Countering the threat of the globalization of Middle Eastern Terrorism. A Perspective from Russia and Israel

On December 14, 2016, the Valdai Discussion Club will present a report titled “Countering the Threat of the Globalization of Middle Eastern Terrorism. A Perspective from Russia and Israel”.

Terror began spreading internationally in the late 1960s and early 1970s through the actions of secular ideological and separatist terrorist organizations. In the late 1980s, many radical Islamist organizations pledged their allegiance to a new force: al-Qaeda, one of the largest ultra-radical international terrorist organizations of the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Salafi jihadist terrorism fully positioned itself in the international arena with the terrorist attacks of 2001 in the United States. During the decade following those attacks, the world community mounted a unified struggle against al-Qaeda and its affiliates and came to believe that it was managing to prevent most of the terrorist attacks. The elimination of key al-Qaeda figures, including its leader, Osama bin Laden, led to the conviction that the organization was essentially liquidated and the Salafi jihadist camp effectively destroyed. However, the events of the “Arab Spring” – that inflamed the entire Middle East – proved that assumption wrong.

The international community faces the task of developing the necessary measures to combat the threat of terrorism on a global scale. Every state attempts to analyze the nature of this phenomenon and to develop its own method for countering this evil. The authors of this report believe that an analysis of terrorist activity and a system of counter-terrorism measures developed by the Israeli expert community hold particular promise as Israel has had to repel the terrorist threat constantly throughout its history. Of special interest is the analysis of terrorist activity and the development of measures to fight it in the Israeli expert community, in a state, which during the entire length of its history constantly comes across the necessity of repelling terrorist threats. These and other questions will be discussed by the experts.

Speakers:

Tatiana Karasova, PhD in History, Head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Oriental Studies Institute Department for the Study of Israel and Jewish Communities

Elena Suponina, advisor to the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.
Moderator:

Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club Foundation programme director, Russian International Affairs Council director of programs.
Discussion Planetary project at Valdai club