[by Mark Safranski / “zen“]

Torn from the pages of Small Wars Journal…..

Global Radical Islamist Insurgency: al Qaeda and Islamic State Networks Focus Vol. II 2012-2014  edited by Dave Dilegge and Robert Bunker

New and looking to be very useful. Right up the alley for our own Charles Cameron and friends of ZP blog like Tim Furnish and Leah Farrell. Another one,  Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has written the foreword.

From SWJ:

….This anthology-the second of an initial two volume set-specifically covers Small Wars Journal writings on Al Qaeda and the Islamic State spanning the years 2012-2014. This set is meant to contribute to U.S. security debates focusing on radical Islamist global insurgency by collecting diverse SWJ essays into more easily accessible formats. Small Wars Journal has long been a leader in insurgency and counterinsurgency research and scholarship with an emphasis on practical applications and policy outcomes in furtherance of U.S. global and allied nation strategic interests. The site is able to lay claim to supporting the writings of many COIN (counterinsurgency) practitioners. This includes Dr. David Kilcullen whose early work dating from late 2004 “Countering Global Insurgency” helped to lay much of the conceptual basis focusing on this threat and as a result greatly helped to facilitate the writings that were later incorporated into these Al Qaeda and Islamic State focused anthologies. This volume is composed of sixty-six chapters divided into sections on a) radical Islamist OPFORs (opposition forces) and context and b) U.S.-allied policy and counter radical Islamist strategies.

The editors are well known to many ZP readers with Dave being SWJ Editor-in-Chief while Dr. Bunker is the Futurist in Residence for the Strategic Studies Institute. Somewhere along the line though, I somehow completely missed the roll-out for Volume I.  Guess my review copy was lost in the mail….cough I will be ordering both.

In all seriousness, I’m very glad to see the valuable work done by the editors and contributors at SWJ compiled into book form. Small Wars Journal is literally a national resource of military thinking, theory and open debate that operates on a shoestring and love of country ( consider making a tax deductible donation here).