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What makes people fight and risk their lives for a country other than their own? Why did diverse individuals such as the poet Lord Byron, the writer George Orwell, the Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara, and the young Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden all turn to foreign military service? From Byron to bin Laden makes a historian's examines the phenomenon of war volunteers who have travelled abroad to fight on the basis of a personal decision, without being sent by their governments and not strictly for the sake of material gain. Although fighting for very different causes, these volunteers shared a number of commonalities; they tended to superimpose their beliefs and perceptions on the wars they joined, while a personal search for meaning invariably underlined their actions. Through a comprehensive study of the history of foreign volunteering from the wars of the French Revolution to the present, the book opens up a broad range of questions that relate to individual motivations, ideology, gender, state-citizen relations, international law, military significance, radicalization and the memory of war.--
What makes people fight for countries other than their own? Nir Arielli offers a wide-ranging history of foreign-war volunteers, from the French Revolution to Syria. Challenging notions of foreign fighters as a security problem, Arielli explores motivations, ideology, gender, international law, military significance, and the memory of war.
The Holy Warrior: Osama Bin Laden and His Jihadi Journey in the Soviet-Afghan War by Reagan Fancher Pdf
Fought between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet-Afghan War provided vital combat experience for Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants in al-Qaeda, allowing them to hone their newly acquired skills in guerrilla warfare to later support Islamist insurgencies worldwide. Yet the ruthless al-Qaeda chief’s success depended on the Soviet leadership’s reluctant prolonging of its military occupation out of fear of leaving Afghanistan in hostile hands. As relative latecomers to the ferocious Afghan frontlines, the inexperienced Arab fighters benefitted militarily from the combat training unwittingly provided by their Soviet foes. After skillfully obtaining this command and battle experience by working within the wartime atmosphere, bin Laden channeled al-Qaeda’s efforts in a global jihadi campaign targeting a second superpower and its allies. While allegations of U.S. support for the Arab jihadis have contributed to a popular image of bin Laden and al-Qaeda as C.I.A. creations, the historical facts appear to demonstrate that the combat opportunities provided by the Soviet occupation forces played a far larger role in transforming them into seasoned guerrilla fighters. In this second edition, Reagan Fancher updates and expands his monograph in an Afterword elaborating on the contemporary U.S.-U.K. perceptions of bin Laden's wartime actions and their results as he applied his battle-honed guerrilla tactics, judo skills, and recruitment capabilities in tactically helping Yemen's anti-communist Salafi guerrillas to emerge victoriously in their country's 1994 Civil War before concluding with an assessment of the founding al-Qaeda leader's impact on history. It offers an opportunity for today's decision-makers to learn from history and avoid creating new generations of Osama bin Ladens.
Between the two world wars, thousands of European antifascists were pushed to act by the political circumstances of the time. In that context, the Spanish Civil War and the armed resistances during the Second World War involved particularly large numbers of transnational fighters. The need to fight fascism wherever it presented itself was undoubtedly the main motivation behind these fighters’ decision to mobilise. Despite all this, however, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that some of these volunteers felt they were the last exponents of a tradition of armed volunteering which, in their case, originated in the nineteenth century. The capacity of war volunteering to endure and persist over time has rarely been investigated in historiography. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the radical and transnational tradition of war volunteering connected to Giuseppe Garibaldi’s legacy in Southern Europe between the unification of Italy (1861) and the end of the Second World War (1945). This book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the long-term, interconnected, and radical dimensions of the so called Garibaldinism.
Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies by Steven O’Connor,Guillaume Piketty Pdf
This book showcases new historical research on foreign soldiers, including an overview of the early modern period and numerous case studies which cover the last 175 years and stretch over 5 continents. The last two decades have seen the term ‘foreign fighter’ enter our everyday vocabulary. The insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian Civil War and the rise and fall of the Islamic State group have sparked public interest in the phenomenon of people choosing to leave their own country and fight in a foreign conflict. Foreign fighters, their origins, motives, activities and potential danger to their home countries have become subjects of debate, attracting contributions from politicians, military personnel, the media, political scientists, legal scholars but to a much lesser extent from historians. The ten essayss in this volume showcase new historical research on foreign military labour. The aim of the volume is to better understand the experiences and challenges faced by both the foreigners and the host country, particularly its armed forces, and to highlight the significance of these trends to the contemporary debate on foreign fighters. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal European Review of History.
Byron exists in two incompatible dimensions: as fully-documented history, and as romantic myth. Often the myth predominates, describing him as a passionate lover, a staunch friend, a great romantic poet, a champion of the working man, a loyal author to his publisher, and a fighter for democracy who sacrificed his life for the Freedom of Greece. This book attempts to prove that the verifiable truth often proves him to be the opposite. Using letters from Byron’s family, friends, and associates which have never been transcribed, collected and sequenced before, Peter Cochran argues that the poet was an unscrupulous sponger on his relatives and friends, that he harboured a horror at the idea of empowering the working man, had no time for democracy, and despised his publisher. His contempt for the Greeks is clear from everything he writes about them, and his motives for going to Greece at the end of his life (which Cochran analyses in more depth than they have ever been analysed before), were a disturbing mixture of self-indulgent fantasy and death-wish. Using large amounts of manuscript evidence, Cochran further argues that almost all editions of Byron’s writing do his style very poor service, constituting not contributions to knowledge of him, but additions to the obfuscating myth.
