Why did Hamas launch this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if it was not on behalf of the Palestinian people but rather at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and arms to Hamas, to help prevent the budding normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival, and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drawn up, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority — by delivering to it a huge infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbs on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other advances to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders might have earned a desperately needed boost of legitimacy from the Palestinian masses, threatening the legitimacy of Hamas.

That U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal also would have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to jettison the most extreme members of his cabinet in return for forging an alliance between the Jewish state and the Sunni-led states of the Persian Gulf against Iran. Altogether, it would have been one of the biggest shifts in the tectonic plates of the region in 75 years. In the wake of this Hamas attack, that deal is now in the deep freeze, as the Saudis have had to link themselves more closely than ever with Palestinian interests, not just their own.

Indeed, within hours of the Hamas invasion, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying, according to Al Arabiya network: “The kingdom is closely following up on the unprecedented developments between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupying forces,” adding that it has “repeatedly warned of the consequences of [the deterioration] of the situation as a result of the occupation as well as of depriving the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and of [not halting] systematic provocations against their holy [sites].”

I am watching how the Hamas-Israel earthquake will shake up another earthquake..:Ukraine…

Read it all.

“Hamas has been a deadly curse for the Palestinian people….The billion-plus dollars in aid that it received from Qatar…could have gone into building Gaza into a productive society….Instead, Hamas has devoted most of its…resources to” attacking Israel. https://t.co/JQ4v9Sp0nx

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 8, 2023

‘In an assault without recent precedent in its complexity and scale, the militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air, according to the Israeli military, leading to some of the first pitched battles between large groups of Israeli and Arab forces on Israeli soil in decades…

All told, the Israeli military said that the militants had entered at least 22 Israeli towns, abducting soldiers and civilians, including an older grandmother.’

Read it all.

Here is what to know about the surprise attack on Israel. https://t.co/SKlRic24ZK

— Nancy Quinn (@nancyquinn) October 7, 2023

Islamist militants in Mali began a blockade of Timbuktu by cutting road access in August and then shut off river and air routes in an offensive that has put the city once again on the frontline of a jihadist insurgency.

The bombing began soon after. On Sept. 21, witnesses said rockets hit a hospital, killing two children, and landed near a school where survivors of a passenger boat attack that killed more than 100 people were sheltering.

“Our worry is the shelling,” businessman Sory Touré said in Timbuktu, which was occupied by jihadists a decade ago. “It creates a real psychosis and leaves a lasting impression. I have this fear within me.”

Read it all.

Mali in meltdown as militants advance and U.N. withdraws https://t.co/cVfhMM39a5 pic.twitter.com/teqDkM4spf

— Reuters Africa (@ReutersAfrica) October 3, 2023

It was a bloody reminder that the dark days of extremist violence appeared to have returned to Pakistan: a suicide attack on a religious festival in the country’s southwest this past week that left around 60 people dead.

For nearly a decade, Pakistan had seemingly broken the cycle of such deadly attacks. In 2014, the country’s security forces carried out a large-scale military operation in the tribal areas near Afghanistan, forcing militants across the border and returning a relative peace to the restive frontier region.

But since the Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021, offering some groups safe haven on Afghan soil and starting a crackdown on others that pushed their fighters into neighboring Pakistan, the violence has roared back. The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

This year, the pace of attacks have continued to rise.

Read it all.

“The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad” https://t.co/rFjtOa7ShS

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 3, 2023

Adama Zourkaleini Maiga is soft-spoken, but her eyes suggest steely determination.

The single mother-of-two lives in a quiet, middle-class part of Niger’s capital Niamey, but is originally from Tillabéry, one of the regions worst-hit by violence.

“My mother’s cousin was chief of a village called Téra,” she tells me over lunch. “He was assassinated just seven months ago.

“The terrorists were looking for him and when they found out he’d rented a car to flee, they caught up with him and killed him. They slit his throat. It was a real shock for our whole family.”

Read it all.

"Why is Macron saying he doesn't recognise our authorities, when he's accepted coups in other countries like in Gabon and Chad?" The doubt raised by an Iman in Niger echoes the ill feeling of many there towards France, tells the BBC's @MayeniJones. https://t.co/N2e9oWkth4

— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) September 26, 2023

A San Francisco husband slept through his wife’s call from the World Trade Center. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her. The building was on fire and there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.

