Daniel Byman

Road Warriors (eBook, ePUB)

Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Mai 2019
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780190646530
• Artikelnr.: 56833811

Autorenporträt

Daniel Byman is a Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of A High Price, The Five Front War, and Al Qaeda, The Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Inhaltsangabe

* I. Why Do Foreign Fighters Matter?
* Definitions
* Key Arguments
* 1. Why do they fight?
* 2. What do foreign fighters offer a local militant group?
* 3. Why do foreign fighters often prove disastrous?
* 4. What is the role of the state?
* 5. What happens after fighters return?
* 6. How can counterterrorism be improved?
* Book Structure
* II. The Prophet: Abdullah Azzam and the Anti-Soviet Jihad in
Afghanistan
* Jihad and the Rifle Alone
* The Afghanistan Jihad
* Azzam the Organizer
* State Support?
* Azzam's End
* Enter Al Qaeda
* When the Jihad Ends
* Warnings Unheeded
* III. Barbaros: The Red Beard
* Looking for Jihad
* Inspired to Fight
* Hearing the Call
* A Mixed Reaction in Bosnia
* An Abrupt End
* IV. The Trainer: Ali Mohammad and Afghanistan in the 1990s
* Jihad at a Crossroads
* Why Did Fighters Go to Afghanistan?
* Getting There
* What Did Fighters Learn in the Camps?
* Tensions in the Ranks
* The Weak Response
* The 9/11 Disaster
* Afghanistan after 9/11
* V. Chechnya and the Sword of Islam
* Russian Dogs
* The First Chechen War
* Enter the Jihadists: Khattab and Basaev
* The Interim: Exploiting the Vacuum
* VI. Hubris and Nemesis: The Chechen Foreign Fighters Overreach
* Russia Exploits the Foreign Fighter Presence
* Chechnya after Khattab
* VII. The Slaughterer: Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi and Ascendant Iraqi Jihad
(2003-2006)
* Sowing the Wind in Iraq
* The City of Mosques
* A Magnet for Foreigners
* Who Went to Iraq and How Did They Get There?
* Zarqawi's End
* VIII. The Dreamer: Abu Ayyub al-Masri and the Self-Destruction of the
Iraqi Jihad
* Reaping the Whirlwind
* The Tide Turns
* A Defeat for the Cause
* IX. The Gadfly: Omar Hammami
* Jihadism Emerges in Somalia
* The Rise of the Shebaab
* The Frustrations of Jihad
* The Shebaab's High Water Mark - A Mini Islamic State
* Hammami's Fall
* The Shebaab as a Terrorist Group
* Foreigners Fighting the Shebaab
* The Shebaab Settles in for a Long War
* X. John the Beatle and the Syrian Civil War
* The Rise of the Islamic State
* The Appeal of Jihad in Syria
* Propaganda, Social Media and Recruitment
* A Five-Star Jihad
* The Turkish Highway
* Training Camps and Hard Fighting
* Life in the Islamic State
* The Terrorism Threat
* Leaving the Islamic State
* The Western Response
* XI. The Facilitator: Amer Azizi and the Rise of Jihadist Terrorism in
Europe
* The Origins of the Europe as a Jihadist Battlefield
* Jihadism in Europe post-9/11
* The Islamic State in Europe
* Jihad Returns to Europe
* The European Response to Foreign Fighters
* XII. America Squares Off against the Legion
* Who Are the American Foreign Fighters?
* The Limits of the Internet
* Attacks in America
* Stopping American Foreign Fighters
* Law Enforcement
* Military operations
* Intelligence Operations
* What's Next?
* XIII. How to Stop Foreign Fighters
* Halting the Foreign Fighter Production Process
* The Decision Stage
* The Travel Stage
* Training and Fighting in the War Zone
* The Return Stage
* Thinking Beyond the Plot Stage
* Bibliography