A Global Wave of Terrorism – A Blood-Soaked Hell Of Summer 2016

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this essay are analytical and expert views offered by specialists who have been duly cited and referenced at length, and do not necessarily always overlap with this authors nor with Criterion Journals official stance.

Abstract

(We are, without the sliver of a doubt, watching history in the making. The substantial upheavals revealed in this report, already touched and tortured our own lives here in Pakistan, from APS to Gulshan e Iqbal, and affect relationships in the wider world.

Perhaps it is more apt to affirm that we are witnessing civilization unravelling before our very eyes. World -changing circumstances and life-altering events can be witnessed all around us: Chilcot’s candid findings, Turkey`s failed military mutiny, a wave of global terror, Brexit, people retreating back toward shells of isolationism, attacks from the frontier of the EU through to Turkey, Iraq, Syria, large swathes of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on to Libya and Tunisia. The habit of conveniently playing proxy games by remote control, changing regimes for convenience sake has left behind a blatant trail of anarchy and faltered states. Fallen to rubble. ISIS is but one unholy incarnation of all this. There will yet be many more. Such is the law of bitter consequences – Author.

The Brexit Vote – Safety and Security Insights and Implications

Like lemmings the British, on John Bull`s little island², have indeed hurtled over the precipice into an economic and political abyss by voting to leave the European Union in the June 23 referendum. Brexit now divides Europe ever-more, polarizing European politics like never before. Such a grimly deleterious outcome is profusely worrisome given the full-blown global militant insurgency, an unparalleled refugee crisis and the hasty ascent of Islamo-Immigrant phobic Fascist far-right extremism.

The referendum in a critical ‘make-or-break’ of Europe, now tilts the entire continent’s pendulum toward a perilous precipe. The verdict rendered was more emotional and divisive rather than calibrated and calculated. This represents a quasi-Darwinian³ counter-evolution, or in Aristotelian rhetoric and persuasion, a shift toward ‘pathos’⁴ negating policy premised on ‘logos’⁵ and ‘ethos’⁶.

Winston Churchill, most prophetically presaged about Britain that: “We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. ”⁷.

A fierce debate has raged over the impact Brexit will now have on Britain’s national security. In this regard the Brexit vote may prove a Pyrrhic victory and like a toppling house of cards, might propel other countries to bid Brussels farewell, dwindling and wilting European integration. According to Pauline Neville-Jones,⁸ a Britain out of the EU leaves her more exposed to foreign terrorists.⁹ Countering claims rendered by Ian Duncan Smith and Richard Dearlove¹⁰, she affirmed “Free movement’ actually meant the ability of EU citizens to work in Britain, not to enter Britain unchecked. In fact, the UK operates full border controls for all entrants into the UK irrespective of nationality or point of entry. Because we will not join the passport-free Schengen area, the control of our borders will remain in national hands. Since 2010, the UK has turned away about 6,000 European nationals from entering our country on security grounds. Hardly unguarded border control allowing people to wander in.”¹¹

David Cameron departed from 10 Downing Street underscoring that being part of the EU gave the UK access to “vital information about criminals and terrorists running around Europe”. Since casting the Brexit vote, security and intelligence- sharing is partly jeopardised; it is harder now to carry out border checks overseas– in Paris, for instance. Border control may further depreciate and weaken. The inspections Britain used to carry out in Paris or Calais vis-à-vis the Channel tunnel and Eurostar, even if not EU treaty-based, would be under considerable threat post-Brexit, with an impending possibility that a migrant and refugee hub might illicitly establish itself in Kent or nearby.

Being part of one EU umbrella, European and British partners would contribute some of their technical prowess with mutual interest in mind. Enforcement and levels of cooperation matter dramatically. It would, argue many “Remain”¹² campaigners, have been in Britain`s national interest for the Prime Minister, home secretary and senior security officials to be in the same room where joint trans-national cross-border decisions affecting UK`s security are made in the future.

Yet the “Remain” camp could not convince Britain’s public that staying inside the EU was the safest option, economically, politically, and in terms of national security – a strategy derided by the “Leave” campaigners as “Project Fear”. Being out of Brussels implies not having a seat on the table when crucial cross-border intelligence and counter -terror measures are being discussed, reasoned, and ratified as new security protocols and legislation emerges. Bilaterally signing security accords separately with each of the 28 EU members, especially those with which Britain does not bear precedent of security agreements will prove bureaucratic, time-consuming and onerous.

Malcom Rifkind¹³, a former Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2015, reasoned that extremism is an international problem that could only be dealt with by cooperating with countries on the continent. He said the best way to do that was by participating in the Brussels bloc. Rifkind cited “we are dealing with international terrorism, these terrorists operate in Britain, in France, in Belgium, in Germany. They are organised, they are integrated in terms of their terrorist plotting, and unless we have a similar ability to coordinate and to share information, then we are at a deep disadvantage. We should be in a situation where any information, obtained in any European country, is shared with every other European country. It is much easier to deliver that outcome if we are all members of the European Union than if we have to have 28 countries¹⁴, each with different bilateral agreements with each other, which are not going to be identical and are bound to be less efficient.

The risk of missing crucial intelligence information which was available in one European county but was not held by other intelligence agencies would be that much greater. We have to have the same degree of cooperation with the intelligence agencies in France and Germany and elsewhere in Europe as we have with the US. The reason why within Britain we have been so far successful in preventing another major attack has been because of the huge amount of cooperation between our intelligence agencies and our police forces throughout the UK. The threat level here in the United Kingdom is already at `severe` – that means that a terrorist attack is highly likely“.¹⁵

More than a decade has lapsed since the July 7, 2005 London bombings¹⁶, which left 52 people dead. Many security analysts fear that the UK is long overdue a terror attack. Since then, the murder of Lee Rigby¹⁷ has been the only terror attack to have been enacted on British soil, although dozens of terror attacks are meticulously foiled by British detectives each year. The British are more dexterous at dealing with terrorism than other EU countries since for years they managed the menace of IRA terrorism. Yet nothing can be taken at face value since Britain now hinges on “high” terror alert.

Europol¹⁸ – the EU’s security agency – estimates there are around 5,000 ISIS combatants prepared to unleash terror on the West. The EU and Europol facilitates the sharing of a wealth of information. In addition to Europol, the EU`s other key counter-terror institutions include Eurojust¹⁹ and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW).²⁰ Post-Brexit renegotiating the European Arrest Warrant might be tenuous and cumbersome. The Brexit verdict has caused potentially insurmountable strain in renegotiating the European Arrest Warrants. The UK will now have to negotiate separate agreements with every country that falls within the European Arrest Warrants arrangement and the bureaucracy would be tortuous and exasperating.

For purposes of balanced argument, it must also be stated, however, that the advent of the internet and the ubiquity of social media heralds a so-called ‘Age of Behaviour’²¹, characterised by rising virtual connectivity, intelligence sharing and border-less communication. This ‘Age of Behaviour’ by its very virtue, perpetuates a period of trans-national ideas and narratives affecting allegiances and behaviour which cannot be contained. Co-operation is greatly facilitated in such an epoch. Ideas can no longer be contained. Ideas are bullet-proof. Ideas now travel timelessly.

Some legal experts are of a majority consensus that the EU has impeded the UK’s ability to deal with convicted terrorists, specifically referring to the Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza verdicts²² as instructive cases in point. As per the auspices of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, the UK has had to cede its sovereignty to countries that do not share the same security or legislative standards.

More so, in certain matters of counter-terrorism, Europe does not hold much leeway. For instance the Counter-Terrorism and Extremism Liaison Officers (CTELOs) of the Metropolitan Police that support other countries to investigate and prosecute terrorists who may threaten the UK, are strategically positioned in states where the threats emanate from, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria rather than EU countries.

A concise overview of EU-wide intelligence and counter-terrorism legislation is deemed relevant at this stage. As per EU law ‘Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union confirms that ‘national security’ remains the sole responsibility of each Member State. This does not constitute derogation from Union law and should therefore not be interpreted restrictively. In exercising their powers, the Union institutions will fully respect the national security responsibility of the Member States.’²³

The EU’s methodology toward counter-terrorism is the consequence of incremental architecture tinged with a multilateral response to the terror upsurge. EU counter-terrorism collaboration formally started in 1993 under the auspices of EU cooperation on terrorism in the Treaty of Maastricht²⁴ De facto, cooperation was fairly restricted until 9/11 prompted the genesis of an EU Anti-Terrorism Roadmap²⁵. 2001 witnessed the inception of the Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism and the European Arrest Warrant to enhance police and judicial cooperation across the EU²⁶. The 2004 Madrid bombings ignited the impetus for the appointment of an EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, as well as the adoption of a new EU Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism, which has been revised every six months. The EU’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy of 2005²⁷ emphasized the prevention of terrorist recruitment, protection of potential targets, pursuit of members of terrorist organisations, and the improvement of the EU’s capacity to cope with terrorist attacks²⁸.

As terrorism has become an incendiary threat of urgency for all European countries in the light of recent Paris Bataclan, Brussels and Nice attacks, the EU has revamped and invigorated its endeavours to bolster EU-wide intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation. Key themes have been border checks at the circumference of Schengen, the Passenger Name Records (PNR) initiative to share records of air travellers and intelligence exchange, and effective cooperation with third parties²⁹.

Security is never static. Senior British and European intelligence and counter-terrorism officials will adapt, as they always do, both bilaterally and multilaterally, legally and politically, and will keep reviewing what more can be done to intensify security. In a post-Brexit climate, British security services and police will remain even more vigilant.

The continent’s future is at the crossroads, like it has never been before. Countries must rely on their own informed judgements where even one lapse of judgement could prove Apocalyptic. It is a tangled web of terrorism, how things pan out, only the vicissitudes of time will tell.

The Orlando Onslaught – How Radicalism meets Repressed Sexuality – The Anatomy of what makes a Terrorist

The twist that Omar Mateen, the gruesome Orlando mass murderer, may have been gay, that both he and the the Nice truck driver Bouhlel, both used gay dating apps and frequented LGBT ³⁰ clubs, such as Pulse where Mateen killed 50 clubbers, puts a wrench into all previous ISIS affiliation and media speculation³¹.

Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS and a dizzying array of conflicting terror groups in a call to the police. Though ISIS initially claimed Mateen as their own, they might now conveniently disown and demonize him an “apostate.” This just shows ISIS’ duplicitous ability to claim responsibility for any attack, even if not their own.

Was Mateen truly influenced by ISIS, or did he just use the ISIS declaration of allegiance as convenient cover for his Freudian repressed self-hatred as a “closeted homosexual?”

Sigmund Freud³² especially whilst studying a young child named “Little Hans” posited the theoreum that any desire, lust, impulse or fear that is repressed, especially during childhood, eventually unleashes itself, often unconsciously, haunting us later in life, rearing itself in violent or uglier ways. This can often include a propensity toward extremism.

Hence Freud opined that no temptation should be repressed, whereas Carl Gustav Jung³³ challenged Freud stating that restraint should be exercised or else the evil forces of our unconscious “darker biology” will wreak havoc on the world, which seems to be unfurling on our planet.

Omar Mateen and Bouhlel, the Nice truck driver, were both confused and conflicted men, with messy minds. A security guard, Mateen was mentally unbalanced, as his divorced first wife attests. Bouhlel, the Bastille Day terrorist also had marital issues. Mateen’s domineering Afghan-born dad (a Freduain archetype if there ever was one) arrogantly spoke of his son’s hatred of gays. Obama affirmed that ISIS had not perpetrated the assault even though Mateen invoked the terrorist group in a call to a police operator.

Mateen and Bouhlel’s homophobia, penchant for violence, promiscuity, botched and futile marriages, feeble religious beliefs, alcohol binge drinking, suppressed homosexuality, all illustrate Freudian dillemas that people often transcend any singular religious or sexual identity marker socially thrust upon them. Searching for“one” single incentive in their conflicted selves is an unmanageable undertaking.

The unpredictable and explosive psychology of self-hatred, shame and murderous fury revealed by Mateen and Bouhlel is scarcely exclusive to the present³⁴. Throughout the 19th century, youngsters were anguished by the dissatisfaction endured due to a forfeiture of faith and the advance of ambitions “beyond the fitting medium of desire,” as Byron³⁵ eloquently etched.

Many of them hurried to combat for Greece’s independence (and usually died just as quickly and pointlessly as Byron himself) as many today flock to Syria to take-up-arms with IS. Many European youngsters back then journeyed to Latin America to fight for soul-stirring but poorly understood causes, as is the case with those headed for Iraq and Syria today.

Many partook in global terrorism of the late 19th century, assassinating numerous Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers, whilst assaulting jam-packed public places for no rhyme nor reason. Ideology, theology, scripture or doctrine scarcely mattered to what Byron termed the “wandering outlaw of his own dark mind”. Dark minds with darker intentions is exactly what Nietzsche brilliantly exposed when quoting that “man is a rope, tied between beast and over-man -a rope over an abyss”³⁶. The Nietzschian beast is what many of these young men and women, unleash on our world, along with their incendiary wrath. The beast paradigm aptly coalesces with both Omar Mateen and Bouhlel.

