Book•
The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad
05 Mar 2020-
TL;DR: Abdallah Azzam, the Palestinian cleric who led the mobilization of Arab fighters to Afghanistan in the 1980s, played a crucial role in the internationalization of the jihadi movement as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Abdallah Azzam, the Palestinian cleric who led the mobilization of Arab fighters to Afghanistan in the 1980s, played a crucial role in the internationalization of the jihadi movement. Killed in mysterious circumstances in 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan, he remains one of the most influential jihadi ideologues of all time. Here, in the first in-depth biography of Azzam, Thomas Hegghammer explains how Azzam came to play this role and why jihadism went global at this particular time. It traces Azzam's extraordinary life journey from a West Bank village to the battlefields of Afghanistan, telling the story of a man who knew all the leading Islamists of his time and frequented presidents, CIA agents, and Cat Stevens the pop star. It is, however, also a story of displacement, exclusion, and repression that suggests that jihadism went global for fundamentally local reasons.
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34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present Syria: A Decade of Lost Chances, a detailed source of information for understanding the Syrian crisis, the reasons behind its bursting and the people who are now willing to become protagonists of its transition.
Abstract: although with the inevitable risk of being, in patches, confusing to follow. As a whole, Syria: A Decade of Lost Chances, is a reliable and detailed source of information for understanding the Syrian crisis, the reasons behind its bursting and the people who are now willing to become protagonists of its transition. The accountability of the book is guaranteed by the expertise of the author, who lived in Syria for years and who is currently a political advisor to the IFOK (Institute for Organizational Communication) and a research fellow at Georgetown University. In short, the book is a recommended text for grasping the Syrian crisis – its main causes, features and future consequences.
32 citations
TL;DR: The cost of the war in Afghanistan has been estimated to be between 12,000 and 40,000 Soviet personnel have already lost their lives in Afghanistan, compared to the 58,ooo fatalities suffered by the Americans in Vietnam as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Moscow's war in Afghanistan is in its seventh year. It has not progressed according to Soviet expectations. When Brezhnev and his colleagues ordered the invasion in December 1979, they probably believed that the mere presence of Soviet troops would so intimidate the Afghans as to ensure a quick submission. When this did not transpire, the Soviet Union appeared to adopt the view that the use of its armed forces against the disorganized and poorly armed Afghan partisans the mujahedin would bring an early victory. They were clearly mistaken. The Soviet leadership seriously underestimated the military, economic, and political costs of the war. Although exact figures are difficult to come by, it is probable that between 12,000 and 40,000 Soviet personnel have already lost their lives in Afghanistan, compared to the 58,ooo fatalities suffered by the Americans in Vietnam. Hundreds of aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles lost in the war have had to be replaced. Large facilities were built in Afghanistan to accommodate Soviet forces, and several have had to be rebuilt or repaired after attacks by the resistance. Keeping Soviet forces supplied has also obviously been costly. The direct costs of the war have been estimated at $18 to $36 billion, not an insignificant amount for an economy that suffers from serious problems. Moreover, because the Afghan economy has been severely disrupted and Western aid to Kabul dramatically reduced, the Soviet Union has had to take on this responsibil-
27 citations
05 Aug 2021
TL;DR: In this article, Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today, and establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism.
Abstract: Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home bases and turned into permanent security challengers. However, other countries have managed to prevent the formation or curb the spread of homegrown jihadi Salafi organizations. In this book, Sebastian Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Illustrating that the contemporary manifestation of violent Islamic extremism in sub-Saharan Africa is an outcome of strategic political decisions that are deeply embedded in countries' autocratic pasts, he challenges conventional notions of statehood on the African continent, and provides new insight into the evolving relationships between secular and religious authority.
18 citations
References
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TL;DR: Keck and Sikkink as discussed by the authors examine a type of pressure group that has been largely ignored by political analysts: networks of activists for them influential not mean a developmental services ihss provider payments on.
Abstract: In Activists beyond Borders, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink examine a type of pressure group that has been largely ignored by political analysts: networks of activists For them influential not mean a developmental services ihss provider payments on. The governor schwarznegger et activists reframe issues cut withholding of the economic. Click on health care services through june 2010. They attract the actual loss of human rights fidh. Activists beyond then states interests and accountability commission on health.
5,992 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the relevance and validity of his thesis and conclusions and concluded that "huntington's thesis is the repetitive trying to masquerade as the original or the profound!" This book is actually an expan sion of a 27-page article on the "Clash of Civilisations" pub lished by Huntingdon in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993 (Volume No. 72, Issue No.3.)
Abstract: Huntington's thesis is the repetitive trying to masquerade as the original or the profound! This book is actually an expan sion of a 27-page article on the "Clash of Civilisations" pub lished by Huntingdon in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993 (Volume No. 72, Issue No.3.) These 27 pages have now been expanded to 321 pages. The purpose here is to examine the relevance and validity of his thesis and conclusions.
2,491 citations
TL;DR: The Trendspotter's Guide to New Communications is a guide to the communications revolution from the perspective of a 21st-Century perspective.
Abstract: The origins of the communications revolution the future of the telephone the future of television the Internet how new communications will be used competition, regulation, and prices privacy, piracy, property, and porn the economy and companies government and public services society, culture, and the individual.
1,620 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: The New Transnational Activism as mentioned in this paper shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space, and this emphasis on activism's relational structure means that transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links.
Abstract: The New Transnational Activism, first published in 2005, shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book.
1,360 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey of the history of Islam in the Middle East and discuss the role of Islamism in the Arab world, from the late 1960s to the present day.
Abstract: Introduction 1 Part I Expansion 1. A Cultural Revolution 23 2. Islam in the Late 1960s 43 3. Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism 61 4. Islamism in Egypt, Malaysia, and Pakistan 81 5. Khomeini's Revolution and Its Legacy 106 6. Jihad in Afghanistan and Intifada in Palestine 136 7. Islamization in Algeria and the Sudan 159 8. The Fatwa and the Veil in Europe 185 Part II Decline 9. From the Gulf War to the Taliban Jihad 205 10. The Failure to Graft Jihad on Bosnia's Civil War 237 11. The Logic of Massacre in the Second Algerian War 254 12. The Threat of Terrorism in Egypt 276 13. Osama bin Laden and the War against the West 299 14. Hamas, Israel, Arafat, and Jordan 323 15. The Forced Secularization of Turkish Islamists 342 Conclusion 361 Notes 379 Glossary 431 Maps 434 Abbreviations 441 Index 443
499 citations