Understanding Terror Networks (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THE GLOBAL Salafi jihad is a worldwide religious revivalist movement with the goal of reestablishing past Muslim glory in a great Islamist state stretching from..." (more)
Key Phrases: United States, Maghreb Arab, Saudi Arabia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sageman, a University of Pennsylvania professor of psychiatry and ethnopolitical conflict, applies his varied experience and skills to build an empirical argument for the socio-psychological reasons why someone would join an organization such as al-Qaeda. As an officer in the Foreign Service in the late '80s, Sageman worked closely with Islamic fundamentalists during the Afghan-Soviet war and gained an intimate understanding of the development, form and function of their networks. Sageman wrote this book in order to dispel incorrect assertions about terrorist networks made by so-called experts. Using public documents, Sageman tells us that the motivation to join a militant organization does not necessarily stem from extreme poverty or extreme religious devotion but mostly from the need to escape a sense of alienation. He also disproves conventional wisdom that terrorist groups employ a "top-down" approach to recruiting, showing instead that many cells evolve from friendships and kinships and that the seeds of sedition grow as certain members of a cell influence the thinking of the others. Unfortunately, Sageman's academic and dry prose will lose readers who would be interested in his insightful argument. The growing field of counterterrorism includes many more readers than just academics, and a book like this one could have easily covered a greater portion of this market if more care had been taken to enhance the writing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Public rhetoric about terrorism is often abstract. President Bush declares a generalized "war on terror." The press explains, as a provocative Newsweek cover put it after Sept. 11, "Why they hate us." Now a presidential campaign summer rings with broad questions about whether the Iraq war strengthened or weakened al Qaeda, and whether it is possible to alter the sweeping forces that are presumed to foster Islamic radicalism, such as satellite television networks, oil dependency, Middle Eastern poverty, and the spread of madrassas, religious schools that often teach an unyielding Islamic faith.

These two small and important books analyze al Qaeda and jihadist violence in a more granular, specific fashion. They are interested not in grand ideas but in the details of al Qaeda's recruitment and support networks. They use the biographies of individual terrorists and obscure al Qaeda-linked groups to explain the movement's evolving structure. By this path the authors challenge some poorly examined assumptions of familiar public debates.

In the end, by hewing to scientific method and forswearing strategy, the authors illuminate crucial but neglected strategic questions of their own: How and why do al Qaeda cells form? What are the important patterns of individual radicalization? What is al Qaeda's new geographical center?

Marc Sageman is a former CIA case officer who worked undercover on the Afghan frontier during the 1980s. After he left the agency, he became a forensic psychiatrist specializing in the motivations of murderers and genocide perpetrators. Drawing upon open sources, Sageman studied the biographies of 172 jihadist terrorists, scrutinizing their stories for patterns. In Understanding Terror Networks he spreads out a feast of stimulating insights.

Sageman concentrates on the small, loose, committed cells of young Muslim men that seem to form almost spontaneously in Europe or North Africa. The cell members pledge themselves to the global jihad, then develop the discipline and commitment needed to carry out a terrorist attack, sometimes by suicide. These Bunches of Guys, as they have been labeled half-facetiously, bind each other to secret membership and reinforce a mutual commitment to violence.

The multinational Hamburg cell that executed the Sept. 11 attacks -- intimate, ultimately loyal but often arguing among themselves, as the Sept. 11 investigative commission recently showed -- is a prototype of the emerging global jihad. In another context such testosterone cliques might rob banks or brawl at local soccer matches. Here kinship and friendship networks, images of violence against Muslims, deepening faith and access to al Qaeda's resources can lead them to cross oceans and commit mass murder.

Sageman argues that poverty, religious belief and political frustration are "necessary but not sufficient" to explain how a few angry young Muslim men -- but not many, many others -- decide to embrace jihadist violence. More important are "social bonds" among the young volunteers, the sense of clandestine belonging they develop, and their ability to make reinforcing contact with al Qaeda leaders or trainers. Bunches of Guys become effective terrorist cells "through mutual emotional and social support, development of a common identity, and encouragement to adopt a new faith." These internal group ties are more significant, Sageman argues, than external factors "such as common hatred for an outside group." After losing its Afghan sanctuary, al Qaeda's leadership is less hierarchical than in the past and more reliant on such semi-independent cells in diverse regions. Sageman notes that the Moroccans who carried out the hotel bombings in Casablanca in 2002 bonded and planned their attacks on long camping trips in local caves and forests, aided by expert advice from more senior al Qaeda contacts who had once trained in Afghanistan. He calls such local volunteers and local training a "wave of the future." After his book went to press, a similar regional group killed 191 people in railway bombings in Madrid.

