Europe s Jihadi Generation

President Bush recently drew an analogy between the current struggle against violent jihadi terrorism and the Cold War. He is right in one respect waves of terrorism tend to be generational.

Scores of texts are appearing in the Muslim world on jihadi strategic studies. The best known in the West is The Management of Savagery , but only because it was translated and made public.

Having lost Syrian backing, it is hoping that the Egyptian Brothers will provide its kindred movement with political and logistical support. Yet it allows radical Palestinians and jihadi groups in Gaza to conduct operations in Sinai.

Then the Bush administration succumbed to hubris and made the colossal mistake of invading Iraq without broad international support. Iraq provided the symbols, civilian casualties, and recruiting ground that the jihadi extremists had sought in Afghanistan.

When the crisis in Syria erupted, nobody predicted how serious, protracted, and complex it would turn out to be. For starters, observers underestimated citizens' ever deepening sense of hopelessness, which has driven them to support jihadi groups or the Assad regime.

This has created fertile ground for anti immigrant populists and Islamist terrorists alike. More than 1,200 French citizens are estimated to have joined the jihadi cause in Syria, along with 600 from the United Kingdom, 550 from Germany, and 400 from Belgium.

There appears to be no single answer. But one common pattern that does emerge is that the jihadi message, because it promises meaning and identity, seems to appeal particularly to people who are unsure about who they are and where they are heading.

Jihadi fighters connected to Al Qaeda are now in the majority. The United Kingdom s Home Office has warned that hundreds of British and other European Muslims fighting in Syria alongside Al Qaeda linked rebel groups could return home to carry out terrorist attacks.

Today, the old Middle East can still be found in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, and Fatah controlled Palestine. The new Middle East includes Dubai, the Gulf emirates, and Israel, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and jihadi terrorism and, partly, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, unlike Yemen, has supposedly created a model system for reintegrating and re educating Guantánamo returnees. The Al Munasaha rehabilitation center is supposed to cure jihadi passions, and Saudi returnees from Guantánamo who spend time at Al Munasaha are later offered jobs and wives.

Its philosophy has been to merge jihadi education with modern curricula not only to train young students in religious principles but also to make them adept in science and technology, a philosophy that can be put to devastating effect to serve the needs of terrorism.

Nonetheless, it argues that a victory in Syria by a coalition of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad s regime would pose an even greater danger. Moreover, in the event of the Assad regime s fall, there would be plenty of ways to deal with the jihadi groups in Syria.

Jihadi extremism cannot be defeated unless the mainstream wins. Military force, intelligence, and international police cooperation needs to be used against hardcore terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda, but soft power is essential to attracting the mainstream and drying up support for the extremists.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent pressure from Washington, led to a U turn by Pakistan away from pro jihadi policies. Today, many former officials associated with those policies, such as Mushahid Hussain, a former information minister, concede that Pakistan should have contained militancy long ago.

The perceived threat posed by the Islamic State has also caused the US to drop ousting Syria s Bashar al Assad, Iran s main regional ally, from its agenda. Indeed, the US has ended up indirectly allied with Hezbollah, a key Iranian proxy, which is fighting alongside Assad s troops against foreign jihadi forces.

Yes, Syria s secular opposition is weak and divided, while the jihadis are more dynamic but jihadi supremacy in the event of an opposition victory is not inevitable. The US and its allies should conduct a robust policy, make a more significant investment in the secular opposition, and articulate clear goals.

In February, Syria s state news agency accused jihadi rebels of firing a rocket containing chemical materials in Khan al Assal an allegation that the British television outlet Channel Four backs. The rebels, however, blame the government for the attack (which neither side has been able to prove involved chemical weapons).

For at least two years, though, Musharraf tried to have it both ways, cracking down at America s behest on the Islamists on Pakistan s western border with Afghanistan while sponsoring them on the eastern border with India. A Pakistani sponsored jihadi attack on India s Parliament in December 2001 nearly provoked all out war.

Pakistan has a large nuclear weapons program and faces an expansive jihadi insurgency, which previously attacked military bases suspected of housing nuclear assets. Though Pakistan has not experienced a nuclear breach, and the government insists that safeguards remain robust, the country s increasingly frequent and severe bouts of instability raise serious questions about the future.

Its hegemony is challenged by the more radical Islamic Jihad (which remains allied with Iran) and a host of Salafi and jihadi groups, some connected to radical elements in Sinai, which complicates Hamas s relations with Egypt. Moreover, these groups have frequently initiated attacks on Israel from Gaza or through Sinai, generating cycles of violence that have embarrassed Hamas.

On one side, the United States, the European Union, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are backing the opposition a welter of armed factions with diverse agendas and ideologies that range from Syrian nationalist to global jihadi. This disunity reflects the fissures in Syrian society, a result of more than four decades of brutal authoritarian rule.

But, as Mubarak s regime declined, so did the government s control over the Bedouin. Palestinian militants from Gaza an active arena of Israeli Palestinian confrontation since Hamas gained control in 2007 and jihadi terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda and the larger global jihad network penetrated Sinai, exploiting the government s neglect of the region and inflaming the local population s feelings of disenfranchisement.

One school regards Syria primarily as a theater of battle against Al Qaeda and other extremists. Its adherents, preoccupied with the prospect of a jihadi takeover in Syria, argue (sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly) that the US and its allies must not support or intervene on the side of the rebels and, in fact, should view Bashar al Assad s regime as the lesser evil.

The moral authority that Francis exudes makes his interventions in controversial contemporary issues such as his condemnation of the Armenian genocide, Islamic jihadi violence, Mafia criminality and corruption in Italy, and the deaths of African and Middle Eastern migrants in the Mediterranean extremely powerful. Before and during his visit to the US, his views on three issues none of which is without controversy in the US will have a particularly strong impact.

Within months, however, Musharraf had conducted a coup against the hapless Nawaz Sharif, and a year later declared himself president, a title meant to enhance his stature when he visited India for peace talks in July 2001. But Musharraf had come to power as the patron of the jihadi s his army was financing, equipping, and training for their forays into Indian territory, and few in New Delhi thought genuine peace could be made with such a duplicitous man.