There is something rather magical in the idea of a 'safe zone' - almost as if by declaring an area to be safe one can make it so. Yet it would be more accurate to suggest that 'safe zones' are extremely fragile and depend for their existence on the complex and shifting goals of in-country actors...

This paper suggests that current tactics in the 'war on terror' are predictably counterproductive, and that these 'failing' tactics actually serve a range of political, economic and psychological functions for diverse actors who make up the 'war on terror' coalition. It compares the 'war on...