The War on Terrorism: Global Experts Reflect on Lessons Learned Twenty-Five Years After 9/11

Localize and Specialize: Action to Address Terrorism Must Evolve  

For most of the past twenty-five years, violent extremism has been understood as a security threat requiring hard security measures. Spurred on by the U.S.-led “war on terror,” this knee-jerk response to the devastation of the 9/11 attacks and the lapses in crime intelligence that contributed to them created a hyperfocus on al-Qaeda and its affiliates globally. This focus led to military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the wider West Asian neighborhood. In 2001, international terrorism was understood to have al-Qaeda at its epicenter with clearly defined core groups.  

“Homegrown” terrorist cells were plugged into this relatively monolithic structure, where rooting out terrorism meant attacking it at the source. This method, the bedrock of what later became the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy, was initially effective, but has done little in the long term to definitively reduce the threat of terrorism and violent extremism.  

Instead, heavy military action has often inadvertently played into the hands of recruiters in groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State (Da’esh), Ansar Dine, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and the Allied Democratic Forces, who rail against the state’s excessive use of force while using it themselves as a tactic of control. In Africa, terrorist groups are now found across all regions, with an especially heavy presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Lake Chad Basin, Mozambique, the Sahel region, and Somalia. These groups are decentralized with looser structures and greater agility. They have developed new command structures and evolved their strategic recruitment to incorporate narratives of community, safety, and security, which are dispersed through digital platforms and in-person social networks.  

Preventing and countering terrorism in 2026 requires an evolved understanding of this new character of terrorism and the methods of recruitment. This shift is already occurring in communities and states that have moved from a top-down, boots-on-the-ground approach to investing in local partnerships and digital monitoring.  

In the Lake Chad Basin, for example, the establishment of a governors’ forum resulted from an appreciation of the role of devolved state authority in addressing community grievances. Still, most action today continues to rely on heavy-handed military force that does not always reflect local grievances, and sometimes instrumentalizes counterterror laws to silence dissent. There is still greater investment in responding militarily to terrorism rather than stopping early-stage radicalization.  

If the past two decades of action, research, and analysis prove anything, it is that prevention through addressing the conditions conducive to violent extremism yields better results than military force. That approach requires investing in communities of peace-builders, enhancing good governance, and supporting sustainable development, and must be coupled with effective responses that include global cooperation, enhanced cross-border intelligence networks, targeting funding sources, and intelligence-driven counterterrorism that avoids costly large-scale military interventions. 

Lessons on Counterterrorism From the Turkish Perspective  

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 catapulted the fight against terrorism to center stage internationally. Much has been learned and accomplished since then and terrorists are seemingly on the run, their ideologies mostly diminished and their methods widely abhorred. However, complacency would be unwise.  

An aging world order is receding, paving the way for a more unpredictable, fractured, and conflict-ridden interim. Revanchism, nationalism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, polarization, and gross economic inequalities are all on the rise, alongside an impending climate crisis. The fault lines on which radicalism festers are active as technology evolves and proliferates at breakneck speed.  

There will be no quick fixes or tailor-made solutions, but some thoughts based on the Turkish experience may prove helpful.  

First, international solidarity and cohesion must be bolstered. A renewed multilateral drive to coalesce around a legally binding international definition of terrorism is a good place to start. Reinvigorating diplomacy on this point would be key. If a broadly representative group of nations still cannot agree on what constitutes terrorism and how to collectively combat it, cooperation in this fight will remain piecemeal, transactional, and inefficient—and, in most cases, lack a legal and moral basis.  

Second, double standards must be eliminated. There can be no effective effort to face this scourge so long as some countries are allowed to commit the highest of crimes under the guise of fighting terrorism or to ally with terror groups in coalitions to target other terrorists. Though there will always be gray areas, they can be minimized and managed. But until states stop blatantly using the fight against terrorism as a cover to pursue ulterior motives, the mutual trust needed to undergird any collective effort will fail.  

Third, the limits of hard power, however high tech, need to be recognized. Military and intelligence capabilities may eliminate terrorists, but they do not end terrorism. The use of force can only bring about sustainable results when coupled with a holistic strategy that addresses multifaceted root causes—be they political, ethnic, religious, ideological, socioeconomic, or a combination of those five.  

This approach would not mean acquiescing to terms dictated by terrorists. As many real-world cases have shown, there are tried and tested methods of addressing the challenges of ending terror campaigns and removing core grievances that are systematically used to radicalize and recruit potential terrorists, including mediation; truth and reconciliation processes; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs; and more.  

Fourth, global democratic backsliding needs to be reversed. Many fundamental freedoms have been trampled in the name of order. More security and less freedom will not guarantee long-term stability. Balance has to be restored, and the slide away from open societies needs to stop.  

Fifth, effectively countering terrorism in the years ahead will require adapting to new methods fueled by evolving technologies. Here, vigilant awareness of emerging risks and lasting partnerships with the private sector will be crucial.  

