A Terror Crime That Can Still Shock

Daesh is using social media and informal networks of friends and family to recruit new militants. — File photo: AP

Part of the terror of terrorism has been its ability to shock. Thus terrorist crimes have grown from the nineteenth century assassination of leading political figures, through the hijacking of aircraft to the seizure and murder of hostages. But the imperative to shock means that terror crimes have since grown in enormity, with the destruction of airliners in flight and the bombing of trains and public places. The terrorists of the Irish Republican Army termed their callous attacks on civilians as “spectaculars”.

These obscenities did not come more spectacular than the horror of 9/11 when two airliners were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The world watched the graphic footage of these crimes with a level of shock that had seemed unimaginable. Time and again people said it was like watching the movies. The death and destruction they witnessed looked as if it could have been created by a Hollywood special-effects department. Tragically however this carnage was all too real.

While Europe has since been shocked by the likes of a massacre at a French concert venue, a far greater number of terrorist crimes have been perpetrated in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria and in Yemen. These brutal assaults have barely merited international media coverage. They have become the bloody coinage of everyday life in these benighted countries. They have lost their power to shock but instead they only engender a grey despair, a pitiful resignation. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ended his tolerance of Daesh (the so-called IS) using Turkey as its main supply of weapons and recruits, the terrorists turned on his country. Tourists were murdered in a suicide attack in Istanbul and 100 mostly Kurds perished in a double suicide attack in Ankara. Now the suicide-bombing of a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep on Saturday has slain 54 people, in the latest Daesh revenge attack for Erdogan’s about-face.

But this attack once again contained the power to shock. The bomber was a boy possibly as young as 12. And because he was sent to go and mix with other kids 29 of his victims were under the age of 18. The Daesh terrorists who sent this child among children were perfectly aware of what was going to happen. They had equipped him with a suicide belt that was packed with metal fragments designed to cause the maximum death and maiming among those around him. Did they convince this poor child that he should detonate his suicide belt himself, perhaps promising him that it would only explode outward and he would be unharmed and could escape in the chaos? Or did they send him to the wedding feast telling him to enjoy himself with other children and that he was wearing a special waistcoat? Had they equipped the vest with a timing device or was there a Daesh killer hiding somewhere with a view of the wedding celebrations? Did this man choose the moment to detonate the suicide belt with a telephone call?

The shock is that the terrorists should be abusing children for their savage murders. Young girls have been sent to their deaths as suicide bombers in crowded Iraqi markets but this is the first time that Daesh has used a child to slaughter and maim other children. There are no words that can adequately describe this wicked deed, which demonstrates the icy emptiness of the terrorists’ ambitions.

(Source: SaudiGazette.com.sa)