FRANCE HAS always been high on the list of rhetorical targets for Islamic State (IS). "Know that we want Paris—by Allah’s permission—before Rome and before Spain, after we blacken your lives and destroy the White House, the Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower," said Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the top spokesman for IS. But that was the long-term plan, perhaps to be carried out by "our children and grandchildren", he added, back in March, long before the atrocities this weekend in the French capital.
In the short term, fighters were instead directed to travel to the group's main battleground in Iraq and Syria, where IS controls a swathe of land. Unlike al-Qaeda, which specialised in attacking the "far enemy" in America and Europe, IS focused on building and fighting for its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, and in acquiring affiliates elsewhere in the Middle East as states collapsed or frayed. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group's leader, was never part of the global jihad movement and indeed is thought not to have travelled outside Iraq and Syria.
But the carnage in Paris on November 13th and a recent spate of earlier attacks claimed by IS may...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1OaCGIf
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