These youngsters, sensing socially impotent by socio-economic and sexual insecurities, desperately sought, like Rudin in Turgenev’s³⁷ eponymous novel, to surrender themselves “eagerly, completely” to “some nonsense or other.” Primitively competing over non-sense for peer-pleasing and a faux-sense of exalted glorification is exactly whatGolding’s³⁸ stranded island boys underwent in Lord of the Flies. It is exactly what 6,000 brain-washed radicals do when they make an Unholy Pilgrimage to Raqqa.

For many youngsters in a Generation Y³⁹ or millennial⁴⁰ age bracket, especially those who neither have a religious background nor any safe standing in our jittery contemporary world, “some nonsense or other” about misinterpreted Islam or the Middle East offers revered escapism from feelings of confusion, subservience, purposelessness and dependency. An escapism which existentialists like Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sarte craved⁴¹.

The quest for a psychological victory over a feeble, fragile and cowardly self has led numerous to align themselves with whichever association comes useful: casting around for one, Mateen himself could not tell the simple basic difference between the severely opposed radical organizations of ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and Hezbollah.

Another emblematic outlaw of his own dark mind was Anwar al-Awlaki. A valued American Imam assigned to neutralize extremism post 9/11, Awlaki metamorphosed in a Kafkaesque⁴² like manner unexpectedly into a preacher of hatred. His social media outbursts sadly hatched an entire generation of “Facebook terrorists”.

When he ranted in his lecture that “a global culture” lured “Muslims and especially Muslims living in the West,” and that Muslims “are suffering from a serious identity crisis,” he was in reality describing his inner-most and agonizingly conflicted self. Scrutinized by the FBI, Awlaki⁴³ apparently left the U.S. out of fear, that he, a fire-breathing tormentor of fornication by day, might be caught red-handed as a visitor of call-girls by night.

Mateen and Bouhlel, too, like many Western terrorists and mass shooters, struggled with a profound identity crisis before melting it into mass murder. Any counter-terrorism initiative is defense-less when confronted with individual pathologies which easily available assault weapons further spark. So along with better intervention, early stage psychological counselling, it is also high time for sensible gun legislation, as Hillary Clinton and Piers Morgan campaign for.

We can intuitively acknowledge that both ISIS and Islamophobes feed off each other. They are just different sides to the same coin. They relish and nourish hate. That is all they can offer to our world.

A “phobia” is defined as an irrational fear. “Islamo-phobia” represents an unfocused fear and fury among people who find all Muslims, their well-meaning peaceful social, political and economic forces to be intolerably opaque and agenda-laden. Brain-dead ISIS adherents are force-fed a menacing vision of the Muslim Umma under attack: so a clarion call for unity, higher purpose, blood and belonging gives ISIS recruits an escape from deep uncertainty and confusion, accomplished by inventing and persecuting a single enemy. It is as much a gift to demagogues as anti-Semitism once was: a desperate and dangerous attempt to deny that our selves as well as our societies are irrevocably plural⁴⁴.

The sexuality of Omar Mateen casts a doubt as to whether Orlando was a “hate crime” or an “act of terror” or both. The blurred bisexuality of Bouhlel raises questions over ISIS affiliation.

Omar Mateen and Bouhlel were internally contradicted and possessed abusive personalities – as confessed by ex-wives. Mateen was the son of a hateful homophobe, which accentuates Mateen’s closeted repression. In such a combustible climate the social inclusion of gay Muslims as a “minorities within minorities” is an uphill yet very sensitive generational struggle, but as the late Muhammad Ali, in his infinite wisdom, opined “we are all children of the same God”.

The truth forever remains that no people are below dignity just as no idea is above scrutiny.

ISIS did initially assume responsibility of both the Pulse nightclub attack and Nice. However, they were uncharacteristically thin on specifics. That Mateen was supposedly gay further explains why there was no meaningful footage of him on ISIS propaganda channels, which routinely eulogize self-appointed “martyrs.”

Hailing Mateen as a “soldier of the Caliphate” in propaganda statements was atypically suspect of ISIS involvement. FBI Director James Comey, stated that Mateen had claimed “family ties to Al Qaeda and to Hezbollah” – well-known ISIS rivals, these were fibs and fabrications of course. Crazed individuals consumed by hate need not officially sign up to ISIS to execute acts on its behalf as the Bastille truck driver case amply demonstrates. ISIS underscores its ferocious homophobia with incessant “snuff videos” of gay people flung off roofs.

Regardless of whether ISIS disowns their Orlando massacre claim, they desperately thirst for recognition and relevance to fuel their toxic global recruitment drive.

Given a run-up to the U.S. presidential elections, political point-scoring is inevitable, however the time is ripe to cohesively unite rather than alienate the Muslim community, who are exemplary social torch-bearers in the West, as the life of the legend Muhammad Ali amply demonstrated. Peace-loving Muslims are the West’s greatest ally in the war against terror.

Naïve suggestions to bar all future Muslims from entering the U.S. by Trump, Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Pamella Geller et al is self-defeating because “home-grown lone wolf terror” is a vexing reality often perpetrated by white, Western-born and bred killers such as Dylann Roof, Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, Anders Breivik, Jared Laughner, Byron Williams, Ted Kaczynski and hundreds more.

More worrisome is the fact that Pew studies show that 1 in 4 Americans know nothing about Islam, which compounds the problem even more.

Omar Mateen’s slaughter evoked a bland unoriginal response from Donald Trump. He condemned Muslims for not informing on the terrorists in their midst and intimated that Obama, who doesn’t publicly use the phrase “radical Islam,” was in reality compassionate to these extremists.

Such hateful semantics are profoundly unhelpful in societies besieged on the brink of social divide. To Gingrich, Trump and their followers, evil perpetrated by Muslim individuals legitimizes immigration control, with the palpable possibility of launching more wars in the Middle East and Africa. Humanity must transcend racial, religious and sexual divides and build “bridges” rather than erect “borders” of hate.

July 15, was the night Turkey⁴⁵ and the entire world held its breath. It all commenced in a nerve-wrecking evening. Army tanks besieged the Bosphorus bridges, the Sea of which is a cradle to civilization, straddling between cultures, communities and the continents of Europe and Asia. Above the daunting sky, choppers clanked and army fighter jets thundered. Some factions within the Turkish army surprisingly spearheaded a coup. The Turkish military, always a staunch bastion for secularism declared they ignited it “to restore the constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law, and public order, the Turkish armed forces have taken complete control of the country.”⁴⁶

The plotters struck in an age-old manner. While the President was gleefully away vacationing by a seaside resort, the instigators, sensing a power vacuum thought they should strike while the iron was hot. Well the iron was a tad too “hot” for them to handle.

Mr Erdoğan, with dramatic irony, who scorns social media, for once used it to salvage his own skin and Turkey’s democracy. At first, the only way Mr Erdoğan could get his message across was by live streaming on TV via smart phone using FaceTime, a video conferencing mobile application. This is how he addressed the nation. Welcome to digital democracy in the 21^st century.

The President reprimanded an uprising by “a small group within our armed forces”, and pleaded his supporters to disobey the curfew by pouring en masse into the streets. He indicted Mr Gulen⁴⁷ (an Islamic movement leader, founder of the Pak Turk schools) his one-time friend now turned sworn enemy, of instigating the coup.

Mr Erdoğan’s loyalists responded to their leader’s call, streaming onto public squares in several cities and at Istanbul’s main airport. Inside mosques below gleaming minarets across the city, muezzins⁴⁸ over microphones hailed people to protest against the coup. Throngs of Erdoğan supporters thundered onto city streets chanting “Allah isGreat”.

There was bloodshed. TV broadcasted footage of a chopper firing on groups of innocent citizens; people carried away bodies after a crowd attempting to march on the Bosphorus bridge was met with lethal fire. Explosions rocked the country’s parliament⁴⁹. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported that helicopters and fighter jets had struck a police base, killing at least 17 people⁵⁰. Tragically 192 people died and countless were injured.

A few hours later it became crystal clear that the subversive military faction were on a losing streak. The rebellious soldiers had failed to swiftly establish control. Always a key ingredient for any successful coup. Within no time, the military`s top ranks and all of the country’s major political parties, decried the subversion of democracy.

By the morning of July 16^th, the coup had been thwarted, units that had taken over the airport melted away, their commander denying they ever supported the coup. TRT, the state broadcaster, which had aired the coup leaders’ aspirations, was back in AKP’s⁵¹ control. Turkey’s Sultan made a thunderingly triumphant return to Istanbul, appearing on television to state that those involved in the coup would pay a “heavy price”. A heavy price, a Shakesperean pound of flesh was extracted indeed.

President Erdoğan invoked Article 102 of Turkey’s Constitution declaring a “state of national emergency”, just like the one in France after the Nice attack, permitting him to conduct raids without prior judicial permission and tremendously boosting Executive powers. His reprisal vis-à-vis the plotters was instantaneous and far-reaching. His purge was delivered with a heavy-handed iron-fist⁵².

6,000 soldiers (out of which 120 are single Generals and Admirals), suspected of participation in the flawed take-over, were detained. 15,200 officers from the Education Ministry suspended, 7,850 police officers sacked, 8,777 Interior Ministry officials suspended, 2,745 judges (out of which 31 were senior) were sacked and many arrested, 492 staffers from the Presidency of Religious Affairs sent packing, 1,577 University Deans had to resign, 257 from the PM`s office own staff fired, 370 TRT state TV broadcast officials are being investigated.

Before the attempted take-over, ever since 2015, Turkey, a strategic NATO partner in the war against terror and a key potential ally of the European Union (EU)⁵³ in terms of intelligence sharing, has been teetering on the razor’s edge⁵⁴ of terror and uncertainty⁵⁵. As the war in Syria spilled over into Turkey, an upsurge in terrorist attacks augmented a sense of a crisis. In the latest of these, three ISIS militants killed 45 people in an attack on Istanbul’s main international airport on June 28th.

Turkey’s half-baked, botched coup exposed flagrant security flaws and vulnerabilities. Though the coup abortively miscarried its effects may weaken the battle against ISIS. There are crucial concerns for Turkey’s allies. Europe, and the world, has a deep-seated interest in Turkey`s peace and stability. Indeed, many lives depend on it.

A proper coup d’ état takes years to hatch, plan and prepare. This botched and bungled military coup by contrast, was haphazard, hasty, ill-prepared, it was, in my opinion, more of a misguided “mutiny” rather than a “coup” in any de facto sense. A major reason as to why the coup did not succeed is because the coup was “wide” but not “deep”. “Wide” in that it occurred at multiple locations but it lacked “depth” as most involved were lower ranking colonels or one star Generals but not above. Without ample support from the very top brass it lacked the hierarchical “depth” to succeed. In most successful coups the incumbent leader is killed or captured, again this did not materialize in Turkey.

Whilst the local inferences are significant so too are the global implications. Turkey is a major artery in the anti-ISIS coronary system: a key NATO ally bridging Europe and the turbulent Middle East, acting as a counter-balance to Saudi Arabia and Iran`s power jostles, hosting NATO aircraft aimed at ISIS, possessing stealthy nuclear weapons. Turkey is a vibrant fulcrum to the Balkans and Caucuses, a kingpin in Euro-Asian security architecture, partaking in a weighty but meaningful accommodation of millions of Syrian refugees, as well as remaining a pivotal intelligence asset by monitoring ISIS movement throughout the volatile region.

Multiple threats rendered the nation susceptible to martial law, and remain deep-rooted within but also beyond Turkey’s borders: the Syrian conflict, the 2.7 million refugees entering from Syria, instability in Iraq, Kurdish insurgents , the lethal terror attacks since last year – in Suruc, Ankara and the deadly Istanbul airport massacre,which killed more than 40 people – all factor in to destabilise Turkey. It is exactly such instability which ISIS craves, for under such circumstances, its ability and maneuverability to wreak havoc intensifies.

The Istanbul airport terror attack forced Turkey to intensify its clampdown campaign vis -à-vis ISIS in Syria. It increased its collaboration with the U.S. American fighter aircrafts that are strategically positioned in southern Turkey to mount aerial assaults against ISIS. After carefully calibrated diplomacy, Washington won Ankara`s support to mount an attack against ISIS, spearheaded by Kurdish combatants in Syria, whom Ankara views as its nemesis due to the PKK terror group which often unleashes merciless terror on Turkey’s people.

Some geo-strategists concede that US-Turkey rapprochement may now partially be at risk.⁵⁶ The fact that Mr Erdoğan wants Washington to extradite Mr Gulen (founder of the Pak Turk school, an erstwhile Islamic ally turned arch nemesis, who lives in self-imposed U.S. exile, suspected to have orchestrated the coup by proxy) and Washington is vacillating on extraditing him frosts the bi-lateral warmth.

