By Gavin Cordon, PA Whitehall Editor
Western governments were today urged to build a new “political accommodation” with Islam in an effort to undermine the threat of terrorist extremist groups such as Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network.
The influential International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank said that despite the continuing violence in Iraq, the counter-terrorist outlook was becoming “more optimistic”.
In its annual Strategic Survey, the IISS said that the global “jihadist” movement was “physically and ideologically in flux”.
Many of the loose confederation of Islamist terror groups around the world now shared al Qaida’s objectives and methods “only in a general and not necessarily sustainable sense”, it said.
At the same time international law enforcement and intelligence co-operation was improving – in large part because Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had been forced to take measures to tackle the Islamist threat within their own countries.
The report cautioned that “hard” anti-terrorism measures could at best only contain the problem and that other approaches were needed.
“A better Western political accommodation with Islam – more a function of soft rather than hard power – was also required,” it said.
“While European Muslims aggrieved by adverse circumstances in their host countries derive energy and political affirmation from al Qaida, their support for its maximalism could flag if conditions for Muslims in Europe improve.”
It said that while America’s past reliance on hard power had resulted in “blowback” – producing more terrorist recruits – there now appeared to be a greater understanding, even in the US, of the importance of soft power.
“Eventually, ideological cracks could emerge from agendas and degrees of commitment among jihadists,” it said.
Groups such as Jemaah Islamiah in Indonesia, or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines – which had relatively limited regional objectives – could become “amenable” to political influence.
At the same time the opening up of opportunities for political progress in the Middle East following the death of the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had allowed for “a more optimistic counter-terrorism outlook”.
Nevertheless, the report warned that al Qaida remained a “very dangerous terrorist organisation” and that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden or his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri had “deferred a major blow to the global jihad’s recruiting power”.
“Al Qaida’s extant first-generation leadership retained immense iconic power due to its long experience, rhetorical talents, survival against the odds and, in bin Laden’s case, personal charisma,” it said.
It added: “From al Qaida’s point of view, Bush’s Iraq policies have arguably produced a confluence of propitious circumstances: a strategically bogged-down America hated by much of the Islamic world and regarded warily even by its allies.”
