Tyrants and Terrorists: Authoritarian Consolidation as Counter-Terrorism.

‘The war on terror has seen the direct military intervention of the United States in the Middle East and it has moved counter-terrorism strategies fully into the military domain. Such a military strategy to combat terrorism has so far failed leading to a rethink of the strategies involved in the struggle against terrorism. In the Middle East and North Africa, the US failure in Iraq has not only served to strengthen the authoritarianism of the regimes in place, but it seems also to have affected the ways such regimes combat the terrorist cells present on the territory. From the Algerian national reconciliation law to the Moroccan authorities reclaiming of the poor shanty towns where suicide bombers come from, the use of military tactics seems to have been abandoned. This paper wishes to explore such issues in detail. In particular, how regimes in the Middle East and North Africa cope with the renewed threat of terrorism and violent opposition to their rule. Countries such as Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco have all felt the domestic consequences of the revitalization of salafi jihadism and it is important to try to understand the mechanisms regimes have put in place to combat such a phenomenon given the ineffectiveness of purely military means.” ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]