Draft27-12

Reviewing
Books for professionals
prize books on threats:
Background
The Airey Neave Memorial
Book Prize 2017 with first
prize of £5000 is sponsored
by Pool Reinsurance
Company. Judges include
the former senior policeman
Sir David Venness; former
director-general of GCHQ
Sir David Omand; Prof
Michael Clarke; and
Brigadier Ed Butler, Head
of Risk Analysis at Pool
Re who was among the
speakers at the Association
of Security Consultants’
conference in October.
Surviving Kidnappers:
by Olaf Ofstad, published
2017 by Matador,
paperback, 180 pages,
ISBN 9781788032797. Visit
www.kidnappingsurvival.
com. This and other books
are also on the magazine
website, under ‘reviews’.
60
UNHAPPY
‘The aftermath of a
cyber-attack, without
the appropriate training
in managing the issue,
can result in
reputational damage,
litigation and blunt
competitive edge.’
At audit firm KPMG,
Paul Taylor, UK head of
Cyber Security.
Impossible
job to rank
terror works
For a change, a review of a set of
books; the four short-listed for the
Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize
2017.
As in any set of finalists, for
books or TV’s The Great
British Bake-Off, and in the
ranking of anything on the same
subject, judges have an impossible
job. Leaving them aside - each
judge has their own background and
idea of what makes one book more
deserving of winning than the others
- how can you say the story of an
MI5 agent risking his life to protect
society is ‘better’ than a contemporary
historian’s work that can never be as
vivid, but may provide perspective
that the first-person memoir cannot?
The four are, in alphabetical order:
Al-Qaeda’s Revenge: The 2004
Madrid Train Bombings by Fernando
Reinares with foreword by Bruce
Riedel (Columbia University Press).
Reinares as the title suggests goes
over the 2004 Madrid plot, its history
and components. A Spanish academic,
he had access to official documents
and interviewed officials. He stresses
the complexity of Islamic State and
AQ in Europe and the long, yearslong,
planning for the attack which
killed 191 and injured 1800. The
al-Qaeda conspiracy in Spain had
an international element, drawing
on the like-minded in Morocco,
Egypt, Pakistan and Italy. As in
other such networks, at least some
of the members were criminals or
‘delinquents’ that turned to terrorism.
As in the United States after 9-11
and in Britain after the July 2005
bombings, Madrid’s had political
fall-out.
Anatomy of Terror: From the Death
of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic
State by Ali Soufan (WW Norton
&Co).
Soufan, a former FBI special agent,
DECEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
is also the author of The Black
Banners: The Inside Story of 9-11 and
the War Against al-Qaeda (2011).
Here he takes the story further. The
shooting of Osama bin Laden did
not deal a blow to his movement;
nor did the Arab Spring of uprisings
against corrupt Middle Eastern
regimes. Instead we have seen the
rise of Islamic State, as an off-shoot
of AQ. It might sound trite but it’s
also of political and indeed military
importance that Soufan shows jihadi
figures in human terms, including bin
Laden’s son Hamza. It’s not enough
to identify who the terrorists are, so as
to kill them; by describing what sort
of people they are, where they come
from, and how they work and relate
to each other, and what motivates
them, the rest of the world can better
tackle them. For as the years mount
since 9-11 - and as Soufan’s earlier
book showed, bin Laden’s work began
well before - it becomes ever plainer
that bin Laden’s terrorism cannot be
snuffed out by force alone, as if it is a
body (to return to Soufan’s ‘Anatomy’
of the title) that can be physically
throttled.
Hacking ISIS: How to Destroy the
Cyber Jihad by Malcolm Nance and
Christopher Sampson (Skyhorse
Publishing).
Soufan provides a foreword. To carry
on that idea, ISIS having gained
territory and proclaimed an ‘Islamic
State’ drew ‘foreign fighters’ and
gained publicity and prestige; and
the fighting to eradicate its physical
territory has been arduous. Even
when the ‘State’ is no more, it still
recruits by spreading its message
online, which indeed was one way
the jihadists won over fighters and
raised the necessary money to seize
ground in the first place. Talking of
cyber, Nance is also the author of the
instant history book The Plot to Hack
America : How Putin’s Cyberspies
and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016
Election.
Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus (Penguin
Books).
The first-person account of an MI5
operative. Tom (not his real name)
became a target for an attempted
beheading. He was part of an
operation that stopped a planned
bombing of a shopping centre in
Manchester over an Easter weekend.
Besides the vivid insight into what
work goes on to keep the UK and
indeed other countries safe from
terrorism, it’s also striking the effect
that such work has on those that do
it. Tom Marcus, a former soldier,
and son of a soldier, not only had the
memories to get over, but the blanks
in his CV to explain if he were to
take up normal civilian work. As he
told the Victoria Derbyshire show on
BBC TV last year: “It’s been hugely
difficult to get a job.” With books like
these, we cannot plead ignorance. p
KIDNAP SURVIVAL
Bankers; aid workers; journalists;
oil refinery engineers; politicians;
tourists; anyone can be kidnapped, in
many countries. Some cities, as Olaf
Ofstad writes - he names Mexico City,
Johannesburg and Kabul ‘are simply
kidnapping hubs’. He has, in his book
Surviving Kidnappers, offered a guide
to what anyone in a region that is at
risk of kidnap can do, to reduce the
risk of being kidnapped, and being
better equipped to manage physically
and mentally if they are, for whatever
reason (profit and extortion, politics,
revenge). The author goes into
some impressive detail about what
to do if a kidnapper is psychotic, or
violent, and draws heavily on social
psychology. For example, if as a
kidnap victim you are mistreated,
‘remember that you must not appear
to be a victim’; crying or otherwise
showing suffering will make the
kidnapper dislike you more; so bite
your lip and be ‘as tough as you can’.
Somehow, when kidnapped you have
to be accommodating enough that the
kidnapper (whether guard or leader)
feels in control, but you have also
to show that you are not afraid, and
avoid giving reasons for kidnappers
to turn angry or violent (although they
could at any time), by being ‘calm,
confident and non-confrontational’.
Little in our daily lives, as Ofstad
says, prepares us for the challenges
of captivity. But mental preparedness
makes a big difference: “If the worst
happens and you are assaulted and / or
kidnapped, you should be able to steel
yourself, use your mind and make
intelligent decisions.” p
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
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