Customer Reviews

Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

There are two types of writers about terrorism, experts such as Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who write from a distance and others that write graphic tales of first-hand from the trenches war stories. Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, is unique in that author Malcolm Nance is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. intelligence community and writes from a first hand-perspective, but with the organization and methodology of writers such as Pipes and Emerson. Those combined traits make the book extraordinarily valuable and perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition.

The main theme of the book, as detailed in chapter 1 is critical awareness. The book notes that criminal investigators spend years studying criminal behavior to better understand and counter crime. Nance writes that the field of terrorism is no different as it is a specialized subject that requires serious study and requires that those in the front line of defense be as knowledgeable as possible.

In a later chapter, Nance gives the Iraq war as an example of a group of leaders that were not as knowledgeable as possible and ignored the advice of those that were as knowledgeable as possible. Had the Bush administration consulted Nance, a trillion dollars and thousands of lives could have been saved in the Iraq debacle.

The book is divided into 5 sections comprising 21 heavily-detailed chapters. Each chapter is a progression in detailing, understanding and identifying terrorists. In chapter after chapter, the book details every aspect of terrorism and indentifies all of the various elements. The various aspects of different guns, explosives, and other elements are described and categorized in detail.

In the section on suicide bombers, an important point the book makes is that contrary to popular belief, suicide bombers are rarely insane. They are most often intelligent, rational individuals with beliefs that those in the West finds difficult to comprehend. Nance does not for a second rationalize the actions of such groups and individuals. But notes that it is critical to understand why they do it in order to prevent future attacks.

Chapter 8 is quite valuable in that it provides a comprehensive overview of how terrorist cells operate and are organized. While the cell is the fundamental unit of a terrorist group; cell operations and their members are the least understood part of terrorism. Their operations are always secret and never seen, until they attack. The chapter details the many types of terrorist cells, operative membership pools, and how cells and leadership communicate.

Chapter 19 is a fascinating primer on al-Qaeda and the global extremist insurgency. The chapter details how al-Qaeda divides its enemies into two categories: Far Enemies and Near Enemies. The terms are taken from the Islamic concept of the community and those who oppose it. While the far enemies of al-Qaeda are the USA, Australia, UK, Europe and Israel, the near enemies are those Moslem's or nations that al-Qaeda sees as corrupted governments or apostate rules. These include the governments of over 20 countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh, India and many more comprising billions of people.

While the post-9/11 attacks from coalition forces have indeed hurt al-Qaeda and killed many of its top leaders, Nance notes that al-Qaeda now acts a terror strategy consultancy. This transformation of al-Qaeda is in response to the loss of its base of operations in Afghanistan and the displacement of its leadership to the Pakistani border. The most significant changes were a shift of operational responsibility from the regional terror commanders, who executed a long awaited plan for jihad operations, to a more radical and difficult to detect posture: jihadist who were self-starting and worked independently from al-Qaeda.

The most significant changes al-Qaeda's structure occurred when it was able to co-opt the Jordanian Salafist group Tawhed Wal Jihad and organize the foreign fighters into Iraq into al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). AQI changed the structure of the military committee's roles dramatically and Iraq would become the cornerstone of al-Qaeda's global operations. Much of the invasion of Iraq was premised on a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There was never such a link, but the war turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as al-Qaeda is now a mainstay in Iraq.

The book writes that it is important to note that contrary to popular belief, al-Qaeda is not a single terrorist group, rather a collection of like-minded organizations that cooperate and receive funds, advice and orders from Osama bin Laden and his supporters. al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a physical chain of terrorist training camps to a virtual network that uses the Internet to create a network centric information and advisory body. Nance therefore notes that al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a global terrorism operation into a terrorism management consultancy. The 6 main aspects of this consultancy are that al-Qaeda: provides inspiration, contributes finances, shares collective knowledge, provides weapons resource and contacts, accepts responsibility and releases video propaganda.

