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

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: terrorist state, jihadist commanders, foreign mujahedin, United States, Shamil Basayev, Western Europe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

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 (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #681,007 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Sasha Valoir - See all my reviews

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.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth, at Last, on Chechnyan Jihadism, and Beautifully Written, December 27, 2007

By	Gregory Copley - See all my reviews

The first "review" posted on Yossef Bodansky's new book was clearly written by one of the "Chechen lovers", who support the Chechen jihadists regardless of their atrocities. And the "review" was clearly written without the benefit of the "reviewer" having read the book. Just another hate piece.

The book by Bodansky, however, is his best yet (I got it the first day it was out), and, as someone working for the past 40 years on terrorist issues, I can vouch for its authenticity. One thing about Bodansky is that he tells the truth regardless of the consequences, and this has always stirred up the politically correct, and those with an ideological agenda. That makes his books exciting reading.

More than anything, however, this new book shows how superbly his writing style has matured, and how his decades of work have given him the benefit of experience and, not surprisingly, the credibility required to have people talk to him, and offer him surprising access. Moreover, and I confess to having talked for many decades to Bodansky on these topics, I know that many committed Islamists often talk with him, off the record, because he actually understands them.

So don't listen to the baying and carping lunatics of the extremist fringe. Buy the book. If you don't think it's credible, readable, and an important contribution to our understanding of the jihadi phenomenon, give me a call.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading, sensationalist - a work of fiction, not for serious study, August 30, 2008

By	Scott Goodison (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

I have never read any of Yossef Bodansky's other works, but if they are anything like 'Chechen Jihad', I wouldn't bother - that is, if I was looking for a serious, credible study.

The reasons and political viewpoint behind the right and the wrong of the conflict aside, the other reviewers who highlighted the absolute lack of even one cited source are correct.

I could barely stomach reading some of the figures Bodansky quoted (i.e. the numbers of fighters involved in different stages of the conflict, Chechen and non-Chechen, the level of involvement of 'Islamist-Jihadists', as the author called them) without any evidence in support whatsoever.


I strongly recommend avoiding this book and instead consider:

1. Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power by Anatol Lieven; or

2. Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia by Dmitri Trenin

At least those authors put their sources up front for scrutiny.