Global Issues: Terrorism: Pakistan terror attacks - regional or civilizational?

Excellent article in today’s Guardian by Jason Burke [who incidentally has an excellent book on Al Qaeda] entitled Pakistan bombing is fratricide in the name of Bin Laden, which links in with the A2 Terrorism topic but also with the ‘Clash of Civilzation’ aspects of Cultural conflict. Burke argues that “Invocation of the dead al-Qaida chief’s name follows an affiliates’ narrative of conflating local wars with a single civilisational clash.”. He also asserts: “There is a terrible inevitability about the bombing in Charsadda, Pakistan, on Friday morning. Little about it is different from previous bombings. There is the same vicious tactic of two devices, the latter apparently arriving on a donkey cart, with one designed to kill helpers.”

The article concludes: “Above all, what the invocation of a dead Saudi-born terrorist’s name is aimed at disguising is the truth about the various conflicts that have been conflated into the narrative, in Washington as much as in compounds in Abbottabad, of one single civilisational clash. In fact, there is no single conflict, simply a nasty mesh of individual wars, most of which pitch countryman against countryman, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. That is the reality which the invocation of a dead Saudi propagandist and terrorist’s name is supposed to hide. It is one which one hopes any communities which still support the extremists in the tribal areas – or indeed elsewhere in Pakistan – will see.”

Well worth a read - and can be linked to questions such as has the nature of terrorism changed and how significant is ‘modern’ terrorism?

For reference here is an earlier article which covers the orginal attack - Osama bin Laden ‘revenge’ attack kills scores in Pakistan