Untold Stories of the Spanish Civil War by Raanan Rein,Susanne Zepp-Zwirner Pdf
This is the first scholarly volume to offer an insight into the less known stories of women, children, and international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Special attention is given to volunteers of different historical experiences, especially Jews, and voices from less researched countries in the context of the Spanish war, such as Palestine and Turkey. Of an interdisciplinary nature, this volume brings together historians and literary scholars from different countries. Their research is based on newly found primary sources in both national and private archives, as well as on post-essentialist methodological insights for women’s history, Jewish history, and studies on belonging. By bringing together a group of emerging and senior scholars from different countries, we highlight the polyphony of voices of diverse individuals drawn into the Spanish Civil War. Contributors to this volume have explored new or little researched primary sources found in archives and documentary centers, including papers held by relatives of the people we study. The volume is aimed at both scholarly and non-scholarly public, including any readers interested in the Spanish Civil War, twentieth-century European history, Jewish studies, women’s history, or anti-Fascism. The volume can be used in both undergraduate college courses and in postgraduate university seminars.
In Notes from 39,000 Feet Dale Rominger has put together a collection of poignant observations from his experiences around the world. With extraordinary clarity, he describes both everyday moments and historical events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first elections in South Africa. In describing personal encounters in places as far afield as Reykjavik and Luanda and reflecting on social and political events from Harare to Seoul, Rominger presents an array of details which most of us would miss and interprets them in such a way that they haunt us long after we finish reading. Perhaps this is the true value of his work; it is not just a fascinating read, it challenges us to question. In the first section of the book, Making Meaning, the Notes are presented in chronological order, beginning in Reykjavik in 1986, passing through places such as Harare, Varanasi, Gaza City, Seoul, Istanbul, Prague, San Salvador and Kingston, and ending in London in 2010. Some Notes are transcriptions of presentations and lectures given at international gatherings and events. Some are journalistic reflections and some sermon-like meditations. Some are directly associated with church work and others are not. Others are reflections on books he came across on his travels. While there is no central theme, there is a background hum that is hard to miss, a hum that hints at ethical, philosophical, theological points of view that make up a system of meaning thoughts, feelings, beliefs, observations, understandings, all of which combine to reveal a way of seeing the world and how we choose to live within it. The last section of the book, Making Believe, is comprised of two fictitious short stories. The first, The Poetry of Being Human, was written after Romingers return from Central America. The second, Martha Goes to Paris, is a response to George W. Bushs rightwing Christian fundamentalist America. While the first places an intense love story within the social and political upheaval, and often tragedy, of Central America in the 1980s, the second is, in Romingers words, An absurd story for an absurd time. At its heart Notes is both an observation of the world we live in and a personal journey. Rominger does not pull his punches and behind almost every word there is a shadow of anger at the injustices he has witnessed in his travels. But the book is also a personal account of the effect such a life can have on a person. He ends the chapter Swanning Around the World or Passing Through the International Non-Places of Planet Earth with these words: Either none of us is special or we are all special. But the point is, the universe, global economics, global warming, international injustice, contemporary slave trade, sex trafficking, disease, poverty, HIV/AIDS, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts and warlords don't give a damn about us. If God does, he/she/it keeps it a good secret. [I have a] friend in Washington D.C. who...travelled for the church more than I ever have and has been around the world a couple more times than I have. I asked him once if he were happy. He said that he wasnt. That he'd seen too much and knew too much. And like me, he couldnt forget a damn thing. And yet this chapter, as well as many others, is also filled with the laughter and absurdity of life. A quick glance as the bibliography at the end of the book gives the reader some sense of its mood and tone. Rominger cites authors from Woody Allen to Don DeLillo, Chung Hyun Kyung to Paul Ricoeur, Henri Nouwen to Tony Judt. Notes from 39,000 Feet is a tribute to the worlds people in their profound striving for justice and the joy they embrace, whatever the circumstances. It is a testament to the human spirit.
New York Times bestselling author Judge Andrew P. Napolitano exposes the alarming history of presidential power grabs performed in the name of national security. Judge, scholar, bestselling author, and Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew P. Napolitano is back with a shocking chronicle of America’s descent from a free society to a frightening surveillance state. In Suicide Pact, Napolitano details a long, sordid history of governmental—and especially presidential—encroachments on liberty, enacted in the name of protecting America but which serve insead to undermine national security and erode the nation’s founding freedoms. Appealing to all politically aware Americans but especially to highly engaged conservatives and libertarians (including his 576,000 Facebook fans and 240,000 Twitter followers), Napolitano’s sobering-yet-patriotic perspective unmasks rampant political doubletalk and Washington power plays by taking a clear, legally grounded look at how we got here. Blending fascinating history with fresh reporting and analysis on contemporary issues such as drone warfare and executions, NSA surveillance, and secret federal courts, Suicide Pact casts a vision beyond hollow rhetoric to common-sense solutions for returning sanity to our shores.
