Abstract
Terrorist groups are often said to be relatively conservative in their strategic and tactical style. Nevertheless, terrorist actors worldwide have shown to be increasingly innovative and creative. They learn from each other and from their own actions and innovate accordingly. This edited volume examines terrorism learning and innovation, with a focus on al-Qaeda-related plots in the UK, Denmark and Germany. It contains 13 chapters by academics, counterterrorism practitioners and journalists from the UK, the US, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Austria. The first part of the book examines terrorism innovation and learning in practice and theory, while the second part contains four case studies discussing developments and trends in al-Qaeda-related terrorism innovation and learning in the UK, Denmark and Germany in more detail. The authors focus on these three countries since ‘there has been a significant volume of planned, failed and executed terrorist plots’ in each of them (p. 2). The editors claim the book will be ‘of much interest to students of terrorism and counterterrorism, political violence, security studies and IR’ (book description). However, the volume is likely to also be useful to practitioners, including journalists and representatives of government, international institutions and non-governmental organisations.
Understanding Terrorism Innovation and Learning provides detailed insights into why and how terrorist organisations innovate and learn. The fact that the volume contains both theoretical chapters and chapters focusing on more practice-oriented case studies is particular useful. The book thus succeeds in avoiding one major problem with many publications on terrorism, which often tend to either be overly theoretical or look at particular cases without a comprehensive discussion of the relevant theoretical underpinnings. Another strength of the book is that while the main focus is on al-Qaeda-related plots in the UK, Denmark and Germany, many of the contributors to the volume also discuss other terrorist movements. However, there are also some areas in which the book could have been improved. First, it is not clear why the focus is on the UK, Denmark and Germany. There are other European countries which have been a main target of al-Qaeda-related groups and individuals, such as France. The analysis would have gained by systematically including these in the analysis. Second, one cannot help but notice that all contributors but one are white men based at Western institution. Indeed, gender is completely missing from the analysis, despite the increasing role of female members in the al-Qaeda movement.