Search: “Al Shabaab”

A pattern is emerging when it comes to the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the West.  People of all faiths and backgrounds denounce the attack, politicians swear that their nations will not be cowed by fear, candles and late-night vigils abound, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris is lit with the colours of the […]

Terrorists are hateful people, of that there is no doubt.  What they hate varies based on the underlying ideology of the group to which they belong or through which they derive their inspiration and yet there are similarities at times.  Most of them hate society or governments or policies or something else and have concluded […]

Terrorism is a charged term and for good reason.  The crime  evokes fear and an inability of states to keep their citizens safe from outside (or inside forces).  And fear of course is the goal of those who are behind this nature of attack.  Even if there is little agreement on how terrorism is defined […]

It is really hard to come up with a definition of terrorism that all agree on.  Every country seems to have its own version and while there are of course similarities there are also differences and some of these may have legal ramifications.  Then there is the non-legal definition: i.e. what the average person thinks […]

We seem to be having a hard time figuring out what to call our struggle with terrorism.   Leaving aside the belief, held by me and others, that framing counter terrorism in terms of war is a bad idea, it is clear that we keep changing our minds about what we are really involved in. […]

Last week news came out that two grassroots organisations in Minneapolis had received between them over $600,000 to do CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) work in the state of Minnesota, as part of a $10 million disbursement by the US Department of Homeland Security in what has been called an ongoing, but controversial, programme.  Minneapolis is […]

Whenever a new year kicks in we always cast a Janus-like glance back to the previous one to get an idea of what we just went through and, hopefully, gain some insight into what we are in for in the coming 12 months.  By all accounts 2016 was not a great year on several fronts, […]

I have just finished watching ‘Eye in the Sky’, a recent film about the use of drones as a counter terrorism tool.  The movie shows an operation where an Al Shabaab cell in Nairobi is located and targeted for killing, before it can carry out suicide attacks, all while shedding some light on the decision-making […]

You have all heard of the butterfly effect, right? The idea that a very small event can have enormous implications well beyond its initial parametres.  The official definition, courtesy of Wikipedia, is “the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large […]

If there is one thing we know about terrorism it is that what we do – or what we don’t do – has a real chance of effecting what terrorist groups do.  For terrorist groups are really good at telling the world why they use violence and usually place the blame for their carnage on […]