CIAO DATE: 6/5/2006

Currents and Crosscurrents of Radical Islamism

Abstract

The second phase of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Transatlantic Dialogue on Terror took place against a backdrop of rapid change. When the first conference in this series took place in Berlin in the spring of 2005, scholars and practitioners were still absorbing the details of the previous year's attacks against the Madrid light rail system, the murder of Dutch artist Theo van Gogh and a host of other attacks and foiled plots. Global radicalism continued to be shaped by the deepening insurgency in Iraq, in which radical Islamists from inside and outside that country play a pivotal role. In the months following the Berlin meeting, the bombing of the London Underground, the attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh and Amman, and a stream of revelations about radical Islamist activity from Europe to the Middle East to South Asia and Australia — where a group of conspirators were arrested for plotting an attack against that country's sole nuclear facility — had also to be taken into account.

Complicating the picture was increasing evidence of the decline of the core al Qaeda group. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other senior leaders were apparently contained in the forbidding border region of Pakistan; other senior leaders were in Iran, where they seemed to be largely, if not completely, restrained. Top operatives were being hunted and captured with considerable efficiency, preventing the organization from reviving its network and carrying out terrorist strikes. The juxtaposition of a weakened al Qaeda and continued terrorist activity — and a seemingly thriving radical milieu — has compelled observers to think hard about the state of terrorism today, which little resembles anything in the past half century of non-state violence.

In the course of Transatlantic Dialogue conferences in Berlin, Washington and The Hague, participants explored conceptions of this new terrorism as being the product not of traditional extremist, hierarchical organizations but rather a burgeoning social movement. Networks have loosened and, in some cases, atomized. But the activism continues, fueled by the spread of jihadist ideology. Increasingly, we see that the key actors are not the established radical organizations, which are under severe pressure from police and intelligence services, but “self-starter” cells, which operate largely without outside direction. The emergence of such small groups from the grass roots forces us to examine more closely the phenomenon of radicalization, the means of transmission of ideas as well as CSIS TRANSATLANTIC DIALOGUE ON TERRORISM 5 tactics, and the conditions that may trigger a handful of individuals to commit their lives to a cause with which they have had little previous formal contact.

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