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Bottom Line Up Front

• A host of factors need to be considered to assess and measure the success of transnational terrorist organizations, including intent, ability to mobilize, operational environment, and organizational capability.
• According to the most recent report by the UN Monitoring Team, al-Qaeda’s “appetite for external operations had increased,” and some battle-hardened militants operating in Syria, particularly those from Central Asia, “retained external ambitions.”
• Many counterterrorism analysts would likely suggest that the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) remains the most dangerous terrorist group operating today, demonstrating both the intent and capabilities to conduct external operations (EXOPS).
• In a world of finite resources, with the U.S. and its allies focused on the war in Ukraine, the ongoing conflict in Gaza, and myriad other foreign policy priorities, maintaining focus on counterterrorism sometimes falls off the list of top-ranked priorities.

Western counterterrorism analysts are frequently asked to evaluate the terror threat landscape and assess which terrorist groups are the most dangerous. In many ways, this gets to the heart of the question—how do we accurately assess whether a terrorist group is a success, or failure, or something in between? For most Western countries attempting to combat the threat posed by jihadist groups and violent Shia extremists, including proxies in Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ what matters the most is the ability to conduct external operations (EXOPS) with a high body count. However, lethality cannot be the single measure of a group’s success, although killing civilians in terrorist attacks is the most egregious thing a group can do. But in the West, it seems as if lethality of Westerners is the sole measure that policymakers consider.

Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The group has not been able to come anywhere near being able to replicate such an attack, due in large part to the relentless counterterrorism campaign led by the United States and its allies. But al-Qaeda still exists, seeking to adapt and evolve, at home in Afghanistan, and abroad, where its myriad affiliates and regional branches wreak havoc in sub-Saharan Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere. Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Qaeda’s branch in West Africa, was the most lethal terrorist organization in 2024, and its affiliate in Somalia, al-Shabaab, has shown its ability to mobilize foreigners to join its ranks. According to the most recent report by the UN Monitoring Team, al-Qaeda’s “appetite for external operations had increased,” and some battle-hardened militants operating in Syria, particularly those from Central Asia, “retained external ambitions.” Beyond killing civilians, al-Qaeda also hoped to lure the United States into invading Afghanistan, a goal it achieved weeks after the attacks of 9/11.

Al-Qaeda has been eclipsed, at least in terms of notoriety, by the Islamic State (IS), which rose to infamy by engaging in extreme acts of violence, including beheadings, immolations, and drownings of their captives. These heinous crimes were broadcast by the group in its propaganda, which helped it recruit tens of thousands of foreign fighters from dozens of countries. Still, the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate was defeated in the spring of 2019, and now the group resembles al-Qaeda in similar ways. It retains a core organization of fighters but relies heavily on a transnational constellation of franchise groups dispersed geographically, such as the Sahel, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mozambique, and other global hotspots. Some of these groups have thousands of fighters under arms, cultivate lucrative revenue streams from a diverse portfolio of illicit activities, and control massive swaths of territory. Taken together, these are indicators of success.

In the study of insurgency, there is an old adage that insurgents win simply by not losing. For terrorist groups, there is a higher bar of success. These groups must be able to demonstrate potency, and this is typically achieved through terrorist plots and successful attacks. The Sahel is most deeply impacted by terrorism in recent years, measured by the number of incidents, fatalities, injuries, and hostages, according to the Global Terrorism Index. The groups responsible for so much death and destruction in sub-Saharan Africa include al-Qaeda’s Sahelian branch, JNIM, as well as the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP); al-Qaeda’s East African affiliate al-Shabaab and the Islamic State Somalia (IS-S) in the Horn of Africa; and the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), which has been highly active in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Western countries, including the United States and France, have drawn down their counterterrorism footprint in Africa, perhaps complacent that, while terrorist groups continue to kill civilians in large numbers and destabilize African governments, the threat has remained chiefly confined to Africa, at least for now. But intent is also something that can be misdiagnosed. In the lead-up to the Christmas Day 2009 al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) underwear bomber plot, the conventional wisdom was that AQAP remained strictly a regional threat, not a transnational one. Moreover, many analysts dismissed al-Shabaab’s transnational ambitions until a Kenyan al-Shabaab operative was discovered in the Philippines training for a 9/11-style aviation attack. Recognizing such threats, the Trump administration has launched dozens of airstrikes against jihadists in Somalia so far this year, determined to degrade al-Shabaab and IS-S.

Nevertheless, many counterterrorism analysts believe that the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) remains the most dangerous terrorist group operating today, stemming from its intent and capability to conduct EXOPS, particularly in the West. In 2024, ISKP demonstrated its capabilities by launching attacks in Türkiye, Iran, and Russia, with numerous disrupted plots in Europe, including against the Paris Olympic Games and another targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria. The group also repeatedly threatens attacks in the West, including in the United States, and there are growing concerns that with the shift in focus from counterterrorism to great power competition, as well as recently announced cuts in both funding and personnel across the U.S. intelligence community, the U.S. could remain vulnerable to attack. On New Year’s Day, a homegrown violent extremist motivated by the Islamic State launched a terror attack, killing fifteen people and injuring dozens more.

