Charlie Hebdo attack:Taking the heat out of the conflict with Assad may help to turn the jihadi tide

[Jefferson23]

It was naïve to imagine that sparks from the war would not spread violence to Western Europe

Patrick Cockburn

Wednesday 07 January 2015



There is a feeling of inevitability about the attack in Paris.

The likelihood must be that the killers were Islamic fanatics, the murder of the journalists and police underlining the degree to which the ferocious religious war being waged in Iraq and Syria now affects all of the world. Regardless of whether or not those who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office have any direct connection with this conflict, it has provided an ideal seedbed for Islamic extremism.

It was culpably naïve to imagine that sparks from the Iraq-Syrian civil war, now in its fourth year, would not spread explosive violence to Western Europe. With thousands of young Sunni Muslims making the difficult journey to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis, it has always been probable that some of them would choose to give a demonstration of their religious faith by attacking targets they deem anti-Islamic closer to home.

One way of measuring the spread of al-Qaeda-type groups is to look at suicide bombings over the last week. Several of them have inflicted heavier casualties than at Charlie Hebdo. For instance, in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, today, a suicide bomber driving a minibus packed with explosives killed 33 police cadets. On Tuesday, another suicide bomber killed 23 Iraqi soldiers and pro-government Sunni tribesmen in a town in Anbar province north-west of Baghdad.

The day before, gunfire and a suicide bombing killed the general heading the Saudi border control force and two others on the Saudi-Iraq frontier. A week earlier, on 30 December, a suicide bomb blew up outside the internationally recognised anti-jihadi Libyan government building in Tobruk.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/charlie-hebdo-attack-a-ceasefire-with-syrias-president-assad-may-help-to-turn-the-jihadi-tide-9963863.html

[Fred Sanders]

1. Yes, but it is only news in these parts when Christians are the targets of murderous madmen.

[Jefferson23]

2. We need a smarter approach as we're still living the consequences of the GWBush regime and

all the violence and unrest he, Blair and others have perpetuated in the ME.