Daily Times

Barcelona is now added to the list of European cities hit by ISIS. This latest attack has left 14 dead and some 120 injured. Barcelona is also the latest in the list — including Nice, London, Brussels Berlin and Stockholm — that has been targeted by nothing more than an ordinary road vehicle. This is terror done on the cheap. And for maximum media effect.

Security experts are only half right, however, when they refer to this as a recent phenomenon. While it is true that the world has seen a fairly recent spate of these kinds of attacks — the idea was first preached by Osama Bin Laden in the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -produced slick English glossy magazine, Inspire.  Indeed it ran in its second publication, which hit jihadi chat rooms back in 2010, a feature entitled, ‘The Ultimate Mowing Machine’. This explained to the group’s followers that they didn’t always need to travel half way across the world to formally join its ranks and get their mitts on the hi-tech toys of modern warfare. Sometimes a simple tow truck would suffice.

The above was specifically designed to attract the so-called ‘lone wolf’ operator, meaning someone already in the West, someone with ‘permanent’ status. Yet ISIS has taken this concept and turned it on its head. For what we have seen across Europe over the last two years, starting with the gratuitously macabre killing of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris, is that ISIS works best when unleashing well-planned and coordinated terror.

The battle cry is something else it shares with Al Qaeda. AQAP ran this tagline on each issue of Inspire: “Here we start, and in Jerusalem we meet”. A clear warning that the US will never be safe as long as Palestine remains occupied. For ISIS the concept is the same, if perhaps less ‘principled’. When the terror group claimed responsibility for Barcelona it said it did so “in response to appeals targeting coalition countries”. Meaning that Spain is part of the international coalition that is involved militarily in Iraq and Syria. In other words, it and other European nations are seen as invading armies trying to overthrow the ISIS caliphate in the landmass it has seemingly captured for itself.

So what should the West do?

Instead of insisting that it will never bow to terror — it has to try on a little honesty for size and see how its citizenries like the look and feel of this. For each time the West goes on a military rampage here in the Muslim world it empowers groups like ISIS just that bit more. The latter is very upfront about its expansionist aims. Seizing and controlling territories remains its priority. Thus while it may or may not want to actively provoke the West into finding itself bogged down in this part of the world — one thing is clear. It welcomes what it sees as the romance of driving out invading western armies from its land.

We don’t actually expect the West to weigh up any options. We fully expect it do continue along this dangerous path. Why would it not when the real fallout of this battle of Empires is shouldered by and large by the ordinary folk in the Muslim world. So, while we stand with the Spanish people — we also stand with the Syrian and Iraqi people. And all the nameless rest. *

Published in Daily Times, August 19^th 2017.