The Theorist of Leaderless Jihad
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Al-Suri is (was?)a Syrian opponent of the Assad regime. Going into exile he began a journey that saw him with the Afghan-Arabs in Peshawar in the 1980s, in Madrid and London in the 1990s back to Afghanistan in the years before 2001. Reported to have been arrested in Pakistan in 2005 with $5m bounty on his head. Although some have accused him of being behind the Madrid bombings his significance is primarily as a writer and theorist. In voluminous writings and lectures he unsparingly analysed the failures of jihadi groups and sought to develop strategies to overcome these failings.
Lia's book traces Al-Suri's journey and ideas based on his own writings, court documents and media reports. The book includes a 150 page extract from Al Suri's magnum opus The Global Islamic Resistance Call.
In the last couple of years Al Suri has attracted a lot of attention in the US counterterrorism/security/strategy community because his ideas about successful strategy for jihadis fit with the kind of model that Marc Sageman writes about in Leaderless Jihad - that is small groups operating autonomously. The extent to which the Al Suri model is actually being consciously applied to open to question.
One of the most interesting things about this book is that it gives a picture of the jihadi movement in the 1990s that isn't focused on Bin Laden. To an extent the story of the exiles is reminiscent of communist groups before the Russian Revolution with their personal feuds, factional differences and conflicting strategies. Interestingly Al Suri was one of those who was against 9/11 because he felt that Afghanistan was a good approximation of an Islamic state that would be threatened by the American response
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Advance praise
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`Lia's masterfully-researched work remains the only known contribution to the terrorism studies field that parses the history and thought of al-Suri, a formidable ideologue by virtue of his pragmatism, rational approach to history and realistic, "egalitarian" view of the future of jihad (al-Suri is now apparently in US custody). Far beyond its utility as an historical analysis, Lia's work is extraodinarily timely as he extracts the finer points of al-Suri's now widely-circulated theories that may have informed the conduct of the London and Madrid attacks.'
- Jeffrey B. Cozzens, research associate at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews and contributing expert for Counterterrorism Blog
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