Phares quoted in Portugal's: "Al-Qaeda Grupo de Osama bin Laden nasceu há 20 anos." Quote Translated: Unlikely victory" As a middle-way between experts Sageman and Hoffman, Walid Phares, a terrorism expert from the ‘Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ in Washington, believes that the concept of “real danger vs a fake danger does not exist”. He sums up saying that it is about an ideological movement, “partly [composed by] the Al-Qaeda and mostly [composed by] global jihad members”. However, in an e-mail interview, he says that “the fact that Arabs, Chechens, Europeans, Africans and Asians are fighting together with the Taliban and Al- Qaeda means that this is not a local but a transnational movement, despite the significant among the Pashtun in Afghaistan”. He explains that “there is a global ideology called the jihadist movement.” Making an analogy with the Lord of the Rings tale Phares said "the jihad movement are the rings, the strong elements that the Lords and the leaders use in their quest for expansion; The Lords, such as Bin Laden and Zawahiri come and go, the ideology stays and produces additional leaders”. For Walid Phares the Al- Qaeda “will only lose when we acknowledge there is an ideology to defeat, the jihad movement, and that the best allies in this confrontation are the anti-jihad muslims”; Hoffman agrees: “Is it necessary to defeat the ideology and this can be done by putting forward a counter-narrative”. However, Hoffman does not believe that even in this way it will be possible to claim “victory”; “We may weaken Al-Qaeda, decrease significantly its capacity to launch attacks or recruit new generations, but it will be very difficult to defeat it”.

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