Read it all.

We will #NeverForget911. pic.twitter.com/lkbNvyiEdl

— 9/11 Memorial & Museum (@Sept11Memorial) September 11, 2023

From here:

Flight 175 passenger Brian David Sweeney leaves a voice-mail message for his wife, Julie, after his plane is hijacked.

Answering machine: “Message one.”

Brian Sweeney: “Jules, this is Brian—listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you, I want you to do good, go have good times, same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I’ll see you when you get there. Bye, babe. I hope I call you.”

Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Gift of Julie Sweeney Roth

Today, we pay solemn tribute to the lives lost on 9/11, a day that forever changed our world. Through the darkest of times, we found strength, resilience, and unity. Let this beacon of hope stand as a symbol of our unwavering resolve to never forget #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/FC8X6m76qK

— One World Observatory (@OneWorldNYC) September 11, 2023

From there:

I got up and turned on the TV, and there was just this big black hole in the World Trade Center. And there was just smoke billowing out of it. I called my sister Cathy I said, “You might wanna wake up, turn in your TV and take a look at what they’re showing.” The commentator’s saying that it’s an American Airlines plane. And I casually asked Cathy, I said, “Do you know where Betty is?” And she says, “Betty’s supposed to be flying out of Boston.” And I said, “Do you think Betty is on that plane?” We just didn’t know. So I left a phone call on her cellphone, just asking her when she’s landed or anywhere you’re on the ground, to just give us a call and tell us you’re okay. And there was no call from Betty. I called American Airlines, and it was only then that it was confirmed that Betty was on the flight.

I just want to add, through your passing, Betty, our family’s gotten very very close. Dad, who’s quite stoic, doesn’t really say a whole lot, man of the family, one day told us that he cries himself to sleep. Even to this day, he just keeps staying up watching TV, hoping somehow that you’ll reappear. And we’re all still waiting for that phone call from you to tell us that you’re okay. We just miss you a whole lot.

You may find the transcript of Betty Ong’s conversation reporting the hijacking from the American airlines plane here.

One World Trade Center rises through fog as the sunrises on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, Monday morning #newyork #newyorkcity #NYC #sunrise #neverforget @agreatbigcity pic.twitter.com/rliOYFgq4D

— Gary Hershorn (@GaryHershorn) September 11, 2023

The Man Behind the Red Bandana from Drew Gallagher on Vimeo.

On [a] Monday [in September 2003], the last of the 343 firefighters who died on September 11th was buried. Because no remains of Michael Ragusa, age 29, of Engine Company 279, were found and identified, his family placed in his coffin a very small vial of his blood, donated years ago to a bone-marrow clinic. At the funeral service Michael’s mother Dee read an excerpt from her son’s diary on the occasion of the death of a colleague. “It is always sad and tragic when a fellow firefighter dies,” Michael Ragusa wrote, “especially when he is young and had everything to live for.” Indeed. And what a sobering reminder of how many died and the awful circumstances in which they perished that it took until this week to bury the last one.

So here is to the clergy, the ministers, rabbis, imams and others, who have done all these burials and sought to help all these grieving families. And here is to the families who lost loved ones and had to cope with burials in which sometimes they didn’t even have remains of the one who died. And here, too, is to the remarkable ministry of the Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, who played every single service for all 343 firefighters who lost their lives. The Society chose not to end any service at which they played with an up-tempo march until the last firefighter was buried.

On Monday, in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, the Society therefore played “Garry Owen” and “Atholl Highlander,” for the first time since 9/11 as the last firefighter killed on that day was laid in the earth. On the two year anniversary here is to New York, wounded and more sober, but ever hopeful and still marching.

–First published on this blog September 11, 2003

A total of 343 New York fire service personnel died trying to save lives on 9/11. pic.twitter.com/7ziMiFBLnq

— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) September 11, 2023

President and Mrs. Bush, I want to say a personal word on behalf of many people. Thank you, Mr. President, for calling this day of prayer and remembrance. We needed it at this time.

We come together today to affirm our conviction that God cares for us, whatever our ethnic, religious, or political background may be. The Bible says that He’s the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles. No matter how hard we try, words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on Tuesday morning. September eleven will go down in our history as a day to remember.

