The Rise of ISIS

The Syrian Civil War has continued throughout 2014, devastating the country and spilling over into neighbouring Iraq.

The devastation and destruction of Syria by years of Civil War left the country unable to defend itself from attack by a “new” fundamentalist and Islamist terrorist group. The group is referred to by several different titles; ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), IS (Islamic State) and the Caliphate. I will be referring to it as ISIS due to the fact that currently it controls vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. Although ISIS actually formed in 1999, it was relatively unknown in the West until 2014. The group had joined Al Qaeda in 2004, but it was disavowed by Al Qaeda in February 2014 after a long power struggle between the two groups. Throughout the Syrian Civil War ISIS had been seizing parts of Syria and imposing Sharia law on the people it controlled. However in the chaos of the Syrian Civil War, its actions went largely un-noted by the Western media. That was until June when ISIS invaded neighbouring Iraq.

On the 5^th of June ISIS forces stormed over the Syria-Iraq border, intent on taking all of Iraq. By the middle of the month they had taken vast swathes of north-western Iraq with relative ease, including Iraq’s second city, Mosul.  It was rather amazing (in a horrible way) to watch as ISIS took so much territory from Iraq without much fighting. This was despite the fact that the Iraqi army hugely outnumbered the ISIS fighters. When ISIS marched on Mosul, they had less than 1,000 men whilst the Iraqi army had an impressive 60,000! The Iraqi army basically ran away so fast that they left behind expensive military equipment, including tanks and anti-aircraft weapons. I am sure ISIS was very glad of getting hold of those weapons. The reason why this happened is because of the sectarian divisions of Iraq. The northern part of Iraq follows Sunni Islam, whilst the southern part is Shia Islam. To complicate matters even more there are the Kurds in north-eastern Iraq. Although they are mostly Sunnis, their different ethnicity makes them a separate group within Iraq. Since Nouri Al-Maliki came to power in 2006 he has tried to purge Sunnis from the government and the army. As a result, when ISIS invaded northern Iraq the army defending the Sunni territory was mostly Shia. Rather than risk their lives defending Sunni territory, the Shia soldiers simply fled. The rapid advance of ISIS was somewhat halted when the group began attacking more mixed areas, as the Shia dominated army began to actually defend the territory.

Despite ISIS’s success in taking control of much of northern Iraq, they were unable to take control of Kurdistan. The military of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Peshmerga, managed to hold their territory and even take some back from ISIS. Since June Iraqi Kurdistan has been de facto independent.

On the 29^th of June ISIS declared that it was now a worldwide Caliphate and that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was its first Caliph. By doing this they are claiming complete authority over all Muslims throughout the world.

Control of Iraq and Syria at the end of 2014
Red: Assad regime
Purple-red: Iraqi government
Green: Syrian rebels
Grey: ISIS
Yellows: Syrian and Iraqi Kurds
Source: wikipedia.org

The barbarity of ISIS has been revealed over the past six months. They have brutally murdered anyone who will not convert to their extremist version of Sunni Islam. At one point they declared that the Yazidis, an ethnic and religious minority in northern Iraq, were “devil worshippers” and that they would be killed. After the Kurdish Peshmerga left the mostly Yazidi city of Sinjar, many Yazidis fled with them to Kurdistan. Unfortunately the journey to Peshmerga protected Kurdistan was several days walk away and many who would not make it fled up Mount Sinjar. As ISIS forces moved to surround the mountain there were fears of a genocide of the Yazidis who were now trapped. Thankfully a combination of strategic bombing of ISIS forces, air-dropped aid packages and the help of Peshmerga forces ensured that most Yazidis managed to escape.

With the realisation that ISIS poses a real threat to both regional and international security, 28 countries have intervened in some capacity to help combat ISIS’s rise.

As things stand going into 2015, ISIS’s advance has been halted, but now the effort to push back against the organisation has to step up. As bad as Iraq has been in recent years, ISIS control would be far worse. My hope for 2015 is that ISIS gets pushed back and that countries begin to recognise Kurdistan as an independent nation.

Red: Iraq and Syria
Dark Orange: Military intervention in Iraq and Syria
Light orange: Military intervention in Iraq only
Yellow: Military intervention in Syria only
Dark Blue: Humanitarian aid
Light Blue: Military aid (no intervention)

Why We Should Never Pay Ransoms

In 2013 G8 leaders agreed that they would not pay ransoms for captured citizens. Recently it has emerged that Italy, Germany and France may have renegaded on their promise and paid ransoms to the terrorist organisation ISIL. Considering that other countries have decided to pay the ransoms, should Britain and America follow suit? The short answer: No.

