book examines the rules and agreements that govern smuggling in North Africa, tracing the involvement of states in these practices and their consequences for borderland communities. Gallien demonstrates that, co...
A critical analysis of how global special forces can and should evolve into a future-ready capability, responding to today's post-War on Terror challenges.
As a conflict ends and the parties begin working towards a durable peace, practitioners and peacebuilders are faced with the thrilling possibilities and challenges of building new or reformed political, security, judicial, social, and economic structures. This Handbook analyzes these elements of post-conflict state building through the lens of international law, which provides a framework through which the authors contextualize and examine the many facets of state building in relation to the legal norms, processes, and procedures that guide such efforts across the globe. The volume aims to provide not only an introduction to and explanation of prominent topics in state building, but also a perceptive analysis that augments ongoing conversations among researchers, lawyers, and advocates engaged in the field.
What does it take to reform a post-Soviet police force? This book explores the conditions in which a meaningful transformation of the police is likely to succeed and when it will fail. Based on the analysis of five post-Soviet countries that have officially embarked on police reform efforts, Erica Marat examines various pathways to transforming how the state relates to society through policing.
In the aftermath of the turmoil that shook North Africa in late 2010 and early 2011, commentators and analysts have sought explanations to the factors that triggered the uprisings and to understand why a region, seemingly characterized by relative stability for decades, would suddenly erupt in convulsions. Had an underlying dynamism in the region overwhelmed what were ostensibly stable authoritarian regimes? What were the connections to events and dynamics beyond the region, such as countries in the Middle East, international commodity markets, and environmental factors, amongst others? Why had allies abetted authoritarianism for so long, and what were the implications for such alliances? No...
Why do ethnic groups adopt violent means? In the 1990's, ethnicity emerged as the principle source of organized violence around the world. Ethnic wars were no longer internal conflicts between substate actors; instead they challenged state sovereignty and taxed the international community's ability to respond. Efforts to understand ethnic conflict remain divorced from the study of systemic change and the declining authority, capacity, and legitimacy of weak multiethnic states. This work proposes that the phenomenon of ethnic violence must be understood through a multilevel approach and that finding a solution to ethnic violence is possible only if we have a clear understanding of the sources...