Terror and Geopolitics: Manchester 2017 and 1996
May 23, 2017
Manchester, UK, was hit with the deadliest bomb attack on Monday since a June Saturday morning in 1996, when a massive 3000 lb. Provisional Irish Republican Army blast leveled the city center shopping district to rubble and left 200 wounded. The toll at the Ariana Grande concert so far this morning is nearly two dozen dead and over 60 wounded.
My heart goes out to the innocent victims, young people celebrating spring and life with some lighthearted entertainment. I apologize that the rest of this column will turn to dry analysis. Trying to understand global contemporary history is my own way of dealing with its tragedy.
It should be underlined that local Manchester Muslims were as devastated as everyone else by this attack, and that Muslim cabbies swung into action helping the concert-goers with free rides out of the affected area. Islamic law forbids terrorism.
Ironically, the attack yesterday in Manchester was likely by Sunni radicals (ISIL has claimed it), and came two days after President Trump blamed all terrorism on Shiite Iran at a speech in Saudi Arabia, the proponent of a form of extreme Sunni supremacism. Saudi Arabia’s royal family say they oppose terrorism and they are not responsible for terrorism, but they do give Wahhabis the impression that non-Wahhabis are wretched heretics with whom one cannot be friends.