Finally, not repeating past errors will also be vital. The many inexcusable and costly actions taken in the aftermath of 9/11 all under the banner of a so-called global war on terror are instructive. Attempts at regime change, never-ending wars, enhanced interrogation tactics, dehumanization of the other, and black sites will only complicate the challenge.  

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel allegedly claimed that the only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. It is up to the next generation of leaders to prove him wrong.

The Security Failure After 9/11 Was a Failure of Imagination 

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the most important lesson may be that security shocks narrow policymakers’ imagination precisely when they should expand it. 

The attacks shattered the American certainty that mass-casualty political violence of this kind could only happen elsewhere. They forced the United States to confront a genuinely new threat environment and produced important advances in intelligence, homeland security, and international counterterrorism cooperation. But they also reordered U.S. foreign policy around terrorism to an excessive degree, contributing to costly overreach in Iraq and diverting attention from other threats taking shape closer to home. 

For Mexico, the consequences were profound. Only six days before 9/11, Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox were discussing migration, organized crime, and a much more ambitious bilateral relationship; earlier that year they had spoken of building a North American economic community.  

After the attacks, the attention of the United States shifted abruptly toward terrorism and border protection. Yet Mexico also bears substantial responsibility for this shift in priorities. The Fox government’s hesitant display of solidarity squandered goodwill, and long-standing Mexican suspicions of security cooperation survived the democratic transition, making fluid cooperation with the United States  politically delicate. Since 2018, those instincts have again constrained bilateral cooperation. 

The primary missed opportunity was to make 9/11 a formative moment for North America, comparable in ambition, if not circumstance, to those that produced Europe’s postwar security institutions.  

The United States, Canada, and Mexico could have built an integrated security community—perhaps eventually establishing a structured partnership between Mexico and NATO—capable of confronting terrorism, organized crime, illicit finance, cyber threats, and border vulnerabilities as interconnected challenges. A 2005 CFR-COMEXI-Canadian task force  was already pointing in that direction. 

Today’s fentanyl crisis illustrates the cost of thinking in categories rather than systems. The Trump administration’s designation of six Mexican criminal organizations as terrorist organizations provides additional legal and financial tools, but it also risks confusing diagnosis with strategy. Cartels may employ terror, but unlike terrorist organizations their overriding objective is profit, not political transformation. That distinction matters. Mexico, the United States, and Canada can learn from past mistakes; the countries could develop a joint security strategy that addresses such novel security problems through appropriate strategies and tools. 

The enduring mistake after 9/11 was not taking terrorism too seriously—it was defining security too narrowly. North America should not make that mistake again. 

Germany Is a New Epicenter of Jihadist Terrorism in Europe 

Since the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the threat of jihadi terrorism in Germany has evolved. The number of jihadi terrorists from and in Germany has risen substantially, from a few dozen in 2001 to a peak of more than a thousand in the early 2010s, though those numbers have declined slightly in the 2020s. In parallel, Germany witnessed a growing number of terrorist plots that were mostly foiled, such as the Sauerland plot of 2007. It was only in 2016 that the country experienced a terrorist wave culminating in a devastating attack on a Berlin Christmas market in December of that year. One of the reasons for this burgeoning radicalism was the emergence of new recruitment pools, which historically follow the start of wars in the Muslim world, such as the conflicts in Chechnya in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, and Somalia in 2006. The civil war in Syria, which broke out in 2012, convinced more than a thousand young Muslims from Germany to join jihadi organizations fighting the Assad regime—among them the self-proclaimed Islamic State.  

Through the late aughts, Germany was a backwater of jihadi mobilization far behind its European neighbors; after 2014, it was second only to France. One of the repercussions was the wave of attacks in 2016. Although many specialists were convinced that returnees from Syria and Iraq posed the biggest threat, the attacks were mainly perpetrated by refugees who had recently arrived from the Middle East and North Africa. In the mid-2010s, Germany opened its borders to more than two million refugees from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; this influx has strengthened the jihadi scene in Germany.  

In 2017 and 2018, the situation improved substantially because the Islamic State came under intense pressure in Iraq and Syria, and because European security authorities gained control of the threat. This could explain why subsequent German governments continued to ignore the correlation between conflicts in the Muslim world, jihadi organizations, and jihadi radicalization and mobilization in Europe. Since 2016, most jihadi attacks in Germany have been executed by refugees from Middle Eastern conflict zones, especially Syria. That trend has become especially obvious since a new wave of attacks started in 2020 and intensified in 2022 and 2023. Only a minority of attackers and plotters were born in Germany or spent most of their lives there.  

The government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has cracked down on jihadi refugees, but the threat will remain for the foreseeable future, if only because the refugee flow from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria continued in the early 2020s. This group included hundreds of former Islamic State fighters from Iraq who arrived in 2022 and 2023. Without a far more forceful domestic security campaign, Germany will not be able to re-establish control of the jihadi terrorist milieu.  

