Combating terrorism

Despite innumerable attempts to combat it, terrorism - as witnessed by its continuing high priority on the political agenda, and by countless newspaper headlines - continues to flourish. As this book makes clear, this is partly because the nature of terrorism is inadequately understood. Media reportage tends to discuss terrorist groups as if they were interchangeable, and yet groups differ sharply in their motivation, organization, methodology and desired goals. Governments need a clearer understanding of the specific organization they are attempting to combat if they are to respond appropriately and effectively. As this book demonstrates, this requires the intelligence units and other enforcement agencies to work closely together. Concentrating on Western democracies with limted recourse to draconian, repressive measures, the author draws lessons from, for example, the very different experiences of the Americans in the Middle East, and the British in Ireland. He develops a conceptual framework in order to assess the exact extent and nature of the threat posed by terrorism and of the measures appropriate to combating it.