If al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, or any of their respective affiliates do succeed in launching a spectacular attack on Western soil, it would not necessarily qualify it as ‘successful.’ Most likely, it would spur a Western military campaign dedicated to decimating its leadership and removing its safe haven, as occurred in the aftermath of 9/11 and the establishment of the Islamic State’s caliphate. In the cases of al-Qaeda and IS, these campaigns led to their decentralization and franchising, causing an endless cycle.

The median lifespan for most terrorist organizations is between one and two years. So, if longevity is a metric for a terrorist group’s success, then groups like al-Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah are outliers, rare in their durability and resonance. Another way to judge a group’s viability is by whether it has achieved its stated objectives. By most measures, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has done so, toppling the Assad regime in December and now in charge of governing Syria, a Herculean challenge that the group is attempting to manage. In the end, if a group like HTS seizes power and transitions away from terrorism and toward governance, it is unclear who wins. There are many voices from Washington to Brussels who view recent developments in Damascus as positive. In contrast, others remain wary of Syrian interim leader Ahmad al-Sharaa’s true intentions, given his recent past as the leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.

In a world of finite resources, with the U.S. and its allies focused on Iran and its proxies, the war in Ukraine, the ongoing conflict in Gaza, and myriad other foreign policy priorities, maintaining focus on counterterrorism sometimes falls off the list of top-ranked priorities. But these groups will remain aggressive in looking for opportunities to strike Western interests abroad, including by targeting embassies, sporting events, concert venues, tourist destinations, or other soft targets where large numbers of civilians are known to congregate. Additionally, with years of practice, they will continue to be able to effectively leverage grievances in slick propaganda materials that circulate widely, exploiting news cycles and major global events to radicalize and even instigate attacks and hate crimes.

The Bush administration’s decision to label America’s post-9/11 military campaign to destroy al-Qaeda as “the Global War on Terrorism” or GWOT, arguably distorted the nature of the terrorist threat. Terrorism itself is a tactic, not a group, a movement, or an organization. Wars end. Accordingly, terrorism will never end; it will merely ebb and flow in different regions of the world in response to a confluence of different factors. Despite official declarations from governments that they will never ‘negotiate with terrorists,’ they do. The cat-and-mouse game between terrorists and the states they threaten is an ongoing negotiation, while the tools employed can oscillate between kinetic and non-kinetic, or sometimes both simultaneously.

Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first post-communist president who died earlier this month at the age of 95, remains one of the country’s most divisive political figures.

For many Romanians, he is remembered less as a liberator than as the man who betrayed the Revolution which toppled the communist regime in 1989, by unleashing miners against protesters in 1990 and ensuring that the communist secret police escaped real accountability.

But this narrative is shaped by retrospective anger rather than sober analysis, former CIA intelligence analyst Richard Andrew Hall tells BIRN in an interview. Hall researched the period for his political science doctorate during an extended stay in Bucharest in the 1990s and now runs a website called The Archive of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989.

“Iliescu was already a political anachronism in 1990,” Hall says. “His insistence on staying politically active, running for and serving as president, ruined the way he will be remembered. Much of the anger directed at him is about what he did later as president, not about what he did in December 1989,” says Hall.

Hall stresses that Romanians often conflate Iliescu’s later sins, most notably his role in the violent ”Mineriada” of June 1990, when Iliescu called in miners to forcibly disperse anti-government protesters occupying Bucharest’s University Square, with the Revolution itself. During the Mineriada, official reports said six people were killed and up to 1,000 people injured.

“Because Iliescu is guilty for his role in the 1990 Mineriada does not mean the accusations about his role in December 1989 are true,” says Hall. “A person deserves to be judged for their actions at a particular moment in time, not judged retroactively in light of what they did later.”

The cost of transition

To understand Iliescu’s paradoxical legacy, Hall suggests placing him in a regional perspective. Romania’s transition was chaotic and bloody compared to Poland or Hungary, where communist elites negotiated their way out of power. “Iliescu was what they call a ‘cost of the transition’ from communism because of timing and how that transition played out,” Hall explains.

In Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski stayed on as president because of the 1989 Round Table deal, when negotiations between politicians led to the end of the communist regime in Poland. In Bulgaria, the former communists dominated politics until early 1997. Romania’s cost of transition was ”Iliescu and the [interim governing body] of the National Salvation Front”, which ruled Romania after the communism collapse in December 1989 until the first elections in May 1990.

Iliescu’s arrival on the political stage was also badly timed. “Had he arrived earlier”, as a timid reformer in the 1980s, like Hungary’s Karoly Grosz for example, ”he would be far better regarded today”, Hall says. “But then again, that was all-but-impossible because of the character of the Ceausescu regime. Instead, Iliescu is remembered for encouraging and welcoming the miners’ brutality in June 1990 and for presiding over political alliances with the ultranationalist, Ceausescu nostalgics from 1992 to 1995.”