The Legacy of the 9/11 Counterterrorism Response Cannot Meet Current Challenges 

Twenty-five years ago, most Americans had never heard of Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. They had little understanding of the broader jihadi movement that harbored an unlikely but ultimately consequential ambition of unseating the world’s remaining superpower and reconstituting a borderless Islamic caliphate. Twenty-five years later, the world is right back to where it started.   

Al-Qaeda and the jihadi movement have largely faded from the global public consciousness. Young people have no living memory of the 9/11 attacks, yet they live in a world that has been utterly transformed by its consequences. It is in this transformation that the current violent extremist threat lies and where world leaders continue to underestimate and misdiagnose how to address it. 

The global standing of the United States was undermined less by the attacks themselves but by the U.S. and allied response. Despite a twenty-year campaign, Operation Enduring Freedom brought neither promised democratic freedoms nor relief from Taliban rule to the Middle East. The broader global, U.S.-led military and intelligence effort that spanned several conflicts and campaigns dented the jihadi movement’s operational capabilities but revealed the limitation of American military power. It exposed a lack of strategic vision, eroded the United States’ hegemony, and fractured the foundations of the postwar rules-based order it created.  

The failure to eradicate terrorist groups generated public skepticism and an isolationist streak in the U.S. citizenry that spanned party lines and is a direct antecedent of the America First foreign policy approach of the Trump administration. Domestic security mechanisms put in place by the United States and other countries to prevent another mass casualty attack by jihadi actors came at the cost of civil liberties and trust in government, all of which coincided with a broader trend of democratic decline in the United States and many other democracies.   

This era of democratic backsliding has many causes—growing polarization, disinformation, lack of trust, and technological transformation—and some of them now contribute to the current increase in political violence and violent extremism. Although foreign terrorist organisations still pose a limited threat, this time the violence is coming from inside the house.   

Violent extremism today is less an external assault on the state than a symptom of something happening within it. Polarization and disillusionment with democracy drive current extremist threats and create internal conditions that extremist actors can exploit. There is also a growing confluence between extremist movements, the justification of violence, and mainstream political and social dynamics. Extremist narratives are moving more quickly from the fringes and becoming institutionalized within established political, media, and social structures—what is now called the mainstreaming of extremism.  

Nation states, particularly advanced democracies, are struggling to address those intersecting challenges of extremism, polarization, fractured social cohesion, and democratic erosion. These are complex, multifaceted societal challenges of which terrorism and political violence are only one type of harm they create.   

Though the threat of foreign jihadist movements has receded from public memory as an acute national security threat, the conditions it exposed—a hollowed-out rules-based order, disillusionment with government, and democracies straining under polarization and distrust—have not receded with it. They have metastasized and produced new strains of violent extremism and political violence. While al-Qaeda has faded from public consciousness, the counterterrorism framework set up to defeat it is still alive and well. The problem is that governments cannot rely on a counterterrorism architecture built to fight an enemy outside the state to address the complex violent extremism threats now generated from within. 

The Fight Against Terrorism Continues in West Africa 

The relative success of post-9/11 counterterrorism strategies in Europe and the Americas has created the perception that terrorism is no longer a primary concern in the West.  

However, that complacency among the major powers bolsters the proliferation and unrelenting activities of jihadi groups in the West African subregion. The post-9/11 counterterrorism architecture shrunk the operational space for terrorist groups in Europe, the Americas, and even the Middle East, making West Africa, with its abundance of ungoverned spaces, a haven for fleeing jihadis and their local affiliates. 

Five major jihadi groups are ravaging the West African sub-region—Jama’al Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, Islamic State-Sahel, Islamic State of West Africa Province, Boko Haram (now an affiliate of the Islamic State of West Africa), and Lakurawa. Unfortunately, the countries that are most beleaguered by those terrorist organizations are some of the poorest in the world, with the least capacity to contain them, so local counterterrorism efforts have been ineffective.  

After initial individual national efforts to fight terrorism failed, the affected countries adopted a multilateral approach. Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria were the first to adopt this method when they reactivated the Multi-National Joint Task Force and relocated its command headquarters to Ndjamena, Chad, following the 2015 debacle when its initial headquarters in Baga, Nigeria, was overrun by Boko Haram terrorists. 

The core Sahel states—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, or the Group of Five for the Sahel (G5 Sahel)—initially put their faith in France and other Western powers to halt the advance of terrorism in their territories. Although external interventions were helpful in stabilizing security, particularly in saving the capital of Mali from being overrun by jihadis in 2013, they failed to stem the tide of terrorist operations in the subregion; in response, the G5 Sahel set up a joint counterinsurgency force, the Sahel G5 Joint Force, in 2027. 

