Is Worldwide Islamic Terror on the Ebb?
There’s certainly no dearth of terror events to report from Pakistan, the Mid-east, Afghanistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Iraq, etc. in any given week, however there are now single days without a report of Islamic terror anywhere.
For three years I’ve done an almost daily surf of news from all electronic sources looking for terror events. I have some key words I search, and 2006 through mid-2008 I could find multiple daily reports of actual terror events or terror plots interrupted all around the world. By combining search results from separate key words like “killed,” “bomb,” “Mohammed,” “Muhammed,” “Abdul,” you would get multiple news reports from various papers around the globe, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. I would find multiple reports every day.
Now the reports are not daily, and the fresh attacks come almost entirely from several known terror hotspots: Pakistan leads, followed by Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Thailand and the Philippines. The terror we see in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan is mostly Muslims versus other Muslims.
The recent big exception to this trend is the Mumbai attack in Indian last year, but in general “worldwide” terror has gone down. It now appears concentrated in specific countries.
Looking at the Sunni axis, not the Shia, you see that the strategy has changed. The new doctrine put out last year is in effect, and they are working in Islamic regions to destabilize and create their “wilderness” where Al Qaida’s version of sharia becomes the only answer to law and order through force. Their recent successes in Somalia and the frontiers of Pakistan show that it’s an effective doctrine, and that has me worried.
Are we seeing the calm before the storm as they regroup and recruit in the AQ created wildernesses? In the non terror regions are they shifting to purely political, seeking to take advantage of the down economy, unrest over food security, and other factors? That remains to be seen, but it’s something I’ve been speculating on a while.