Today we say to those who masterminded this cruel plot, and to those who carried it out, that the spirit of this nation will not be defeated by their twisted and diabolical schemes. Someday, those responsible will be brought to justice, as President Bush and our Congress have so forcefully stated. But today we especially come together in this service to confess our need of God. Today we say to those who masterminded this cruel plot, and to those who carried it out, that the spirit of this nation will not be defeated by their twisted and diabolical schemes. Someday, those responsible will be brought to justice, as President Bush and our Congress have so forcefully stated. But today we especially come together in this service to confess our need of God.

We’ve always needed God from the very beginning of this nation, but today we need Him especially. We’re facing a new kind of enemy. We’re involved in a new kind of warfare. And we need the help of the Spirit of God. The Bible words are our hope: God is our refuge and strength; an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.

But how do we understand something like this? Why does God allow evil like this to take place? Perhaps that is what you are asking now. You may even be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands these feelings that you may have. We’ve seen so much on our television, on our ”” heard on our radio, stories that bring tears to our eyes and make us all feel a sense of anger. But God can be trusted, even when life seems at its darkest.

But what are some of the lessons we can learn? First, we are reminded of the mystery and reality of evil. I’ve been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept by faith that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says that God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a mystery. In 1st Thessalonians 2:7 it talks about the mystery of iniquity. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah said “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” Who can understand it?” He asked that question, ‘Who can understand it?’ And that’s one reason we each need God in our lives.

The lesson of this event is not only about the mystery of iniquity and evil, but secondly it’s a lesson about our need for each other. What an example New York and Washington have been to the world these past few days. None of us will ever forget the pictures of our courageous firefighters and police, many of whom have lost friends and colleagues; or the hundreds of people attending or standing patiently in line to donate blood. A tragedy like this could have torn our country apart. But instead it has united us, and we’ve become a family. So those perpetrators who took this on to tear us apart, it has worked the other way; it’s back lashed. It’s backfired. We are more united than ever before. I think this was exemplified in a very moving way when the members of our Congress stood shoulder to shoulder the other day and sang “God Bless America.”

Finally, difficult as it may be for us to see right now, this event can give a message of hope–hope for the present, and hope for the future. Yes, there is hope. There’s hope for the present, because I believe the stage has already been set for a new spirit in our nation. One of the things we desperately need is a spiritual renewal in this country. We need a spiritual revival in America. And God has told us in His word, time after time, that we are to repent of our sins and return to Him, and He will bless us in a new way. But there’s also hope for the future because of God’s promises. As a Christian, I hope not for just this life, but for heaven and the life to come. And many of those people who died this past week are in heaven right now. And they wouldn’t want to come back. It’s so glorious and so wonderful. And that’s the hope for all of us who put our faith in God. I pray that you will have this hope in your heart.

This event reminds us of the brevity and the uncertainty of life. We never know when we too will be called into eternity. I doubt if even one those people who got on those planes, or walked into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon last Tuesday morning thought it would be the last day of their lives. It didn’t occur to them. And that’s why each of us needs to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God and His will now.

Here in this majestic National Cathedral we see all around us symbols of the cross. For the Christian–I’m speaking for the Christian now–the cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering. For He took upon himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, our sins and our suffering. And from the cross, God declares “I love you. I know the heart aches, and the sorrows, and the pains that you feel, but I love you.” The story does not end with the cross, for Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the cross to the empty tomb. It tells us that there is hope for eternal life, for Christ has conquered evil, and death, and hell. Yes, there’s hope.

I’ve become an old man now. And I’ve preached all over the world. And the older I get, the more I cling to that hope that I started with many years ago, and proclaimed it in many languages to many parts of the world. Several years ago at the National Prayer Breakfast here in Washington, Ambassador Andrew Young, who had just gone through the tragic death of his wife, closed his talk with a quote from the old hymn, “How Firm A Foundation.” We all watched in horror as planes crashed into the steel and glass of the World Trade Center. Those majestic towers, built on solid foundations, were examples of the prosperity and creativity of America. When damaged, those buildings eventually plummeted to the ground, imploding in upon themselves. Yet underneath the debris is a foundation that was not destroyed. Therein lies the truth of that old hymn that Andrew Young quoted: “How firm a foundation.”

