PANCHAGARH, BANGLADESH – What is it with jihadis and decapitation?
It is usually a good idea to be careful with the words you use in public when you are talking about violence and counter violence. You don’t want to descend to the same vocabulary the bad guys use as that would give them some attention.
Imagine, then, my surprise to read a headline this morning in a US post I follow called The Defense Post: “France Maintains Sahel Force to ‘Decapitate’ Al-Qaeda Groups”. You read that right: ‘decapitate’ AQ.
And it was President Macron who said it! “We are re-engaging our forces in order to decapitate these organizations.” I hope it sounds better in French, though I doubt it. There is also the ‘decapitation theory‘ in counterterrorism which says removing the leader can destroy the group (psst! It rarely works out this way).
I find it ironic, and a little unfortunate, that the French head honcho elected to use the same analogy that terrorist groups, especially jihadist ones, actually put into practice. Ie, they do remove people’s heads from their bodies while the poor victims are still alive.
Like’s today’s featured attack.
On this day in 2016
Two members of Islamic State (ISIS) in Bangladesh were behind the beheading of a senior Hindu priest and wounded two worshippers in the north of the country. The ISIS news agency reported the claim, noting that “caliphate soldiers” had carried out the assaults using “light weapons”.
The priest was preparing for morning prayers when they pounced on him and decapitated him on the veranda of his home inside the temple.
Bangladeshi government administrator
Bangladeshi police added that the assailants were on a motorbike when they attacked the priest in the remote northern district of Panchagarh with a sharp weapon, and injured two devotees who tried to help him.
There is no doubt that this attack was tied, at least in part, to Hindu extremist attacks on Muslims in India. Then again, Islamist extremists see Hindus as polytheistic heathens who deserve to die. Still, no one deserves to be killed in such a cruel fashion. Jihadis are the only ones I know who seem to relish in this form of barbarity.
Which makes me wonder whether President Macron should be lowering himself to that level.
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