TerrorismAll terror attacks are not connected – but terrorists want us to think they are
In just one weekend in December, a series of terrorist attacks killed nearly 200 people in five different countries – Germany, Turkey, Nigeria, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Somalia. This is a horrific spate of attacks, but while the resultant headlines are certainly alarming, all the attacks occurred in countries facing very specific challenges. Rolling them all together into one “wave” of violence is misguided, and misunderstands the real nature of global terrorist threats. Terrorism’s preeminent effects are psychological rather than a physical; it has a way of skewing our perceptions, meaning we perceive a bigger menace than actually exists. To fight it, we need to fight back against these psychological tricks. So long as we go on assuming that terrorist attacks are connected and trying to link them to a global extremist threat looming on our doorstep, we misunderstand the unique problems facing each country – and what’s needed to defang them.
Aftermath of December attack in Istabul // Source: theconversation.com
In just one weekend in December, a series of terrorist attacks killed nearly 200 people in five different countries. All of them claimed the lives of civilians, and all were claimed by different terrorist groups.
In Yemen, a suicide bomber killed 48 government troops at a military base in the port city of Aden, injuring 36 people besides; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the so-called Islamic State (IS) were variously cited as the likely culprits. In Turkey, two bombs killed at least 38 people and wounded well over a hundred outside a football stadium in Istanbul; the TAK, a Kurdish militant group, claimed responsibility.
In Nigeria, two girl suicide bombers died after detonating a bomb near a market in Maiduguri, a city in the north-east of the country; an additional 17 people were injured and officials blamed the Islamist group Boko Haram. In Egypt, a bomb exploded inside a Coptic Christian cathedral complex in Cairo killing at least 25 and injuring dozens more, with the perpetrator supposedly IS. Just one day earlier, six policemen were killed in a separate bombing attack on the road leading to Giza, allegedly by a newly formed militant group called Hasm. And in Somalia, 29 people and another 48 were wounded in a suicide car bombing at the entrance of Mogadishu’s largest port near a police complex. The violent Islamist group al-Shabaab was reportedly responsible.
This is a horrific spate of attacks, and it should disturb us all. As the scale of what had happened became clear, there was naturally some speculation that the attacks were somehow connected or coordinated. But while the resultant headlines are certainly alarming, all the attacks occurred in countries facing very specific challenges. Rolling them all together into one “wave” of violence is misguided, and misunderstands the real nature of global terrorist threats.
A way to make headlines
Nigeria’s seven-year Boko Haram insurgency has claimed more than 20,000 lives and forced 2.6m people from their homes. Somalia, a country whose collapsed government propped up by the United Nations, has been fighting an insurgency against al-Shabaab for over a decade.
