Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ON AUGUST 31, 1992, Ramzi Yousef left Peshawar for Karachi en route to New York City..." (more)
Key Phrases: terror incorporated, modern jihad, financial colonization, Middle East, Soviet Union, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Published two years ago as Modern Jihad in a British edition from Pluto Press, this first full U.S. release adds a chapter on globalization and a new preface to what is perhaps the most systematic treatment in print of how terror is financed. Journalist Napoleoni has a doctorate from the London School of Economics, and she traces 50 years of Western economic and political dominance in developing Muslim countries: backing repressive, corrupt regimes, fighting the Cold War by proxy and blocking the legitimate economic ascendancy of millions of people. In sometimes riveting, sometimes pedantic prose, Napoleoni weaves interviews and first-person accounts of her encounters with terrorists with a fascinating close analysis of the connections among drug cartels, gunrunners and major Western economies in the network of financing for terror organizations: "billions of dollars generated by narcotics are laundered in the United States; between 30 and 40 percent enter the US economy, while the rest is pumped into the international illegal economy"—to the tune of $1.5 trillion a year. Avoiding the sometimes inflammatory political and religious rhetoric that characterizes many of the debates about terrorism, Napoleoni offers a sobering look at its economic roots. Agents, Roberta Oliva and Daniela Ogliari.(Apr. 20)
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Product Description

"Napoleoni has accomplished an extraordinary task of research in tracking, finding and graphically describing the financiers and the institutions supporting global terrorism, including al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden."-John K. Cooley, author of Unholy Wars

"A masterpiece . . . This book should be required reading for everyone in the White House, State Department and Pentagon."-Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and The Joker's Wild: Dubya's Trick Deck

In Terror Incorporated, Loretta Napoleoni maps out the arteries of an international economic system that feeds armed groups the world over. Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to hawala exchanges in the Middle East.

Napoleoni describes the "New Economy of Terror," "a fast-growing international economic system with a turnover of about $1.5 trillion [that] is challenging Western hegemony." It is made up of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading and oil and diamond smuggling, as well as charitable donations and legal profits. Napoleoni reveals the interdependency between economies run by armed groups and Western economies. "As in the Crusades, religion is simply a recruitment tool; the real driving force is economics."

A pioneering examination of the system and methods by which international terrorism is financed, Terror Incorporated is "penetrating, lucid and essential" (Harry Porter, author of Empire State).

Loretta Napoleoni, a former Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics, is an expert on international terrorism who has worked as an economist and foreign correspondent for Italy's financial papers. She has translated and edited books on terrorism and was among the few people to interview the Red Brigades in Italy after three decades of silence.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583226737
• ISBN-13: 978-1583226735
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #120,446 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent analysis of terrorism financing, May 17, 2005

By	richard (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

Loretta Napoleoni is the world's expert on terrorism financing. She is very well known in Europe as the sole writer who has explained the international economic system created by armed organizations since the end of WWII.
I have just attented one of her lectures in San Francisco and was amazed at her knowledge and undersanding of the phenomenon.
I think her book should be a required reading for anybody who wants to know the truth about the world we live in.
The book is fascinating, written like a thriller will have the reader stay up all night turning the pages.
Well done and congratulation,

Richard

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound and moving, February 19, 2008

By	A. Philbrick "Jinjeet" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nopoleoni's research into the subject of teeror fincing is incredibly thorough and unparalleled. I initially purchased this book as a source for a research paper, but quickly found myself completely engaged in her writing.

The author not only tackles the most obvious and current situations of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but she also provides an in-depth look into such groups as the IRA and the Red Brigades, and why this information is relevant to terror financing.

Napoleoni spells out very clearly that terror is just as much, if not more, of a business than it is an ideolgy. She has coined the term "terror state-shell" to decribe the voids created in areas, such as Chechnya, in which terrorist investors scramble to find recruits by offering financial stability to these poverty-stricken areas.

The author also clearly examines, step-by-step, the methods by which money leaves your hand and reaches terror groups.

Compelling book!