Osama bin Laden has haunted the popular psyche and stymied the world's mightiest military for the last five years. Despite President Bush's declaration that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," despite being one of the world's most notorious men, and despite the barrage of coverage surrounding him, Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and shrouded in a fog of anecdote and myth, rumor and fact. Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling book Holy War, Inc., offers an astounding, unparalleled portrait of bin Laden, comprised of Bergen's own interviews with more than fifty people who have known bin Laden personally, from his brother-in-law to his high school English teacher to former members of al Qaeda. The resulting collage of voices and memories affords an unprecedented glimpse into the life and the true nature of the man directly responsible for the largest terror attack in history. No journalist knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before bin Laden became a household name, Bergen met with him, and has since followed his activities closely. After an insightful introduction -- in which Bergen recounts how, at their meeting, bin Laden "presented himself as a soft-spoken cleric, rather than as the firebreathing leader of a global terrorist organization" -- Bergen stands aside to make way for the voices of dozens of people with firsthand, sometimes intimate experience with the al Qaeda leader. Current conventional wisdom seems to be that bin Laden and his organization have faded in importance, but Bergen argues urgently that that perspective is far from accurate -- indeed, each day that bin Laden remains free adds to al Qaeda's public relations triumph, for his legend only grows among his supporters. More concretely, he continues to provide broad strategic guidance for jihadists -- his many statements released on video or audio tape since 9/11, for instance, have exerted direct influence on terrorists' actions. In 2003 the world suffered more significant terror attacks than had occurred in a single year during the previous two decades -- and in 2004, the number of attacks doubled over 2003. In 2004, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Iraq's most ferocious insurgent leader, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden, a sign of the continued importance of al Qaeda's leader. How did Osama bin Laden transform himself from a shy, polite, middle-of-his-class schoolboy to commander of the world's most formidable terrorist organization? Where was bin Laden on 9/11, and what was his reaction to it? How did he escape from Tora Bora? Is al Qaeda a top-down organization or a loose ideological alliance? What is it about this man that draws hundreds of thousands of followers, and makes men willing to fly airplanes into buildings at his command? This definitive and engaging portrait gives the American public its first true, enduring insight into a man who has declared us his greatest enemy.
Examines the life and leadership skills of Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist network, al-Qaeda, is believed to be responsible for terrorist attacks on people and buildings around the world.
USA Today Best-Selling Author Terrorism, Corruption, Torture, and That's Just for Starters . . . When Ali Hussein, suspected terrorist and alleged banker for Al Qaeda, is finally transported from Guantanamo Bay to the US mainland to stand trial, many are stunned when Byron Carlos Johnson, a pre-eminent lawyer and son of a high-profile diplomat, volunteers to represent him. On principle, Johnson thought he was merely defending a man unjustly captured through rendition and water-boarded illegally. But Johnson soon learns that there is much more at stake than one man's civil rights. Hussein's intimate knowledge of key financial transactions could lead to the capture of or the unabated funding of the world's most dangerous terror cells. This makes Hussein the target of corrupt US intelligence forces on one side, and ruthless international terrorists on the other—and puts Byron Carlos Johnson squarely in the crosshairs of both. Perfect for fans of Nelson de Mille While Extraordinary Rendition is a standalone novel, here is the publication order of Paul Batista's legal thrillers: Death's Witness Extraordinary Rendition The Borzoi Killings (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #1) Manhattan Lockdown The Warriors (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #2) Accusation (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #3) —coming in March 2022
Deconstructing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Congressional Inquiry, he exposes disturbing liaisons between American, British, and European intelligence services and al-Qaeda operatives in the Balkans, Caucasus, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific - liaisons linked not only to 9/11, but also to prior terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 US embassy bombings. Against this background, Ahmed accomplishes the most detailed and wide-ranging study to date of the powerful vested interests and intrigues responsible for the collapse of US national security in the years and months leading up to 9/11. Government documents, whistleblower testimony, and the findings of official inquiries are scrutinized to trace the innermost workings of the intelligence community, revealing precisely which government policies and operations facilitated the 9/11 intelligence failure, and pinpointing the specific agencies, individuals, and decisions that weakened the US air defense system. Finally, Ahmed unlocks the underlying geostrategy of the War on Terror - the culmination of a decades-long plan to secure and expand an increasingly unstable system.
The first English translation of the complete statements by Osama bin Laden, has been placed in its historical and theological context by renowned Arabist, Bruce Lawrence.
The Killing of Osama Bin Laden by Seymour M Hersh Pdf
Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.