Yes, our nation has been attacked. Buildings destroyed. Lives lost. But now we have a choice: Whether to implode and disintegrate emotionally and spiritually as a people, and a nation, or, whether we choose to become stronger through all of the struggle to rebuild on a solid foundation. And I believe that we’re in the process of starting to rebuild on that foundation. That foundation is our trust in God. That’s what this service is all about. And in that faith we have the strength to endure something as difficult and horrendous as what we’ve experienced this week.

This has been a terrible week with many tears. But also it’s been a week of great faith. Churches all across the country have called prayer meetings. And today is a day that they’re celebrating not only in this country, but in many parts of the world. And the words of that familiar hymn that Andrew Young quoted, it says, “Fear not, I am with thee. Oh be not dismayed for I am thy God and will give thee aid. I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand upon “thy righteous, omnipotent hand.”

My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him. We also know that God is going to give wisdom, and courage, and strength to the President, and those around him. And this is going to be a day that we will remember as a day of victory. May God bless you all.

🇺🇸 In Memoriam #September11 pic.twitter.com/0tnKjDTywR

— William Reymond (@WilliamReymond) September 11, 2023

Almighty God and Father who wills that people may flourish and have abundance of life, be with us especially on this day when we remember such destruction, darkness, devastation, death and terror; help us to honor the memory of those whose lives were utterly cut short, and to believe that you can make all things new, even the most horrible things. Redeem and heal, O Holy Spirit, grant us perspective, humility, light, trust and grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sunrise envelops the Statue Of Liberty and in the distance the Twin Towers – 1978.#September11 #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/BOY1kBhenH

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) September 11, 2023

“The cloudless sky filled with coiling black smoke and a blizzard of paper—memos, photographs, stock transactions, insurance policies—which fluttered for miles on a gentle southeasterly breeze, across the East River into Brooklyn. Debris spewed onto the streets of lower Manhattan, which were already covered with bodies. Some of them had been exploded out of the building when the planes hit. A man walked out of the towers carrying someone else’s leg. Jumpers landed on several firemen, killing them instantly.

“The air pulsed with sirens as firehouses and police stations all over the city emptied, sending the rescuers, many of them to their deaths. [FBI agent] Steve Bongardt was running toward the towers, against a stream of people racing in the opposite direction. He heard the boom of the second collision. “There’s a second plane,” someone cried.”

–Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Random House [Vintage Books], 2006), pp.404-405

11 Sept 2001: al-Qaeda conducts #terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers in NYC & the #Pentagon in Arlington, VA by flying planes into the buildings. A 4th plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The White House or #Capitol was the likely target. #ad https://t.co/XGZkU8NhZE pic.twitter.com/6gl3uaavJW

— Today In History (@URDailyHistory) September 11, 2023

Attacks on Christian communities in parts of Nigeria are now relentless, as men, women, and children are killed and churches are burned, the Director of Mission Operations in the Anglican diocese of Jos, the Ven. Mark Mukan, has reported.

He spoke at Holy Trinity, Eastbourne, on a “Day of the Christian Martyr” event last month. It was part of “Out of the Ashes”: a three-month campaign of events in the UK organised by the charity Release International to highlight the suffering of Christians in Nigeria (News, 9 June).

Archdeacon Mukan described a campaign of murder and arson, with houses, churches, hospitals, and farmland “burned to ashes”, in the north-east of Nigeria.

Many of the Christians in the north — most of whom belong to the Church of the Brethren — had been killed or displaced, including at least eight of their pastors, he said, and the denomination had been almost wiped out.

Read it all.

Nigerian Christians ‘under relentless attack’ https://t.co/b6cYDUrOmd

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 14, 2023

The promise and perils of America’s counterterrorism campaign were on full display at a remote training base in central Somalia.

It was graduation day for 346 recruits who would join an elite Somali commando unit trained by the State Department, advised by U.S. Special Operations forces, and backed by American air power.

Since last August, the unit, called Danab, has spearheaded a string of Somali army victories against Al Shabab, an Islamist terrorist group that is considered the deadliest of Al Qaeda’s global branches.

“We’re more dedicated than ever,” said Second Lt. Shukri Yusuf Ali, 24, who joined the unit two years ago as one of its few female members and was recently selected to attend the U.S. Army infantry training course at Fort Benning, Ga.

Read it all.