Yet Iliescu was not without achievements. Romania under his leadership remained committed to NATO and EU integration. NATO membership was finalised in 2004 during his final mandate. “Some of the criticisms of Iliescu are partisan or subjective nonsense,” Hall insists, referring to Iliescu’s opponents, mainly political rivals and intellectuals, who accused him of not supporting fast economic and social reforms or the decommunisation of the country.

For Hall, the idea that he was some Russian agent – as his opponents often claimed – is absurd. Romania stayed the course toward NATO and EU and showed consensus in this regard. ”That was something that made Romania an attractive geopolitical partner for the United States.”

The revolution files

At the heart of Romania’s unfinished revolution story is the question of what Iliescu and the National Salvation Front labelled the “terrorists”, allegedly Ceausescu’s loyalists, security forces, and unknown armed groups, who unleashed chaos and violence in December 1989.

These supposed terrorists were blamed for sniper attacks, gunfire, and diversions in Bucharest and other cities, fueling fear, chaos, and confusion. Over 1,100 people were killed and more than 3,300 wounded after the Romanian Revolution started in December. Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown on December 22, 1989. The problem is that 36 years after these events, the actual existence of the “terrorists” remains disputed.

The official indictment in the long-delayed revolution trial in 2019, in which Iliescu was accused of crimes against humanity, also claimed he and the army staged a “false flag” operation, fabricating a non-existent enemy [the “terrorists”] to legitimise their seizure of power and cover up the army’s role in earlier repression.

Hall disagrees with this framing. For him history is not about retroactive logic, it’s about what happened at the time. And what happened often included things that seem illogical in hindsight but made sense to those involved.

Since 2021, Hall and Romanian researcher Andrei Ursu have gained access to the so-called Revolution Files, a vast trove of official documents long kept from public view, mainly because Iliescu and others wanted to keep their contents secret. “We thus know what the military prosecutors used from the file in preparing the 2019 indictment, but we also know what they have ignored,” Hall says.

For him, Iliescu’s ‘crimes’ in December 1989 are better categorized as “errors”. One of those errors was his promise, on the evening of December 22, that the Ceausescus would face a public trial. Another was his hesitation to execute the dictator and his wife sooner. Had they been executed on the night of the 22nd, “there would have been far fewer deaths, injuries, and mayhem,” Hall explains.

The central question remains: did the “terrorists” of December 1989 exist? “Yes,” Hall says firmly. For him, the terrorism of December 1989 had three components: disinformation and rumour-spreading; radio-electronic warfare such as jamming and fake transmissions, that made it seem Romania was under invasion; and sporadic gunfire, especially at night, meant to terrify and disorient.

According to Hall, these operations were essentially a failed counter-revolution designed to save the Ceausescus. “Its main protagonists were culled from the [former secret service police] Securitate,” he says. Because the plan failed, many dismiss the idea of an organised group of “terrorists” altogether. But that’s bad historical analysis, Hall argues, saying that history is not about asking ‘who benefited?’ but about studying the “dynamics of the event itself”.

Despite three decades of investigations, much remains obscured. Documents about the Securitate released as part of the 2021 Revolution Files “brought little light on what had happened in December 1989 and were in fact something of a diversion”, Hall argues. For him, the real answers lie in army files still buried in local military procuracy archives.

As for Soviet involvement, there’s no serious evidence. Hall says that Soviet specialists “have found nothing to substantiate the accusations of Soviet involvement in December 1989, let alone of a planned Soviet invasion”.

Why then, more than three decades later, do so many Romanians remain convinced the revolution was a coup orchestrated by Iliescu or the Soviets? Hall points to contemporary fears. “After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, suddenly the threat to Moldova and even to Romania increased. Because of fear and anger, narratives about the Russian threat posed to Romania ‘sell’ to the broader Romanian population. Today’s anger and fear is thus projected back on to historical events, especially December 1989,” Hall argues.

These fears make the old Securitate narrative, that December 1989 was a Russian coup, far more marketable. It plays to Russophobia and diverts blame from the Securitate’s own role.

That disinformation, Hall adds, has been remarkably successful.

The former Securitate narrative has reshaped the story about December 1989 from focusing on the Ceausescus and the Securitate, to focusing on Ion Iliescu, the army, and the Russians. “Establishing the exact role and responsibility for the pre-22 December 1989 period has to be taken from the top again, because Securitate disinformation has succeeded in rewriting and muddying the narrative,” Hall says.

In the end, what is Iliescu guilty of? Hall is blunt: “His crime is not that he invented non-existent terrorists…or that they fought on his behalf, but that he allowed the Securitate to clean up and cover up their bloody responsibility for the deaths, injuries, and mayhem of December.” For Hall, Iliescu needed the Securitate to hold power, so he turned away from justice and accountability.

That choice has cast a long shadow. Thirty-six years after the revolution, Romania still lacks clarity about who killed, who ordered the killing, and who covered it up. Iliescu, once hailed as a saviour, has become instead the symbol of an unresolved controversy.