How 'humanitarian intervention' made a world in which stateless terror could flourish - Article by Brendan O’Neill.

'Over the past decade, a new player has emerged in world affairs - the cross-border terrorist. Unlike the national liberation movements of old, like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or the Irish Republican Army (IRA), cross-border terror groups do not confine themselves territorially or ideologically to a particular region. Instead, in the words of one foreign policy expert, they are 'explicitly global in orientation', happy to 'move funds, men and material from one location to another.

Consider al-Qaeda, the best known of the new breed of terrorists, and increasingly a kind of brand name used by an assortment of Islamic terror groups. Al-Qaeda has become infamous for its sporadic attacks, for moving its bases from failed state to failed state, for its networks of individuals distributed around the globe - whether in south London, south Florida or south Asia. Al-Qaeda has been severely weakened by the post-9/11 war on terror (or 'effectively defeated', according to one US official, but recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other unstable parts suggest that disparate elements are keen to keep on bombing.'