In a daring suicide attack barely a hundred yards from the Frontier Constabulary (FC) Headquarters in Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP, formerly the North West Frontier Province), a 15-year-old boy blew himself up, killing the FC chief, Sifwat Ghayoor, along with three of his bodyguards on August 4, 2010. Another eleven persons were injured in the attack. Police said that about 10 kilogrammes of explosives were used in the blast.
 

The foiled January 2008 plot against the metro in Barcelona evidenced both the polymorphous character of post‐9/11 global terrorism and the composite nature of the main threat it seems to pose in the West. The thwarted attacks suggest a mixture of foreign extremists coming from the country which then as now occupies a central locus in the cartography of global terrorism, that is to say Pakistan, and first‐generation immigrants in the West –who nevertheless may travel often and for rather long periods of time to their homeland‐‐ turned into extremists.

First published as a working paper by the Elcano Royal Institute.

On July 28th 2010 an explosion occurred on a Japanese oil tanker near the entrance to the Persian Gulf. One sailor was lightly injured as a result of the explosion. The “M Star” tanker, loaded with nearly two million barrels of oil, was on its way to Chiba Port near Tokyo when the explosion occurred as the vessel entered the Strait of Hormuz, close to Oman. The Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Persian Gulf and Oman, is considered to be one of the most important routes in the world. Close to 40% of the world’s oil supply passes through this strait. After a few days of speculation regarding the origin of the explosion, the Jihadi forums announced on August 4th 2010 that the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

One of the most interesting and important phenomena yet to have received appropriate treatment in research literature is the de-radicalization process which several Islamic terrorist organizations have undergone and are still undergoing. In the past decade we have been witness to attempts made by Muslim regimes to cope with the phenomenon of radicalization by formulating a policy and action strategy whose objective is to encourage a de-radicalization process. This approach has developed over the past decade and is attempting to provide an answer to all the elements of radicalization and its sources of development. Within this there are various and diverse methods of approach for coping with radicalization, thus far with no proven significant success. This document wishes to examine the de-radicalization process undergone by the well-known Libyan terrorist group – the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) as of November 2006. Its peak was in September 2009 with the publishing of a new book written by members of the group during their stay in the Libyan prison. The book represents a turning point in the group’s way of thinking and in its path, constituting a new phase in the war on terrorism.

 The violent nature of the flotilla and the events on board of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara should not have been a surprise if anyone would have "connected the dots" before the takeover of the ship by the Israeli Naval Commandos. The Gaza flotilla initiative was a step in the implementation of the Jihadi "Istanbul declaration", which was issued at a conference held in Istanbul on 14-15 February 2009 under the title "Gaza victory".

This overview deals with the terrorist and kidnapping activities of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen has been gaining in strength since its reestablishment in 2006 and particularly since it merged with Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia to become Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in 2009. With reputable Jihadi leaders, access to funds, ties to terrorist organizations abroad, and abilities to perpetrate attacks outside of Yemen, the organization has thrived into a force that must be reckoned with. With the Yemeni state losing control over its territory, it must continue to take strong action against the organization or risk failure as a state.

Since the attacks of 11 September 2001 on New York and Washington DC there has been an ongoing controversy about whether the real threat of global terrorism is posed by al-Qaeda, its territorial extensions and affiliated organisations, or by decentralised groups inspired by, but unconnected to, such entities. The 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings are often held up as the archetype of an independent local cell at work, and the perpetrators depicted as self-recruited, leaderless terrorists. Six years after the blasts, however, new evidence connecting some of the most notorious members of the Madrid bombing network with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, along with features of the terrorist network itself and distinctive elements of the likely strategy behind the blasts, suggest that these assumptions are misleading. Judicial documentation now fully accessible at Spain’s National Court and other relevant primary or secondary sources can help us better understand what the attacks can tell us about al-Qaeda and a global terrorism in transition, as well as about the changing nature of the threat to open societies.

First published in: Survival | vol. 52 no. 2 | April–May 2010

For years, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has increasingly demonstrated violent global ambitions beyond the South Asian theatre; however, the antisemitic component to its target selection has only more recently been demonstrated.