Search: “Africa”

On this day in 1910, a time bomb built of 16 sticks of connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times.

Terrorism is not always as ‘in your face’ as we sometimes think. Campaigns of violence, often mislabeled as the work of ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’ can go on for years and even decades with little reverberation in the news, especially if the killing occurs in a faraway land or part of a country well off the […]

In all the debates about what is more important today from a terrorism angle, i.e. where we should put the greatest concentration of resources to counter it, I find there is one glaring omission. As we go back and forth on whether to put all our eggs in the jihadi basket or the far right […]

One thing we know about terrorism is that it has no boundaries. No single language, ethnicity, religion, ideology or national entity – except maybe Antarctica: I cannot find any terrorist acts there – has an inherent wall around it to prevent terrorism from unfurling its violence on innocent people. Yes, some places suffer disproportionately from […]

Ya gotta feel for Nigeria. This West African country is, and has been for some time, beset with all forms of violence, from organised crime to ethnic clashes to jihadi terrorism. In the latter category we have Boko Haram (BH), an Al Qaeda affiliate wannabe that has been very active since the late 2000s largely […]

When you have been at war with something for almost two decades it is important to declare ‘victory’ at some point. Those whose support you – i.e. the public/taxpayer – need and want to see some results for the actions they are backstopping. Fighting for years with no sense that you are winning is a […]

We seem to collectively have short memories. When something bad happens, or better yet several bad somethings occur over a short time span, we immediately declare this to be a new trend, as if these incidents have never been seen before. This, of course, is not usually correct. As the Old Testament’s Book of Ecclesiastes […]

They often say that truth is the first casualty of war. States and militaries have all kinds of reasons to hide facts if for no other one than to cover up their ‘mistakes’ (except that military ‘mistakes’ usually imply lots of meaningless deaths). A good example is the US insistence that few if any civilians […]

If you are really seized with an issue – and I mean really, really burning with zeal and a desire to right a perceived wrong – would you not want to put your commitment to the test as soon as you could? Would you not want to show the world that what you fervently believe […]