What is the role of founding leaders in shaping terrorist organizations? What follows the loss of this formative leader? These questions are especially important to religious terrorist groups, in which leaders are particularly revered. Tricia L. Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm provide a groundbreaking analysis of how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. They demonstrate that founders create the base from which their successors operate. Founders establish and explain the group's mission, and they determine and justify how it seeks to achieve its objectives. Bacon and Grimm argue that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group's future course. They examine how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change. Bacon and Grimm emphasize that the instability surrounding succession can place a group at its most vulnerable--the precise time to explore options to weaken or defeat it. Bacon and Grimm highlight similarities between Islamic terrorist groups abroad and Christian white nationalist groups such as the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Drawing on extensive field research in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan, Terror in Transition features detailed analysis of groups such as al-Shabaab, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaeda in Iraq / the Islamic State in Iraq, as well as the KKK. Offering a rigorous theoretical perspective on terrorist leadership transition, this policy-relevant book provides actionable recommendations for counterterrorism practitioners.

The U.S. military forces currently face a nontraditional threat from insurgents and terrorists who primarily employ improvised explosive devices, and have shown a cycle of adaptation of less than 12 months to responses by U.S. forces to counter these attacks. This constantly evolving threat requires U.S. military forces to adapt and respond more rapidly with modified tactics, technologies, and/or equipment. In response to this need for new technologies, the Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO) was established in 2006 to develop technologies that can mature in 6 to 18 months for purposes of counterterrorism. Although RRTO appears to be successfully fulfilling its mission, the agency seeks to understand and address barriers to and opportunities for meeting future counterterrorism needs-including the need to accelerate the transition of technologies for counterterrorism with an eye to countering emerging and anticipated threats. This book reviews RRTO approaches and provides a set of recommendations for potential improvements to help meet these needs for rapid technology development.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between globalization and modern terrorism phenomena that forced the US foreign policy of counterterrorism to shift towards the US-led coalition of the "global war on terror"strategy. The research presumed that recent globalized-technologies had facilitated the emergence of radical transnational non-state actors in the international arena who increased the level of global terror and violence and compelled the change of international security and foreign policies due to enormous global security threats it poses. However, the Bush Administration announced the new strategical plan after the September 11th attacks-that caused significant global economic, political, and social impacts-to defeat illegitimate transnational groups and organizations such asthe Al-Qaeda who exploited globalization`s technological instruments of communication, transportation, and information to perpetrate terrorist attacks, spread violence, and influence followers across the world. Therefore, the qualitative research methods have identified and examined the hypothesis` variables to confirm the direct relationship between the phenomenon and its subsequent implications on adjusting the US foreign policy of counterterrorism to adopt an unprecedented strategical plan that led to the longterm and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Government responses to terrorism can conflict with the protection of human rights and the rule of law. By comprehensively looking at all aspects of counter-terrorism measures from a comparative perspective, this book identifies best practices and makes clear recommendations for the future.

Annotation This work answers questions concerning the length of time that terrorist campaigns last and when targeting leadership finishes a group. It examines a wide range of historical examples to identify the ways in which almost all terrorist groups die out.

Extremist groups rely upon women to gain strategic advantage, recruiting them as facilitators and martyrs while also benefiting from their subjugation. Yet U.S. policymakers overlook the roles that women play in violent extremism--including as perpetrators, mitigators, and victims--and rarely enlist their participation in efforts to combat radicalization. This omission puts the United States at a disadvantage in its efforts to prevent terrorism globally and within its borders. Women fuel extremists' continued influence by advancing their ideology online and by indoctrinating their families. New technology allows for more sophisticated outreach, directly targeting messages to radicalize and recruit women. It also provides a platform on which female extremists thrive by expanding their recruitment reach and taking on greater operational roles in the virtual sphere. The failure of counterterrorist efforts to understand the ways in which women radicalize, support, and perpetrate violence cedes the benefit of their involvement to extremist groups. Omitting women from terrorism prevention efforts also forfeits their potential contributions as mitigators of extremism. Women are well positioned to detect early signs of radicalization, because fundamentalists often target women's rights first. As security officials, women provide insights and information that can be mission critical in keeping the peace. And because of their distinctive access and influence, women are crucial antiterrorism messengers in schools, religious institutions, social environments, and local government. Overlooking the contributions women can make to prevent extremism renders the United States less secure. Many extremist groups promote an ideology that classifies women as second-class citizens and offers strategic and financial benefits through women's subjugation. Boko Haram, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, and other groups use sexual violence to terrorize populations into compliance, displace civilians from strategic areas, enforce unit cohesion among fighters, and even generate revenue through trafficking. Suppressing women's rights also allows extremists to control reproduction and harness female labor. U.S. government policy and programs continue to underestimate the important roles women can play as perpetrators, mitigators, or targets of violent extremism. The Donald J. Trump administration should take steps to help the United States and its allies respond effectively to the security threat posed by violent extremism and advance U.S. peace and stability.