Grappling with Daesh-inspired terror attacks
The terror attacks in Kuwait, Tunisia and France last Friday left the world grappling with the aftermath of one of the deadliest days in recent history. M ourning the carnage on the beach in Tunisia, the Observer said in an editorial: “Death came with a smile on his face. The killer, black-shirted, with black hair and beard, strolled up Boujaffar beach just like any other tourist out for a day in the sun… As he fired indiscriminately, survivors said the killer laughed. For all we know, he was still laughing when he, too, was finally gunned down. Such cruelty defies reason.”
Noting that the victims of the shooting came from many countries — Britain, Germany, Tunisia and elsewhere — the newspaper said: “They were European and Arab, Christian and Muslim. Above all, they were civilians. They were not soldiers in a war. Yet, in the killer’s mind, they somehow constituted the enemy. For him, evidently, they deserved to die.”
Examining the context behind the rise of such extreme violence, it said: “The reasons why such warped beliefs have apparently poisoned the hearts and twisted the minds of so many young men and women… are less obscured. Foremost among many causes is the deepening schism which lies at the heart of internal conflicts from Iraq to Yemen to Pakistan.” It also noted among the reasons “the long, sorry history of western intervention in the Middle East, including, most recently, the hapless, disastrous destabilisation of Iraq”.
“Atop this heap of undirected misery, fear, anger and bigotry — a breeding ground for intolerance and inculcation — stand the ghouls and gangsters of [Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)], the extremists’ extremist mafia of choice.”
On Friday, Daesh claimed the responsibility for the carnage in Sousse as well as the suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Kuwait that killed 27 people. Investigators say it also inspired the failed attempt to blow up a US-owned factory in France, in which a man was beheaded.
Whether these attacks were co-ordinated was hardly a matter of concern, said the New York Times in an editorial, noting that with the massacre in Tunisia, “the gunman had struck at Tunisia’s economic lifeblood, the tourism industry; its government; and the international community. The attack lays bare the extent to which extremists who are spreading through the region now threaten Tunisia, the only success story of the Arab Spring.”
The USA Today, meanwhile, turned its focus on the apparent failure of the US-led strategy in fighting Daesh. “[Daesh] troops parade safely through Ramadi, Iraq, in broad daylight, flags waving, with no US aircraft in sight. American intelligence agencies identify their headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, but they remain untouched,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
Explaining further, the paper commented: “These seem like natural targets in the continuing American air campaign against [Daesh]. However, in both cases, they were in built-up, densely populated areas. Even the most precise attacks could not be conducted without the possibility of causing civilian casualties, which runs afoul of restrictive US rules of engagement. The enemy knows this and has turned entire city populations into collective human shields. The Obama administration’s air-only strategy is helpless against this kind of countermeasure.”