05 May 2016
Cities under Siege: Mass Casualty Urban Terrorism Assaults
Executive Summary
Cities around the world have come under siege from a new kind of terrorism: assault by well-trained and motivated “terrorist commandos” whose primary goal is to cause as much death among civilians as possible. Such has been the case in a number of key attacks in recent years: Mumbai (2008), Nairobi (2013), and Paris (November 2015). The trio selected above for study here represent the deadliest and most extensively analysed incidents of this new type of urban terrorism. This study will address the factors behind these attacks: reasons, methods and characteristics of the attacks, the government responses, and consequences or fallout. It will also include a brief assessment of whether Singapore can be a target of a major assault by “terrorist commandos.”
About the Author
Ahmed Salah Hashim is Associate Professor of Strategic Studies in the Military Studies Programme at RSIS, Nanyang Technological University. He specialises in Insurgency and Counterinsurgency and Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies. He worked for the United States Department of Defense for twenty years before taking up his career as an academic focusing on Strategic Studies, the Middle East, and military history. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written extensively on Strategic and Security issues. His latest publication, which is forthcoming in July is The Caliphate at War: The Ideological, Military and Organizational Innovations of Islamic State, London: Hurst and Company, 2016.
Executive Summary
Cities around the world have come under siege from a new kind of terrorism: assault by well-trained and motivated “terrorist commandos” whose primary goal is to cause as much death among civilians as possible. Such has been the case in a number of key attacks in recent years: Mumbai (2008), Nairobi (2013), and Paris (November 2015). The trio selected above for study here represent the deadliest and most extensively analysed incidents of this new type of urban terrorism. This study will address the factors behind these attacks: reasons, methods and characteristics of the attacks, the government responses, and consequences or fallout. It will also include a brief assessment of whether Singapore can be a target of a major assault by “terrorist commandos.”
About the Author
Ahmed Salah Hashim is Associate Professor of Strategic Studies in the Military Studies Programme at RSIS, Nanyang Technological University. He specialises in Insurgency and Counterinsurgency and Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies. He worked for the United States Department of Defense for twenty years before taking up his career as an academic focusing on Strategic Studies, the Middle East, and military history. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written extensively on Strategic and Security issues. His latest publication, which is forthcoming in July is The Caliphate at War: The Ideological, Military and Organizational Innovations of Islamic State, London: Hurst and Company, 2016.
