Acknowledgement in the "Handbook of Terrorism in the Middle East"

Protective Intelligence Network and its Director Angelo Bani are extremely grateful to Prof. Rohan Gunaratna for his kind mention in his latest book "Handbook of Terrorism in the Middle East", published by World Scientific in 2022.

Mention includes Protective Intelligence Director, Angelo Bani, among other senior counter terrorism practitioner and renown academics, and is expressed for the "support for terrorism and counter-terrorism research":

• General Tito Karnavian, former Chief of the Indonesian Police, now Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia;
• Arie W. Kruglanski, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at University of Maryland, College Park, USA;
• John Parachini, Senior International and Defense Researcher, former Director of RAND National Defense Research Institute's Intelligence Policy Center, USA;
• Brigadier General Russel Howard, US veteran Special Forces officer, Director of the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program, USA;
• Danny Chan, Director, Regional Security Officer Asia Pacific for Mastercard International Inc. in Singapore, member of the Advisory Council of the Harvard Business Review;
• Dr. La Toya Waha, Political Scientist, analyst and policy advisor for the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Berlin, Germany, former Deputy Director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s Regional Programme Political Dialogue Asia;
• Mathew Bukit, Senior Analyst, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore;
• Dr. Jolene Jerard, Executive Director of Centinel, and Adjunct Senior Fellow S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
• Dr. Katalin Petho-Kiss, Senior Analyst, Counter Terrorism Information Centre, Budapest, Hungary.

Please find here following a presentation of the book:

In the Middle East, the world's deadliest organizations, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have firmly established their presence in the Levant and the Gulf. In parallel, state- sponsored Shia threat networks, groups and cells, notably the Lebanese Hezbollah and Houthis operate throughout the Middle East and beyond. Exploiting the conflict zones and their cascading ideologies, both the Sunni and Shia threat entities compete to advance their own interests.

Their parent and affiliate entities recruit and radicalise both territorial and diaspora Muslims to fight each other. Unless governments work together to mitigate the threat at the core and the edge, the Middle East and its peripheral territories in Asia and Africa will suffer from terrorism and political violence in the foreseeable future.

The response to extremism and its vicious by-product terrorism requires both preventive intelligence-led and pre-emptive community-based security approaches. While developing tactical counter-terrorism capabilities, governments should build strategic capabilities to erode their support bases.

The new frontiers in counter-terrorism and extremism, community engagement and rehabilitation, should be integrated into government planning. Unless governments take the lead and work with community leaders, societies will be threatened by the existing and emerging wave of ideologically-motivated violence. Government and community leaders should develop whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approaches to dismantle transnational threats. To contain, isolate and eliminate the evolving threat, the Middle Eastern states should shift from security cooperation to collaboration and partnership.

Rohan Gunaratna is a Sri Lankan born political analyst specializing in international terrorism.

He is the Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies. Professor Gunaratna has over 30 years of academic, policy, and operational experience in national and international security. He is Honorary Professor at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) and is a Senior Advisor to its Faculty of Defence and Strategic Studies.

With his expertise, he contributed to several investigations related to al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, and the Islamic State.