Defeating Al Qaeda

Last week, Siwar presented an article taken from the BBC news website published on November 14^th about the difficulties to beat Al Qaeda. The columnist tried to analyse the position of the head of the UK's armed forces, General Sir David Richards.

The latter had said that a military victory neither on the Taliban nor on al-Qaeda was possible. In order to introduce the topic, Siwar recalled that Al Qaeda (meaning "the base") was a militant Islamist group founded in 1988 by Cheik Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and Ussama Bin Laden which operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army. It’s a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad. She also replaced it in a threatening context of the Yemen terror alert, as two suspicious packages found in the UK and Dubai and destined for Jewish places of worship in Chicago appeared to have contained explosive materials. She finally presented Barack Obama’s point of view concerning this issue: according to him, the US should continue to work to destroy al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to root out violent extremism in all its forms.

Siwar then asked the group if an idea could be defeated; Terence underlined that we had to distinguish Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Louis Vladimir then said that the Afghanistan population has been facing a long period manipulation. The country lives with its ideas but we can’t change them rapidly: it requires a long term process. After this hot debate that inflamed all the class Siwar asked a current controversial question: Is the risk for France to be attacked really serious, and shall we feel afraid about this menace?

According to me the risk France is currently facing seems well-founded, if we take into account the recent hostage-taking of french workers in the islamic Maghreb or the execution of the french ingeneer Michel Germaneau in July 2010. Yet the government use it in a way that afraid people more than necessary. Of course we should take into account the fact that our country is waging a war against terrorism, and this position can have serious aftermath. However if people are aware of it, fear seems useless: being cautious doesn’t mean we should be afraid everyday about our vulnerability. It is still the best way to defend democratic ideas against extremist ones.