Sageman's work is mainly detailed analysis, but he does offer some practical advice, some involving his old work as a spy recruiter. Group loyalty among Islamic radicals makes it very difficult to lure informers or agents. The best luck is likely to be had from Bunches of Guys who trained for jihad but decided not to act -- the Lackawanna Six in upstate New York, for instance, or the similar accused group in Northern Virginia. In such cases, Sageman writes, an "aggressive policy of prosecuting" these almost-jihadists without exploring their recruitment as agents may be a "mishandled opportunity." Perhaps even more important is putting country-by-country and node-by-node pressure on al Qaeda leaders and trainers, making it harder and riskier for aspiring cells to connect with the more ambitious, capable wings of Osama bin Laden's movement. If a particular volunteer Bunch of Guys is unable to train or plan with competent al Qaeda leaders, they are more likely to fade away in place or carry out a relatively small attack.

These cell-by-cell outcomes may have much more impact on the overall potency of al Qaeda violence than changes in Middle East education or job creation -- certainly in the near term, and perhaps in the long term as well. Sageman also argues persuasively that just as European socialist parties and democratic communist parties helped to isolate Soviet-backed communists and radical Marxist cells, so should the United States explore how to use peaceful, radical Muslim political movements to cut off jihadists from popular support. Secular Arab governments have used such strategies successfully, as did European colonial administrations in the Middle East before them. Debate about such nuanced political strategies in the United States since Sept. 11 has barely developed; Sageman's contribution is helpful.

As for Iraq, it "is a great opportunity but also a great danger," Sageman concludes. Its success as a democracy may indeed alter Middle Eastern politics for the better, he thinks, but Iraq may also become a new "Peshawar or Khartoum . . . where the excitement for the jihad is renewed." The al Qaeda visible in Sageman's analysis is more movement than organization, an "imagined community," in the phrase of anthropologist Benedict Anderson, increasingly located not in any one geographical place but in the virtual and global space of the World Wide Web -- continually reaffirmed by cliques of angry young Muslim men tapping their keyboards in Internet cafés from Rabat to Riyadh to Jakarta.

Yet if there is any one country that matters most to al Qaeda's future, argue Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy in Islamist Networks, it is Pakistan, where "the fate of the last jihadists" trained and inspired before Sept. 11 "is being played out." The "Pakistanization of al Qaeda," as the authors call it, is rooted in 20 years of collaboration between elements of the Pakistan army and intelligence service and the radical Islamist movements that birthed and nurtured bin Laden's organization. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, contradictions long submerged and unresolved in Pakistan are surfacing as open conflict -- as in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl and the recent assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf.

Zahab, a French specialist on Pakistan, and her colleague Roy, an accomplished scholar on political Islam, argue that in Pakistan -- unlike in other countries where al Qaeda has recruited and thrived -- "the state and the Islamist movements had common interests," namely, political control of Afghanistan and Islamic revolution in Kashmir.

Before Sept. 11, bin Laden targeted the United States while his lesser-known Pakistani allies -- radical groups such as Lashkar-e Jhangvi, Harakat al Mujaheddin al Alami and others -- concentrated on Kashmir. Now these Pakistani groups have more fully fused with al Qaeda under pressure from Musharraf, who in turn is acting under heavy pressure from Washington. The groups are responding by trying to kill Musharraf, sheltering fugitive al Qaeda leaders and organizing regional attacks against Western and Indian targets.

In a richly detailed analysis of the recruitment patterns among the Pakistani groups, Zahab and Roy report that, contrary to popular belief, the great majority of violent Pakistani jihadists have come not from the madrassas but from dysfunctional state schools or private, semi-commercial English-language schools promising a modern education in exchange for religious indoctrination. (In Sageman's more global sample, too, only 17 percent of the terrorists he examined had Islamic religious primary or secondary education; the rest went to secular schools.) For Pakistan's floundering, desperate lower-middle classes, jihad can offer a path to upward social mobility, since "the family of a martyr acquires a privileged position" in local towns and villages, often including financial support. Islamist Networks is a thin work, more a journal article between hard covers than a fully formed book. Still, especially read with Roy's other lectures and published work, it is nourishing.

Iraq is commonly described as a hinge conflict that will decide al Qaeda's future, but Zahab and Roy place more weight on the current peace talks between India and Pakistan, especially the talks about Kashmir's future. Unless those negotiations succeed, Pakistan's army will again "need the jihadis to put pressure on India," they fear, reviving the cycles of violence and state support that strengthened al Qaeda in the past. In the meantime, they argue convincingly, while Iraq's insurgency may be of rising importance, Pakistan "continues to be the central point of mobilisation of the Islamic radicals."

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (April 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812238087
• ISBN-13: 978-0812238082
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,129 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #35 in	Books > Nonfiction > Politics > Freedom & Security > International Security
  #57 in	Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Terrorism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile primary research, June 27, 2004

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

On balance this book is a very fine review of the actual background and motivations of over 150 members of four specific terrorist networks: the Central Staff around Osama bin Laden, the Core Arabs, the Maghred Arabs, and the Southeast Asians.

