Jihad's Moveable Feast
We see them here, we see them there, we see them everywhere! The plural divides the fabled fictional hero of the French Revolution, from the shaheen (martyrs) of the Islamist Revolution. Where the Scarlet Pimpernel travelled from his effete aristocratic digs in London, over to Paris in a revolutionary disguise, Islamists are busy making their way from all points of the Muslim compass to Syria, whose revolution has pitted Shia and Sunni Muslims, just as the revolting revolutionaries of France upended their royal masters.Atrocities abounded in France, with the guillotine working overtime to decapitate anyone with a bit of blue in their blood. Decapitation is also a favourite life-ending device of Islamist terrorists -- who, like the French revolutionaries called the population out to publicly celebrate such events in person -- themselves enjoy making videos of these sabre-neck-slicing ceremonies for wide display over the Internet, amply demonstrating to the horrified international audience their penchant for debased inhumanity.
The revolution took place to unseat a royal succession removed from the suffering of the people. Those who lived in munificent splendour while all around them people lived in poverty and degradation, oppressed and helpless to gain any manner of advance for themselves or to provide the necessities of life for their families. Their grim ardour in murdering those whom they claimed had demeaned their existence to servitude was fairly horrific, and legendary.
The Islamists world-wide, but particularly in North Africa and Central Asia appear exceedingly anxious to prove they are just as capable of bestial atrocities as any 18th Century European revolutionaries. Life for them has no sacred appeal to ensure its respect. Sacred is the will of Allah who commands complete submission, and the message of the Koranic holy scriptures are as relevant today as they were when Bedouin tribal constant warfare against enemies induced them to slaughter one another.
They still slaughter one another, with the occasional diversion when jihad turns its deadly eye on the world of the West. But there is so much to take their attention in North Africa, in Central Asia, in the Middle East, to compete with one another in sectarian violence, that the West gets a break from time to time from its tenterhook apprehension of yet another attack. The attacks, for the time being, are being confined to Syria; which is to say within a divided Syria.
Of course there are those occasional outbreaks of violence through suicide attacks meant to kill and to maim, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Along with plans that are often unsuccessful taking place in Europe or North America to ensure that no one rests easy on the theory that if Islamists are busy slaughtering one another they will forego opportunities to attack elsewhere. Might seem predictable, but it is not, necessarily.
That bloody upheaval in Syria has drawn in surrounding countries and none more than Iran, Lebanon, Iraq. As well as Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, all giving haven to desperate Syrian civilians anxious to escape death at the hands of either the ruling Alawite regime, the Syrian Free Army or the Sunni Islamists that have flocked and continue to stream into the country slowly collapsing under the weight of its raging dysfunction.
On the outskirts of the action there is Russia which has thrown its lot in with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, investing heavily in their success against Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and um, of course, Israel. While France and Britain chew their proverbial fingernails and the United States remains grimly beyond involvement and the United Nations wrings its useless hands in despair.
Foreign fighters representing al-Qaeda militants from Iraq and Hezbollah, where Shia and Sunni meet on the battlefield in a virulent clash of sectarian hatred. Joining them now too is the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamists. Joined by Islamists from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Somalia, and wherever else disgorges its bloody-minded, martyrdom aspirants.
Labels: Conflict, Islamism, Middle East, North Africa, Revolution, Syria, Terrorists
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 16, 2013
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