A few days ago a young man named Ali Sonboly took a gun into a shopping mall and shot nine Germans and wounded many others. The whole nation was in uproar, in turmoil. Another terror attack was in progress! For over seven hours a great part of the historic town of Munich was cordoned off by the police in search of the culprit terrorists, at a time said to be about three in number. But when the dust had cleared and the frenzy had died down the relieved policemen told the world that it was only one teenager who had tutored himself on how to conduct his own rampage, that is, how to kill as many people as possible at a time. He had read publications and watched videos on the topic. Who knows he may have watched ISIS instructional videos on how to butcher fellow human beings. But it turns out that he was only a generally innocuous German citizen who had had bouts of mental problems in the past.
So, we breathe a sigh of relief because he was not ISIS inspired! Or do we? What does it matter whether he was ISIS inspired or not? After all he killed human beings. However, it does matter to the extent that ISIS has instilled another type of fright in all of us – terror, fear, fright of mass murder inspired from the Middle East, fear based on religious hatred, see my earlier posts, Religion – The Opium Of The Massesand Radicalised. No, this was only a frustrated young man who had probably lost the will to live and, thanks to the literature from the library or from the internet whether from ISIS or other weird groups, had learnt how to get a gun and ammunition and take others along with him. This is a young man who would in the past ordinarily have committed suicide but had from his research and learning had decided that the best way to go was to take as many other human beings along with him and go out with fanfare!
So, this is the world we live in now. Somebody takes his gun into the public space and kills many people and we have to analyse what type of mass murder it is. Is it ISIS inspired or home grown? Since the world was created there have always been people who wake up and decide to kill others. There will always be such people. It is part of the law of nature, the survival of the fittest. But sometimes there are people who just decide to kill others, perhaps for the excitement of watching them die, or because that is the way they themselves are created, or out of frustration with life.
But ISIS has added a new, dangerous dimension. And the world will no longer sleep easy. Whether the Americans and the coalition battling ISIS recapture Racca in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, ISIS will always be there. The Kurds and the Americans who surrounded Mambij in northern Syria gave ISIS an ultimatum to leave. ISIS will leave but without their vehicles and other war machines that can be pulverised from the sky by war planes but will melt into the surrounding villages. That is what will happen. The Americans will capture the towns and villages but ISIS will mix with the rest of the world and continue their wicked art of murder and destruction. People who have been taught how to make suicide bombs or to wield guns and wicked knives will not suddenly forget. They will teach others. They will continue their dastardly act just like Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and the others. The world is no longer at ease.
Well, the western world, I mean Europe and the United States, can console themselves that they can fight or at least resist the menace. Their media is so well developed that information goes round instantly. Their police and the military are well trained, suitably armed to defend their societies. They have closed circuit television that monitors movements. And everybody is his brother’s keeper and report suspicious movements to law enforcement.
Pity us and other backward countries! People are being killed daily by Boko Haram, secret cultists, kidnappers, armed robbers, ritualists, Islamic extremists wiping out church worshippers and burning their churches, and other such weird organisations and people only get to know about a tiny fraction of them. The military and the security agencies are linked often with extra-judicial killings. The police often kill people who fail to part with money. In Nigeria we have the added hazard of Fulani herdsmen conducting mass killing of people who object to their cattle grazing on their farms. Citizens are afraid to report some of these suspicious movements for fear of reprisals. In this part of the world human life is virtually worthless. And who will save us? If the western world is afraid we are more than afraid. We are simply terrified!