Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T17:15:49.309Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empowering Salafis and Islamists Against Al-Qaeda: A London Counterterrorism Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2008

Robert Lambert
Robert Lambert
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If it is assessed against an objective of reducing the number of Muslims recruited or inspired to commit terrorist acts in the name of al-Qaeda, then the U.S.-led, UK-backed war on terror launched in the aftermath of 9/11 has failed demonstrably. This performance-related assessment, as William Tupman and Carina O'Reilly argue, favors examining counterterrorism experience and the consistency of government conduct during the war on terror (Tupman and O'Reilly 2004). Such an approach, however, tends to expose the disregard the architects of the war on terror had for counterterrorism experience and policy-makers in the U.S. or UK have not adopted it in the six years since 9/11. Performance measurement may be routine in other areas of government-sponsored activity, but the war on terror has always been presented as a separate and exceptional activity dealing with an extraordinary enemy where familiar rules of engagement and conventional government behavior do not apply. However, in writing this introduction on 9/11 in 2007, it is apparent that the failure of the response to the world's most dramatic terrorist attack has finally become clear to many who supported it for the major part of its duration. Not that there is a consensus about the nature and extent of the failure. Nor is there a willingness to look to prior counterterrorism experience that might have been used to promote a measured, effective, and counterintuitive response to 9/11. Rather, notwithstanding moves to re-brand the war on terror in softer tones with particular emphasis on counterinsurgency “hearts and minds” approaches (Kilcullen 2006), the sixth anniversary of 9/11 marks the culmination of a poorly targeted military led response that has unintentionally boosted al-Qaeda credibility and recruitment.

Type
SYMPOSIUM
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 31 - 35
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alderson, John. 1979. Policing Freedom. Plymouth: Macdonald & Evans.Google Scholar
Alderson, John. 1998. Principled Policing: Protecting the Public with Integrity. Winchester: Waterside Press.Google Scholar
Altikriti, Anas. 2007. “The New Fundamentalism.” Guardian Unlimited—Comment is Free, July 2.Google Scholar
Batty, David. 2006. “Reid Barracked During Speech to Muslim Parents. The Guardian, September 20.Google Scholar
Ben-Dor, Gabriel, and Ami Pedahzur. 2004. “The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism.” In Fundamentalism and Political Extremism, ed. L. Weinberg and A. Pedahzur. London: Frank Cass, 71–90.Google Scholar
Berman, Paul. 2003. Terror and Liberalism. London: Norton.Google Scholar
Briggs, Rachel, Catherine Fieschi, and Hannah Lownsbrough. 2006. Bringing it Home: Community-Based Approaches to Counter-Terrorism. London: Demos.Google Scholar
Butt, Hassan. 2007. “My Plea to Fellow Muslims: You Must Renounce Terror.” Guardian Unlimited, July 1, Comment.Google Scholar
Carter, Ashton B. 2001. “The Architecture of Government in the Face of Terrorism.” International Terrorism 26 (3): 5–23.Google Scholar
Coker, Christopher. 2002. “Globalisation and Insecurity in the Twenty First Century: NATO and Management of Risk.” Adelphi Paper 345 (June). London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 40.Google Scholar
Duyvesteyn, Isabelle. 2004. “How New is the New Terrorism.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27: 439–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Fadl, Khaled Abou. 2005. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Esposito, John L., ed. 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gerges, Fawaz A. 2005. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godson, Dean. 2006a. “Already Hooked on Poison.” The Times, February 8.Google Scholar
Godson, Dean. 2006b. “You'll Never Guess Who's to Blame for 7/7.” The Times, December 13.Google Scholar
Godson, Dean. 2007. “The Old Bill Should Choose its Friends Carefully: What on Earth are West Midlands Police up to?” The Times, August 23.Google Scholar
Gove, Michael. 2006a. Celsius 7/7. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson.Google Scholar
Gove, Michael. 2006b. “We Must Engage with Moderate Muslims.” The Guardian, August 23.Google Scholar
Hillyard, Paddy. 1993. Suspect Community: People's Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Bruce. 2004. “Foreword.” In Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements and Failures, ed. A. Silke. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
Hussein, Ed. 2007. The Islamist. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Ignatieff, Michael. 2004. The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Princeton: Princeton University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ignatieff, Michael. 2001. “It's War—But It Doesn't Have To Be Dirty.” The Guardian, October 1.Google Scholar
Innes, Martin. 2006. “Policing Uncertainty: Countering Terror Through Community Intelligence and Democratic Policing.” Annals of the American Academy 605 (May): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judd, Terri. 2006. “Police in Public Feud over Profiling.” The Independent, August 21.Google Scholar
Kamali, M. Hashim. 2003. “Fanaticism and its Manifestations in Muslim Societies.” In The Empire and the Crescent: Global Implications for a New American Century, ed. Aftab Ahmad Malik. Bristol: Amal Press, 175–207.Google Scholar
Kilcullen, David J. 2006. Counter-Insurgency Redux. Survival 48 (4): 111–30.Google Scholar
Lambert, Robert. “Countering al-Qaida Propaganda, and Recruitment in London: An Insider's Interpretive Case Study.” Ph.D. diss. University of Exeter. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Leheny, David. 2005. “Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security: How Al-Qaeda Affects Southeast Asia.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 6 (1): 87–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lustick, Ian S. 2006. Trapped in the War on Terror. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malik, Aftab Ahmad. 2005. “The Betrayal of Tradition.” In With God On Our Side: Politics & Theology of the War on Terrorism, ed. Aftab Ahmad Malik. Bristol: Amal Press, 133–63.Google Scholar
Manningham-Buller, Eliza. 2006. “The International Terrorist Threat to the UK.” Speech by the director general of the UK Security Service at Queen Mary College, London, November 9.Google Scholar
Oliver, Mark, 2007. “MI5 Chief Says Terrorists Targeting UK Teenagers.” The Guardian, November 6.Google Scholar
Phillips, Melanie. 2006. Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a Terror State Within. London: Gibson Square.Google Scholar
Smyth, Marie Breen. 2007. “Symposium: A Critical Research Agenda for the Study of Terrorism.” European Political Science 6: 260–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tibi, Bassam. 2005. Islam Between Culture and Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tupman, W.A., and C. O'Reilly. 2004. “Terrorism, Hegemony and Legitimacy: Evaluating Success and Failure in the War on Terror.” Paper presented at the Political Studies Association conference, Lincoln University, August 12.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. 2002. “Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy.” International Security 26 (3): 56–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar