WORLD ROUNDUPThe Terrorist Threat the West Still Ignores | Iran’s Nuclear Crisis Has No Military Solution | An ISIS Terror Group Draws Half Its Recruits from Tiny Tajikistan, and more
· The Terrorist Threat the West Still Ignores
Domestic far-right terrorism has been increasingly internationalized—and requires a coordinated response
· Is the EU’s Image Failing in Southeast Asia?
A new survey shows the EU is losing face with business and government “elites” of Southeast Asia. Respondents showed less confidence in Brussels on issues like upholding free trade and global order
· China is Battening down for the Gathering Storm Over Taiwan
There is no apparent countdown to D-day for initiating a blockade or invasion, but major strategic indicators clearly show that General Secretary Xi Jinping is still preparing his country for a showdown
· Iran’s Nuclear Crisis Has No Military Solution
Whether Tehran weaponizes its program remains tied to threat perceptions by political leadership
· An ISIS Terror Group Draws Half Its Recruits from Tiny Tajikistan
Young migrants from the former Soviet republic were accused of an attack on a concert hall in Moscow that killed 145 people
The Terrorist Threat the West Still Ignores (Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, Foreign Policy)
The Islamic State’s recent return to prominence with its bloody attack on a Moscow concert venue overshadowed a solemn and tragic anniversary of a different kind of terrorism. Five years ago in March, a white supremacist named Brenton Tarrant carried out twin shooting attacks against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty-one people were killed, all of whom were Muslim.
Until then the conventional wisdom was that Islamist terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS posed the only serious terrorist threat to Western countries, with Christian white supremacists rarely mentioned. This assumption was shattered with the Christchurch attack, which would become the defining exemplar of modern far-right terrorism—and a precursor of more tragedies to come. At a moment when attention is again focused on the threat from the Islamic State, it is important to remember that other terrorist threats exist and can have equally lethal consequences. The violent, almost viral momentum of such attacks inspire copycats and require an holistic appraisal to effectively and sufficiently counter them.
It took only weeks for other violent far-right extremists to emulate Tarrant’s target and tactics. On March 24, an arson attack on an Escondido, California mosque was perpetrated by a white supremacist who spraypainted “For Brenton Tarrant -t. /pol/” on the pavement, an obscure reference to the 8chan imageboard that both terrorists frequented. A month later, that same person, John Earnest, walked into a Jewish synagogue in nearby Poway and opened fire, murdering one person. “Tarrant was a catalyst for me personally,” he wrote in his manifesto, which itself copied another of Tarrant’s tactics.
10,000 miles away and five months later, Philip Manshaus, a 21-year-old Norwegian neo-Nazi, was clearly and directly inspired by Tarrant in his targeting choice, communications efforts, and sanctification of his terrorist predecessors when he murdered his Asian-origin stepsister as she slept, before proceeding to the Al-Noor Islamic Centre in Bærum, a posh suburb of Oslo with a GoPro attached to his helmet. (Manshaus was quickly subdued by elderly worshippers.) (Cont.)
