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In 2003, there were several positive developments in longstanding conflicts involving terrorism. Sri Lanka saw the continuation of a ceasefire and of peace negotiations between the government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In Nepal, there was a diminution in Maoist terrorist activity and some political movement. In other recalcitrant ethno-nationalist conflicts for instance, that between the Spanish government and the Basque separatist Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) – there was little or no progress. And in the decades-long fight between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), violence increased markedly after the collapse of the peace process. None of these geographically circumscribed problems, however, has the strategic import of the transnational Islamic terrorist movement guided by al-Qaeda and its elusive leader, Osama bin Laden, who is presumed to be alive and at large. As of June 2003, US assertions made in the wake of the Iraq war that al-Qaeda was ‘on the run’ and that the global counter-terrorism coalition had ‘turned the corner’ in the ‘War on Terror’ appeared over-confident. To the contrary, attacks linked to al-Qaeda – whose targets included US residents and corporations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 12 May, and Europeans and Jews in Casablanca, Morocco, on 16 May – suggested that it is still a potent and formidable terrorist organisation. They further indicated that US aggression in Iraq might have impelled the group to refocus its efforts on the Persian Gulf and the larger Arab World. That said, the post-11 September incarnation of al-Qaeda is qualitatively different from the entity that existed pre-11 September