Despite the purge, a profound rift within the ranks of the Turkish military (a steadfast beacon for secularism) is discernible for the world to witness. Its strength of nearly half a million always makes the military a pivotal player in the affairs of Turkish state. Pakistan`s special relationship with Turkey, rooted in history, exacerbates obvious concerns that might encompass our own perceptions about the military’s role in Pakistan. During the take-over attempt, some in Islamabad even sought for the invocation of Article 245⁵⁷ which would have given the military pre-eminence and a decisive hand in dealing with local terror. Turkey, like Pakistan, has had numerous doses of military interventions, with an uncanny similarity in the execution of overthrown Prime Ministers.

However, when Erdoğan summoned the populace they charged to the streets against the military. If Pakistan’s PM requested the same, people might have run to their beds to sleep the night away, given COAS Raheel Sharif`s popularity, as he has proved admirably successful – a leader of the people, after Operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Add to this the ascent of political Islam in Turkey, a country that is constitutionally secular unlike Pakistan’s Islamic Republic. Civil-military relations as well as radicalism have taken root both in Turkey and Pakistan. But the pattern changed after the advent of Erdoğan’s AKP. Unlike in Pakistan, there has been a dramatic decline in the military’s influence in Turkey⁵⁸. However, both Pakistan and Turkey have their strategic significance in the Great Game owing to their geo-strategic locations and access to trade routes and waterways, namely Gwadar Port and the Bosphorus Sea.

The warning signs were there for Erdoğan – and the West – to see, if only they took the instructive case of Pakistan. Brazenly and audaciously used by the West as a conduit for missiles, guns and cash to the “mujahedin” fighting the Soviets, which was mid-wifed into the Taliban giving incestuous birth to al-Qaeda splintering into today`s ISIS heathens. Consequently Pakistan had its cities torn apart with massive bombs, 70,000 lives lost to the “war on terror” which many say has devolved into a “war of terror”.

Istanbul began playing the same role for the US as a proxy battlefield against Syria – it, too, has become the casualty of circumstances, its cities ripped and ravaged by massive bombs, its hinterland haunted by extremism, its countryside infiltrated by radicals, the South-east of the country, especially Diyabakir, now as destroyed and devastated as large swathes of Homs or Aleppo.

Even after the Sultan’s purge, Turkey`s military is now deeply divided – dichotomized between loyalists versus latent coup supporters. Such internal division could weaken the military’s morale, corps d`esprit, strength, and partially hinder its institutional capability to project power and collaborate with the US and NATO in the “war against terror”.

All this might imply a frosty era of Turkey-US military collaboration, which we temporarily witnessed when the operations at U.S. Incirlik [air base], were temporarily frozen in southern Turkey. Though temporary, this freeze sends apprehensive shivers down the Pentagon`s spine. The Pentagon added that the US was adjusting its air strategy in response to fluid ever-changing realities in the region.

Although President Obama declared that he supported Mr Erdoğan`s elected democratic government during the take-over attempt, rumours are abound that de facto Washington actually rooted for anti-Erdoğan powers. There were even reports that suspected coup supporters were located in close proximity to US military persons. Such rumours were amplified loud enough that Secretary of State, John Kerry, felt compelled to produce a stalwartly diplomatic denial.

Turkey’s complicated yet critical role in the region remains more significant than ever before. During the attempted coup, ISIS were rejoicing, also pro-Assad supporters poured onto the streets in Damascus to welcome the uprising in Turkey. Ankara sponsors major insurgent groups fighting to oust Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. So there is no love lost. A weakened Turkey lends a welcome boost to pro-Assad forces.

This analyst opines that whereas the attempted coup, or `mutiny` more precisely, will not meaningfully derail any anti-ISIS activities for now, it has considerably alarmed policy-makers in the West that a NATO ally has come perilously close to a major political disaster. In the coming weeks, Turkey’s enemies, of which there are many, may look to take advantage of this period of instability to weaken it further.

Just as a coup has consequences, a failed coup has its reverberations.

Mr Erdoğan for now, argue critics, has himself stirred a coup of his own, a coup against democracy itself, with a carte blanche to change the Constitution possibly to an executive U.S or French style Presidency. If he is overthrown in the future, the coup-makers will face furious resistance not only from Mr Erdoğan’s supporters but from those Turks convinced that the only thing worse than Mr Erdoğan’s iron-grip is to be ruled by the Generals.

The searing tensions between modernity and tradition, political Islam and secularism was also one of the reasons for the army`s desire to take charge in Ankara. Probed deeper, intense social divisions are emerging in Turkey. There now exists a vividly stark contrast between the religious right manifest in conservative Konya, the resting place of Sufism’s doyen Rumi, versus the electrically charged, uber- modern, cosmopolitan nature of Istanbul`s Taksim Square and the adjoining Istiklal Street with its pulsating night life. Whereas Turkey carries on being accommodating to both these glaringly different lifestyles, in the near future, other than the AKP’s perceived authoritarian streak, such increased polarization might usher social upheaval and pit religious revivalism against secular Kemalism. Similar social tensions may also unfold in Pakistan, where conservatism has a much heavier upper hand.

Let one reality sink in: think of even those who do not support the current AKP government but cherish the virtues of democracy, think of the bravery of those Turkish dissidents, democracy vanguards, journalists, students, mothers, wives, sons and daughters, politicians and citizens opposing a coup that is trying to remove a government they deeply despise.

Admire how they did not flinch, of how they championed democracy, against all odds, despite all its flaws, even lying on Istanbul`s streets so as to stop tanks from going further. Such is the hard-fought battle for democracy, such is the resilience of the Turkish people. Such is the value they place on an idea worth living and dying for: democracy.

The Istanbul Ataturk Airport Attack

Turkey has been through hell and back. As if the botched mutiny has not rattled Turkey enough, as alluded to earlier in this report, Turkey since 2015, fell prey to the shroud of gruesome suicide bombings, some of which were blamed on the Islamic State (IS) while others were claimed by Kurdish terror outfits. Turkey, therefore, finds itself perilously dangling between a rock and a hard place, fending and fighting off both Kurdish terrorists and the IS.

After the terror attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, it is highly likely that Turkey will now strategically prioritise the IS security threat, giving it equal weight as Kurdish terrorism and the dangers posed by the neighbouring dictator, Bashar al Assad. Turkey of course, even prior to the Istanbul airport attack, was importantly coordinating intelligence with Brussels, as viewed hereunder.

Just like July 15, 2016 with the attempted military take-over, June 28, 2016 was a similarly harrowing day in Turkey’s chequered history as she bore the brunt of a horrid attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport.

The tragic attack bears broader geo-strategic implications. As Europe undergoes seismic political shifts, witnessed most recently by Britain’s exit from the EU, the Istanbul attack may scupper Turkey’s bid for future accession to the European alliance. Turkey`s attempts were already undermined by Boris Johnson and the fear-mongering Brexit `Leave` campaigners who said that allowing Turkey access is tantamount to letting 75 million Turks onto Her Majesty`s island.

After the botched mutiny, instability, the draconian purge, nationalists throughout Europe will further feed the fear frenzy and use all these plus the tragic terror incidents for political point-scoring to highlight Turkey’s EU entry as a carte blanche for terror spillover into mainland Europe.

Turkey is ill-fatedly infested with an IS network, active since May 2015. Logistically, militarily and operationally, despite media frenzy, IS cells in Turkey are not state- sponsored, but operate via informal underground networks, and are as well organised as those in Iraq and Syria. No one as yet claimed responsibility for the airport attack, but like previous attacks in Suruc and Ankara, the style deployed, techniques used, and targets honed in on, show that it bears the stamp of IS characteristics in that the attackers struck simultaneously on multiple fronts, at high visibility locations, stretching emergency services to the limit.

What distinguishes the IS from other terror groups within Turkey, such as the Kurdish PKK and the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks is that the latter strike more at ‘local’ targets, often using vehicle-based improvised explosive devices, where perpetrators tend to be females, as they are less likely to arouse suspicion. The IS, on the other hand, (usually) use men⁵⁹, aim at international sites and transport hubs, as in Brussels, seeking to cause global shock and awe. Many ask why the IS would repeatedly target Turkey. Some believe that Ankara’s rapprochement with Tel Aviv and Moscow, with lucrative gas and defence deals on the horizon, irked ISIS into terror tactics. Another line of reasoning is that Turkey’s mounting operation against IS forces, especially in areas like Manbij where Kurdish forces are gaining territory and traction, compels the IS to reassert retaliation. As the IS loses the territorial war, it needs to keep winning the propaganda war.

The airport attack has already brought far-reaching foreign policy changes. President Putin has spoken to President Erdogan and agreed to normalise bilateral trade ties, ending the stalemate that had ensued following the shooting of a Russian jet fighter. As Russia and Turkey patch up, it is likely that the latter will rejoin coalition air strikes and that the US High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems regional deployment will speed up.

The timing of the Istanbul attack is strategically crucial. In a Ramazan message urging misguided ‘jihad’, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the IS’s chief spokesman, instructed zealots “not to seek anyone’s permission”.

This incites home-grown haters, such as Omar Mateen, Syed Farooq, Tashfeen Malik or the Tunisian Bouhlel to execute deadly missions and circumvent chances of leaks or infiltration by intelligence services.

Bleu, Blanc and Blood-Stained Rouge

Blood Soaked on Bastille Day: A Nightmare in Nice

The world in general, mainland Europe especially, and France in particular, is facing a brutal string of repeated terror assaults not seen in recent human history. France again bears the brunt of being struck by a terrorist. A French resident born in Tunisia, Lahouaiej Bouhlel, rammed a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, blood-soaking Bastille Day and the pristine picture-perfect French Riviera, leaving 84 dead and hundreds injured⁶⁰.

Such unbridled hell befell Nice, in Southern France, already a smouldering cauldron of swelling immigration with a mélange of rising Far-right anti-Muslim sentiment- a toxic combination of all-round social revulsion and odium.

View below a map showing the route taken by the Nice attacker along the Promenade des Anglais. Shockingly the security barrier that was present earlier in the day during the military parade was removed later on, which highlights a fatal security flaw.

Though contradictory claims have been asserted, Amaq, the ISIS news agency, claimed official responsibility for the attack⁶¹ stating that Bouhlel was one of their soldiers. Their response, however, was much more suspiciously delayed than usual, hence it may be deemed that Bouhlel was `self-radicalised`, a term deployed for those pesky occasions when no direct evidence of ISIS involvement is traced. Bouhlel had a previous criminal record, he was going through a messy divorce, had anger and mental health issues, and was on the fringes of break-down.

The Bastille Day attack blood-soaked a nation that, in cruel irony, was celebrating the universal virtues of liberty, fraternity and equality. In 1789 Robbespierre⁶² instigated a blood-fuelled revolution⁶³ to win the French citizenry inalienable rights. Terrorists in 2016 drop blood to deprive humanity of those very rights.

However, Robespierre, was deemed a terrorist to some, and a freedom fighter to others. A revolutionary to most, a madman to a few.Just as he sought to unravel Louis XVI`s reign of power, ISIS seeks to topple the brave new world order.

Nice’s attack now opens up political Pandora boxes, alienating minorities and increasing identity politics. It emboldens Far-Right Fascists like Marine Le Pen’s National Front who exploit the Nice attack for political point-scoring stoking public malaise over migration. With presidential elections looming in April 2017, President Hollande must prove that he has an iron grip on the terror scourge.

Mr. Hollande’s redeployment of the Charles de Gaulle fighter-jet to intensify aerial assaults against ISIS (al-Qaeda`s heirs and children from hell) and his suggested increase in ground troops to recapture Mosul is an affront to ISIS and irked rabid radicals. Perceived measures against Muslims such as the 2010 face veil ban in the legal case SAS-vs-France and inflammatory cartoons in Charlie Hebdo stoked social discontent.

The Nice tragedy threatens to polarize fragile European integration further, especially jittery after Brexit. This presents a monumental challenge for the mainstream moderates and middle ground, whose voices must be amplified.

Such terror pandemonium is to persist until stability in Syria is not achieved, till ISIS is militarily not defeated, till refugees are not resettled, and until the notion of a theocratic Caliphate is not ideologically challenged and rendered defunct for all ages.

France has a tainted imperial history with the Islamic world. With a population of 66 million, 8% of France is Muslim, settled in the poorest pockets of Lyon and Paris. In post-industrial France, industries faced redundancy spiking unemployment. However, the settlers remained. Subsequent generations bore restlessness due to their exclusion from the French workforce and society.

The Nice attack highlights the urgency for social inclusion and integration, especially of Muslims who live in the underprivileged underbelly of city outskirt estates (banlieues). These settlements are ripe recruitment pools for ISIS and al-Qaeda.

France is a victim of the most sustained terror assault any Western state ever faced. This is the third major terrorist attack in France over 18 months: on January 7-9, 17 were killed commencing at Charlie Hebdo’s office; on November 13, 2015, 130 people were killed in the Bataclan attacks; and now the Bastille butchery.