However, that force has not made significant contributions to the regional war against terrorism, largely because security forces in the G5 Sahel countries are poorly equipped and lack operational capacity, at times depending on logistic support from France and other EU countries. 

Almost every Western power at one time or another has had a presence in the Sahel. France had Operation Barkhane and, more recently, Operation Sabre; the EU had Operation Takuba; the United States had an air base in Niger until 2024; and Russia, with the Wagner Group (now the Africa Corps), also played a role in the counterinsurgency efforts in the countries of the Alliance of Sahel States. 

None of the major powers’ efforts have stemmed the tide of violent extremism in the region. Indeed, many of the efforts have been half-hearted and more geared toward protecting Western national interests in the mineral resources of West Africa than counterterrorism. 

But as long as terrorism can exist unchecked in the most vulnerable part of the world, it can exist anywhere. The major powers must not yield to the temptation of deprioritizing terrorism in their security structures. They must develop a master plan for helping the weak and impoverished countries of West Africa to vanquish terrorism and eliminate a scourge that is significantly undermining their development and survival. 

To Counter Terrorism, Treat the Cause 

One of the most important lessons learned in countering violent extremism is that security measures alone cannot eliminate the threat of political violence. Military operations, intelligence cooperation, and law enforcement remain essential tools, but they are insufficient if they are not accompanied by genuine efforts to address the political, social, and economic conditions that fuel radicalization. Sustainable security requires addressing both the symptoms and the root causes of violent extremism. 

A major shortcoming of countering violent extremism strategies, both before and after the 9/11 attacks, has been the failure to tackle persistent political injustices in a credible manner. Many policies have focused on disrupting extremist organizations but have paid less attention to unresolved conflicts, prolonged occupations, weak governance, political exclusion of vulnerable minorities, and the absence of peaceful avenues for addressing grievances. Where such conditions exist, extremist groups can exploit frustration, marginalization, and perceptions of injustice for recruitment and propaganda. 

The Palestinian issue is one of the clearest, most enduring examples of unresolved political injustice in the modern international system. For many across the Middle East and beyond, the continued absence of a just and lasting resolution has become a powerful symbol of perceived double standards in the application of international law.  

Extremist organizations have repeatedly exploited this narrative of unfairness to justify violence, mobilize support, and reinforce claims that peaceful political processes are ineffective or partisan. While that does not excuse or justify terrorism in any form, it does highlight how unresolved political conflicts can create an environment that extremists can manipulate. 

The key lesson is that an effective counter-extremism strategy needs to integrate security with diplomacy, conflict resolution, inclusive governance, economic opportunity, and respect for international law. Lasting success depends not only on defeating violent groups operationally but also on reducing the grievances and political conditions that enable extremist narratives to resonate. Without addressing those underlying drivers, counterterrorism efforts risk treating the symptoms while leaving the causes largely intact. 

Unify, Diversify, Define: Lessons from the War in Afghanistan 

Twenty-five years ago, the United States was the victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and responded by launching a protracted twenty-year antiterrorism crusade in Afghanistan. That expensive war cost many lives, did not eradicate the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and should be viewed as a strategic and tactical failure. The current wars in the Middle East, including U.S.-Israeli military strikes against Iran, echo these previous actions and could weaken regional governance and breed new anti-American and anti-Israeli hatred—a catalyst to new extremism and terrorism.  

The long and costly Afghanistan War offered profound lessons for the world in the fight against terrorism. The first lesson is that, as terrorism is transnational and can spill over any border, countering terrorism requires collective action. Multilateral cooperation is necessary, and the United Nations should play the leading role.  

Second, military tools alone cannot effectively eradicate the violent extremism that often fuels extreme nationalist sentiment. States should use economic, cultural, political, and diplomatic means together. For example, China advances security through domestic development as part of its antiterrorism practice. This practice has yielded positive results, with China having no terrorist attacks for several consecutive years. World leaders cannot end terrorism without addressing development imbalances, social inequality, and weak governance.  

Third, a well-defined, limited strategic objective is key to successfully combating terrorism. In the Afghanistan War, the United States changed its goals from antiterrorism to reshaping the Afghan political regime; this loss of focus prolonged the war.  

Last, there are no good terrorists or bad terrorists—all terrorists are the common enemy of humanity and threats to peace. As a result, pursuing double standards in counterterrorism or using terrorism as a tool of geopolitical competition is dangerous. Global terrorism is rising again, and in some regions, especially South Asia, the security situation is deteriorating. At the same time, global governance institutions have become dysfunctional and fragmented due to the Trump administration’s aversion to burden sharing or engaging in global counterterrorism cooperation.  

In this new era of counterterrorism, states should take stock of these lessons and seek to bolster the international cooperative order, curb the unilateralism and power politics that bring instability, clearly define terrorism, tackle the societal and ideological drivers of extremism through development, and be wary of using force in a way that breeds new resentment and extremist ideology. Global powers should shoulder that burden and provide that security for this increasingly interconnected world.

