A WEEK after the carnage in Paris, terrorists struck again, this time in an attack on a hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There were no immediate indications that attacks in Mali and France were directly linked, but both incidents underscore the spread of a deadly style of attack that came to prominence in a jihadist assault on Mumbai eight years ago.
The first characteristic of this form of terrorism is that the main weapon used is guns, rather than bombs. This is partly because assault weapons are relatively easy to obtain. East Africa is awash with guns that have come down from Somalia. Large parts of the Sahel and West Africa have been flooded by weapons brought south across desert smuggling routes from Libya. And in parts of Western Europe attackers have had relatively little difficulty buying guns smuggled in from the Balkans.
Bomb-making, on the other hand, requires either access to explosives (whether commercial or military, both of which are tightly controlled) or the ability to make explosives from commonly available materials—a dangerous and difficult job. Moreover once explosives have been acquired or made, a...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1Yl73QZ
EmoticonEmoticon