Last week, Khalid Masood, a British-born convert to Islam with a long criminal record, plowed a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge and then stabbed a policeman before being killed by other police. Unsurprisingly, the self-styled Islamic State claimed responsibility. Whether the group actually had any involvement with Masood was irrelevant, since his religious-tinged violence fit its narrative. As usual the America media was flooded with commentators asserting that the London attack once again demonstrated that violent jihadism is not a distortion of Islam but its true essence. The Westminster attack, they claimed, was just one [...]
As the forces of the U.S.-led coalition continue to push the so-called Islamic State out of its heartland in Syria and Iraq, the group isn’t exactly disappearing. Rather, it has sought out new footholds across the region and beyond, stepping up transnational terror attacks to keep its brand from fading. World Politics Review has compiled 11 articles tracing the Islamic State’s evolution, and what its changing outlook means for the international battle to combat it. Purchase this special report as a Kindle e-book. A Complex Battlefield As the Islamic State Disperses, the United States Must Adapt Though it has been [...]
During one week in mid-February, Pakistan suffered a series of terrorist attacks in all four of its provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In all, 200 people were killed across the country in just seven days. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or JuA—a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP—claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks, while the TTP and the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed separate responsibility for others, including the Feb. 16 suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in Sehwan that killed 90 people. The multiple assaults perpetrated by different militants have raised concerns about [...]