Fighting Violent Extremism in Latin America: Operational Progress and Strategic Self-Deception 

In Latin America, violent extremism manifests more subtly than what Europe and the United States have historically confronted. The primary threat is not ideological in nature; it stems from organized crime networks engaged in drug, human, and other material trafficking. What the region inherited from 9/11 was not the threat itself but the framework used to read it. The George W. Bush administration folded counternarcotics into the counterterrorism architecture extending to drug-financed armed groups authorities and resources originally designed for a different adversary. That conceptual fusion still shapes how the threat is defined today.  

These networks are arguably among the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world. Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Mexico are the most severely affected countries, and the violence these organizations generate is instrumental: it serves to protect and advance business interests, not to propagate religious or political doctrine.  

The central lesson that Latin American governments have learned is to accept realistic limitations. Despite sustained policy efforts and police and military operations, Latin American countries have not been able to permanently dismantle the operational capacity of those organizations. The most they have been able to achieve is to disrupt or temporarily degrade their abilities, as criminal networks have proven remarkably resilient and have rapidly reconstituted. This result is not a failure of will—it reflects the structural depth of organized crime in the region.     

What has improved significantly is our response architecture. Regional cooperation now allows Latin America to identify and close the blind spots that criminal organizations exploit as they move across borders. Interagency policy coordination, both within countries and between them, is considerably more fluid than it was twenty-five years ago. This has enabled more effective and timely dismantling of key operational nodes and made it harder and more expensive for illegal groups to operate.   

Latin American governments have also grown more sophisticated in our understanding of domain awareness. The geographical realities of Latin America’s vast jungles, remote coastlines, and soft borders create plenty of challenges to establish control. Acknowledging that difficulty has led to a more honest assessment of what is operationally feasible.  

The United States has been a meaningful partner in this process. The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy elevated the Western Hemisphere as a priority, opening pathways to a clearer understanding of operational conditions and constraints in the region. 

The Shield of the Americas initiative and the U.S. Southern Command cooperation integrate officers from most Latin American countries and enable cooperation between surveillance and intelligence systems with U.S. networks, improving collective capacity to respond to asymmetric threats. Complementary frameworks developed around U.S. Department of Homeland Security priorities have provided both technology transfer and institutional guidance and have established a more coherent and sustainable containment posture against several forms of violent extremism.  

However, the mistake we continue to make is a conceptual one: framing organized crime as a threat that we can defeat. But it cannot be defeated in any conventional sense, because these organizations do not exist in a vacuum.  

Organized crime networks exist because different kinds of illicit markets and demands exist. If societies generate the conditions that make their services attractive—whether through inequality, institutional weakness, or the simple persistence of human vice—criminal networks will endure. Law and security forces are a containment mechanism that hold the line, but they do not eliminate the underlying conditions that drive organized crime. Until we are honest about this distinction, our strategies will continue to promise outcomes they cannot deliver.    

Confronting Terrorism: Lessons for Liberal Democracies  

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Western liberal democracies have suffered several shocks that exposed the difficulties of protecting their citizens. The 9/11 terror attacks and the rise of “global jihad” shattered the assumption that granting civil rights guarantees loyalty to a state and proved a pivotal turning point in how liberal democracies contend with terrorist organizations. 

The response to 9/11 unfolded in two waves. The first included the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, led by U.S. forces, alongside an overhaul of homeland security, border control, and intelligence worldwide. The second wave followed the Arab Spring and the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, when there were expanded military campaigns in the Middle East and mass immigration from the Middle East and Africa to the United States and Europe. During this time, many European countries held tolerant immigration policies—most notably Germany under then Chancellor Angela Merkel. The political backlash in the United States and Europe, rife with xenophobia, immigration restrictions, and rising populism, is the aftershock of that second wave. 

To build a doctrine that defeats radical terrorism while preserving liberal democratic values, one needs to assess what has worked and what has not. 

What Worked 

First, concentrating operational efforts at the source of the threat has proven successful. Terrorism cannot be contained through border defense alone, so the large military campaigns fighting the Islamic State in the Middle East, where the group was founded, were necessary. 

Second, intelligence needs to be adapted when confronting a decentralized enemy that hides among civilian populations. Israel has led in building cyber-based intelligence capabilities, encouraging cooperation between states, and including the private sector to strengthen global counterterrorism efforts. 

Third, rapid biometric identification has revolutionized control over the movement of people, curbing identity theft and impersonation, and improving screening at borders and sensitive sites. 

What Has Not Worked 

First, Western strategic planners continue to disregard ideology as a core driver of terrorist threats. Israel’s failure to prevent the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack stemmed partly from treating Gaza as a rational, state-like actor rather than confronting Hamas’s genocidal ideology. The group’s aims were repeatedly stated, yet dismissed as populist rhetoric. Western strategic thinking tends to discount theological and ideological factors—a blind spot that should be corrected in future threat assessments. 

