Michael A. Innes

The war on terror's emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. Denial of Sanctuary highlights the limits of conventional thinking on the subject, and suggests new approaches to understanding this complex and misunderstood feature of modern conflict. Critics of the war on terror have pointed to the futility of waging war on a tactic. Its emphasis on denying sanctuary and safe havens to terrorists, rooted primarily in traditional counterinsurgency theory and poorly conceptualized policy statements, has placed a premium on physical territory, from mountain caves and frontier hideouts to the bordered world of modern states. To fully understand sanctuaries is to uncover the problems and pitfalls of waging war on locations—exposing the secret lives of multiple hidden worlds, filled with extremists, criminals, soldiers, and spies, with the pious and the profane, with dangers that lie below the surface and in the margins. As this volume makes abundantly clear, such a murky underground is far more complex and varied than the conventional wisdom suggests. Terrorists have hidden in plain sight in modern cities, used advanced communications technology to build virtual refuges, crafted militant enclaves out of the disarray of failed states, flocked to distinctly unsafe insurgent battlespaces, and generally challenged the protective limits of law, citizenship, and state. Denial of Sanctuary brings together top experts in the field to expand the debate; to explore the roots, causes and consequences of the problem; and to clarify our understanding of sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice.

Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens

Denial of Sanctuary

America's wars after the 9/11 attacks were marked by a political obsession with terrorist 'sanctuaries' and 'safe havens'. From mountain redoubts in Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq, Washington's policy-makers maintained an unwavering focus on finding and destroying the refuges, bases and citadels of modern guerrilla movements, and holding their sponsors to account. This was a preoccupation embedded in nearly every official speech and document of the time, a corpus of material that offered a new logic for thinking about the world. As an exercise in political communication, it was a spectacular success. From 2001 to 2009, President George W. Bush and his closest advisors set terms of reference that cascaded down from the White House, through government and into the hearts and minds of Americans. 'Sanctuary' was the red thread running through all of it, permeating the decisions and discourses of the day. Where did this obsession come from? How did it become such an important feature of American political life? In this new political history, Michael A. Innes explores precedents, from Saigon to Baghdad, and traces how decision-makers and their advisors used ideas of sanctuary to redefine American foreign policy, national security, and enemies real and imagined.

A Political History of Sanctuary and War, 1959-2009

Streets Without Joy

Featuring fresh contributions from leading scholars, this new volume considers a varied range of post-war, post-Dayton and post-9/11 problems and issues, reminding readers that Dayton is not the only challenge to the safety, stability, and long-term viability of the post-war Bosnian state. Drawing together all the latest research, this book covers new ground in its discussion of post-9/11 security concerns, and in its leading-edge analyses of crime, corruption, and terror in a transitional state. It takes Bosnia-Herzegovina seriously as a subject of regional and international affairs, and is a critically important contribution to scholarship, showing how redefined global security concerns have heavily altered international and domestic security priorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with corresponding implications for post-war justice and identity politics, foreign intervention, and state-level institution building. This is essential reading for scholars of the Balkans, peacebuilding and reconstruction, European politics and of security studies in general.

New Perspectives

Bosnian Security After Dayton

Rachel Kerr

Examines not only the role of the state, but also that of the Internet, crime and border areas.

Michael A. Innes

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