It was never supposed to be like this. For a period, in late 2011, it seemed as if the so-called war on terror was won. The United States had killed two of al-Qaeda’s most important figureheads: Osama Bin Laden and the American-Yemeni preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. Peaceful uprisings across North Africa suggested that a new, more democratic era was emerging in the region. Respectable commentators, who do not ordinarily lean towards hyperbole, regarded the decade-long struggle against that most ambiguous of abstract nouns – “terrorism” – as being over. “Al-Qaeda played no role in the Arab spring,” wrote Peter Bergen, a contributing editor of the New Republic, “and hasn’t been able to exploit in any meaningful way the most significant development in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman empire.”
The Syrian jihad has changed all that. The threat now emerging from Islamic State in the new Middle East is unprecedented for two reasons. The first relates to the sheer scale of mobilisation in Syria and Iraq. What IS has achieved is remarkable. Not only has it carved out a proxy state but it has mobilised the largest volunteer army of Sunni foreign fighters in recent history. Consequently, the threat facing Britain and the West is not just that much broader than previous iterations, but it has also been extended by at least a generation.
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