Between al-Andalus and a failing integration Europe’s pursuit of a long-term counterterrorism strategy in the post-al-Qaeda era. Egmont Paper, no.5, April 2005

Coolsaet, Rik. (2005) Between al-Andalus and a failing integration Europe’s pursuit of a long-term counterterrorism strategy in the post-al-Qaeda era. Egmont Paper, no.5, April 2005.

Abstract

“Now, in 2004, with Al Qaeda having risen and mostly fallen, the threats that US intelligence must monitor in the current decade have in a sense returned to what existed in the early 1990s; only now the threat has many more moving parts, more geographically disparate operations, and more ideological momentum.” The author of these lines, Paul R. Pillar, former deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and now at the National Intelligence Council (Washington, DC), is quite adamant about the state Osama bin Laden’s network is in today: “The disciplined, centralized organization that carried out the September 11 attacks is no more. Al Qaeda still has the capacity to inflict lethal damage, but the key challenges for current counterterrorism efforts are not as much Al Qaeda as what will follow Al Qaeda.” (1) In public perception and political discourse terrorism is still widely perceived as a more or less structured international movement – an image Osama bin Laden, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and other jihadi spokespersons themselves are eager to uphold. Using century-old symbols and myths such as al-Andalus and a Caliphate reborn, portraying themselves as warriors of the global jihad, in an epochal struggle with the West, terrorist leaders are indeed hoping for this perception of a major global threat to last forever.