Five years after September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks and the U.S response—now called the global war on terrorism — have changed the world, and the terrorist enterprise that we know as al-Qaeda has changed with it. The current status of al-Qaeda’s network remains unclear, but it is certain that it and other terrorist groups continue to threaten the lives and well-being of Americans, at home and abroad, and the security of our friends and allies. This continuing danger leads to ongoing U.S. and international efforts to monitor, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist groups before they can cause large-scale destruction to our people or our interests.
The objective of this RAND Corporation study, undertaken as part of a project entitled “Beyond al-Qaeda: Countering Future Terrorist and Other Nontraditional Threats to U.S. Security,” is to understand the shape of future threats to the United States and U.S. security interests from terrorist and other extremist organizations. We do this through analyses that draw together the various threat strands that are informing current U.S. thinking in the war on terror. The study looks specifically at four sources of threats:
1. Al-Qaeda. We examine how al-Qaeda has changed since September 11, the loss of its operating base in Afghanistan, and the death or capture of key operatives; and we assess what forms the al-Qaeda threat to the United States and U.S. interests takes now and might take in the future.
2. Terrorist groups that may not be formally part of al-Qaeda but that have assimilated al-Qaeda’s worldview and concept of masscasualty terrorist attacks. This, we believe, is where the center of gravity of the current global terrorist threat lies.
3. Violent Islamist and non-Islamist terrorist and insurgent groups and other nontraditional threats with no known links to al-Qaeda. These groups threaten U.S. regional interests, friends,and allies.
4. The nexus between terrorism and organized crime. In each case, we examine how the presence of these threats affects U.S. security interests, and we identify distinct strategies that the United States and the U.S. Air Force may take to neutralize or mitigate each of these threats
Read More..
* Part 1. Beyond Alqaeda – The Global Jihadist Movement
PDF | 228 Pages | 2,49 MB | Download
* Part 2. Beyond Alqaeda – The Outer Rings of The Terrorist Universe
PDF | 216 Pages | 1,15 MB | Download
Password : e-dublog