France is rightly on ‘high alert’. At least 1400 disgruntled citizens left France to join ISIS. Many have every intention of returning back, camouflaging like snakes amongst refugees, re-entering France and unbridling more lethal assaults. More attacks are imminent. Intelligence also discerned that the 22 March, 2016 Brussels attack that killed 35 was actually meant for France.

So France has armed herself to the teeth, to wartime proportions, with street troops and a prolonged state of emergency, just as Turkey has, allowing Orwellian surveillance and counter-terrorism teams to conduct raids without judicial permission. Below is a visual depicting the major recent attacks France witnessed.

Chillingly, the Bastille Day attacker showed how much death and destruction is attained by a single determined driver with the heaviest chip on his shoulder and a motor vehicle.

That the attack was vehicle based is no surprise. ISIS since 2014 encouraged followers to “get into vehicles and mow people down, especially in France”. Al-Qaeda exhorted and echoed the same.

Vehicular assaults also previously occurred in France inducing a possible `copy-cat` syndrome. Two attacks involved motor vehicles in December 2014 in Dijon and Nantes, killing one person and injuring twenty. In January 2016, an attacker rammed into four French soldiers protecting, of all places, a mosque in Valence.

The Baghdad bomb that killed 300 in Kerrada was also a vehicular assault. Nice is now a truck. Terrorists use every day vehicles as terror weapons. Better vehicle screening, tighter vehicle leasing and renting conditionalities, more alert intercept and search is needed. Under vehicle security scanning (UVSS) devices are an option. Cities like Kabul and Islamabad, by means of necessary precaution, are full of UVSS devices.

France witnessed smaller attacks of brutal savagery. On 13 June, a French cop and his wife were stabbed to death in their house in a Parisian outskirt by a single attacker claiming to be ISIS motivated. The perpetrator live-streamed the attack onto social media. French law enforcement suggest he seems to have been obeying the ISIS general edict to attack all its foes during Ramadan. Such “lone wolf or self starter” attacks are much more tenuous and complex to halt due to their spontaneous and sporadic nature.

This author feels that the term “lone wolf” is a misnomer. These blind adherents are in fact “dumb sheep” not `wolves` who are fed and gladly swallow a dose of hate and vitriol via ISIS media. Below is an example of how ISIS, through its media and Cyber Caliphate Army wing, a virtual social media militia, barks instructions to IS loners from a distance, to “shoot, stab, blow up, ram, throw, intoxicate and hit infidels”.

Witness above the presence of the word `ram` with a vehicle image, which is exactly what the Nice truck driver did. The reason why such sites are not taken down is because they offer a key intelligence gathering opportunity for law enforcement.

All this attests that France must improve its social integration. Until minorities don`t feel like genuine stakeholders in the “French Dream” social schism will escalate. This is an historic opportunity for France to adopt an American like “Melting Pot” assimilation model.

The death toll in Europe, grotesquely unspeakable as it is, still remains a fraction of that in countries like Pakistan (which has lost 70,000 civilians since 9/11), Iraq, Syria, Libya or Afghanistan.

In Europe, similarities do exist via terror waged by the Northern Irish Republican Army (IRA), or the Spanish Basque separatists from the 1970s-2000`s. Cumulatively, those had death tolls running significantly higher than the several hundred killed by radicals in Europe since 9/11. However, the individual death toll per attack was considerably less.

Terror takes on all shapes, stripes, hues, forms, faiths and political ideologies. So measures such as deporting all Muslims from the US, as Newt Gingrich proposes is deeply divisive. This contravenes the Geneva Convention, to which most countries are signatories of, France and the USA included. Nor would religious profiling be helpful. The 31 year old Franco-Tunisian Nice driver was not on any `terror watch list`.

We cannot deport, legislate, or bomb our way out of terror. It`s ideological premises merits countering. We need long-term civil-society led engagement, inter-faith dialogue, intensified intelligence sharing and, in the 21^st century, leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to gain better forecasting models.

The battle against radical terrorism is a generational struggle. It is not a struggle for “Western” civilization, but more for “universal secular democracy” and for a peaceful civilizational co-existence of humanity.

Murder, Massacre and Mayhem in a Holy Month – The Real Root-Causes of why Radicalism Rises during Ramadan

Ramadan or June 6 – July 5 of the Gregorian calendar 2016 will go down as one of the darkest most deeply disturbing months in human history. ISIS and their incestuous affiliates mercilessly massacred and maimed a total of 5,200 innocent civilians and soldiers.

Ramadan is meant to be a month reserved for stirring self-reflection and soul-searching amongst Muslims, but ISIS blemished it with blood. ISIS boasted of massacring and mutilating 5,200 victims in what they disgustingly deem as “military operations”. This is in keeping with a perverted and polluted intention to revive the necessary historical battles of yore, fought by Muslim soldiers, from the 7^th century onwards, during the month of Ramadan. This is ISIS` ill-begotten quest to hail the tip of the sword as mightier than that of the pen.

Now burdened by losing more territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS feel compelled to pivot to missions all over the planet, launching attacks on far-flung civilian targets that are difficult to deter with traditional military campaigns, hence the combat against ISIS is technically termed asymmetric.

ISIS needs to deviate attention away from the fact that it is constantly losing land. ISIS is under unrelenting burden to hold on to the territory it claimed two years ago when it ripped and raged its way through Western and Central Iraq, overrunning Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi and Falluja, and even menacing Baghdad.

Now, however, Mosul is the only Iraqi urban centre remaining in the hands of ISIS, although it retains control of much of Anbar province and the border with Syria.

ISIS has an unquenchable thirst for recognition to keep fuelling their toxic global recruitment drive, both online and offline, as they face unprecedented territorial losses in the Northern Euphrates, in Fallujah, Qayyarah, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul and Northern Syria. Nobody wants to join “losers” especially given the liberation of Hit, the meaningful traction by Kurdish forces, and the intensified Western and Russian aerial campaigns.

So to preserve their recruitment and relevance, ISIS has to deviate attention from such territorial setbacks by inflicting gruesome attacks abroad, especially on “soft civilian targets” such as the Istanbul Ataturk airport, Baghdad`s Kerrada bazaar or the Dhaka Gulshan café, as it provides instant sensationalist international publicity and visibility. Such atrocities keep ISIS in the media spotlight, intensifies their recruitment drive, propagates their divisive anti-western propaganda, and continues their image of initiative, of shocking, of reshaping the world – something they have done with alarming alacrity.

Symbolism and sadistic grandeur are their hallmarks; therefore they needed to mark their second year anniversary with blood-letting. The timing of the attack is strategically crucial. Vocal ISIS mouth-pieces had warned of attacks against “Infidels.” An infidel (according to them) is anyone who does not unthinkingly yield to their so-called “puritanical” genre of Khariji Takfiri Wahabi Salafism (an austere brand of Islamic interpretation).

In a Ramadan message urging misguided “jihad”, Abu-Mohammed al-Adnani, ISIS` spokesperson, instructed zealots to “aspire to battle in Ramadan not seeking anyone’s permission” saying this is “the month of conquest and jihad especially for Caliphate fighters in Europe and America.”

In Ramadan 2015 IS unleashed similar stomach-churning savagery, blood-stained and soaked Sousse, the holiday resort in Tunisia, blew up the Imam Sadiq Shia (read Infidel to ISIS) mosque in Kuwait, and attacked Northern Sinai`s Sheikh Zuweid, which unsurprisingly strategically borders the Gaza Strip and Israel, coalescing neatly with IS` Apocalyptic end of days narrative, as Israel`s occupation of Palestine (theoretically) remains a pivotal IS rallying point which it feels it can exploit due to foreign policy grievances and galvanise popularity out of Palestine misery, even though some analysts cynically conspiratorially cite evidence that the “Rockerfellers of Raqqa”⁶⁴ have been selling the black gold⁶⁵ through the back-door to Israel, with Tel Aviv and “the powers that be” turning a convenient blind eye.

Since Ramadan 2015 to date, ISIS’ attempt at capturing territory in North Sinai over the long-haul implies gaining a pivotal foothold into the occupied territories of Palestine, thereby strong-arming Hamas (their Shia nemesis) and eventually accessing the Promised Holy Land of Jerusalem – a cradle of all faiths, the nucleus which brave-hearts like Salah Al-din al-Ayubi had conquered in historical days of yore.

An unprecedented global wave of terror was also witnessed previous Ramadan on 26 June, 2015, when three terrorist attacks in three continents unfolded within three hours. The Isère attack, in Southern France, like that of Garland, Texas or the Copenhagen shooting, were all IS inspired.

In 2016 ISIS` appetite for global destruction remains un-satiated. The info-graphic hereunder (obtained from ISIS`s al-Naba magazine, issued on a weekly basis highlighting their “military operations”) celebrates the massacre of 5,200 victims and details fourteen gruesome attacks which the death cult conducted spanning four continents: Europe, N. America, Asia and Africa.

The graph offers a break-down of the victims and where they came from. The victims include 2000 Shiites, 1000 Kurds, 600 Syrian Alawites and 300 Christians. This reinforces an ISIS agenda to drive forward a so-called puritanical Wahabi Salfist version of Islam, negating the living breathing reality that:

Islam is a mosaic and never a monolith.

The thousands of innocent civilians murdered and maimed include, inter alia, 49 people killed in an attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando⁶⁷ in June, 22 hacked to death in Dhaka⁶⁸, Bangladesh in July, and 300 butchered in Baghdad⁶⁹ after an explosive vehicle detonated in a busy and bustling market.

Discernible Trends & Themes of the Ramadan Attacks – Analytical Summary

Whilst IS tackled numerous offensives in Syria, Iraq and Libya, three discernible global trends thematically underscored the two-year anniversary of the group’s Caliphate:

Primarily, IS augmented its global presence and geographic span of control (which has been dwindling owing to coalition and NATO aerial offensives coupled with Russian stealth, Kurdish, pro-Assad and Iranian militia attacks) by directing or incidentally rousing radical attacks in over sixteen countries, including Jordan – where IS had hitherto never claimed an assault before.

The full list of countries victim to IS attacks in alphabetical order are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, France, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, the United States, and Yemen. In a 17th country, Saudi Arabia, IS remains a prime suspect for the triple attacks dated July 4 but the group denies official responsibility. This parallels with 11 countries attacked from April 5 to May 4 and 13 countries assaulted from May 5 to June 5.

Attacking Saudi Arabia, that too on the U.S. Independence Day, sends a clear signal that IS oppose the U.S.-Saudi nexus, scathingly view the rapport between both nations and seek to annihilate such a nexus.

Secondly, mostly all the nations that ISIS had hitherto attacked witnessed a significant surge in IS linked operative terror. An analytical executive summary of all attacks is offered below.

Afghanistan

Nine attacks unfolded in Ramadan: four in Nangarhar⁷⁰, three in Kabul, and two in Jalalabad⁷¹, nestled along the route from Peshawar to Kabul⁷². This is an increase from the two in May, three in April, and three in March⁷³,

Bangladesh

Bangladesh endured six attacks in Ramadan and 16 this year thus far. ISIS has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks in Bangladesh, including the bombing of an Ahmadiyya place of worship, assaults on two Shia mosques, and the killing of an an Italian humanitarian worker. These attacks also amalgamate with the indiscriminate killings of agnostics, atheists, and foreigners by al-Qaeda-linked operatives.

Bangladesh: The most alarming ISIS incident was during Ramadan, on June 1, 2016, which was the first time IS killed a large number of victims as it had previously targeted individuals. On June 1, gunmen assaulted the Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale café come restaurant in Dhaka’s foreigner-attracting diplomat-drawing Gulshan district. Bodies of mostly foreigners were shot and then sliced with machetes. 20 hostages (nine Italians, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, one American and one Indian) and 2 police officers were slaughtered in stone cold blood.

IS then asked personnel to switch on the café’s WiFi network. They then used customers’ smartphones to upload pictures of the hacked bodies. The bodies were not even cold yet and ISIS heathens were amplifying their masochistic snuff voyeurism on social media, characteristic of the Chomskyesque propaganda machine they thirst for.

The attack highlights how Bangladesh’s radical outfits are globalizing which is a main worry for Uncle Sam and allies amidst their endeavour to circumscribe IS growth. Bangladesh’s 160 million population are predominantly Sunnis, with a demographic bulge under the age of 25. This makes it a magnet and a valuable recruiting magnet for IS. Bangladesh is also a prime lodestone for radicalisation as the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, has been dishing out capital punishment to religious clerics.

France

Before blood on Bastille day, during Ramadan, on June 13 the stabbing of a police officer and his wife in Magnanville was the first IS-claimed attack in the country this year. What makes France a repeated prey to ISIS attacks is its large vulnerabilities, its staunch secularism, a lack of social integration of the mostly Tunisian, Morrocan and Algerian immigrants into mainstream society, the rising tide of Marine Le Pen, stealthy military assaults in Syria, Charlie Hebdo, the 2010 face veil ban and a tough stance against Islam.

