David Monnery

In 1994, in the newly independent state of Uzbekistan, a party of mostly British tourists was a day excursion from the fabled city of Samarkand when their bus was hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists. Unknown to the hijackers, this particular tourist group contained an ex-SAS sergeant ' the recently retired Jamie Doherty ' and the...

In 1993, as civil war continued to rage in Bosnia, a strange story began to emerge. In the isolated mountain town of Zavik, a small army of Serbs, Muslims and Croats had been formed under the command of a renegade Briton by the name of Reeve. Originally organised to defend the town against the tides of war and 'ethnic cleansing', this...

As both the 1980s and the cold war draw to a close, there is no shortage of new enemies lining up to challenge the West. Prominent among them are the cocaine cartels of Colombia, criminal organisations as powerful as armies, whose malign reach stretches from the coca fields of Bolivia to the streets of London and New York.Needing help in the...

At the end of July 1981, world heads of state gathered in London for the wedding of Price Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Among those present was President Jawara of the Gambia, whose absence was exploited by Marxist rebels to overthrow him. Rightly fearing armed intervention from neighbouring Senegal, the new revolutionary council seized hostages...

At the height of the imperial age, European powers ruled over most parts of the Islamic world. The British, French, Russian, and Dutch empires each governed more Muslims than any independent Muslim state. European officials believed Islam to be of great political significance, and were quite cautious when it came to matters of the religious life of...

In the Central American republic of Guatemala, government-sponsored torture and mass murder had reduced the Mayan Indian population to a despairing acquiescence, and after five hundred years of struggle it began to seem as if the conqueror's peace could at last be claimed in the capital.Then, at the beginning of 1995, a guerrilla leader whom...