The above article reinforces similar assessments by TRC (WAR Report) and the US intelligence community that the insurgency in Iraq is likely providing the crucible for a new generation of battle-hardened and trained terrorist operatives who are likely to go on to establish regional Islamist extremist militant groups. The Iraq militancy crucible, combined with the galvanizing purchase of al-Qaeda?s virulent Islamist extremist ideology among radicalized Islamic communities globally, has served to catalyze the global metastasization of a network of Islamist militant groups that, as TRC and the CIA?s National Intelligence Council (NIC) have suggested, will come to rival al-Qaeda?s elite leadership and operational nucleus as the frontline fighters of Islamist militancy. There is also the potential that al-Qaeda, in strategically focusing on Iraq as a central jihadist battlefield and seeking to expand its presence in Iraq via its alliance with the network of terrorist and mujihideen fighters, commanded by terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi, may be attempting to cultivate the ranks of the mujihideen flowing into Iraq with the goal of integrating battle-hardened veterans into al-Qaeda’s global terrorism operations.

Thus, within the context of the war in Iraq, it is simple-minded and myopic of current global Islamist extremist terrorism to believe that there are finite ranks of terrorist who, with enough time, bullets, and body bags?on both sides?can be eroded and ?defeated? in a traditional military sense. Rather, as seems to be happening in Iraq, direct action counter-terrorism operations have the attendant effect of radicalizing greater numbers to fight out of their perception of personal grievance as a result of counter-terrorism actions, an inspired militant commitment to the purported ?cause? of the targeted group, and/or feelings of defensive ideological and personal solidarity with the target group. Thus, counter-terrorism strategies with any hope of ?success? in tempering global Islamist extremist terrorism must, in addition to direct action against fighters, emphasize strategies addressing the ideological, political, and social issues integral to such militancy. Specifically, national policies and global counter-terrorism strategies must be calibrated to help ameliorate the societal, economic, political, and cultural grievances within communities that may make them susceptible to extremist Islamist ideology, which in turn, rallies the successive waves of recruits and supporters to Islamist extremist terrorism.

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