Description
Napoleoni, a journalist and consultant who has worked in the commodities markets and in creating new strategies for combating the financing of terror networks, describes the nature and goals of the Islamic State and its new nation-building model, which uses modern technology to recruit and fundraise. She explains how the success of the Islamic State involves factors like a globalized multipolar world, a pragmatic attempt at nation-building, an understanding of the psychology of Middle Eastern and Muslim emigrants, and the West's response to 9/11, as well as how the world needs a new approach to stopping it. She discusses how the rise of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, followed by the succession by al Baghdadi as leader, led to the rise of the Islamic State, and describes shell states that emerged out of proxy wars and the privatization of terrorism, the political image the Islamic State tries to present through technology and social media, the type of war it is waging, the nature of radical Salafism, the motivations for sectarian civil war the Islamic State has initiated to gain control of the insurgency, and the contribution of the breakdown of the nation state in Syria and Iraq. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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An updated edition of The Islamist Phoenix is now available as ISIS: The Terror Nation (978-1-60980-725-2)From its birth in the late 1990s as the jihadist dream of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Islamic State (known by a variety of names, including ISIS, ISIL, and al Qaeda in Iraq) has grown into a massive enterprise, redrawing national borders across the Middle East and subjecting an area larger than the United Kingdom to its own vicious brand of Sharia law. In The Islamist Phoenix, world-renowned terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni takes us beyond the headlines, demonstrating that while Western media portrays the Islamic State as little more than a gang of thugs on a winning streak, the organization is proposing a new model for nation building. Waging a traditional war of conquest to carve out the 21st-century version of the original Caliphate, IS uses modern technology to recruit and fundraise while engaging the local population in the day-to-day running of the new state. Rising from the ashes of failing jihadist enterprises, the Islamic State has shown a deep understanding of Middle Eastern politics, fully exploiting proxy war and shell-state tactics. This is not another terrorist network but a formidable enemy in tune with the new modernity of the current world disorder. As Napoleoni writes, “Ignoring these facts is more than misleading and superficial, it is dangerous. ‘Know your enemy’ remains the most important adage in the fight against terrorism.”
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