Second, military victories are not followed by stable political arrangements. Both the United States and Israel won tactically while losing strategically: Afghanistan and Iraq were “won” only to fall to the Islamic State and the Taliban; in Gaza, Israel has militarily defeated Hamas without a political process that could produce lasting peace. Unlike conventional wars, counterterrorism campaigns end with negotiations between the victorious state and a separate, often weak, governing authority responsible for the territory and not the terrorist group itself. Victory over terrorist organizations should therefore be paired with establishing or rehabilitating a credible political address for “the day after,” which is needed in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. 

Third, liberal democracies tend to ignore internal threats, fearing that confronting them will erode civil liberties. But neglecting this legal front—whether regarding terrorism or the erosion of truth through social media and disinformation driven by artificial intelligence (AI)—risks greater harm, including vigilantism, unlawful security-force conduct, or institutional paralysis. 

Conclusion 

Defeating terrorism while preserving democratic values requires treating ideology as central to strategic assessment, pairing military action with credible political follow-through, and updating legal frameworks to meet evolving threats. Ignoring those lessons strengthens authoritarian rivals and fuels the rise of radical populism that threatens democracies from within

The Cost of a Terrorism Designation in Africa 

In 2013, al-Shabaab killed sixty-seven people at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. It was a terrorist attack by any definition. Kenya’s response to the attacks that followed in 2014 was Operation Usalama Watch, during which four thousand people were swept out of Eastleigh, the city’s Somali commercial district, and detained inside a stadium for screening—some for several weeks. Few were ever charged. That incident shows the cost of calling something terrorism: the word imbues authorities with extraordinary powers, but the infrastructure of counterterrorism rarely says when those powers should stop.  

Africa’s experience with terrorism predates September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killed more than two hundred people; almost all the victims were Kenyan and Tanzanian nationals. What 9/11 changed was the machinery of combating terrorism, not the threat. UN Security Council Resolution 1373, passed in 2001, made counterterrorism measures binding and dictated new laws to pass, lists to keep, and rules criminalizing aid or money moved to territories held by listed terrorist groups. 

Twenty-five years on, the Sahel accounts for more than half of all terrorism deaths worldwide, compared with under 1 percent in 2007. The designation of terrorist groups is not wrong: the region’s al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates are powerful organizations with real reach. The challenge is that applying the designation has also become the surest route to resources and attention, encouraging governments to use it generously. 

The designation is broadened in two directions: by outside powers, and by African governments. 

At a global level, the word “terrorism” outlasts the money; two decades of counterterrorism interventions and $3.3 billion of U.S. security assistance did not contain the Sahel insurgencies, and the 2026 United States National Counterterrorism Strategy now expects partners to carry “a greater portion of the [counterterrorism] burden.” Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf states have filled the gap on easier terms, supplying training, equipment, and drones without the human rights conditions attached to Western assistance. 

Within a country, broadening the designation requires no new law. The powers created to pursue insurgents can be easily deployed against civilians who criticize their governments. In May 2026, Burkina Faso investigated its students’ union for “apology for terrorism” after it questioned the state’s progress in the war against terrorism; six journalists have been unlawfully conscripted into the army. Similarly, Sahelian forces and their Russian partners are linked to more civilian deaths than the groups they fight. 

Kenya ran Usalama Watch as part of a Western security partnership, and Burkina Faso now runs its own version after expelling French forces from the country. The practice of designating groups as terrorists outlived the partnerships that introduced it, leaving the question of what, if any, the limits are to such powers.  

The African Union’s counterterrorism plan for 2026 to 2030, adopted in July 2026, is detailed on capability and thin on limits: it outlines a common arrest warrant and a terrorist database, but barely discusses the protection of human rights. The paragraph setting limits on the powers of the state that are intertwined with counterterrorism is always the next document’s problem. Bounding those powers need not wait for a new instrument. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted Principles and Guidelines on Human and Peoples’ Rights while Countering Terrorism in Africa in 2015, and tying the plan’s arrest warrant and database to them would supply the limits it omits. 

Countering Violent Extremism in Southeast Asia Since the October 2002 Bali Bombings 

The horrific bombings of two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, on October 12, 2002—coming just a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States—confirmed that transnational terrorism had become the preeminent post‒Cold War security challenge. The Bali attacks were perpetrated by the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network. JI had established cells in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore by the 1990s, seeking to violently create a Southeast Asian caliphate spanning from southern Thailand to Australia.  

Organized Islamist threat networks such as JI occupied regional governments throughout the 2000s. By mid-decade, however, violent Islamist extremism, thanks to the force-multiplier impact of social media, became more readily disseminated worldwide. This trend was further boosted in the mid-2010s with the emergence of the ultraviolent al-Qaeda offshoot the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The Islamic State adroitly exploited popular social media platforms to spread propaganda, fostering the online radicalization of vulnerable young men in particular. Since then, youth radicalization has become a matter of global concern. 

