Denial of Sanctuary - (Praeger Security International) by Michael a Innes (Hardcover)

About the Book

The war on terror's emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. Denial of Sanctuary highlights the limits of conventional thinking on the subject, and suggests new approaches to understanding this complex and misunderstood feature of modern conflict.

Critics of the war on terror have pointed to the futility of waging war on a tactic. Its emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists, rooted primarily in traditional counterinsurgency theory and poorly conceptualized policy statements, has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. To fully understand sanctuaries is to uncover the problems and pitfalls of waging war on locations--exposing the secret lives of multiple hidden worlds, filled with extremists, criminals, soldiers, and spies, with the pious and the profane, with dangers that lie below the surface and in the margins. As this volume makes abundantly clear, such a murky underground is far more complex and varied than the conventional wisdom suggests.

Terrorists have hidden in plain sight in modern cities, used advanced communications technology to build virtual refuges, crafted militant enclaves out of the disarray of failed states, flocked to distinctly unsafe insurgent battlespaces, and generally challenged the protective limits of law, citizenship, and state. Denial of Sanctuary brings together top experts in the field to expand the debate; to explore the roots, causes and consequences of the problem; and to clarify our understanding of sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice.

Book Synopsis

The war on terror's emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. Denial of Sanctuary highlights the limits of conventional thinking on the subject, and suggests new approaches to understanding this complex and misunderstood feature of modern conflict.

Critics of the war on terror have pointed to the futility of waging war on a tactic. Its emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists, rooted primarily in traditional counterinsurgency theory and poorly conceptualized policy statements, has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. To fully understand sanctuaries is to uncover the problems and pitfalls of waging war on locations--exposing the secret lives of multiple hidden worlds, filled with extremists, criminals, soldiers, and spies, with the pious and the profane, with dangers that lie below the surface and in the margins. As this volume makes abundantly clear, such a murky underground is far more complex and varied than the conventional wisdom suggests.

Terrorists have hidden in plain sight in modern cities, used advanced communications technology to build virtual refuges, crafted militant enclaves out of the disarray of failed states, flocked to distinctly unsafe insurgent battlespaces, and generally challenged the protective limits of law, citizenship, and state. Denial of Sanctuary brings together top experts in the field to expand the debate; to explore the roots, causes and consequences of the problem; and to clarify our understanding of sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice.

Review Quotes

"The author has gathered several of the world's top experts to explore the root causes and consequences associated with the use of sanctuaries by terrorists....essential reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of the role that sanctuaries and safe havens play in the strategy of the international terrorist." --Parameters

"[D]emonstrates the shortcomings of proposals to attack terrorism at its source when there are so many ways of hiding: in the ungovernable interiors of failed states, in the obscurity of urban London, on the Internet." --Foreign Affairs

"Innes presents 11 chapters that challenge conventional understandings of denying terrorists safe havens in the post-September 11th environment that are typically framed in strictly geographical terms. The collection is organized in such a manner as to address the following specific problem-sets of denying terrorists sanctuary: the political geography of sanctuary, the political discourse that has structured our understanding of it, al Qaeda and the state, terrorist exploitation of state failure, border security and urban warfare, transnational crime and terrorist finance, national security law, information warfare and virtual havens, diaspora issues, and problems of state-building and reconstruction." --Reference & Research Book News

About the Author

Michael A. Innes is Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, and a Research and Practice Associate of the Institute for National Security and Counter-Terrorism, College of Law/Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. His research and writing focuses on intermediacy in armed conflict, and touches on broader theories and histories of political violence, sanctuary, surrogacy, and political and legal exceptionalism. His publications include an edited monograph, Bosnian Security after Dayton: New Perspectives (2006), as well as articles, essays, and reviews in such journals as Civil Wars, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, SAIS Review, and the Journal of Conflict Studies.