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The declaration of a Caliphate in June 2014 by an al-Qaida offshoot implied a strong sense of political–religious unity, but, in reality, the announcement reflected deep division at the heart of radical Islam. This article critically assesses al-Qaida’s progress on its four main objectives over the course of the 9/11 decade, and suggests that its principal setbacks were due to the fragmentation of Islamic authority. In particular, Osama bin Laden’s inability to reverse the misguided focus, by some affiliated groups, on the ‘nearer enemy’, began to portend al-Qaida’s downfall. However, after the Arab Spring, in the chokeholds of strong states and the chaos of weak states al-Qaida found advantage. Furthermore, with the rise of groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a new pattern of radicalism emerged, in which the threat to ‘far enemy’, ‘near enemy’ and ‘nearer enemy’ were combined.

This chapter assesses the US-led counter-terrorism response to the September 2001 attacks on the American homeland in order to gauge the successes and failures of the Global War on Terror. It concludes that successes against transnational terrorist threats, as represented by al-Qaida and its affiliates, have been few and far between. Instead, the past decade has been marked by a failure to meet set goals for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: the shifting character of war, the unintended fallouts of the counter-terrorism policies adopted, and an inadvertent strengthening of al-Qaida’s material and ideological capabilities through the US macro-securitisation of the Global War on Terror–all of which point to the absence of a long-term strategic vision. However, our counter-terrorism failures hold crucial lessons for the future and the chapter concludes by outlining how they can enable us to translate our past failures into future successes.

How governments understand and thus come to conceptualise and explain current and future threats and the calibration of their response across all the levers open to government at home and abroad is seen as key to sound strategy. The prevailing approach to domestic security planning after 9/11 as part of the British counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, is seen as heavily influenced by the growing application of risk management as a planning tool in government generally and is contrasted with the US approach. The influence of unrelated external events, including the revelations of Edward Snowden, is examined as a factor disturbing the domestic calculus of the ‘thermodynamics’ of counter-terrorism: how the government can best exercise its primary duty to protect the public in the face of a severe terrorist threat and yet maintain civic harmony and uphold democratic values and the rule of law at home and internationally. This chapter argues that the overall challenge for the future is to maintain public confidence that it is possible for government having absorbed such lessons to discharge its responsibilities for public safety and security whilst behaving ethically in accordance with modern views of human rights, including personal privacy, in a world where deference to authority and automatic acceptance of the confidentiality of government business no longer holds sway.

In order to assess terrorist groups within a broad historical and strategic framework, it is vital to assess how and why terrorist campaigns end. Moreover, if effective counter-terrorism is to be developed, then serious reflection is required regarding what happens during the final phase of terrorist campaigns, and why. This chapter therefore: first, analyses four classic strategies of terrorism and considers why Western democracies have particular difficulty responding to them; second, it reviews six historical patterns of endings for terrorist organisations that have emerged from scholarly research on hundreds of groups; third, it assesses (in light of these six patterns) which counter-terrorism policies have hastened al-Qaida’s demise and which have not, while also reflecting upon the rise of ISIS and its potential future significance.

This chapter begins the examination of whether international humanitarian law is an appropriate legal framework that can be applied to extraterritorial force against non-state actors. This includes both the possibilities of such measures being categorised as international armed conflict and non-international armed conflict. The notion of non-international conflicts as including extra-territorial circumstances is considered, as are the criteria for determination of such conflicts, including threshold of violence and identification of the parties to the conflict.

This chapter utilises the analysis conducted throughout the book, and applies it in the context of two cases. The first is the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. The second is the targeted killings conducted by the US in Yemen and Pakistan. The rules of the ius ad bellum are examined, as are the rules regulating the use of force, whether human rights law or international humanitarian law. The chapter concludes with a summary of the analysis and identification of the challenges yet to be resolved.

Yasmin, in Cairo, heard about the attacks of 9/11 and felt fleeting satisfaction at the idea of America receiving its comeuppance. Zuhra, in Islamabad, considered Bin Laden larger than life. Murat, in Istanbul, blamed America for the attacks. “How could a person in a cave in Afghanistan have planned such an attack as 9/11?” These views are evidence of “radical sheik”—a play on Tom Wolfe's phrase “radical chic,” expressions of sympathy for revolutionaries as anti-establishment heroes—without actually wanting these movements to succeed. This sort of symbolic endorsement does not translate into support for revolutionary goals or potential collaboration with terrorism.

Outsiders often confuse al-Qaida with the Taliban, but these two organizations represent distinct revolutionary movements that are often at odds with each other, despite similarities in their Islamic world-view. The Taliban are a local movement that draws on poorly educated villagers, while al-Qaida is a global movement that draws on relatively well-educated cosmopolitans, who speak European languages and are eager to adopt modern technology. Technology is not the only modern aspect of these global revolutionaries. They also seek to dismantle tribal hierarchies and monarchical government—not in the name of the West, but in opposition to the West.

This chapter presents John Bellinger's speech on legal views and policy decisions with respect to the detention and treatment of terrorists, as these have evolved in the United States since September 11. His aim is to convey a sense of how far they have progressed in addressing the threat posed by al-Qaida as a legal matter. He says that just as the United States strengthens and clarifies its laws at home, now is the time for the international community to construct a common foundation to defend our nations and protect our freedoms. The bedrock of that foundation is an appreciation of the magnitude of the threat posed by al-Qaida, and the need, in some instances, to use military force to combat that threat. Domestic criminal law does not itself adequately address the threat posed by this enemy. Military force is not the right answer against all enemies everywhere. In the face of a threat as grave as that of al-Qaida, appreciating that military force can be appropriate may pave the way for an intensified dialogue as we move forward.

The focus of Chapter 2 is a letter written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to al-Qaida leaders and intercepted by coalition forces on 23 January 2004. It reveals more than just the predatory operational and strategic rationale behind the violent campaign of Tawhid wal-Jihad in Iraq. It offers vital insights into the strategic thinkers in its ranks who clearly understood the importance of soberly assessing their own capabilities and those of their adversaries while identifying opportunities ripe for exploitation via words and violent actions. While the letter’s contents likely reflect the collective wisdom of Zarqawi’s inner circle, it offers a glimpse into his mind as field commander and aspiring commander-in-chief. Within three years of writing this letter, Zarqawi would be dead, but not before he became an iconic figure of the global jihad, turned Iraq into a sectarian killing field and established a movement that would champion his legacy.

Chapter 3 suggests that IHL requires non-state entities to fulfil three criteria to form a party to a non-international armed conflict: a group needs to be (1) a collective entity with (2) the ability to ensure respect for basic humanitarian norms, and (3) the capacity to engage in sufficiently intense violence. This chapter discusses how these broad criteria have been interpreted and also develops new ways of how they should be understood in light of the variety of groups engaged in contemporary armed conflicts and the increasing fragmentation of groups. Instead of simply recounting factors established in international jurisprudence, this chapter reconsiders these factors’ actual relevance and shows how they can be helpful in proving the three identified criteria. In its final part, Chapter 3 applies the identified criteria to two specific cases: transnational armed groups such as the Islamic State Group, and cyber groups such as Anonymous.

This chapter discusses how the breakdown of the Iraqi regime in 2003 led to religious insurgencies in Iraq. Sunni Islamists and jihadists were given the space and opportunity to organize in a way that would have been unthinkable prior to 2003. Within the Shi’i community, Islamists from the Sadrist trend in Iraq, and Iranian backed religious actors, emerged in southern Iraq and in Baghdad. Over the previous decade, religious institutions had begun to play important roles in education, politics, and security. They continued playing this role post-2003; but because the authoritarian controls of the former regime no longer existed, these institutions were often controlled by extremist and sectarian actors. The result was insurgencies launched by the Sadrists, Sunni Islamists, al-Qaida, and eventually the Islamic State.

While the Lebanese use the term "party" ("hizb") as a practical category for referring to the country's various political groups, in public law the only collective action structure, political or otherwise, is that of the "association" ("jamiyya"). However, despite its concern for acting within the law, Hezbollah is not listed with the Ministry of Interior under this rubric. The reason is simple: Hezbollah does not present itself as an association, but as a group of networked institutions. The party's institutional oddity is heightened by the hybrid nature of the ideological and cultural roots of its institutions as well as of its organizational functioning. Hezbollah is usually understood as an Islamist group, but its structure is nothing like that of the Muslim Brotherhood or Sunni al-Qaida. Admittedly, an Islamic version of the decision-making process is to some extent reflected by the collegial command structure ("shura"). But the organization at heart is not Islamic. Indeed, Hezbollah's structure and its internal operations owe a good deal to communist and socialist models.