‘Total failure’: War on terror 20 yrs on

Twenty years ago, US president George W. Bush declared a "war on terror". Today, its failure is undeniable, with jihadist groups both more numerous and scattered more widely across the world.  Bush launched the war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington which were plotted from Afghanistan by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was sheltered by the Taliban regime of the time.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban and degraded the capabilities of Al-Qaeda, but it did nothing to eradicate the causes of violent Islamic extremism at its roots, analysts say. "They managed to kill Bin Laden," said Abdul Sayed, a researcher on jihadism based at Lund University in Sweden, referring to the killing of the Al-Qaeda chief by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011. "But if the goal was to end transnational jihadism, then it's a total failure," he said.

RISE OF IS

Though the United States, and the broader Western world, has seen no attack on the scale of 9/11 in subsequent years, analysts say that should not be used to claim the "war on terror" has been a success. "The objectives that it set for itself were unachievable. Terrorism cannot be defeated. The threat is constantly evolving," said Assaf Moghadam, senior researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel. The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated in 2018 that the number of active terror groups was 67, its highest level since 1980. 

'THREAT HAS METASTASISED'

The nature of the threat has transformed since 9/11 when jihadist terror essentially meant Al-Qaeda under the charismatic leadership of bin Laden. But then IS emerged and various branches pledging allegiance to IS or Al-Qaeda. According to Moghadam, some terror figures have now "become serious political actors". "You're not just talking about a small number of people that we can put on the terrorism watchlist. The threat has metastasised. You have a greater number of regimes in geographically dispersed places facing challenges of violent extremism."

'SHIFTED PRIORITIES'

While in 2001 it was clear that terrorism was enemy number one of the United States and its allies, tensions have since grown with Iran, Russia and above all China. Neither Al-Qaeda nor IS may have the means to stage attacks in the West in the near future like those against Paris on November 13, 2015 that were claimed by IS. But the police and intelligence services are faced with so-called "lone wolves" and other isolated militants, often from the country they strike, radicalised on the internet and who kill blindly, in the name of a jihadist group, with a knife, a gun or a vehicle.  And the future threat may not always come from Islamist radicals drawing inspiration from the Middle East but from extreme right-wingers and white supremacists who look no further than the West.