Besides a few minor historical errors, some grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and not a lot of details about cyber-based terrorism, Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities is a most important book in that it avoids all of the hype, politics and bias that come along with such titles, and simply focuses on its task at hand, to be a field guide for anti-terrorist and counter-terrorist professionals to use to prevent attacks.

Such a title is sorely needed by groups such as the TSA, who still think that anti-terrorism means having people remove their shoes at airports. The book notes that the European approach of guarded vigilance via a sustained level of anti-terrorism readiness and awareness is a much better concept than the US approach of spiking to heightened alert levels.

The Terrorist Recognition Handbook is a must-read for anyone tasked with or interested in anti-terrorism activities. One would hope that every TSA and Homeland Security manager and employee get a copy of this monumental reference. It would change the face of TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, and might perhaps really enable them to identify terrorists, and not simply require the elderly to take off their support shoes at airport checkpoints.

5-Stars on Mr. Nance's "Terrorist Recognition Hamdbook!" This should be considered a Terrorist Primer on terrorist awareness and preparedness for observing terrorist surveillance indicators and preplanning. It is "well-worth" the price tag and it is highly recommended!

Jeff Strohman, Antiterrorism Program Manager and Senior Instructor, USMC

Well researched and written. The author does a good job providing the reader with fundamental knowledge in accordance with terrorism. A must read for anyone interested in learning more about this subject.

The attacks of 9/11 have put America into the awareness of terrorists within its borders more than ever. "Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities" is a manual for those in charge of tracking down these criminals. Covering the origins of terrorists and what makes them do what they do, "Terrorist Recognition Handbook" offers an examination of common and uncommon terrorist tactics - and how to identify an attack before it happens. Presented in an easy to use handbook format, "Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities" is highly recommended for those in charge of security and community library military collections.

This book is an essential book for the intelligence operative, the fiction writer or anybody interested in the vital topic of terrorist operations. The author breaks the book down into understandable sections so that the reader can gain a comprehensive understanding of terrorism and terrorists. Afterward, you will understand weapons, cell organization, motivation, profiles and various active terrorist groups.

This book contains a lot of information relating to detecting terrorists BEFORE they strike. This is vitally important. The information out there on this is scattered all over the place and in varying detail. This book clearly and comprehensively covers many aspects of recognising terrorist pre-attack activities.

It includes information like some basic terrorist profiles and the pitfalls of profiling, terrorist cells and recognising key terrorist activities such as safe houses, terrorist surveillance techniques, terrorist attack cycle and terrorist tactics and intent.

It is quite detailed and at the same time doesn't waffle. It is useful, practical information all in the one place. Recommended highly.

lowtechcombat.blogspot.com

There are several so-called "reviews" that have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the book. Indeed, one "reviewer" admits that he didn't read the book at all, and the others are obvious political grandstanding - again having nothing to do with the merits of the book. These "reviews" should be completely ignored by anyone who is looking for a definitive discussion of terrorists and their methods. A "must read" for intelligence and security professionals, especially in the critical infrastructure sectors.

I purchased the book for additional reference material for a research paper. I was already half way through the class within weeks before the paper was due. The book arrived approximately two weeks ahead of the time indicated. I was impressed since the book was sent outside of the United States which usually requires longer shipping time. The book was in was in excellent condition when it arrived.

The book itself is excellent, I have two undergraduate degrees in the terrorism field and completely my Graduates degree in the same area. This book adds a great amount of detail for a counter-terrorism practitioner. Many of the books on terrorism seems to repeat the same material, the material does not repeat much of what I have read and studied previously. It also provides as an excellent reference guide for criminal investigators.

The author is one of the "experts" that didn't manage to recognize the terrorists of 9/11. And now he wants to get paid for a story on "recognizing terrorists".

...would be to look in the mirror. The so-called "war on terror" was an unprovoked attack by the US on a country that had absolutely no involvement in 9/11. George Bush has been the world's most dangerous terrorist the last few years, but somehow he doesn't fit the author's narrow definition.