THE massacre in Paris on November 13th has been met with martial rhetoric and muscle-flexing by world leaders. Barack Obama and François Hollande have vowed to “destroy” Islamic State (IS). France and Russia have intensified their air strikes on the group. The fight, for now, is focused on Iraq and Syria, where IS controls a large swathe of territory. But eliminating that stronghold may just be a start. The group has affiliates, some self-proclaimed, across the globe, from Algeria to the Philippines.
Many of the official branches have only loose ties to the central leadership. Most find it difficult to hold territory, but some are quite potent. The civil war in Yemen, long home to a deadly al-Qaeda franchise, has allowed a branch of IS to emerge from the country’s ungoverned spaces to attack government, military and religious targets. An affiliate in Egypt, operating in the rugged Sinai peninsula, has tormented the government of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Russian passenger jet on October 31st that killed all 224 people on board.
But perhaps the most worrisome offshoot of the caliphate is...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1H981vF
EmoticonEmoticon