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.