Nearly two decades after the rise of Al Shabab, Somalia is the most active front in the “forever wars” that the United States has been waging against Islamist extremists since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks https://t.co/MImvQabjRM

— Eric Schmitt (@EricSchmittNYT) February 27, 2023

Thirty years ago today, terrorists left a bomb weighing more than a half-ton in a rented van parked beneath the World Trade Center, a workplace for tens of thousands. Its smoldering fuse took about 12 minutes to close the gap between the everyday and the horrific.

The lunchtime blast left a crater several stories deep, sent acrid smoke up the center’s north tower and killed six people. More than 1,000 others were injured that day, including a dark-haired trader just yards from the underground detonation.

Eight years later, that same man, Tim Lang, fled Lower Manhattan as terrorists struck the World Trade Center again, this time with jetliners. He saw the first of its two towers buckle and fall in an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people, including those dear to him.

Mr. Lang is 69 now, with shock-white hair and photos of grandchildren stored in his smartphone. He describes himself as an unremarkable man. Yet he is also an everyman through-line between two remarkable events: the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which upended world politics, and the bombing of Feb. 26, 1993, which is less indelibly burned into collective memory but stands as ominous prelude.

Read it all.

Thirty years ago on Sunday, Tim Lang was injured in the first attack on the World Trade Center — an ominous but often overlooked prelude to 9/11.

"Just about everybody forgets about it," he said. But he does not. https://t.co/dGR8lVXEyr

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 26, 2023

Once again, we see a phenomenon that I have written about many times here at GetReligion.

This kind of international story, in the context of America’s niche-media realities, is now seen as a merely religious, Catholic or even “conservative” story. Click here to see a Google News file illustrating this, in the case of the murder of this particular priest. There are the major, trend-defining newsrooms in this picture? That is, of course, the question.

But you can find more details (#DUH) in Catholic media. What you will read at The Pillar — “Nigerian priest killed in Sunday attack; another in critical condition” — shows that this bloody, fiery dark-of-night attack isn’t all that unusual.

The second priest, Fr. Collins Omeh, is the parish’s parochial vicar. He was shot several times as he tried to escape the scene, and is now hospitalized. From the hospital, Omeh has described the violence to priests in the Diocese of Minna, in messages shared with The Pillar.

According to Omeh: “The bandits, who were about 15 in number, came fully armed and shooting sporadically in the air shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is great].”

Read it all.

Why Is the Biden Administration Ignoring Religious Persecution in Nigeria? https://t.co/uPasIiQXSo

— Newsweek Opinion (@NewsweekOpinion) January 23, 2023

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has outlawed a leading Muslim group and its affiliates for five years, accusing it of links to terrorist organisations, in a move that is likely to foment the country’s deepening communal tensions.

The banning of the Popular Front of India on Wednesday followed the arrests in recent days of more than 200 of its members and searches of top leaders’ houses and offices.

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said the PFI was involved in “serious offences, including terrorism and its financing, targeted gruesome killings, disregarding the constitutional set up of the country [and] disturbing public order”. 

The ban extended to eight other groups that work on behalf of the Muslim minority population, which makes up about 200mn of India’s almost 1.4bn people. Those organisations included the Rehab India Foundation, the Campus Front of India, the All India Imams Council, the National Confederation of Human Rights Organisation, and the National Women’s Front.

Read it all.

India bans leading Muslim group over terrorism accusations@JohnReedwrites @jyots43 https://t.co/MHuJoWSf4N

— Benjamin Parkin (@b_parkyn) September 28, 2022

“The cloudless sky filled with coiling black smoke and a blizzard of paper—memos, photographs, stock transactions, insurance policies—which fluttered for miles on a gentle southeasterly breeze, across the East River into Brooklyn. Debris spewed onto the streets of lower Manhattan, which were already covered with bodies. Some of them had been exploded out of the building when the planes hit. A man walked out of the towers carrying someone else’s leg. Jumpers landed on several firemen, killing them instantly.

“The air pulsed with sirens as firehouses and police stations all over the city emptied, sending the rescuers, many of them to their deaths. [FBI agent] Steve Bongardt was running toward the towers, against a stream of people racing in the opposite direction. He heard the boom of the second collision. “There’s a second plane,” someone cried.”

–Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Random House [Vintage Books], 2006), pp.404-405

We will #NeverForget. pic.twitter.com/9B8wBsNJ1V

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) September 11, 2022

This site is intended as a place to remember and celebrate the lives of those lost on September 11, 2001. It includes Guest Books and profiles for each of those lost.