Jordan

IS considers the Kingdom of Jordan to be way too close for comfort with the USA. IS claimed its first ever attack in Jordan against “the Rukban American-Jordanian [military] base,” which occurred on June 21, 2016. This is an example of how IS expanded its geographical attack territory during Ramadan.

Niger/Nigeria

IS’ West Africa Province “wilayat” “Boko Haram” which has pledged allegiance to IS, has claimed seven attacks in 2016, four of which occurred during Ramadan. Nigeria witnessed two attacks in the Borno area (June 25 and July 2) and one attack in Yobe state. Across the Niger Delta, in a smaller country of Niger, IS targeted Nigerien military barracks in the Diffa region on June 17.

Somalia

Somalia brews a lot of radicalisation. The absence of stability, endemic poverty, piracy on the high seas⁷⁴, civil strife, and social chaos intermingle to spawn terror. Somalian Al-Shabab militants are most active, especially in Kenya⁷⁵. Three of the five total attacks that IS has claimed in Somalia to date occurred during Ramadan: June 8, 23, and 27, 2016. The June 8 and June 27 attacks in Mogadishu⁷⁶ both targeted Somali police, and the June 23 attack in the Hawa Abdi part of Lower Shebelle targeted African forces. It must be observed that these constitute hard military targets.

The Philippines

Though Abu Sayyaf is very active in radical militancy and recently captured and killed a Canadian hostage, IS in the Philippines has meaningfully increased both military and media activity, with a total of eight official IS-claimed attacks, five of which occurred over the past three weeks.

Turkey

Turkey’s ISIS agitation is one of the factors that prompted the 15 July, 2016 botched military take-over attempt, which President Erdoğan and the people of Turkey quelled, saving his democracy with an I-Phone. This is exactly the kind of upheaval and instability IS relish, for in such strife it has ample leeway to wreak havoc.

Two of the three IS-claimed attacks in Turkey to date occurred during Ramadan: June 12 (assassination of the creator of the “Raqqa is being Slaughtered Silently” campaign in Urfa) and June 17 (murder of a U.S. officer in Adana). Though IS does not officially claim responsibility, it remains the leading suspect for the attack on the Atatürk Airport in Istanbul dated June 28. The Istanbul Atatürk Airport attack bore all the hallmarks of ISIS, in that it had a series of attackers, the chosen venue was international and had high-visibility with foreigners (just like the Dhaka attack). ISIS deny the Istanbul’s⁷⁷ Atatürk Airport attack, though Turkey`s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan squarely lays the blame on them. In Mr. Erdoğan`s own words: “Daesh or ISIS is a dagger planted in the heart of Islam by our enemies”.

Saudi Arabia

The unimaginable and unthinkable affront to Medina, where Islam’s beloved Prophet (PBUH) lies resting, is a blatantly audacious attack on Islam and its most sacred symbols. Who would think we would ever live to see such debauched depravity?

No Muslim, however aberrant or senseless, can conceive of conducting such an atrocity as a suicide attack in the most sacred city of Medina and Masjid-e-Nabawi (the Prophet’s PBUH Mosque) or on Karbala. Those guilty of such ignominy cannot be people of the faith – any faith for that matter.

Analysts contend that such death merchants are obviously (partially) being bankrolled by forces which despise the very House of Islam⁷⁸.

A discerning mind would critically question who stands to gain most from all this? When this entire reign of IS terror reared its ugly head, some old and sagacious observers of the Arab World hastened to discern a method behind the madness. Nay-sayers, however, heaped scorn over such claims, dismissing them as tired and conspiratorial. However, considering the reign of recent terror and mindless mayhem that Daesh has unleashed, driving daggers at the very houses and heart of Islam, cynics say, conspiracy theories may not seem so far-fetched after all.

Similar to the attack at the Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, IS has not claimed the three Medina attacks in Saudi Arabia on July 4, which not coincidentally coincided with the US Independence Day. The U.S.-Saudi nexus irks ISIS, contend some. The Medina assaults targeted near the Prophet’s (PBUH) Mosque or Masjid-e-Nabvi. The other attacks were strategically aimed near the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, and near a Shia mosque in Qatif.

In Saudi Arabia, 12 Pakistani nationals are among the 19 people rounded up related to the attacks. Pakistanis form the largest group of labour migrants to Saudi Arabia and some air apprehensions about how they are treated. There is a mounting danger that Pakistanis will now collectively be typecast and all tarred by the same stereotypical Saudi brush. Many Pakistanis will unjustly be blamed and deemed prospective IS recruits.

The United States

Omar Mateen, who conflictingly pledged allegiance to IS along with rival groups such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, attacked a gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 12. This was the first IS-inspired attack in the US since the San Bernardino attack in December 2015.

The third discernible trend is that IS demonstrated a prominent deviation and escalation of terror tactics and targets in several countries, for instance, in Yemen IS staged an unprecedented 8-man suicide attack on June 28 in Al-Mukalla.

These eight suicide bombers killed 50 people injuring 37 in the al-Mukalla attacks in Hadhramaut province of strife-torn Yemen. Here ISIS suicide bombers blew themselves upto smithereens aiming at fasting Yemeni soldiers. This, like the 2016 Ramadan Nigeria/Niger attacks, were a hard military soldier target as opposed to ISIS’s usual soft civilian targeted attacks.

The Yemen attack again emphasisized ISIS’s determination to spearhead diverse methods, deploying both hard and soft attacks in asymmetrical guerrilla maneuvrist warfare strategies. The attacks also killed civilian passersby.

Also during Ramadan 2016 in Egypt, on June 30, IS expanded its near-daily attacks against Egyptian security personnel by targeting an Egyptian Coptic priest in Arish, an important deviation from its usual targets in the Sinai.

In North Sinai, previously IS also attacked positions around the road to Al-Jura, where a Multi-National Force Observer airfield is used. The airbase was attacked earlier in the month. This is strategically significant as IS remain allergic to any foreign, especially coalition-led, military presence or airbases in the Islamic world. The Sheikh Zuweid assault was deliberately orchestrated to drive Egyptian security forces out of Sinai, but also to muscle-flex power against Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), a rival radicalised insurgency force in the region, whose wings were further clipped by the death of Ajnad`s leader, Mohamed Attiyah in 2014⁷⁹.

The timeline hereunder chronologically details the deadly wave of attacks as they stomach-churned humanity, one fatal shock after the other, in Ramadan, 2016.

Hereunder is an extremely comprehensive info-graphic furnished by the SITE intelligence group – a global map visually exhibiting not only the major IS attacks perpetrated during Ramadan but also a detailed break-down of each city and number of casualties.

ISIS in South Asia – A Spectator or a Spoiler?

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Indian administrators arrested dozens of suspected ISIS backers, especially in Karnataka and in other parts. Many that were once part and parcel of the Indian Mujahideen/Ansar al-Tawhid network have been co-opted by ISIS. For now these ISIS-linked cells are minor in scope, but might be growing day by day.

Afghanistan witnessed Nine attacks unfolded in Ramadan 2016, four in Nangarhar⁸⁰, three in Kabul, and two in Jalalabad⁸¹ , nestled along the route from Peshawar to Kabul⁸². This is an increase from the two in May, three in April, and three in March⁸³, spearheaded by the so -called Islamic State’s Khorasan province (ISIS-Khorasan), which, as per IS, will be an instrumental catalyst to birth the Apocalyptic end of days. Hazara’s Shia Muslims often bear the brunt of IS-Khorasans bloodlust.

IS-Khorasan⁸⁴ straddles both sides of the Af-Pak border, a land now diabolically labelled Talibanistan⁸⁵. Without sanitizing such festering filth from our soil, the fight against terrorism cannot be taken to its logical corollary.

ISIS-Khorasan primarily comprises of opportunistic two-timing Af-Pak Taliban turncoats who merged with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and are grouped in remote pockets of northeastern Afghanistan straddling along Pakistan, where bi-lateral diplomatic axes have been grinding between Ashraf Ghani and Islamabad of late. Such a diplomatic stalemate is instigated by “external agents” and back-handed trouble-stirring hawks like Mr. Karzai who is critical of Pakistan. Mr. Ghani is the dove who people like Mr. Karzai mould into hawks.

ISIS-Khorasan South Asia missed a strategic window of opportunity to co-opt local militants during the leadership vacuum following the death of notorious Afghan Taliban founder, Mullah Muhammad Omar, the elusive feline extremist with nine metaphorical lives. The loss of such a strategic opportunity is because of ISIS-Khorasan’s ideological intransigence coupled with an already over-crowded and saturated South Asian terror market controlled by a confusing often conflicted “consortium” – the U.S., Afghan, and Pakistani governments, and the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT)– which conspire to circumvent Khorasan`s rise.

A former Pakistani Ambassador, H.E. Qazi Humayun, told this author that ISIS-Khorasan took responsibility for a January 13, 2016 attack on the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad,. My forecasting is that Pakistan’s civilian government and military have the will, clout and capability to confront Khorasan. Perhaps Mr. Sartaj Aziz needs a tougher stance on Afghanistan`s Taliban, as he last week declared that Pakistan should refrain from targeting them due to “blowback”, a term the consummate (but this time mistaken) Mr. Aziz may have conceptually gleaned from Chalmers Johnson.⁸⁶The evanescence of IS-Khorasan comes amid a waning thrust of terror violence in Pakistan, fuelled by Operation Zarb-e-Azb and propelled by a poignant comprehensive counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism (CT) campaign given birth to in 2013. Concomitantly, Pakistan witnessed a fall in terrorist violence. Civilian deaths due to terrorism fell from a virtual all-time high of 3001 in 2013 when the Haqqanis were lounging in Waziristan to 1781 in 2014 and 940 in 2015 – a 70% deterioration from its topmost and the lowest figure since 2006.

Still, as Lahore’s Gulshan e Iqbal and Peshawar’s APS attack hauntingly remind us, Pakistan can ill afford to rely on statistics. Victims are not numbers. They are humans. Their loss is irreplaceable. Unforgiveable.

Intelligence indicates that ISIS-Khorasan is evolving and hatching a network in urban Pakistan, as attacks attributed to the group coupled with arrests indicate. What remains to be seen is whether this embryonic evolving network is a consequence of vigorous recruitment by radicals linked to the ISIS core leadership in Syria or whether these fundamentalists are lured towards ISIS by themselves.

ISIS-Khorasan has still to demonstrate that it is empowered to perpetrate attacks in Pakistan with the scale, sophistication and consistency of rival extremist outfits. It claimed the grenade attack on ARY News, which embraces a heavily pro-military position.

The deadliest assault ascribed to ISIS-Khorasan was a mass shooting in Karachi on a bus where the passengers were members of the Ismaili Shia community. 46 innocent passengers were killed in the attack on May 13, 2015. Hafiz Saeed Khan, ISIS-Khorasan’s leader, claimed responsibility for the bus attack in an interview published in ISIS` Dabiq magazine. Security officials, however, have rotated between stating that the terrorists were linked to al-Qaeda or at times ISIS, though al-Qaeda never claimed responsibility for the attack. There is a nebulous nuanced self-directed gray zone between both al-Qaeda and ISIS, with fluid ever-shifting allegiances.

If ISIS seeks to have an impact in Pakistan, the manner might be through cost-effective high-impact high-visibility urban terror (such as mass shootings), as opposed to a taxing insurgency aimed at controlling rural or remote territory. Threateningly, just as in Bangladesh, ISIS has been attracting middle-class, educated, urban Pakistanis – however in smaller numbers.

Saad Aziz, the key criminal behind the mass bus shooting spree of Ismaili Shias, graduated from Pakistan’s top tier MBA university. Adil Masood Butt, who allegedly bankrolled the operation was an ex-member of the Islamist Tanzeem-i Islami group who read at Indiana University, and was linked to Pakistani al-Qaeda and Akmal Waheed. And a small number of Pakistanis, including women, have embarked upon an unholy migration to Syria to support ISIS. However Pakistan has made key arrests of JuD, LeT and other radical outfits. This reflects the watchfulness of Pakistan’s clampdown on a nascent network as opposed to ISIS’s mounting momentum in the country.

In the aforementioned interview in Dabiq, ISIS-Khurasan’s leader Hafiz Saeed Khan smugly dismissed the presence of both al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban in the region, and is scornful of the oath of allegiance of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to the new Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

Al-Qaeda is a mere shadow of its former self in South Asia, the Afghan Taliban is ISIS-Khorasan’s main challenger in the region. Mullah Akhtar Mansour has exerted control over the Afghan Taliban. The TTP, despite its rupturing, is ostensibly, part of Mansour’s flock – but there might be covert collaboration amongst the TTP network and ISIS-Khorasan. If peace negotiation with Kabul yield hostility vis-à-vis Mansour, Taliban dissenters and rebels risk independently operating with ISIS-Khorasan, if not directly under their banner. For now, ISIS-Khurasan is more spectator than spoiler in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban aims to abort ISIS-Khurasan in its embryonic phase. It has given pregnant to a “special forces” chapter of over 1,000 fighters to thwart ISIS-Khorasan. Last year, the Afghan Taliban even saved Hazara Shias kidnapped by Uzbeks claiming ISIS-affiliation and murdered their captors.