By paying ransoms to terrorists you endanger other westerners by making them bigger targets. The terrorists know that governments are prepared to pay ransoms, and so they will go out of their way to capture more westerners in the hopes of making more money. Different groups have been demanding money for hostages from the American and British governments for decades with little success. The last known case of either government paying ransoms for hostage was the Iran-Contra Affair that nearly got Reagan impeached in the 1980s. So why do Brits and Americans continue to be taken hostage if their governments refuse to pay ransoms? Well sometimes families manage to raise enough money to pay the ransom, helping to maintain the cycle. Another reason is that they put themselves in a win-win situation. If they get the money, then they have more money to fund their activities. On the other hand if they don’t receive the money and they kill the hostage, then they receive a huge amount of publicity, which is exactly what they want.

The more important reason why you shouldn’t pay the ransoms is that the money paid is financing terrorists. ISIL demanded $132million (£80 million) for the release of American journalist James Foley. If the American government had given ISIL that money, they would have used it to fund their war in Iraq and Syria. This would have resulted in hundreds of people dead and ISIL would have been in a stronger position.

Thankfully the British public understand this, in aYouGov poll conducted in early September 68% of respondents said that it was wrong to pay the ransoms, compared to 9% who said it was right and 24% who said that they “don’t know”. This is encouraging as it means there is no pressure from the public to do the wrong thing. 

Journalism ≠ Terrorism

When Edward Snowden revealed the spying the US government had been conducting, it send shock-waves through the entire world. It was revealed that the US government had handed over data to some of its allies, including the UK. As in the US the revelations have upset the government greatly as now it has been forced to defend this horrifying and unnecessary invasion of privacy. Recent revelations show that the UK government has been cracking down on journalism to show its anger at Snowden, Glen Greenwald (the reporter who revealed the story) and the Guardian in which Greenwald published.

The UK government has attempted to scare journalists out of doing real reporting. The story starts in Berlin, where American journalist Laura Poitras is currently living. Poitras, like Greenwald, has revealed many cases of government misconduct when it comes to spying on its own citizens. This has forced Poitras to move to Germany to avoid the US government stealing her data that she is using in her new documentaries. Recently she has been working in conjunction with Glen Greenwald on government spying. So last week Greenwald's Brazilian partner, David Miranda, was visiting her and on his way home to Brazil, he passed through Heathrow Airport. This is where the story gets interesting; Miranda was held for nine hours by British police and had all his electronics seized. The legal justification for the nine hour detention? Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act. Seriously, the Terrorism Act. What Miranda, Greenwald, Poitras and Snowden have been doing is not terrorism, it is journalism.

You may not like what they leak, you may not value their contribution, but you cannot possibly believe that what they are doing is terrorism. That is insane.

The Home Office and Number 10 have claimed that neither of them authorised the detention, but had prior warning that it was going to happen. The White House has also claimed that although the British informed them of their intention to detain Miranda, that they did not pressure the British in any way to do so.

I seriously dislike the current UK government, and the attitudes to privacy of previous UK governments, but I never thought that they would try and intimidate the press like they did here. I always prided myself in the fact that we had Jeremy Paxman and not Wolf Blitzer, that we had the Guardian and the BBC. Now I realise that government pressure on journalism is just as real as it is in the US, and I fear what it may do to our democracy.

Remember Cameron, journalism does NOT equal terrorism.

David Miranda (left) arriving in Brazil after his nine hour detention
meeting his partner Glen Greenwald (right)
source: www.mirror.co.uk

Terrorism

Terrorism did not slow down in 2012 unfortunately, thousands of people were killed across the globe in terrorist atrocities. Yet most of those attacks took place in just a handful of countries:

Country	Attacks*	Dead
Iraq	55	1,676
Afghanistan	35	543
Nigeria	21	511
Pakistan	30	425
Yemen	14	328
Somalia	11	78
Russia	9	51
Kenya	8	47
Colombia	5	31
China	2	26

*Co-ordinated attacks that take place on one day are counted as one attack.