It is well worth your time to explore it thoroughly today.

21 years later…
We’ll never forget. #Remember911 pic.twitter.com/tx9S50MghQ

— Emily Waldon (@EmilyCWaldon) September 11, 2022

The Man Behind the Red Bandana from Drew Gallagher on Vimeo.

“The al-Qaeda terrorist infrastructure we faced in 2001 is long since gone,” said Ken McCallum, head of mi5, Britain’s security service, last year, shortly before Kabul fell. But that infrastructure shows signs of revival, according to a un monitoring team. Al-Qaeda has an “advisory” role with the Taliban, it notes. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (aqis) has 180-400 members, many of whom recently fought alongside the Taliban.

“We don’t have evidence that there is any nascent international attack capability that is starting to blossom in Afghanistan,” says Edmund Fitton-Brown, the un team’s co-ordinator. But he notes that Mr Haqqani, as interior minister, oversees citizenship, passports and travel. “This could be a longer game plan” that could lead to fresh acts of terrorism by the likes of al-Qaeda anywhere, planned in Afghanistan.

That will depend on whether the Taliban rein it in, fearful of the consequences of another attack mounted from Afghan soil. But what already distinguishes al-Qaeda’s position today, compared with 2001, is the breadth of its activity. In recent years the movement has become remarkably decentralised….

Read it all.

America has now killed both of al-Qaeda’s leaders, the first five heads of IS in Afghanistan, and successive IS leaders in Syria. Yet this relentless decapitation seems to have made little difference https://t.co/0CF0Rs3X0g

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 13, 2022

I feel i am uniquely qualified to speak on international terrorism because I have survived at least three attempts to assassinate me. They came during my first term as Somalia’s president from September 2012 to February 2017. The first attempt was on my very first day in office; the second while I was walking to pray at the mosque in the presidential compound; and the third while I was on my way to visit Marka, a town we had liberated from Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate and jihadist group which operates in Somalia.

Terrorism still wreaks havoc across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and East Asia, and most of the world, including Europe and America, are on high alert, according to the 2022 Global Terrorism Index (gti) compiled by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace. Although the report states that deaths from global terrorism are in decline, it does highlight that Africa accounted for a staggering 48% of them in 2021. Somalia alone accounted for 8% of all deaths, on par with Mali and Niger and surpassed only by Afghanistan (where 20% of deaths occurred) and Burkina Faso (10%).

Given that most prominent terrorist groups have expansive international objectives and networks, and are aided by sophisticated technology, nobody should take comfort from a relatively low score in the gti. It is arguable that terrorism is not on the wane, but that terrorists are reinventing themselves and adapting. We must do the same.

Read it all.

Nigerian security officials suspect extremists from Islamic State’s affiliate in west Africa were behind an attack on a Catholic church last weekend that killed dozens.

Forty people are now thought to have died after gunmen stormed St Francis Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State, on Sunday, and 61 survivors are still being treated in hospital, according to local authorities. The total is double an earlier estimate.

Nigeria’s National Security Council said on Thursday that the attack was the work of the Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) group, apparently reinforcing fears that the militants, who have been restricted to the north-east for many years, are looking to expand their influence and reach to other parts of the country. Ondo, in the south-west, has long been considered one of the safer parts of the country.

Read it all.

Islamic State affiliate suspected of Catholic church massacre, Nigeria says https://t.co/kEsLBzwmLv

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 9, 2022

Al-Qaida has a haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban and “increased freedom of action” with the potential of launching new long-distance attacks in coming years, a UN report based on intelligence supplied by member states says.

The assessment, by the UN committee charged with enforcing sanctions on the Taliban and others that may threaten the security of Afghanistan, will raise concerns that the country could once again become a base for international terrorist attacks after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops last year.

Critics of the US president, Joe Biden, will point to the report’s description of a “close relationship” between al-Qaida and the Taliban as evidence that his decision to pull out all US forces was an error.

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Al-Qaida has a haven in #Afghanistan under the Taliban and “increased freedom of action” with the potential of launching new long-distance attacks in coming years, a #UN report based on intelligence supplied by member states says. https://t.co/vdIjB2PiJv

— Syed Zabiullah Langari (@syed2000) June 3, 2022

In the past seven years tens of thousands of Yazidis kept as sex slaves by Isis fighters, girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Rohingya women dragged from their huts and gang-raped by Burmese soldiers, have courageously come forward and told their stories, yet there has only been a single prosecution.

