Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Terrorism, insurgency, or organized crime?

Insurgency, Terrorism and Organised Crime in a Warming Climate

Organized Crime and Terrorism. Reasons, Manifestations, Counteractions

Without doubt globalization is impacting on just about every aspect of life in the modern world. One may argue about the positive and negative issues involved in the process but what cannot be overlooked is that it is creating new opportunities to expand criminal activity, particularly in the form of organized crime and terrorism. As such, this phenomenon needs to be carefully studied both for ...

Recent evolution of terrorism in the Maghreb

The number of terrorist attacks in the Maghreb has increased extraordinarily overt recent years. It is unlikely that their current frequency will lessen in the short term. The main scenario for such attacks is no longer Algeria but Libya. The acts of terrorism are being carried out above all by jihadist groups connected to al-Qaeda and, since 2014, followers of the Islamic State (IS). Their mod...

Review Essay Terrorism and Insurgency

The war on terrorism will have lasted seven years by September 2008, making it much longer than the American Civil War or World War II. Current American national security and military strategy documents, in fact, frame this war as a protracted struggle, one which may see persistent conflict lasting several decades. Despite the duration of this war, the US government has not yet exhibited a grea...

Al Qaeda as a Dune Organization: Toward a Typology of Islamic Terrorist Organizations

Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups offer the analyst a highly complex challenge. The current literature classifies Islamic terrorist organizations as either networked or hierarchical. Yet, this classification fails to account for the appearance on the international stage of a new type of global terrorism. Most notably, it does not capture the structure and mode of operation of Al Qaeda as it em...