ISIS’s forthcoming forecasts in South Asia look faint. It squandered an opportunity to co-opt huge numbers of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban dissenters into its fray, it has also floundered in exhibiting the ideological suppleness to carve meaningful inroads in an Islamically heterogeneous South Asia. ISIS stresses that those under its umbrella adopt its Takfiri variant of Salafism.

By juxtaposition, al-Qaeda, which fuelled uprisings in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11, collaborated with radical Sunni formations that were not Salafi or transnational, realizing its dependence on local agents and an aptitude to modify, evolve and per-mutate.

Still, as ISIS does not have state patronage, Afghan intelligence officials might be lured to use it to strike Pakistan. In the past, Afghan intelligence lent a helping hand to the TTP in its terror campaign Mansour, Taliban dissenters and rebels risk independently operating with ISIS-Khorasan, if not directly under their banner. For now, ISIS-Khurasan is more spectator than spoiler in Afghanistan.

A multitude of extremist groups in Pakistan have stunted any possible ISIS growth. Significantly the anti-ISIS campaign waged vehemently by JuD, has picked up pace after the imprisonment of several of its participants for flocking to the ISIS nest. It has pioneered a state-of-the-art sophisticated social media movement, labelling them as khawarij, utilising Prophetic traditions. The JuD anti- ISIS movement is more than slick PR and damage mitigation. It is an austere Salafi ensemble facing a veritable menace of its members deserting over to ISIS, given that LeT is mostly sedentary in Kashmir and India, and Islamabad and New Delhi continue their comprehensive dialogue. Still, as ISIS does not have state patronage, Afghan intelligence officials might be lured to use it to strike Pakistan. In the past, Afghan intelligence lent a helping hand to the TTP in its terror campaign vis-à-vis Pakistan. As the Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban continues to strike Afghanistan, ISIS may play, and might already be playing, a similar role.

Zahir Qadir, an anti-ISIS Afghan member of parliament, alleges that his government is supporting ISIS- Khorasan in Nangarhar. He also alleges that Lashkar-e Islam, an Afghanistan-based anti-Islamabad militia, is supported by Kabul which offers operational sustenance to ISIS-Khorasan. Along with the prospect for clandestine government benefaction, external forces may enhance ISIS in South Asia. Iran intensifies its use of Afghan and Pakistani Shia battalions as cannon fodder in Syria. They combat under the Fatemiyoun Brigade. The homecoming of such combatants may topple Sunni-Shia relations in Kurram, generating wider appeal for the ISIS cult.

Al-Qaeda has excluded Pakistan’s Punjab and Sindh provinces from its nation of Khorasan. Its Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent associate bears dominion over these provinces, as well as Kashmir, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.

ISIS might replicate and create a distinct administrative unit for this area labelled “Wilayat Hind.” But much like its “province” of Khorasan, ISIS-Hind would, over the foreseeable future, without illicit state or rival sponsorship, be an:

Imaginary space rather than a real stronghold.

Blood and Butchery in Baghdad

In Ramadan, on July 2, Baghdad witnessed the deadliest attack since the war to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003. A car bomb detonated in a busy and bustling Karrada shopping bazaar in Baghdad, killing 300, and injuring hundreds more in a Shia neighbourhood. Fasting clients clustered to buy gifts for the upcoming Eid al-Fitr festivities not knowing that this would be the last Ramadan they witnessed on earth.

The Baghdad blast was partly in retaliation to the fact that Iraqi forces recently stepped into Fallujah, amongst other areas eroding ISIS`s power base. Post-Karrada, Iraq`s interior minister and a host of other senior officials resigned⁸⁷.

The car bomb is ISIS` attempt to stir up dislocation, division and a sectarian war between Shias and Sunnis, an internecine centuries old struggle plaguing the world’s Muslims. The Kerrada car bombing takes sectarian tensions to toxic new heights. Attacking Shia centres, religious sites and soft civilian targets has long been an ISIS stratagem.

Iraqi forces and Iranian-sponsored Shia militia have invested handsomely to protect Shia shrines in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala, acutely aware that they are magnets for militant targeting. This was so during the Imam al-Askari shrine strikes of Samarra⁸⁸ in 2006, which gave birth to large-scale bloodletting where thousands died and nationwide dislocation took place in Iraq, pitching the two major sects of Islam against each other, exactly like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi⁸⁹, Iraq’s ghost of death⁹⁰ and head honcho of a forerunner to ISIS, had forecast.

The Sunni Shia sectarian divide is a ceaseless schism that threatens not only to tear Iraq further apart, but disunites the entire Muslim Ummah (community). It is a bitter rivalry largely pitting Saudi Arabia against Iran with the entire Middle East as a prime playground for ensuing proxy wars. A war, claim fatalists, to be fought to the better end of judgement day.

ISIS sparks such simmering sectarian tensions and routinely bombs Shia targets (whom they deem non-believers) to keep Iraq unstable and meanwhile consolidate their own ebbing power base, especially after they lost Falluja. Iraq’s minority Sunnis lament that they too endure ceaseless discrimination at the mercy of Iraq’s Shia majority, which does not significantly share power with them. Most of Iraq’s internally displaced people (IDP’s) emanate from Sunni sections beleaguered by ISIS. Applying Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory⁹¹, many Sunni IDP’s are purposely cordoned off from Baghdad (the core) thereby

seeking shelter in remote towns (the periphery). This reinforces the power base at the nuclear “core”.

The bloodbath continued after Ramadan. ISIS delivered gory and grotesque Eid “gifts” from hell. The groundswell of unbridled violence by ISIS and their affiliates during Ramadan did not abate over Eid ul Fitr either. In Baghdad, as if the Ramadan killing of 300 people in the Shia neighbourhood market was not enough, the Shia population once more fell prey to death during prayers in a mosque in Balad where ISIS snipers and suicide bombers killed at least 35 people.

Rupturing the mausoleum site in Balad created reverbations with potent competing militias, Asa’ib ahl al-Haq and Saraya Salam, accusing each other of security gaps. Consequently, the Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, fired many top security officials in Baghdad, including the general responsible for the capital’s security.

Relatedly, during Eid festivities, Bangladesh, a growing hot bed for radicalisation, was also and yet again prey to a terror attack. A bombing at a prayer site in northern Kishoreganj district of Bangladesh was aimed at an Imam who was frank about the latest upsurge of terrorist attacks. There is a near limitless list of suspects in the bombing which came on the heels of the Dhaka Gulshan café bombing killing 20.

Both IS and other local extremists are active the world over. IS and their slavish adherents deem those who do not follow their narrow misguided interpretation of Islam as unbelievers. Such attacks are a logical corrolory to a blind system that sees just about any human as fair game for massacre.

Whose Lives Matter? The Danger of Selective Solidarity

Why does the international community not stand in solidarity with those who died in Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq? Why is the same solidarity not extended to these victims as was done in Orlando, San Bernardino, Brussels and Paris⁹²? Western arm-chair audiences are psychologically conditioned, with almost Pavlovian precision, to feel satisfied with hackneyed half-hearted assurances from Western politicians, whilst millions of refugees risk life and limb, kith and kin and yet remain languishing at the precipice of Europe’s ever-closing borders.

The rise in anti-minority hate crimes in the aftermath of Brexit is also apace with alarming alacrity. Such hatred undermines the West’s moral authority as ‘lesson-givers’ when their own backyards are heaving with fascist far-right fundamentalist racists. Assuming that all Brexit ‘Leave’ campaigners are racists is as puerile as thinking that all Muslims are rabid terrorists.

Media coverage purposely underplays hate crimes, which is a move beyond bias towards pure propaganda. That racism has risen post-Brexit is undeniable.

One week of political unrest and thousands seek to depart from the UK – as opposed to five years of the worst modern war in Syria and some still wonder why Syrians are leaving their homeland.

The superiority clichés of ‘might is right and might is white’ divisively drive a wedge between communities, exacerbating the worst of Trumpism and Faragism, a political zeitgeist gaining traction from fear by appealing to our basest instincts. Such exclusionary selective notions of solidarity wreak more marginalisation than any military misadventure of reorganising the map for convenient regime change.

Unlike the unspeakably horrid terror assaults at the Orlando night club or Paris Bataclan, terrorism in Istanbul, Dhaka or Iraq is considered unworthy of week-long investigations. UEFA, the football organisation, even denied a ‘moment of silence’ for the Istanbul airport victims.

Social media users displaying pictures of a Turkish or Bangladeshi flag background are far and few between. Why should the Eiffel Tower not be lit red and white with the Turkish flag? Where are the fusillade

of celeb Facebook status updates and tear-jerking tweets about the massacres in Dhaka, Istanbul and Iraq?

Where are the ‘Je suis Istanbul’ or ‘Je suis Dhaka’ incantations? When are global leaders congregating in Istanbul and Dhaka for funeral memorial services? Human empathy is yet to evolve from stale diplo-speak statements of the glaringly obvious.

When a devastating assault like Paris or Orlando occurs, the world is forced to mourn (rightly so) yet when psychopathic suicide bombers blow themselves up or kill in Bardo, Bangladesh, Beirut, Bamako,

Baghdad, Ankara or Istanbul, no one flinches, it only merits momentary cursory news coverage.

Political pundits have stage-managed to outmanoeuvre our better judgement by broadcasting naïve cognitive dissonance: when Westerners are killed by terrorist attacks it’s a tragedy when “they” (Arabs, Africans, Turks) are massacred by terrorism, it’s but an ill-fated normality in a destabilised region.

Such biased conjecture assumes servile generalisations about the Arab, African and Muslim world – contending that violence there is an inherent measure of life. Such insular Orientalist tribalism, an ethno-centric bigoted biased worldview, and the ignorance it brews are an uninviting symptom of our moral double-standards.

Millions in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Kashmir are innocent law-abiding citizens caught in the quagmire of daily terror and stereotypical labelling. History will eventually shake out the truth, but till then let us sympathise with these people, offer them the media coverage they deserve. Some lives should never matter more than others. Over the years, partly by default and partly by design, there has developed an unhealthy hierarchy of valuing lives.

It is upon the journalists of today to remain true to themselves, and treat all people as ‘equal’ rather than an Orwellian ‘some are born more equal than others’. Arabs and Africans are being slaughtered silently,

capturing much less sound bites than the most brain-dead of celebrity scoops.

This is not some Utopian pacifist plea towards a ‘victimhood’ mentality, but a realist mind-shift to help us contain radicalism. Minorities are our greatest ally in countering extremism. As long as we remain dismissively unsympathetic to them, it will be increasingly tough to overthrow the ISIS death cult.

To rid the world of extremism we need a more nuanced, balanced, inclusive, community-centred media coverage, where all minorities, of all hues and religions, are equal shapers and stakeholders.

Epilogue

Dear Criterion readers,

We are, without the sliver of a doubt, watching history in the making. The substantial upheavals revealed in this report, already touched and tortured our own lives here in Pakistan, from APS to Gulshan e Iqbal, and affect relationships in the wider world.

Perhaps it is more apt to affirm that we are witnessing civilization unravelling before our very eyes. World-changing circumstances and life-altering events can be witnessed all around us: Chilcot’s candid findings, Turkey’s failed military mutiny, a wave of global terror, Brexit, people retreating back toward shells of isolationism, attacks from the frontier of the EU through to Turkey, Iraq, Syria, large swathes of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on to Libya and Tunisia. The habit of conveniently playing proxy games by remote control, changing regimes for convenience sake has left behind a blatant trail of anarchy and faltered states. Fallen to rubble. ISIS is but one unholy incarnation of all this. There will yet be many more. Such is the law of bitter consequences.

Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, in their infamously sinister complot of Anglo-French imperialism, commenced carving up the map and the Ottoman Empire, chopping it up into pieces – with a helping hand from Arthur Balfour. Such imperial impulses and “Games of Thrones” are lived in real life and persist to this bitter day. We have devastatingly not learnt from history, which is why history repeats itself.First as a tragedy. Then as farce. The farce within the tragedy is now glaringly obvious to all but the strategically blind. The scourge of ISIS and its fellow travellers, claiming with audacious hilarity to speak on behalf of Islam and Muslims, is the most sinister fitna that the world of Islam has encountered since the Khawarij and Mongol invasions.

From the unmentionable slaughter of innocent civilians to the raw rape of pre-pubescent girls to exacting psychopathic brutalities on hostages caught on camera, every sadism of these groups has been designed to yield an all too convenient blanket wholesale loathing and repugnance of Islam and Muslims. And they seem to be succeeding in their attempts, taking into account the global wave of Islamophobia and hate attacks on Muslims to which we all, collectively, bear testimony to, in the West and around the world, spiking alarmingly after Nice and Brexit.

The Islamic world is the prime and principal victim of this vicious, overwhelming, overpowering campaign of mayhem and torture, bleeding as it does from Baghdad to Beirut, from Damascus to Dhaka, and from Iraq to Istanbul. Terror tentacles have now even been extended to the very birthplace of Islam and one of its two most sacred cities, Medina.