The author, who does have intelligence experience and is not just an ordinary foreign service officer, gets high marks for making excellent use of open sources of information, for emphasizing the role of Egypt as a source of terrorism and Israeli behavior against Palestine as the primary catalyst for terrorism now directed against Americans and other Western nations (and recently, Asian nations), and for documenting the distinction between the near enemy (corrupt Muslim regimes) and the far enemy (the West), a distinction all the more relevant because US actions against Iraq brought the far enemy near, and changed the dynamics of the global war on terrorism in favor of the terrorists.

Pages 65-68 offer a superb overview of the nuances of open sources of information, including a useful caveat on "experts" that are only as good as their discipline in seeking out and validating the sources they claim as their foundation. From my own role as a former spy and now global proponent for improved use of open sources of information to product open source intelligence, I regard the author's methodical review of sources and their dangers to be among the very best I have ever seen. His details on press misinformation and the laziness of journalists, and his understanding of how many "leads" about terrorists are actually more sinister and selfish efforts to settle personal scores by fabricating the leads to destroy others using American power, are clear signs that this author is a top-notch professional.

In general the book and the original research by the author confirm what earlier scholars of revolution (Chalmers Johnson, Ted Gurr, Eckstein, among others) have documented in the past, to wit that most top-notch terrorists are middle-class, smart, educated beyond the norm, and grow into their motivation. They are *not* crazy and suicide is a rational choice for them, not an aberrant behavior.

I found the author's observation that recruitment is a bottom-up self-selected process rather than a top-down "seek out and recruit" process, quite fascinating, especially when the author makes the point that these people are NOT brainwashed. This is about a conflict of ideas, of ideals, of perception, and of context, and America is clearly not able to field the "idea army" and is not able to be competitive with Bin Laden in the war for the hearts and minds of these hundreds of thousands of prospective terrorists.

Most importantly, the author documents that Bin Laden is not your typical terrorist, is not seeking a controlled network, and is perhaps most brilliant for letting thousands of cells blossom with a little financial nurturing and a lot of social liberty.

The author documents the return of kinship as a source of power--kinship and social networking as means of organizing, as means of providing security, as means of radicalizing supporters.

The book is disappointing in two respects--a cursory conclusion as to how to marshal global resources against their severe threat, and no reference to the Pakistani and Hamas variants of terrorism, nor to the overlapping networking of ethnic criminal, corrupt government, and motivated terrorist networks.

For those interested in understanding the terrorist threat at the individual level of detail, I recommend this book together with Yossef Bodansky's classic on "Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America" and Steve Emerson's more recent "American Jihad." However, for a broader strategic understanding of the emerging threats and the reasons why billions are increasingly against America, I suggest the Amazon customer consider the several books in my Emerging Threats List and my Blowback List ("see more about me" should really say "see my other reviews and specific lists").

I believe this author has more to offer, and would be interested in a second book from him, one that answers the specific question: "How must America behave, what pathologies of American corporate and government action must be corrected, if we are to live in peace with billions of faithful Muslims?" The author has helped us understand the core of the terrorist networks that are capable of bringing down America. Now it might be helpful if he turns his medical eye on our own mind-sets, and tells us how to heal ourselves.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy it - should be part of your personal library, August 4, 2005

By	Mike (Virginia) - See all my reviews

Sageman's 'Understanding Terror Networks' is probably the best primer on the global salafist movement. The author begins with the 'Origins of the Jihad,' tracing the importance of ibn Taymiyya, Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. and does an excellent job of framing the movement in its historical context. In the next four chapters, Sageman discusses 'The Evolution of the Jihad,' 'The Mujahedin,' 'Joining the Jihad,' and 'Social Networks and the Jihad.' Other reviewers have mentioned some of the major take-aways from the book, however I believe that this book needs to be read in its entirety.

Sageman does a fantastic job of debunking the myths propogated by the talking heads in the media, and enlightening readers with empirical analysis.

I point interested readers to Hoffman's 'Inside Terrorism,' Anonymous's 'Through our Enemies' Eyes.'

A superb analysis with a substantial bibliography for further reading.

'Understanding Terror Networks' is a gem. Buy it!

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Book! Deserves a Better Name!, November 8, 2004

By	M. Nance "SME" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A Superior Book! Mark Sageman's Understanding Terrorist Networks is really a ground breaking analysis of Al Qaeda's networks and personalities, not just run of the mill terrorist groups. The psychological breakdown of the membership is excellent and truely helpful to any professional in the field. I found only one conclusion in the empirical data I didn't agree with because it is an academic study rather than an intelligence agency study (i.e I believe there are more than four major sub-groups of Al Qeada, as many as 10, organized by a designated geographic command system and special mission teams versus an ethnographic association (the Maghrebs, Core Arabs, Arab Command and SE Asians ... but his identification of the four core groups of members in the network is fascinating and correct). This book is clearly one of the best studys of Al Qaeda and will be mandatory reading for my students. It is a model for future analytical studies. One suggestion, change the second edition name to Understanding Al Qaeda's Terrorist Networks.