The State of Global Jihad

According to its regularly issued annual report on global terrorism, the United States State Department reported an over 40 percent increase in worldwide terrorist attacks between 2012 and 2013. Presumably, anyone reading the newspapers on a regular basis might have reached that conclusion on their own. The report stresses a surge in the number of al-Qaeda affiliate groups in the Middle East and North Africa.

The reason that the U.S. State Department maintains an intelligence watch on these Islamist jihadis and their mind-chilling slaughters is to keep abreast of any potential threats to U.S. interests and those of their allies. Iran has been singled out as a major state sponsor of terrorism, and that's one huge surprise, is it not? This is the country whose determined enterprise in nuclear technology to achieve a breakthrough in atomic weaponry of its own, defies international authority.

The U.S. administration has wagged its metaphorical finger at Iran, imposing sanctions on the country to diminish its economic freedom, but nothing has dissuaded the Islamic Republic from achieving its ultimate goal. Threats of annihilation through technical achievement, aggression and domination equal power, and power and the domination it results in is precisely what the Islamic Republic is planning for its future.

While planning at the same time to extinguish the future for those it perceives as its enemies through the very medium it is busy advancing. And it is this agenda, despite its obvious intent and its potential danger to the international community beyond the Middle East, that the United States, despite its reliable intelligence gathering, has been wheedling and bargaining with Iran over, with the full knowledge that nothing will dissuade it from its purpose.

The State Department's report emphasizes that the much-celebrated losses in al-Qaeda's core leadership had the result of "accelerating" the decentralization of the network in 2013, resulting in greater numbers of violently aggressive affiliates fully autonomous in their actions, most notably in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, northwest Africa, and Somalia. Shia Hezbollah sits in the ruins of Lebanon, and helps the Syrian regime to slaughter its Syrian Sunni population.



Some 9,707 terrorist attacks were verified as taking place around the world in 2013, leading to 17,800 deaths and over 32,600 injuries most of which occurred in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Thailand and Yemen. Those same countries were similarly impacted the year before when 6,771 terrorist attacks resulted in over 11,000 deaths and over 21,600 injuries.

The terror groups have managed to fund themselves through the staging of ransom-abductions and additional crimes like extortion and credit card fraud, for financial independence. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, active in North Africa and the Yemeni affiliate have been "particularly effective" at such extortionist criminal activities.

Social media platforms have been helpful to the jihadis in recruiting to the cause, and convincing maladaptive psychopathic Muslims to plan their own jihadist attacks.

Emma Suleiman/Demotix, via Corbis

Why however, the report  in speaking of a significant amount of terrorism in 2013 of a sectarian nature where terrorists target other terror groups represents a "worrisome trend", is beyond comprehension. As matters stand, the jihadist groups represent for the most part either Sunni or Shia factions of Islam, each detesting the other, each determined to extinguish the others as false Muslims.

It is when the murderous onslaughts turn on Muslims whom they consider to be insufficiently dedicated to Islam, innocent civilians wanting nothing else out of life but to live it moderately and with full dedication to what they interpret from the Koran as adopting decent and respectful attitudes toward all others, come under attack, that a worrisome trend exists.

As is the case in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan where psychotic Muslim 'purists' embracing violent jihad assault those among them whose form of Islamic virtue and practise, worship and sensibilities do not reflect the miserable barbarism of fundamentalist fanatics.

Iran has been designated a "state sponsor of terrorism" since 1984 by the United States. Last year Tehran continued to support Palestinian terrorist groups, increased its malevolent presence in Africa, and continued to smuggle weapons to separatists in Yemen, Bahrain, and anywhere else it plans to demonstrate the evil that Islamists are capable of.

And within the United Nations, that global bastion of peace and brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran is cordially invited to sit on human rights tribunals. But of course it has ample company in the presence of China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Cuba sitting on those United Nations councils, ensuring the world is steered toward a finer place.