Last weekend’s ritualised slaughter of Egyptian Coptic Christian migrant workers
in Libya by masked jihadis adhering to the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant was bestial, even by the hideous standards of Isis. Only a
twisted mind would see it differently, yet this desecration of human
beings was anything but mindless — the epithet politicians and
commentators so often use to describe acts of terror. Like many Isis
atrocities, this was a calculated provocation. The methods of the jihadi blackshirts are chillingly savage. But Isis is chillingly smart too.
It is already clear Isis has been trying to open
up fissures and faultlines in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia,
fragile states bordering the self-declared caliphate
in the failed states of Syria and Iraq. We have seen, too, how Isis is
starting to expand — especially across north Africa. In Egypt’s
ungoverned Sinai peninsula, the jihadis of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis —
responsible for a string of bloody attacks on security forces — have
declared themselves the Sinai Province of Isis. In Libya, polarised and
fragmented by civil war as the west and its Arab allies focus on Syria
and Iraq, Isis has crept into the vacuum to assert its presence in a new
arena. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/de2135f6-b772-11e4-981d-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3RvVepYs8
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