It is the 13th anniversary of 9/11, a terror
attack 13 years ago that still symbolizes how audacious and incisively painful
terrorism can be.
And after 13 years of the attack, a series of multiples
assaults on the concept of ‘America
The war theaters were not so many in the world back in
2001. The global geopolitical theaters were acting and moving in the routine of
a post Cold War world.
It was more or less in routine, except the elements propagated
by the two superpowers to further their interests in different parts of the
worlds – in different regimes – the so-called fighters against intruders, the
Mujahidin, the rebels, and the dictators – all trained, armed and propped up by
these two superpowers and their allies – in the post Cold War world, many of
these elements were left aimless – when they were still armed and were looking
for the next target to hit.
It was more or less in routine, except the ‘now free’
elements were seeing more and more of their upcoming action-zones from a
religious spectacle.
It was more or less in routine, except the many so-called
allies of both the sides were without the ‘active’ patronage now and the
dictators in many of them started taking decisions independently, something
that they had never done when they were allied either to this or that camp of
the Cold War world.
It was more or less in routine, except that the only
superpower of the world then, the US
All these not-so-routine events after the Cold War were
the shaping elements of what we know today as Islamic Terrorism. A religion
never teaches to fight; still religions were used as the organizational
principles.
And all these not-so-routine events after the Cold War
culminated in 9/11.
But, as we see today, that culmination was just the
beginning. Yes, being the only true superpower, the US
And the list is not exhaustive. Terrorism today or more
aptly to say terrorism in the name of religion, with organized groups, has a
far greater reach today and unstable governments and ethnic wars in many of
these war-theater countries have allowed the terror groups to grow stronger
than or parallel to many of the governments, like in Nigeria, like in Somalia,
like in Libya, like in Syria and like in Iraq.
And with the mess in Syria and Iraq now, again a
situational outcome of the selfish geopolitical concerns and some pathetically
indecisive moments of the global powers that opposed a dictator but didn’t do
anything to support the rebels except showing them mirage and thus pushing them
to the warzone, the terror threat is reaching above the warning levels with
emergence of probably the deadliest and most powerful of the organized terror
groups yet, the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
US President Barack Obama has vowed today to destroy the
ISIS and extend the theaters of operations beyond Iraq ,
to Syria , after ISIS openly
challenged the US might by
killing two of the captive US
But even Obama knows it is not going to be that easy. ISIS may be much stronger but we need to remember it is
still an Al Qaeda offshoot. And Al Qaeda didn’t die with Osama bin Laden in
2011. Laden had died much earlier, when he chose to live a solitary, hidden
life. But the ideology lived and grew to engulf more regions of the Muslim
world. Almost of the major terror groups today have their origins in Al Qaeda.
Many others have affiliations and collaborations with it. And the vast swaths
of the unstable Muslim world are fast becoming their sanctuary.
Terrorism
is more organized, sponsored and bloodthirsty now, more than ever.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