Yet with bitter irony it is Islam and Muslims who are deemed ‘the problem’ and patronizingly lectured about the virtues of peace and tolerance. The puerile, paranoid and reductive, `all Muslims want to destroy our way of life,` is rhetorically repetitive and Orientalist to the core. The record must change. The narrative must be reclaimed.

The Muslims are caught, quite literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. Between an IS death cult and maniacs who carry out detestable, vile crimes against humanity in their name and on the other polar extreme self-appointed “worthies” like the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump whose family members not only plagiarize speeches but he believes that Muslims and Islam are solely responsible for all this chaos and merit severe sanction, to Newt Gingrinch, the new self- appointed brand ambassador for Islamophobia, who feels that all Muslims should be “deported” out of the USA. This is precisely what ISIS wants: fear, loathing, militarization, the securitization of society, religious profiling and anti-Muslim hate crime.

Let us not feed this beast.

Muslims now face an existentialist threat like never before-both at home and abroad. We will never vanquish, let alone contain, the war on extremism by remaining handcuffed to narrow sectarian identities of Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Sufi or any other denomination. Many of our ills, including the unholy, mind-numbing mess in Syria, stem from this crippling sectarian, subjective bias.

So again, in purely rational, neo-Darwinian, realist, existentialist terms, Muslim majority nations must sink their differences and stop shadow-boxing themselves in their self-made ivory towers.

Rather than the fanciful wilful delusion, romanticism or apologia that the Muslim Ummah will ever unite as “one” given that Sunnis and Shias are perennially at each other`s throats, there is an insightful lesson to be learnt from Western foreign policy. The West, whatever its ills, is brutally straightforward with itself. Be it the “war on terror” or more recently Brexit, strategies are clinically scrutinized, cost benefit analysis are analytically fleshed out, candid critique ensues with informed national self-interest gaining primacy.

For instance, the US forayed into Afghanistan in the 80’s not to philanthropically defend Afghanistan out of humanistic goodwill but to limit the Soviet sphere of influence. When its national interest evolved in a post-cold war scenario, it naturally withdrew. That is how logical self-preserving Neo-Darwinian states conduct their affairs: on the basis of self-interest based cold calculation in a world driven by Westphalian Clausewitzian realpolitik.

The existential threat faced by Islam today requires Muslim-majority countries to (however momentarily) architect a resolute, collective, coldly calculating, self-interest preserving directly proportionate response by re-calibrating foreign policy just like the West does, with cool tempered calculation, in alignment with Muslim leaders, governments, policy-makers, think-tanks, intellectuals and scholars.

They must, just temporarily, hard as it seems, align their ample resources, human capital and military firepower together to take on the deadliest menace of our 21^st century, ISIS. Not out of any imaginary “brotherly love” or goodwill, for there exists no such thing in calculated realism, but for the purposes of self-preservation.

Enough empty platitudes, open pledges, hollow promises and shallow postulations asserting that terror has no place in Islam. True as that is, it is high time to back up this belief with bold decisive action.

It’s high time the GCC, the OIC and all other relevant blocks closely collaborate with NATO, on intensified joint military campaigns, with more intense aerial and land exercises, which by bitter dictum of necessity, requires temporary “boots on the ground” to slay the ISIS dragon. Aerial campaigns, no matter how surgical, cannot do the job. Libya is living proof.

After all that, most importantly, post conflict planning, local employment creation, society engagement, institution building, aid funding, refugee resettlement are all necessary, so as not to witness: ISIS the Second Sequel.

A multi-pronged approach is the only way forward: to keep starving ISIS off its finances, to keep monitoring hundi and havala networks, to keep striking at their oil rigs, to keep penetrating and dissolving their cells. Without such unity of purpose and action in our ranks, we can win no battles, preserve no territory, protect no minorities – be they Yezidis, Kurds, Alevis, Hindus, Parsis or Christians. Nor will Muslim minorities living in the West, increasingly subject to draconian witch-hunts reminiscent of the Gulags and Pogroms, feel safe as they are on the knife`s edge.

To confront this tempestuous storm, fortifying our internal edifice, no matter how cracked or crevice-laden it is, remains priority numero uno. The bickering and petty squabbles that have haunted Muslims over centuries will, of course, not cease. It is foolhardy to even assume so. But a temporary coalition of the Muslim willing needs to be ramped up. If an attack on the very heart of Islam does not shake us out of our indefinite slumber and stupor, what will?

Islamic nations must momentarily, cast their differences aside, and collectively give the OIC more teeth. Revamp the coalition of the willing formed already by 34 states, to take out ISIS and initiate (through a mutually pooled budget) cross-border counter-terror initiatives, not just militarily, by clearing out terror sanctuaries as described above, but also by: engaging youth, intensifying poverty mitigation, empowering voices, emboldening debates, initiating inter-faith dialogue exchange programs between, across and within Muslim majority countries.

Along with this: neighbourhood watch schemes, inter-cultural solidaity days, civic responsibility camps, introducing theological diversity programs in education curriculum from primary school, compulsory religious tolerance sensitization programs for all employees at all organizations, public, private and non-profit, to all staff irrespective of rank or file, so that the torch-bearers of tomorrow, our youth of today, are readily alert, mainstreamed, sensitized and prepared to place:

Conciliation over confrontation and commonality over cut-throat enmity.

The most potent generational civilizational ammunition we, as collective humanity, have on our side against ISIS is the millions of refugees (mostly Muslim) whose lives and limbs, kith and kin now hinge at the very precipice of Europe`s borders after fleeing from the ISIS scourge. They are aspiring for a more decent meaningful purposeful peaceful promising life.

Imagine, had these very refugees, in their millions, taken up arms with ISIS? The very fact that they did not, that they chose for themselves and their children the promise of the pen rather than the poison of the sword, is the strongest indication that there are glimmers of hope destined for us ahead.

It is for this very reason, that I emphasize time and again, that these refugees must be given safe sanctuary, integrated, accommodated, assimilated, sensitized, no matter what the financial cost, for over the long-haul the dividends far outweigh any costs.

Many of the greatest minds on earth today are the progeny of migrants and refugees. Steve Jobs⁹³, that one single individual who helped revolutionize corporate America and six different industries as we know them, a celebrated doyen of creativity, is the son of Syrian political refugees. Just look how he, one single refugee child, transformed the very living landscape of post-modernity. When given a chance, human agency is an incredible force.

An individual can but be responsible for their own actions. Institutional change is beyond our purview, and for most of us, remains beyond our agency. However, what disturbs us can also energise us. We can do better. We must be better. We all sow within ourselves the seeds of our own salvation. Abdul Sattar Edhi might have physically departed, but more than an Inspiration he is an Idea whose time is long overdue: we should all embrace counter radicalism or Edhism, whose motto must be echoed into eternity that:

“No religion is greater than Humanity”.

What greater bulwark against radicalisation than the ethos of Mr Edhi himself. Humanity and dignity personified. ‘Edhism’ is an Idea-one for us all to humbly endeavour to emulate in this journey called life.

Abdul Sattar Edhi emulated the life of the greatest person that ever lived, namely our Holy Prophet (PBUH) who said “poverty is my pride”. At the height of his power he chose to live not like some “Sultan” but the life of the poorest member of the Muslim community.

A very wise man once shared with me that it was Oscar Wilde who believed that the truly pious are those who are “not too proud to wash the feet of the beggar and kiss the leper on the face”.This is the distillate of the life of Abdul Sattar Edhi. No other person in the sad history of this country has done more to help the teeming millions in distress. He will forever live in the thoughts and prayers of the people.

What better a place to live?

