2001-2015, from Al-Qaeda to Isis: A Short Review on 15 Years of Struggle against Terrorism

We have often heard that the 21st century will be spiritual or will not be - a sentence falsely attributed to André Malraux usually. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the world, expected spirituality was swept away by the images of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Instead of hope for a global awareness, people got to know words such as “Terror”, “Barbarism”, and “War on Terror”, “War and Terrorism”.

Terrorism and security issues became major concerns. This applies for governments first; they are using terrorism as a political guideline, then on a wider global scene. Terrorism was seen hitherto as a matter of state; it became one of the main topics in internationals organizations. After 15 years of active counter-terrorism on a global scale, the assessment of the situation shows that the results are not very encouraging so far.