News | Announcement | EUROPEAN UNION CENTRE in TAIWAN

Taipei Discussion and Learning
Venue: Wisteria Tea House (near Daan Park)
XingSheng Road, Section 3, Lane 16, Number 1, Taipei
Time: 14 October, 20:00 – 21:00

Topic: The Destructive Power of Global Terrorism
Speaker: Dario Kuntic

Political violence has always been a major threat to our security. Tribal skirmishes, violent revolutions, insurrections, and destructive wars have been threatening human lives for centuries. However, the history of political violence has been marked not only by the large scale conflicts but with asymmetric warfare as well. These unconventional wars have come in multiple forms, such as guerilla warfare or insurgency, but none of them have managed to frighten the world more than global terrorism.
Global terrorism showed its destructive power during the attacks on the United States on 11 September, 2001 when terrorists managed to kill nearly 3000 people in less than two hours. The attacks were perpetrated by the global terrorist network known as the al-Qaeda as a response to U.S. military presence in the Muslim countries and its support of Israel. But the war waged by militant Islamists has not been directed solely towards the U.S. but also the West itself. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates consider the West as a poison that intoxicates Islamic faith, undermines Islamic values, and resists the establishment of a mighty Islamic caliphate ruled by Sharia law. According to militant Islamists’ beliefs, the only way to achieve this goal is to wage a holy war, the Jihad, against the United States and its allies, regardless of who they are.
After the 11 September attack the U.S. gathered a wide international antiterrorist coalition and launched the War on Terror with the aim of destroying al-Qaeda. During the war against Jihadists the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, which harbored al-Qaeda, and started to attack al-Qaeda’s remote sanctuaries and its network throughout the world. As a result of intense pressure, al-Qaeda suffered significant setbacks in the last couple of years. It has lost many of its leaders, including Bin Laden, and found it tougher to raise money, train recruits and plan attacks outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Additionally, the Arab Spring undermined al-Qaeda militant ideology because the people did not call for the establishment of theocratic regimes but for modern democratic societies.
Yet despite these setbacks, the threat of militant Islamists is still present. Terrorist cells of al-Qaeda are still operative, its militants still active and its network more dispersed. Although al-Qaeda is maybe not capable of performing spectacular attacks it is certainly capable of launching a number of small but lethal attacks that could undermine global security.

Dario Kuntic is the Head of Department of International Relations, Diplomacy and Security at Politea - Association for promotion of social sciences and new media, Visiting Fellow at the European Union Centre in Taiwan, and doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, Croatia