Terrorism sans frontière, sans frontière

The nature of terrorist attacks changed when al-Qaeda used civilian planes with passengers on board as weapons to attack civilian targets in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. 9/11 marked the beginning of global guerilla warfare.

Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with its predecessors. It promoted a kind of "Islamist international," rejecting the validity of nation states and using extensive terror against the masses with signature attacks.

Its organization had nothing to do with known illegal networks either, opening new franchises for jihadist groups across the world.

The answer to al-Qaeda proved to be not as successful. The fight against al-Qaeda could not be confined to Afghanistan, where it was based, as if it was a one-country (or even one-region)-based organization using violence for its political goals. It is true that its founding leader, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, but proof of the ultimate failure of the U.S.-led Western strategy against al-Qaeda was the subsequent birth and rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). 

ISIL was born under the circumstances of the Syria civil war in early 2013. Its rise followed Bashar al-Assad's release of al-Qaeda prisoners in late 2011, in his attempt to show the West that he was the lesser - or even preferable - evil. 

It was soon understood that ISIL was not "al-Qaeda 2.0," but something of an entirely different kind. It raised the bar of violence to mind-blowing levels: Around 70,000 mostly Shiite Iraqi soldiers fled the country's second biggest city Mosul in one day when faced with around 1,000 ISIL militants seizing the city in June 2014. It also negated national borders like al-Qaeda, but at the same time aimed to set up its own states...