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The first condition for devising an appropriate
strategy in response to jihadi terrorism is to have
set of solid concepts and foundations common
to all those who feel affected by the threat that
it poses. In this respect, we are found wanting.
Still today, despite the thousands of terrorist
acts that take place each year and the consider-
able number of organisations classified in this
way, we simply do not have a single and agreed
concept in the international community on
what we should understand by terrorism.
If we go back to the tragic attacks of 11
September 2001 in New York and Washington
(9/11), we will remember that when the UN
General Assembly finally got underway its mem-
bers assigned themselves the task of reaching
an agreement on the matter in the belief that it
was an essential component of the necessary
multilateral response strategy in the face of a
threat that we all felt. However, neither on that
occasion nor throughout the years in which the
Executive Directorate of the Security Council’s
Counter-Terrorism Committee has been dealing
with the issue has it been possible to bridge the
deep differences that exist. To this day, that
deficiency continues to obstruct the adoption of
multilateral, multidimensional and prolonged
response strategies that address both the most
visible effects of the problem and the structural
causes that serve as a breeding ground.
Catalogue of intentional errors
In no way has that stopped terrorism from cap-
turing the obsessive attention of the most
prominent international players (with the United
States during the George W. Bush era as the
chief instigator), to the extent that many today
try to single it out as the biggest threat to inter-
national security. Those who have been acting
in this way, with a rhetoric that is as mistaken as
it is self-interested, use the vagueness of the
term to their advantage to interpret it as they
please, simply selectively classifying as terrorists
those who are their enemies. They would rather
forget that terrorism is just one form of violent
action, to which many very different players
turn as another instrument of violence to
achieve their ultimate goals. In other words, the
Assessment of the jihadi
threat and the response
strategies
Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde