Counterterrorism

Seventeen years after the start of the first major U.S. war on terrorism – and tens of thousands of casualties and more than two trillion dollars later – the U.S. still lacks a credible database on international terrorism. There is no common official database at the interagency level, there are deep disagreements over the size and success of given threats, and there are major gaps in coverage. Each “war” on terrorism has its own approach (and usually approaches) to estimating the threat and to judging what parameters are important. There are a wide range of databases outside the U.S. government, ranging from commercial efforts to academic and NGO assessments. They often sharply disagree, and many are clearly political or ideological in character. The closest thing to an official database is the one used by the U.S. State Department in its Country Reports on Terrorism and its Annex of Statistical Information. The report and annex provide an overview of the global trends in terrorism.

This report analyses the reasons for European policy-makers coming to perceive the Sahel as a threat to Europe’s own security and stability. It starts by presenting the most recent developments in the Sahel and Maghreb regions in respect of the two most significant threats to European security and stability: trans-national jihadism and cross-border migration. The report provides in-depth analysis of a series of the most important factors that are driving the increases in jihadism and migration, including the persistence of state weakness in the Sahel, the collapse of the state in Libya and the failure of regional collaboration. Furthermore, the report analyses the most significant developments in the international community’s responses to the most recent conflicts and crises in the Sahel and Maghreb, including the foreign policies of France, which remains the single most important foreign actor in the Sahel, the European Union and Denmark. The report closes with a series of suggestions regarding how the European powers, especially Denmark, might adjust their policies in order to increase the likelihood of long-term peace and stability being generated in the region.