The United States should shift strategy against Al-Qaeda from the current heavy reliance on military force to more effective use of police and intelligence work, a study released on Tuesday concluded.The study by the RAND Corporation, a think tank that often does work for the US military, also urged the United States to drop the "war on terror" label."Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," said Seth Jones, lead author of the study.The US military has pressed in recent weeks for more troops to combat an intensifying Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan, but the RAND study recommends only "a light military footprint or none at all."The study examined how terrorist groups since 1968 have ended, and found that only seven per cent were defeated militarily.Most were neutralised either through political settlements (43 per cent), or through the use of police and intelligence forces (40 per cent) to disrupt and capture or kill leaders."Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory," the report said. “This has significant implications for dealing with Al-Qaeda and suggests fundamentally rethinking post-September 11 counter-terrorism strategy," it suggested.It argued that a US strategy centred primarily on the use of military force has not worked, pointing to Al-Qaeda's resurgence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border nearly seven years after the September 11 attacks.
