Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century

by Marc Sageman (University of Pennsylvania Press). Rating: 4.0/5.

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Reviews from Amazon

A worthwhile but not critical read

I read Sageman's previous book "Understanding Terror Networks" before this book and would suggest that others do the same.

While this book is vastly easier to read than his previous book it is still not a fun casual read by any stretch. If you are truely interested in the area, it has alot of info that will keep you interested.

I respect the authors opinions on alot of the topics but do not see eye to eye with him on the third wave, namely the terrorist in Iraq today. Reading other works by people who have served in Iraq and sat face to face with these people and in some cases extracted valuable intel from them shows them in a different light. The author neglects to mention or discuss the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq and how the removal of a goverment who greatly favored Sunni's in a land dominated in population by Shia has caused a huge backlash of Shia against the Sunni. As evidenced by confessions of terrorist in Iraq ("How to Break a Terrorist" and "Fear Up Harsh" are great books for this) they are not much different than many fighters for the Taliban and Al-Queda in Afganistan described by the author in his first book. They fight for money and on the side they see and there only hope. Just like Afgan fighters in the first book, when this war is over they will go back to there shops and farms and have little regard for who won or lost.

This point of view may not have been included because the main focus of the third wave portion of this book is focus on the "homegrown" variety of terrorist. It focuses on cases in Europe and other Western areas. What about the many suicide bombers in Iraq that are blowing stuff up way more often than in West. What about the IED's being used by terrorist that have caused the loss of thousands of soldiers. We can not simply neglect to study those instances because it is inconvient to our views. I suspect the attacks and plots on the west are just easier to study since most people will never of hear the names of the suicide bomber who detonated himself at some random checkpoint in Iraq.

With all of that said I do understand the authors points of view and I do agree with most of them. I just noticed a lack of study in this area and also noticed the frequent bashing of journalist and other authors in this book that Dr. Sageman believed didn't do enough research because it was simply to difficult.

Again I will say if you are going to read this book you should diffently read the previous book first. It reads like a text book, but is very informative and provides the needed background info.

Rating: 4

likely future

Provides good descriptions of current situation and likely future scenarios, and interesting proposals. Uses interviews with individuals to buttress arguments. Well done.

Rating: 5

Great insight to the future of Jihad

GREAT BOOK! Read this book in two days. It gives enough history about Al Qaeda to understand how the structure functions currently without boring with meaningless details. Offers solutions and how to change to the face of how the United States and the international community faces terrorism in today's ever-changing technological advancing world.

Rating: 5

A good perspective but overall, not too many breakthrough ideas

I wouldn't say this is "easy to read." It reads more like a textbook in some places than a book looking to inform people. In other areas, it reads like an op-ed from the NY Times and in others it reads like a narrative history book.

I'll start with my criticisms and then go into the positives.

Dr. Sageman spends the first half of the book discussing terrorism and why (he thinks) people resort to terrorism. He spends a chapter on the actual title of the book, the Leaderless Jihad and then he spends the rest of the book talking about the geo-political solutions and how terrorism can only be fought with good police-work. It would have been better to expand on the chapter about the leaderless jihad.
Some of his conclusions were a little confusing. He seems to believe that this 3rd wave of Al Qaeda poses little threat because they haven't been to terrorist training camps or fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. I don't think he realized at all that many of the Jihadists who went to Iraq have started returning to their home countries with a wealth of knowledge in insurgency, bomb-making, and terrorism. They will be every bit as dangerous as Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and Zawahiri.

He also seems to rely on some sort of database of terrorists he created. While such tools will be useful for historical debates, they can't really tell us about the next attack or the next wave any more than databases help us prevent crime.

He attempts to "debunk" many myths about terrorists, such as sexual denial in the motivation. I have heard first-hand from an Egyptian who was one step away from flying to Afghanistan to blow himself up and many of the motivators he talked about, Dr Sageman thinks are just myths. Perhaps Dr. Sageman needs to go out in the field and talk to people on the ground a little more than relying on politically correct idealistic views.

Many of Dr. Sageman's conclusions seem to be based more in his political biases than in any concrete evidence. We left terrorism up to law enforcement for a long while and the attacks only got more and more violent. Dr. Sageman himself acknowledges you can't prosecute a suicide bomber after the attack and how you can't arrest someone for something they have not committed yet he avoids answering this question.
He seems to think that getting U.S. forces out of Iraq will magically generate good will in the Muslim world yet he doesn't consider other possibilities such as how if we set up a true democratic nation in Iraq, that will do more to deter jihadists than allowing that nation to fall into collapse.

I think Dr. Sageman lets his political views cloud his judgement in this area and he probably should have stayed to analyzing the actual terrorist groups and their future instead of advising on policy.

I think Dr. Sageman could have looked at other examples of terrorism such as the Abu Sayyef Group, FARC, Shining Path, and others and seen that treating them as police actions usually end up with terrible results. Terrorism is a dirty business and terrorists seek to find the loopholes in our laws to exploit.

Now for the good:

He does know a lot and you will be sure to learn some things from this book. I found the opening chapter very interesting about the man who kidnapped Daniel Pearl. I found his discussion about the "homegrown terrorists" interesting as well and the chapters about the pre-teen girls who attempted to become terrorists.

The book is short so you aren't going to commit yourself to a lengthy tome.

Overall, this is worth a read but don't take it as gospel because its not. Some of the information is already dated, such as his views on Iraq. At the time of the writing, the Surge had probably just begun. Most likely his political bias played a part in the fact that he didn't think the Surge would be a success which it has been.

Rating: 3

ZWEIN

The book is easily read and understood. The author provides finding and assessments about Al-Qaeda based upon his large sample of terrorists. That he is a forensic psychiatrist enables him to provide important insights to the book. In addition, he aptly highlights the current structure of Al-Qaeda, which is resilient and decentralized. He makes useful recommendations regarding successful counter terrorism strategies. However,he partly appears to deal with social engineering when attempting to understand Al-Qaeda network, thereby deviating from the rules of objective analyze. Also, there are misinterpretations as to motivations of suicide terrorism, especially sexual frustration theory. Nevertheless, it merits reading.

Rating: 3

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