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References

The first image is courtesy of http://www.islam21c.com/ The second image is courtesy of Al-Arabiya (July, 2016).
A canny metaphor conceptually borrowed from Murshed S. Iftikhar (2016) excellently in John Bull`s Little Island, The News International, Jang Group, July 18, 2016. The article can be accessed at: https://www.thenews.com.pk/ print/135661-John-Bulls-little-island
Darwin, Charles (1860), “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, Nature (2nd ed.) (London: John Murray) 5 (121): 318 and Darwin, Charles R. (1871) The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Volume 1. First edition.
In an Aristotelian sense this denotes appealing to emotion.
Rationality and reason.
Good sense, goodwill and credibility. An excellent translation of selections of Aristotle’s works is: Irwin, T. and Fine., G., (1995) Aristotle: Selections, Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995. On Aristotle`s general works consult: Shields, C., (2014) Aristotle 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2014 and Sauvé Meyer, S., (1992) ‘Aristotle, Teleology, and Reduction,’ Philosophical Review, 101: pp. 791–825 and Ward, Julie K., (2008) Aristotle on Homonymy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Churchill, Winston (1946). Speech to the Academic Youth (Speech). Zürich, Switzerland, 19 September, 1946 view also Winston Churchill (1948) ‘Speech at a Conservative Mass Meeting. Llandudno. 9 October 1948’. Reprinted in Randolph S. Churchill (ed.) Europe Unite – Speeches: 1947 and 1948 by Winston S. Churchill. London: Cassell, 1950. pp. 417–18.
Both Smith and Former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove claim that Brexit renders Britain safer, by allowing the government to control migration from the EU. Dearlove asserted that Britain would be more vulnerable by staying within the EU given the “open door” policy at Britain’s borders. Dearlove He insisted that security co-operation with the “leaky ship” of the EU was not worth Britain’s while.
Baroness Lilian Pauline Neville-Jones is a former BBC Governor, Security Minister and Former Chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
As reported by Stewart, Heather (2016) Brexit would increase terrorist threat to UK, says ex-minister, The Guardian, Friday, 25 March, 2016.
Neville-Jones` fears echoed that of the former home secretary now Prime Minister, Theresa May, who told the House of Commons that the battle against Islamic extremism was “the challenge of a generation”. Justice Minister Dominic Raab also claimed EU freedom of movement rules forced the UK to “import risk” from the continent. More insight on Theresa May`s policies can be had at: Stewart, Heather (14 July 2016). “Theresa May’s decisive reshuffle draws line under Cameron era”. The Guardian (London, UK). Retrieved 15 July 2016.
A name given to those favouring Britain to remain within the EU auspices.
A former Ministry of Defence Secretary.
Malcom Rifkind aired these concerns at the World Counter Terror Congress
As reported by Batchelor, Tom (2016) Brexit will increase chance of UK terror attack warns former defence secretary, The Daily Express, April 13, 2016.
Also referred to as the 7/7 bombings.
On 22 May 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale in Woolwich, southeast London, he was attacked on the street. Adebolajo and Adebowale, British citizens of Nigerian descent who converted to Islam, ran him down with a car, then used knives and a cleaver to stab and hack him to death just like the ISIS perpetrators did in Dhaka in Ramadan 2016. Rigby`s killers said that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces. Worse still, the death was placed online and glorified view: Pennink, Emily (2014). “Lee Rigby murder: Royal Barnes pleads guilty to posting videos online glorifying the death”. The Independent (UK). 12 February, 2014. For further reading analyse: Rayner, Gordon and Swinford, Steven (2013). “Woolwich attack”. The Daily Telegraph. 24 May 2013.
Headquartered in The Hague, Europol is the EU’s primary law enforcement body and strategic gateway for intelligence sharing. Its aim is to combat European crime and terrorism. Whereby the former is combatted through specialist teams seeking to fight human and drug trafficking networks and anti-money laundering networks, Europol’s counter-terrorism measures include information sharing platforms, the ECTC, and the annual European Terrorism Situation and Trend Report.
Eurojust is an EU agency, which encourages judicial cooperation in criminal matters. It aims to guarantee coherent extradition procedures and facilitate communication between legal authorities across the Union. Importantly, cooperation experiences have confirmed Eurojust’s ability to coordinate synchronized legal operations across EU member states, and carry out simultaneous trials.
The EAW serves to guarantee efficient extradition of criminals across the EU. It allows EU citizens to be arrested in any member state and facilitates cooperation between the criminal’s home state and the state in which the individual is arrested. The EAW means that EU countries are obliged to surrender their own citizens to other EU countries, if they have committed or are suspected of having committed a serious crime in another EU country.
Roger Cohen (2011) ‘Positive Disruption’. The New York Times, 23 June 2011 and also view: C. Yui & S. Fink. (2013) Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger: Remaking government for the digital age. Policy Exchange Report (2013)
European Court of Human Rights (2012) ‘Case of Othman (Abu Qatada) v. The United Kingdom’, (Application no. 8139/09, 17 January 2012.
European Council (2016) ‘European Council Meeting: Conclusions’, EUCO 1/16, 19 February, 2016.
Treaty of Maastricht (1992) ‘Treaty on European Union’. ECSC/EEC/EAEC. 1992. Article K.1 (9). p. 132.
European Council (2001) ‘Anti-Terrorism Roadmap’. SN 4019/01. 21 September 2001.
Kaunert & S. Léonard (2013) European Security, Terrorism and Intelligence: Tackling New Security Challenges in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. pp. 2-10.
European Council (2005) ‘The European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy. 30 November 2005.
Simon F. (2015) ‘From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo: The EU’s response to terrorism’. EurActiv. 14 January 2015.
European Council (2016) ’Response to foreign fighters and recent terrorist attacks in Europe’. 2016.
An acronym which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT).
Khalid, Ozer (2016) Omar Mateen`s confused sexuality could cause ISIS to disown him, New York Daily Times, June 14, 2016.
Freud, Sigmund (2010) The Interpretation of Dreams, Third Edition. Trans. by A. A. Brill. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913.
Jung, C. G. (1928) [1917], Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected Works 7 (2 ed.), London: Routledge (published 1966) and Jung, C. G. (1981) The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious, Collected Works 9 (1) (2 ed.), Princeton, NJ: Bollingen.
Mishra, Pankaj (2016) The messy mind of Omar Mateen, Bloomberg, June 15, 2016.
Blackstone, Byron (1974) ‘Byron and Islam: the triple Eros’, Journal of European Studies vol. 4 no. 4, Dec. 1974, pp. 324–64.
Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. (1995) Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for all and none. New York: Modern Library. See especially pages 3-5.
Turgenev, I., (1856) Rudin, Sovremennik Publishing, translated by Constance Garnett.
Golding, William (1962) Lord of the Flies, Coward-McCann.
Those born in 1992 or thereafter.
Those born from 1981 onwards.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Philip Mairet (1948) Existentialism and Humanism. London: Methuen, 1948.
Kafka, Franz (1996). The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Anwar al-Awlaki (: أنور العولقي‎‎) was an American Yemeni Imam and an alleged senior recruiter for al-Qaeda, he was the first United States citizen to be targeted and killed in a United States drone strike. Awlaki would often spew his vitriol via the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, and many YouTube videos, often dubbed the “bin Laden of the Internet. For more: Abdul Haq and Sloan, Abu Ameenah AbdurRahman (2011) A Critique of the Methodology of Anwar al-Awlaki and his Errors in the Fiqh of Jihad. London: Jamiah Media, 2011.
Mishra, Pankaj (2016) The messy mind of Omar Mateen, Bloomberg, June 15, 2016.
For a comprehensive view on Turkey`s recent trials and tribulations view: Khalid, Ozer (2016) “Turkey : Teetering on the Edge of Terror “, Express Tribune, June 30, 2016. The article might be accessed at http://tribune.com.pk/story/1133696/ turkey-teetering-edge-terror/
The Economist (2016) The Sultan Survives, In Turkey a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Jul 15^th, 2016.
To learn more about Mr Gulen: La Porte, Amy; Watson, Ivan; Tuysuz, Gul (2016). “Who is Fethullah Gulen, the man blamed for coup attempt in Turkey?” CNN. 16 July, 2016 and Beaumont, Peter (2016) “Fethullah Gülen: who is the man Turkey’s president blames for coup attempt?”. The Guardian. 16 July, 2016.
Religious clerics who recite the call to prayer five times daily.
The Turkish Parliament was also evacuated: Withnall, Andy (2016). “Turkey parliament ‘evacuated due to imminent security threat’”. The Independent. 18 July 2016.
The Economist (2016) The Sultan Survives, In Turkey a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Jul 15^th, 2016.
Mr Erdogan`s elected government political party.
McKirdy, Euan; Dewan, Angela (2016) “Turkey’s Erdogan ‘cleanses’ security forces with iron fist after failed coup”. CNN. 18 July 2016.
For an in-depth understanding on Turkey consult: Khalid, Ozer (2016) Turkey’s 2015 Elections – Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges and Prospects, Criterion Quarterly, February 1, 2016, Volume 10, Number 4, February 1. The article is available at: https://criterion-quarterly.com/turkeys-2015-elections-domestic-and-foreign-policy-challenges-and-prospects/
Stemming partially from Turkey’s political and social divisions ever since 2013, when the nation was jolted by anti-government protests and a corruption scandal that led to the axing of three cabinet ministerial posts. Mr Erdogan and his supporters have accused the Gulenists of masterminding both the unrest and the bribery scandal.
Khalid, Ozer (2016) “Turkey : Teetering on the Edge of Terror “, Express Tribune, June 30, 2016. The article might be accessed at http://tribune.com.pk/ story/1133696/turkey-teetering-edge-terror/
This view is also held by Soner Çağaptay, who leads the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
Article 245 of Pakistan`s Constitution elucidates that the Armed Forces shall, under the directions of the Federal Government, defend Pakistan against external aggression or threat of war, and, subject to law, act in aid of civil power when called upon to do so.
This is partly because in the 2000`s the army had its wings clipped via numerous trials of top-ranking army officers on conspiracy charges, thought to be instigated by Gulenists with Mr Erdoğan’s assistance. Lately, as he tilts more toward nationalism, Mr Erdoğan has uncuffed formerly imprisoned Generals and was strengthening rapport with the army.
However during the Paris Bataclan attack in November 2015 a woman was involved, so too in the San Bernardino terror assault.
Khalid, Ozer (2016) A Nightmare in Nice, The News International, Jang Group. 18 July, 2016. The article may be reviewed at: https://www.thenews.com.pk/ print/135665-Nightmare-in-Nice
Williams, Richard A. L. ( 2016) “Nice terror attack: Isis claims responsibility for lorry massacre in French coastal city”. The Independent, 16 July, 2016.
There are two polar extreme contexts which, in the opinion of this author, totally misconstrue Robespierre as a historical figure. One is to hate the man, the other is to worship him. It is illogical to view the loner lawyer from Arras as a totally evil usurper, to deem him a demagogue, to confuse the moderate as a blood-lusting tyrant, or the democrat as a dictator. The misconstruance springs from psychologically ascribing definitive traits to the man given the historical role into which he was thrust by events larger and beyond himself. Robespierre remains immortal not only because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse. History as we know repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Fascinatingly read: Robespierre, de Maximilien (2007) Virtue and Terror, edited by Jean Ducange, translated by John Howe. January 17, 2007 with an introduction by Slavoj Zizek.
To quash Louis XVI`s grip on power.
Raqqa is the capital of the ISIS Caliphate. The Rockerfellers of Raqqa is a moniker denotating that ISIS are cash-rich due to the sales from oil proceeds, as they controlled Omar oilfield and other key oilfields in Iraq and Syria.
A witticism for petroleum.
Translated from Arabic.
Santora, Marc (2016) “Last Call at Pulse Nightclub, and Then Shots Rang Out”. The New York Times. June 12, 2016 and Grimson, Matthew, Wyllie, David and Fieldstadt, Elisha (2016) “Orlando Nightclub Shooting: Mass Casualties After Gunman Opens Fire in Gay Club”, as televised on NBC News on June 12, 2016 and Mozingo, Joe., Pearce, Matt and Wilkinson, Tracy (2016). “’An act of terror and an act of hate’: The aftermath of America’s worst mass shooting”. Los
The terrorists, who one witness, Hasnat Karim said appeared to be in their early 20s, were hunting for diplomats and non-Muslims. ‘They asked the hostages to recite verses from the Quran’, he said, those who did were spared. For more: Summers, Chris; Pleasance, Chris (2016) “Pictured: The grinning ISIS terrorists who hacked 20 innocent victims including westerners to death but spared those who could recite the Koran in Bangladesh attack”. Daily Mail. 3 July, 2016. Also Al-Mahmood, Syed Zain (2016) “Bangladesh Hostage’s Father Says Son Didn’t Expect to Live”. The Wall Street Journal. 3 July 2016. Zain details that ‘Those who could recite the Quran, were treated well, but those who couldn’t were separated…’.
Adel, Loaa (2016). “Baghdad bombing: Scores of people dead, dozens injured”. Iraqi News, 3 July, 2016. Chulov, Martin (2016) “Isis claims responsibility for Baghdad car bombing as 120 die on single day”. The Guardian, 3 July, 2016.
ISIS-Khorasan seeks to expand its foothold in Nangarhar and elbow its way into neighboring Kunar and Nuristan. Radicals also operate in Zabul, where IMU members are now cozying upto ISIS-Khorasan.
ISIS-Khorasan took responsibility for a January 13, 2016 attack on the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad a former Pakistani Ambassador H.E. Qazi Humayun told this author. Days later, a suicide bomber struck the home of a local anti-ISIS-Khurasan tribal leader in Jalalabad, killing over a dozen people. An Afghan Taliban spokesman said that his group was not involved in the blast, which makes ISIS-Khurasan a likelier suspect.
The Peshawar-Jalalabad-Kabul road was a key supply route for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and an important nerve artery for landlocked Afghanistan’s global trade.
Ramadan in Review (2016) IS Expanded Global Presence from June 6 to July 5, SITE Intelligence Group Report. 12 July, 2016.
As depicted in Hollywood-based Tom Hanks` riveting `Captain Philipps`.
As seen in Hollywood`s excellent and highly acclaimed `Eagle Eye` starring Helen Mirren.
In 1991-92 many Pakistani soldiers went to Mogadishu and Baqara as part of a UN mission.
Karimi, Faith; Almasy, Steve and Tuysuz, Gul (2016) “ISIS leadership helped plan Istanbul attack, source says”. CNN, 30 June, 2016 also Akyavas, Aziz; Engel, Richard; Windrem, Robert; Johnson, Alex and Ortiz, Erik (2016) “Explosions Rock Istanbul Airport, Multiple Deaths Reported”. NBC News, 28 June, 2016 and Amur, Jennifer Amur and Vitkovskaya, Julie (2016) “In Turkey, suicide bombers are targeting tourists”. Boston Globe. 29 June 2016.
Bunt, Gary R. (2009) Muslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Khalid, Ozer (2015) A global tide of terror: from Sousse to Sinai, Daily News Egypt on 5 July, 2015. The article can be accessed on http://www.newsjs.com/ url.php?p=http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/07/05/a-global-tide-of-terror-from-sousse-to-sinai/
ISIS-Khorasan seeks to expand its foothold in Nangarhar and elbow its way into neighboring Kunar and Nuristan. Radicals also operate in Zabul, where IMU members are now cozying upto ISIS-Khorasan.
ISIS-Khorasan took responsibility for a January 13, 2016 attack on the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad a former Pakistani Ambassador H.E. Qazi Humayun told this author. Days later, a suicide bomber struck the home of a local anti-ISIS-Khurasan tribal leader in Jalalabad, killing over a dozen people. An Afghan Taliban spokesman said that his group was not involved in the blast, which makes ISIS-Khurasan a likelier suspect.
The Peshawar-Jalalabad-Kabul road was a key supply route for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and an important nerve artery for landlocked Afghanistan’s global trade.
Ramadan in Review (2016) IS Expanded Global Presence from June 6 to July 5, SITE Intelligence Group Report. 12 July, 2016.
Jones, Seth (2015) “Seth G. Jones – ISIS’ South Asia Strategy”. Foreign Affairs. 6 October, 2015.
Bergen, Peter; Tiedemann, Katherine (2012) Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders between Terror, Politics, and Religion. Oxford UnivOxford University Press. pp. 1-308.
The costs and consequences of American foreign policy faux-pas were glaringly highlighted in both Chalmers, Ashby Johnson. Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (January 4, 2004 ed.). Holt Paperbacks. pp. 1-289 as well as during the secretly leaked telephone conversations of Kissinger, Henry (2003) Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises: Based on the Record of Henry Kissinger’s Hitherto Secret Telephone Conversations.
Resignations were also conveniently tendered by David Cameron, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson for others to clear up the mess left after Brexit.
Knickmeyer, Ellen (2006) “Bombing Shatters Mosque In Iraq”. The Washington Post. February 23, 2006 and Rodriguez, Alex (2006). “Suspect in bombing of Shiite shrine is captured”. Chicago Tribune. June 28, 2006.
Zarqawi was a terrorist from Jordan who ran terror network camps inside Afghanistan. His notoriety peaked when he perpetratednumerous bombings, beheadings, and attacks in the Iraq War, reportedly turning an insurgency against US troops in Iraq “into a full-blown Shia-Sunni civil war”. He is also known as “Shaykh of the slaughterers”. Milelli, Jean-Pierre (2005) La lettre d’al-Zarqaoui à Ben Laden , Maghreb-Machrek, Choiseul, Paris.
Smith, Michael (2006) “How Iraq’s ghost of death was cornered”. London:The Sunday Times. June 11, 2006 and Knickmeyer, Ellen; Finer, Jonathan (June 8, 2006). “Insurgent Leader Al-Zarqawi Killed in Iraq”. The Washington Post.
Wallerstein, Immanuel (1983). Historical Capitalism. London: Verso.
Khalid, Ozer (2016) Whose Lives Matter? The News International, Jang Group, 5 July, 2016. The article may be accessed at https://www.thenews.com.pk/ print/132981-Whose-lives-matter
Walter Isaacson has etched a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized no less than six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing. In Isaacson, Walter (2011), Steve Jobs, New York : Simon & Schuster, 2011.