In the 2020s, violent Islamism is no longer the sole ideological driver of digital radicalization. Far right extremism (FRE) has also moved to the forefront. Today, a plethora of easily accessible social media platforms carrying a wide range of extremist content has enabled disaffected individuals to combine individual grievances and diverse ideological elements, producing what is called composite violent extremism, or “salad bar extremism.” In Southeast Asia, while Islamic State‒inspired youth radicalization remains a serious concern, FRE-inspired radicalization has been observed, especially in Indonesia and Singapore. This type of “salad bar” youth radicalization is an eclectic mix of violent Islamist ideas (Islamic State and Hamas), FRE, misogyny, antisemitism, and, most recently, nihilistic violent ideas. 

Since the attack in Bali, most Southeast Asian governments have learned the lesson that kinetic measures alone cannot address violent extremism. For instance, to address the region’s emergent youth radicalization challenge, it is broadly understood that holistic strategies involving various combinations of civil society groups, religious bodies, educators, law enforcement, counselors, and rehabilitated extremists are needed.  

Additionally, organized Islamist threat networks remain and must be addressed. Here the counterterrorism record is mixed. In southern Thailand, the Thai government has thus far appeared to emphasize hard kinetic measures against Muslim separatists, without fully addressing the deeper identity sources of that long-standing insurgency. Indonesian authorities have also applied kinetic force against Islamic State‒linked networks, though they have complemented this approach with softer measures, including negotiations. 

Through such a mixed strategy, the aforementioned JI network was persuaded to formally disband in June 2024. Likewise, in the southern Philippines, Islamist violence has declined ever since the long-standing issue of Bangsamoro political autonomy was resolved with the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao in 2019. Going forward, Southeast Asia will need to continue to carefully navigate the rapidly evolving threat landscape of violent extremism of all stripes. 

In the Fight Again Terrorism, Cooperation—Not Confrontation—Must Win the Day 

Each of us remembers perfectly where we were on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers in New York were hit by a terrorist attack that struck at the symbolic heart of the United States of America. 

We remember it with the extraordinary clarity that exceptional historical events etch into collective memory. The September 11 attacks were a turning point for the international community—a cruel revelation of the chasm that sometimes divides humanity and of the hatred, fueled by radical ideologies, that prohibits peaceful coexistence and the pursuit of dialogue. 

Twenty-five years later, as the world is marked by even greater interdependence and uncertainty, dialogue and international cooperation are more necessary than ever.  

If the goal of the 9/11 terrorists was to unleash a global religious war, their plan failed. It is true that since the attacks, jihadis have sown terror for years in the Middle East, the West, and elsewhere, although their efforts have tapered off in the past decade. Nevertheless, the need for Europe to reestablish and strengthen communication with Islamic leaders remains unchanged. 

Religion should not be a source of division. On the contrary, the international agenda requires us to focus on potential common interests, which are significant, and shared strategies, which are necessary. The approach cannot be one of confrontation; it must be one of cooperation, and will require realism, commitment, and foresight. We cannot ignore the contradictions and conflicts within the Islamic world itself, which remains divided by ancient, deep-seated antagonisms such as the ideological struggle between Sunnis and Shiites. 

Threatening to wipe out entire civilizations, as President Donald Trump did early in the Iran conflict, is utterly senseless and has the capacity to trigger new spirals of violence. Reason must drive us to overcome basic and potentially devastating instincts. 

That is why the issue of the Palestinian people’s rights must be decisively addressed. Doing so will require the active contribution of all those who, despite the difficulties, are pursuing a framework for effective regional security—regardless of Israel’s resistance and the hesitations or opposition of Islamic countries. 

The Paradox of New Tech: AI and the Future of Counterterrorism 

Twenty-five years after 9/11, one of the most remarkable changes in counterterrorism has been the ability to find terrorist leaders with unprecedented speed and precision. Drones, advanced surveillance, big data, and artificial intelligence have made it increasingly difficult for members of terrorist organizations to hide. AI can process enormous amounts of information, identify suspected militants, track their movements, and generate potential targets far faster than human intelligence officers. Yet that technological progress has produced an important paradox: the better we become at finding terrorists, the stronger their incentive becomes to hide among civilians. 

The Identification Problem 

The Israel-Hamas war illustrates this dilemma. Israel has reportedly employed AI-assisted systems such as the Gospel and Lavender to identify potential targets and suspected Hamas members. Combined with drones and persistent surveillance, such technologies have dramatically increased the speed and scale at which targets can be identified. 

However, Hamas has strong incentives to adapt to Israel’s technological superiority. When militants can be detected and targeted almost anywhere on an increasingly transparent battlefield, civilians become a form of protection against technologically superior forces. Tunnels, densely populated neighborhoods, and civilian facilities provide places to conceal their activities.  

