Radicalized

December 5, 2016
This useful analysis of global terrorism warns that jihadist groups fighting in Syria and Iraq are incubating a generation of trained terrorists from Western countries whose survivors will return to Europe, sowing the seeds of “the beginning of a new wave of terrorism that will occupy us for a generation.” It’s a dire forecast. In his account of the “fifth wave” of jihad-inspired terrorism, Neumann, a German journalist turned academic, estimates that as many as 4,120 European citizens have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, many for ISIS. While there is no simple, quick solution to the rise of the Islamic State, and “certainly no purely military one,” Neumann, basing his work on research by his International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, London, suggests that under “aggressive containment,” ISIS will collapse under its own contradictions. He traces the group’s rise in a concise, informative summary, and looks at both overall ideology and the personal narratives of individual fighters. Striking a readable balance between academic prose and anecdotal journalism, this book provides a start in “realistically evaluating a phenomenon that will define the new wave of terrorism.”