Bøger af Rohan Gunaratna

The global pandemic has offered extraordinary opportunities for extremists and terrorists to mobilize themselves and revive as more powerful actors in the security landscape. But could these threat groups actually capitalize on the coronavirus crisis and advance their malevolent agendas? Utilizing the largest COVID-19-related terrorism database, the book presents an analysis built upon a quantitative and qualitative comparison between the nature of both the radical Islamist and the far-right-related threat in 2018 and 2020. It provides, for the first time, a true picture of novel trends since the pandemic outbreak.

Inside Al Qaeda examines the leadership, ideology, structure, strategies, and tactics of the most violent politico-religious organization the world has ever seen. The definitive work on Al Qaeda, this book is based on five years of research, including extensive interviews with its members; field research in Al Qaeda-supported conflict zones in Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East; and monitoring Al Qaeda infiltration of diaspora and migrant communities in North America and Europe. Although founded in 1988, Al Qaeda merged with and still works with several other extremist groups. Hence Al Qaeda rank and file draw on nearly three decades of terrorist expertise. Moreover, it inherited a full-fledged training and operational infrastructure funded by the United States, European, Saudi Arabian and other governments for use in the anti-Soviet Jihad. This book sheds light on Al Qaeda's financial infrastructure and how they train combat soldiers and vanguard fighters for multiple guerrilla, terrorist and semi-conventional campaigns in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caucuses, and the Balkans. In addition, the author covers the clandestine Al Qaeda operational network in the West. Gunaratna reveals: how Osama bin Laden had his mentor and Al Qaeda founder, "Azzam", assassinated in order to take over the organization and that other Al Qaeda officers who stood in his way were murdered, Al Qaeda's long-range, deep-penetration agent handling system in Western Europe and North America for setting up safe houses, procuring weapons, and conducting operations, how the O55 Brigade, Al Qaeda's guerrilla organization, integrated into the Taliban, how the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui forced Al Qaeda to move forward on September 11, how a plan to destroy British Parliament on 9/11 and to use nerve gas on the European Union Parliament were thwarted, how the Iran--Hezbollah--Al Qaeda link provided the knowledge to conduct coordinated, simultaneous attacks on multiple targets, including failed plans to destroy Los Angeles International Airport, the USS Sullivan, the Radisson Hotel in Jordan, and eleven US commercial airliners over the Pacific ocean, that one-fifth of international Islamic charities and NGOs are infiltrated by Al Qaeda, how the US response is effective militarily in the short term, but insufficient to counter Al Qaeda's ideology in the long-term. Finally, to destroy Al Qaeda, Gunaratna shows there needs to be a multipronged, multiagency, and multidimensional response by the international community.

While, not discounting the potency of the radical Islamic religious discourse in fuelling the contemporary wave of terrorism, this book makes an attempt to explain terrorism in China as an ethno-nationalist conflict rooted in issues involving minority identity. However, a largely domestic conflict is being hijacked by the radical Islamists.

Dozens of international and local organizations, up to one hundred thousand individuals, and millions of supporters are part of the phenomenon of global jihad. This reference work names and differentiates these organizations, explaining their ideology, infrastructure, operational capabilities, and activities. It also analyzes their mutual and multi-lateral relations inside and outside the "jihadi framework."

Since January 2004, the violence in the southern provinces in Thailand has claimed more than 4,600 lives. The violence has also adversely affected the local economy and quality of life in the southern provinces.