That creates a serious identification problem. Counterterrorism forces must distinguish militants from civilians, but violent extremists deliberately make that distinction increasingly difficult. Paradoxically, therefore, improvements in surveillance and identification do not necessarily translate into better civilian protection. Technological advancement can encourage strategic adaptation that places more civilians at risk. 

The Limits of New Tech 

This dilemma points to a broader lesson from twenty-five years of counterterrorism efforts—military technology can help solve the technical problem of finding and striking terrorists, but it cannot by itself solve the political problem of defeating terrorism. Counterterrorism ultimately depends on distinguishing militants from civilians and maintaining the trust and cooperation of local populations. Civilian casualties can undermine that cooperation, generate resentment, and provide extremist organizations with opportunities for recruitment and mobilization. 

The mistake, therefore, is not in employing rapidly evolving technological tools in the fight against terrorism; it is the assumption that these tools produce better strategic outcomes. Twenty-five years after 9/11, we have become extraordinarily good at finding terrorists. But finding terrorists and defeating terrorism are not the same thing. As AI transforms counterterrorism, protecting the civilians among whom terrorists seek refuge may become more important—and more difficult—than ever.

Assessing Terrorist Threats With Objectivity and Nuance 

Twenty years ago, in 2006, the French government published a white paper on homeland security in the face of terrorism. One section of the document explained why France rejected the American concept of the “global war on terror,” even though French troops had been deployed to Afghanistan as early as 2001 as part of the U.S.-led military coalition. The primary reason for this explanation was legal: in France, a declaration of war can trigger emergency legislation that may endanger democracy by concentrating power in the hands of the president. But the rationale was also strategic. To the extent that nationals of Western countries join jihadi groups, recognizing a state of war could put countries on the slippery slope toward civil war. 

Yet ten years after that publication, the term “war” had become widely used across the French political class. During that period, France deployed its armed forces in Operation Serval (later Operation Barkhane) in the Sahel, joined the international coalition against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and launched Operation Sentinelle on French territory following the terrorist attacks of January 2015. 

Today, the terrorist threat has evolved, but it is still regarded by the French authorities as highly dangerous. The 2025 National Strategic Review devotes significant attention to terrorism, even though, since 2022, the predominant threat has been Russia and the return of interstate warfare to European soil. 

If there is one lesson to be drawn from this decades-long war that began on September 11, 2001, it is the need to identify the terrorist threat with objectivity and nuance. Underestimating the threat can lead to a form of blindness that paves the way for tragic attacks. Conversely, exaggerating the threat can trigger an overreaction that risks creating a vicious cycle beneficial to terrorists. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, which France refused to join, is a case in point. 

The risk of underestimation or overreaction stems from the inherent difficulty of assessing the capabilities of groups operating clandestinely, but it may also result from political or ideological bias. It is rather striking that the 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy completely sidesteps far-right white supremacist extremism, which was considered a significant threat during the Biden administration. When politics contaminates threat assessments, it bodes ill for what lies ahead. 

Multilateral Cooperation Is Needed to Fight Evolving Extremism  

As the world moves away from post-9/11 U.S.-led security architecture, fundamental shifts in global power structures mean that the transnational fight against violent extremism and terrorism is fractured between new centers of power in global geopolitics. The unravelling of the post‒World War II international order is proving a rare opportunity for terror groups to rebrand themselves as legitimate political entities. Afghanistan and Syria have already undergone that transition. 

The Taliban has taken charge of Afghanistan after two decades of war. In Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), a former member of al-Qaeda, is now the president. Those realities are stark reminders that the fight against terrorism and extremism is ongoing, and not beholden to short-term political shifts or individualistic ideological and strategic goals of states or their leaders.  

The modalities that lead to radicalization have not drastically changed, and extremism continues to be a top security concern globally. However, recent U.S. counterterrorism priorities have shifted toward domestic terrorism, including left-wing extremism. That change, coupled with France’s exit from the African Sahel, has left political and power vacuums where the Islamic State and al-Qaeda can further incubate.  

The perpetuation of these groups serves as a reminder that the battle against terrorism requires consistency and collaboration. Allowing a renewal of the “good terrorism and bad terrorism” thinking would reverse progress made in countering these threats since 2001.  

Beyond the ongoing geopolitical competitions and political vacuums providing space for terrorism to return, new technology is adding a layer of difficulty in the counterterrorism fight. Ten years ago, the Islamic State was successfully using social media for recruitment and crude drones in attacks. Today, such groups are using artificial intelligence and other emerging tech for both online propaganda distribution and tactical warfare and acts of violence.   

Fighting back against this new era of extremism will require structured multilateral cooperation, at a time when multilateral institutions and the diplomatic space are shrinking. That will no doubt add to the challenges in the fight against terrorism.