We are at war against a new form of terror. 9/11 was significant, not least because it launched Al-Qaeda as a household name but also because it signaled the arrival of neo-terrorism: traditional terrorism packaged for the 21st century, alert and adapted to the circumstances and challenges of the new millennium. Until we take the war to these new battlegrounds, to address terrorism's newfound effectiveness, we will not win the War on Terror.
Technologically, the terrorists have responded inventively to our conventional state-led security responses to the threat they pose.Governments have continued to upgrade their security measures, as well as to concentrate on disrupting terrorist financing (particularly narco-terrorism) and the rogue states and individuals that sponsor them. But conventional state counter-terrorism methods, however necessary, tend to palliate rather than provide a remedy to the disease. We need to consider counter-measures that are neither conventional nor government run.
And prevention can be better than cure. Neo-terrorists such as Al-Qaeda have effectively created an ideological brand that they can franchise to those who are the subject of poverty, ignorance and injustice throughout the world. The neo-terrorist uses the media not just for self-publicity but also as a means of instilling fear (into every TV home), as a recruiting device and as a channel to justify its actions to the public. We have no choice but to wage a public-relations war against the culture that sustains terrorism. That means inverting many of the images that the terrorist seeks to propagate and from which they gain benefit.
