Chechen Jihad: Al Qaeda's Training Ground and the Next Wave of Terror [Hardcover]

Yossef Bodansky (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 26, 2007

Yossef Bodansky is one of the most respected-and best-informed-experts on radical Islamism in the world today. In "Chechen Jihad", Bodansky draws on previously unseen intelligence from his insider sources, to offer the most comprehensive-and startling-portrait of the Chechenization phenomenon and what it means for the war on terror. As he reveals, the final years of US-Soviet relations left Chechnya as a fertile breeding ground for the mujahadin, and in the past decade a combination of militant native Chechen anti-Americans, anti-Russian agitators, and Middle Eastern jihadis have joined forces to help al Qaeda and the greater Islamist movement pursue its war against the west.As Bodansky points out, "the Chechens are professional fighters- disciplined and responsible, with a combination of skills, expertise, and character that has made them the most sought-after 'force multipliers' in the movement." Authoritative in its detail, chilling in its implications, "Chechen Jihad" is a book no one with an interest in the future of the West should miss.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Yossef Bodansky, has been the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for ten years. He is also the longtime Director of Research at the International Strategic Studies Association. The author of nine books, he has written frequently for numerous periodicals, including Global Affairs, Jane's Defence Weekly, Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, and Business Week. He is a former senior consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State. Bodansky has also been a visiting scholar in the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (December 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060841702
• ISBN-13: 978-0060841706
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #913,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly relevant, a bit too detailed October 3, 2011

By Walter

Format:Paperback

A long and almost too detailed history and review of the background, development and activities of radical Islam in the Caucasus region. While the narrative can be tedious at points, the details have relevance beyond Chechnya or the Russian Federation, as this book shows how they are thoroughly intertwined with Islamist organizations and developments elsewhere. This book shows a largely unrecognized part of the background behind current conflicts and how they are tied to other events.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this book: Leave it at Amazon or on the Book Shelf April 29, 2013

By T. Quiggin

Format:Kindle Edition

Like most of Bodansky's work, this is simply a product of his imagination filled in by knowledge gained through media reporting. Here is an informative view of the book by the Naval Institute Press:

****

The importance to the global jihad of the Chechen wars that have roiled the Caucasus region for more than fifteen years is something Western commentators on terrorism persistently underestimate. For most Western observers, the battle for Chechnya has more to do with tribalcum- national conflicts and human rights abuses than fighting against the forces of armed radical Islam. Russian claims that it, too, is waging its own "war on terror" (a view that held currency in the United States only briefly after 9/11) now fall on deaf ears. For most people outside the former Soviet Union, the arduous Russian struggle against Chechen mujahideen has evaporated from the headlines and amounts to a forgotten war.

This is unfortunate for many reasons, not least that al-Qa`ida considers the jihad in the Caucasus to be a major front in its global campaign. The first Chechen war (1994 to 1996) was a humiliating debacle for Moscow that resulted in the establishment of a Chechen pseudostate, which soon fell under the influence of Islamic radicalism.
Al-Qa`ida believed this to be a clear win for its cause. The second Chechen war, which began in 1999 and coincided with the rise of Vladimir Putin, presents a much different picture. For all intents and purposes,
Russia has won--Moscow has successfully reestablished its authority over most of the breakaway region. For al-Qa`ida, by the same token, Chechnya today is a much less promising venue than it was a decade ago.

The continuing neglect of Chechnya in the "terrorism studies" canon is, therefore, a problem. Chechnya has much to teach Western counterterrorists about effective tactics, techniques, and procedures against the mujahideen. Russia's trial-and-error efforts there could prove important to Western audiences. A good book on this subject is therefore something very much to be desired. Unfortunately, Yossef Bodansky's Chechen Jihad is not that book. The author is a prolific writer on terrorism in general and its radical Islamic variant in particular, but his viewpoint lacks perspective and subtlety. Bodansky's treatment of the Chechen conflict follows his usual pattern of offering a detailed, chronological narrative, veering into a "you are there" account, devoid of any real analysis. Moreover, the author boasts of many unnamed sources in Moscow's security and intelligence agencies that have given him the "real" story to which others are not privy. The reader is bluntly told that all is to be taken on faith, with no endnotes, as is customary in Bodansky's writings, so as to protect his sources. It is, therefore, impossible to determine where the author gets his material or what its validity may be. In this connection, Bodansky's silence on many controversies relating to Russian intelligence in its struggle with the mujahideen is both revealing and troubling.

In spite of all this, however, a close examination by anyone well versed in the subject will reveal that most of Bodansky's information is in fact gleaned not from clandestine meetings in dark alleys but from (translated) press accounts (it appears that Bodansky knows none of the relevant languages). In other words, the author is relying on practices associated with sensationalist journalism, not serious analysis, much less scholarship.
Chechen Jihad is best left on the shelf; it has nothing of substance to offer serious students of al-Qa`ida and terrorism.

20 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Percipient writer, shocking information December 27, 2007

By Sasha Valoir

Format:Hardcover

Yossef Bodansky's encyclopedic "Secret History of the Iraq War" drew criticism for having no footnotes. Turns out that persons employed in a certain critical US security organization have to sign an employment contract agreeing not to publish any book with a footnote unless the manuscript is subject to serious editing, at least, by appointed officials. Fortunately, the organization is not the boring, error-filled CIA; it seems to be a quieter one that actually knows something. And so, we can see with years of hindsight, did the author.

Now this mysterious, consummately expert writer has published "Chechen Jihad," another comprehensive work. This one is on a small, combative, fearsome group that, under bombardment, dispossession, slaughter, and unceasing attack by Moscow for its intention to secede from Russia, has thrown its considerable talent and bellicosity in with the global jihad. While sullen, hormonal, anomie-laden Saudi and Pakistani rich boys may pull off ghastly stunts, the really scary guys in the game today are the Chechens.

Thank heaven for Bodansky. Always ahead of other analysts, sometimes by years, and always lavish in laying out information that almost without exception has proven accurate over time, Yossef Bodansky is a secret luminary of open-source genius.

In to the heart of the book, we see a thorough explanation of how Russia has poured men and vast monies into an inch-by-inch fight for territory and, in throwing in billions of petro-rubles for physical development, a fight toward a moderately peaceful society. A central premise is that outsiders can favorably influence a tribal society only by working respectfully through the existing structure of tribal elders and traditions. The brazen, contemporary American vision, sometimes well-intentioned, of uprooting everything familiar among the benighted foreigners in order to thrust in a fully-formed Twenty-first Century electoral system is guaranteed to fail.

As the publisher correctly states: "Drawing on mountains of previously unseen intelligence from Islamist movements and other military and intelligence sources from throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as senior officials in many of the affected nations, Chechen Jihad offers an intimate and startling portrait of the jihadist movement that is astonishing in its detail and chilling in its implications--but one that points to a new way forward in the struggle to answer the challenges of international Islamist terrorism"

For a different take on events in Chechnya, see Thomas Goltz's "Chechnya Diary" (2003). Nonetheless, the polyglot and inscrutable Mr Bodansky has elegantly caught and made available a universe of knowledge that impinges heavily on all our present and future, and probably would never have been revealed otherwise.