Sol Sanders Archive

But elsewhere there were abundant signs of the extent to which this is a global conflict, at whatever intensity, how long and hard it would have to be fought to return any measure of stability and counter the possibility of new attacks on the U.S. itself.

An examination of a scattering of recent incidents not only reveals that the fanaticism is alive and well but that it probably has intensified its international connections of inspiration and support.

In Algeria, a country with a bitter history of colonial warfare and communal violence, local jihadists whose ferocity has known no bounds, two suicide bombers Dec.11 struck a students’ bus and a UN installation in the capital of Algiers. Tens of thousands have been killed since 1992 when the military cancelled a general election in which the Islamicists had taken a commanding lead. In November al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for attacks to be carried out across North Africa and observers feared the forthcoming Muslim fasting month of Ramadan will be particularly bloody.

In Pakistan, where a government allied with the U.S. is under attack from both the jihdists and civilian opponents, a completely veiled woman suicide bomber Dec. 4 blew herself up near an army checkpoint in Peshawar, continuing a wave of such recent attacks. At least five people were killed in the blast in the offices of The Nation newspaper in the frontier city in north-west Pakistan adjoining the lawless tribal areas that run along the border with Afghanistan. More than 16 persons including at least 11 security personnel were killed Dec. 13 in two suicide bombings in the cantonment area of Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, also near the Afghan border.

In India, a series of near-simultaneous explosions ripped through courthouse complexes Nov. 25 in three north Indian cities, killing at least 16 lawyers and injuring dozens of others. Written threats have been made to repeat the horrors of October 2005 when a series of bomb blasts rocked the national capital, claiming 59 lives on the eve of the Hindu festival of Diwali. Nevertheless, Indian Vice President Shri M. Hamid Ansari in a speech said the foreign policy adopted by the US “is fueling the flames of terrorism in the world”.

In the U.K., authorities revealed in early December that the failed terrorist attacks in London and Scotland six months ago have been linked to al-Qaida in Mesopotamia – their first known attempts at terrorism outside the Middle East. Bilal Abdulla, a British doctor of Iraqi descent, and Kafeel Ahmed, an aeronautical engineer from India, failed to detonate two cars near a popular London nightclub but then drove a Jeep Cherokee filled with gas canisters into the Glasgow, Scotland, airport the following day.

In Israel, Dec. 13 a 40-year-old woman was seriously injured when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip slammed into a house in southern Israel, the incident threatening to escalate violence along the already volatile border. Gaza is ruled by Hamas which permits rocket and mortar squads to fire crude rockets almost daily at southern Israeli border communities but the inaccurate projectiles rarely cause casualties or damage. The U.S. Congressional Research service has recently concluded that North Korea gave munitions and training to the Hezbollah who last year ignited the latest in the wars between the Israelis and the Arabs.

In Maldive Islands, a court Dec. 14 sentenced three locals to 15 years in jail for a bombing that had wounded 12 tourists. The Hindu newspaper reported there were links between the bombers and an Indian-Pakistani Kashmiri jihadist group while a propaganda video shot inside a radical Maldives mosque was posted on an Internet forum associated with al Qaeda in November. Thirteen other men have been charged in the Sept. 29 blast which the defendants said was planned as a deliberate attack on the tourism industry on which the islands are totally dependent.

In Lebanon, army investigators are looking for possible involvement of al-Qaida-inspired extremists in the Dec. 12 bombing that killed a Lebanese general who had led a major offensive against Islamic militants. Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj and his driver were assassinated when a parked car bomb exploded in Baabda, a Christian suburb east of Beirut. Four Lebanese in whose names the car was registered were picked up on the edge of the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp where Islamic “militants” have threatened to form "Jihadi groups".

In Afghanistan, a civilian car hit a freshly planted land mine in southern Afghanistan on Dec.13 killing six people and wounding six others, while Taliban terrorists beheaded an old woman and her grandson accused of spying. These killings followed roadside blast on a NATO convoy in eastern Afghanistan a few days earlier that killed two soldiers and wounded three others.

In Bosnia, authorities deported Atau Mimun, an Algerian man suspected of terrorist links after stripping him of the country's citizenship. Mimun was among hundreds of foreigners, including a number of former Muslim fighters in Bosnia's war, who were recently stripped of their citizenship. Mimun was the first of the group to have been deported.

Several things are clear from a look at these and many other similar episodes. The international connections among the jihadists, while not always crucial to their activities and “success”, are growing, and probably will expand the constantly developing “expertise” of the terrorists. Local political concerns require intricate and complex strategies and tactics in attacking each of these networks for while they often depend on international jihdist encouragement and support, they have a character all their own which is essential to countering them.

And that would take more than a show of hands in a misguided travesty of public discussion.