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"Countering Global Terrorism and Insurgency: Calculating the Risk of State Failure in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq" explores issues of terrorism and insurgency in relation to the process of state failure. It focuses on the current trend of religious extremism as a means of understanding and re-thinking the debates around the connections between terrorism and insurgency and state failure. Using the case studies of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq it examines the underlying causes and conditions necessary for terrorism and insurgency to occur, while countering the common perception that state failure is the central cause. Underhill presents a better understanding of the concepts of terrorism, insurgency and state failure on an individual and comparative level, and analyses more deeply the underlying issues affecting the world's most active terrorist and insurgent hotspots: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq

This volume draws together a number of research papers presented at a conference titled "Security, Insecurity and Prospects for Peace in the Middle East and North Africa", organised by Nottingham Trent University's Middle East and North Africa Research cluster in April 2016. The conference focused on questions pertinent to what may be termed the 'post-Arab Spring' era, in which the Middle East is experiencing unprecedented national and transnational challenges. Conflict, instability, radicalisation and the mass displacement of people have become increasingly salient features of the political and economic landscape of the region.The contributions here analyse a range of political, economic, security and socio-cultural issues that the authors argue lie at the heart of the instability that the region is currently experiencing. Re-thinking issues of security and insecurity in the Middle East not only allows us to explain what might have led to current instability, but also allows us to posit possible solutions to these security issues. In doing so, this book goes beyond the concepts of security and insecurity as a standard account of perpetrator versus victim, in a state-centric and violence-centric manner, to a broader and more complex understanding of the underlying processes informing security and insecurity in the region. The contributors include scholars from around the world working in a variety of different fields, including Middle Eastern studies, international relations and international political economy, providing an eclectic discussion of the state of the region.