No one is better qualified to write about the situation than this astonishingly brave Congolese gynaecological surgeon. His Panzi hospital in eastern Congo has treated more than 60,000 raped women and girls over the past 20 years. Some arrive so damaged that he has carried out multiple operations to try to reconstruct them.

One of the most heroic men I have ever met, Mukwege literally risks his life to save women. After a series of threats and assassination attempts, he lives almost as a prisoner on the hospital site, guarded by UN peacekeepers.

Far from being supported by the Congolese state, he does all of this in the face of a government so craven it tried to fine him $20,000 for collecting rainwater on the hospital roof, insisting that rain belongs to the state.

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@DenisMukwege: From the detention centres in Belarus to the Uighur internment camps in China to the Tigray women in Ethiopia, there is an epidemic of sexual violence in conflict.https://t.co/hsO71QBJat

— Civil Courage Prize (@TrainFoundation) December 13, 2021

In many western countries, politicians, soldiers and veterans gather every November to pay tribute to comrades killed fighting for their country. Among those commemorated this year were more than 3,500 troops from America and its allies who died in Afghanistan before the West’s humiliating retreat this summer. And among those paying tribute, far from the Cenotaph in London or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, were dusty Western soldiers in small garrisons across a swathe of Africa. With the formalities over, they resumed their posts among almost 9,000 European and American troops on the front line of what is now the West’s biggest offensive against jihadists, in the Sahel. It is not going well. How it will end depends in no small part on whether the West learns the right lessons from its failures in Afghanistan.

Some may argue that the main lesson is to avoid fighting insurgents in distant lands where no pressing national interests are at stake. But that is not the case in the Sahel, where jihadists aligned to al-Qaeda and Islamic State have taken aim at Western countries, bombing their embassies and kidnapping or killing their citizens. If the jihadists are given havens and time, they will surely launch attacks on European or American soil, too. “That is their goal and their determination and they’ve been open about it,” says a Western general.

Western governments see other interests at stake as well. The most afflicted countries of the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger) are among the poorest, have the world’s fastest-growing populations and are among those where climate change will do the greatest harm.

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The West should offer more than a purely military solution to the jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel and be realistic about what it can achieve. A start would be to respond to local grievances https://t.co/sKK5G1h6ZJ

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 21, 2021

As the Cold War came to an end, political scientists began to debate what the new paradigm in global conflict might look like. Perhaps the most notorious theory was proposed by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations (1996) – “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” – in which he singled out Islam as likely to be particularly problematic; Huntington further expounded this argument in Who Are We? (2004), in which he argued that, in many non-Muslim societies, Muslim minorities are proving to be “indigestible”.

Jytte Klausen’s The Islamic Challenge (2005) was in many ways a direct riposte to Huntington. The book, based on interviews with Muslim parliamentarians, educators, lawyers and businesspeople, pushed back on the notion that there is a uniform “Muslim” approach to integration in the West. Klausen discovered something “shocking”: Muslims are basically like everybody else. They want to educate their children, make a decent living and find ways to live a religious life of their choosing. Critics of her book didn’t see it that way, however, and pointed out that Klausen was ignoring a significant subset of the Muslim population in the West that was committed to terrorist violence.

The quest to answer these critics turned out to be a long one. As she writes in her new book, Western Jihadism: A thirty-year history, it took “fifteen years and the work of eighty students”, each of whom scoured court records, media reports and martyrdom biographies released by terrorist groups themselves, to amass a dataset containing 5,832 men and 561 women who have acted on behalf of al-Qaeda or Islamic State in some manner. The book – which has revelatory individual chapters on the life of Osama bin Laden, the first World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the rise of ISIS – argues that the “Western branch” of the jihadist movement is driven by a coalescence of the “strategic objectives of Osama bin Laden and the global movement he spearheaded” and the desire of some young Muslims to take part in a transnational and revolutionary social movement, to be part of a historical moment, and to have their lives imbued with purpose.

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My short review of Jytte Klausen's new book "Western Jihadism: A Thirty-Year History" for The Times Literary Supplement (@TheTLS). https://t.co/q694xoTJ3b

— Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) November 17, 2021