Defeating Jihadist Terrorism

Since the early 1990s, terrorism and its victims have increased exponentially.
Without any action strategy or exit solution, through political and military
incompetence, stupidity and ideological blindness, Western interventions have
only contributed to its development. We eliminate terrorists, but not
terrorism. The solution lies in a more holistic, more subtle, more intelligent
and less dogmatic approach. Terrorism is not an ideology. It is a method that
takes many forms, including jihadist terrorism. Each form of terrorism is
fought with a specific strategy. Based on the original texts of jihadist
strategists as well as on their own analyses of attacks in France, Belgium,
Great Britain and the United States, Jacques Baud explains the reasons for
Western failure. He uses the analyses of Western intelligence services to
decipher the mechanisms of jihadist terrorism, in order to extract strategies
of action likely to avoid it or to fight it effectively and durably.

The author is a former head of Swiss strategic intelligence and former head of
UN peace operations doctrine. In the course of his missions in Africa and
Central Asia, the author has had several encounters with jihadists in the
field.