Looking at this rather horrifying table you can see that Iraq had the worst year of any country. Terrorists killed over three times as many people as in Afghanistan, the second worst affected country. One of the most prominent terrorist attacks of the year was not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but Pakistan; the shooting of 15 year old Malala Yousafzai. Thankfully Malala survived and is recovering well in a British hospital. There were protests all across Pakistan against the assassination attempt and 50 Islamic clerics issued a fatwā against the perpetrators. Despite this the Taliban claim they still want to kill her and her father. So what was her ‘crime’? Trying to get young girls into education in Pakistan, this infuriated the Taliban who are anti-education especially when it comes to women. As Malala rose to fame in Pakistan, the Taliban increasingly sent death threats to her home and on the internet. But she continued in her struggle, in 2011 Desmond Tutu nominated her for the International Children’s Peace Prize and later won Pakistan’s first National Youth Prize. Time magazine recently selected her as the runner up of Time Magazine’s person of the year.

There was some pleasant news on the terrorist front, Anders Breivik, was finally sentenced to Prison for this mass shooting and bombing in July 2011.  There is finally closure for the families of the 77 killed and those that were on the island of Utøya on that fateful day.

Up until November 2012, Northern Ireland was relatively quiet on the terrorism front, apart from the odd bomb scare. Then on the 1^st of November a prison officer was shot dead. Then trouble began after Belfast City Council voted to fly the Union flag on certain days of the year. That seriously upset some unionists who for the past few weeks have been causing chaos across Northern Ireland, but particularly in Belfast.

Terrorism is something that will likely always exist, it will never go away but certain places such as the Basque region, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka all prove that things can be done to improve the situation, to show the terrorists that talking produces better results. The West should learn from these if it ever wants to truly ‘defeat the Taliban’.

Malala Yousafzai's page in Time Magazine

Abu Hamza Finally Extradited

Abu Hamza has finally been extradited from the UK to the USA along with four others. His extradition will come as a relief to Britons and Americans alike as the process has taken a shockingly long, eight years to complete. Hamza has long been a controversial person, calling for the death of Westerners and refusing to criticise Al-Qaeda when it killed 200 people during attacks on US embassies in Africa. Originally arrested in 2004 with 15 counts of terrorism, he was not convicted until 2006. In 2004 the Americans requested his extradition to face charges of setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and of kidnapping in Yemen. In May of 2007 attempts to extradite him were re-started but were once again placed on hold when his lawyers brought the case to the European Court of Human Rights. The court, facing a backlog of 80,000 – 90,000 cases, did not begin hearing the case until 2010. It was in April of this year that the court finally decided to allow his extradition, and two weeks ago his appeal failed. Today he is in the USA awaiting trial.

For many this case indicates that there is something severely wrong with the system of extradition in the UK, and in Europe as a whole. Many believe that the UK should simply ignore what the European courts say and go along with what British courts say alone. I think things could be improved if there were more staff in the European Court, the backlog is absolutely gargantuan and is only set to increase; this is not a sustainable situation. Whatever the decision is regarding the broken system, we can all be happy that Hamza is finally facing American justice.

The radical cleric, Abu Hamza speaking to the press,

2000th American Serviceman Dies

Today marks a new milestone in the war in Afghanistan.  Following an attack on a remote army base, the number of American causalities rises to 2000. If Obama wins re-election in November the war will finally come to a close in 2014. Ending the war in Afghanistan is a popular one, with the majority of Americans believing that the war should end on or before the 2014 deadline. This is a view held by every section of society, even by the Republicans! Unfortunately if Mitt Romney wins, then the war has no end; he has already declared his opposition to the 2014 deadline and even says that it was a ‘shame’ that Obama ended the war in Iraq.

If you’ve been paying attention to American politics you will notice a refusal to talk about foreign policy on the Republican side. Particularly when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, Romney was blasted for failing to mention the war when he accepted the Republican nomination for president in Tampa, Florida. Gallup also notes that the Democrats are now more trusted on foreign policy than the Republicans, it’s ironic that four years ago Obama was seen as the weaker candidate on foreign policy. Yet as he presided over the killing of Bin Laden, the end of the Iraq war, the decimation of Al-Qaeda and the Arab Spring it is now viewed as a strong point.

The war will not end for two more years. Minimum. There will be more deaths and more sacrifice, for many Americans, the sooner the war ends, the better. 

US Consulate in Libya Stormed

In the early hours of this morning four US embassy staff were killed in the American consulate in Benghazi, the second city of Libya. Libya is one of the real success stories of the Arab Spring, a country that had experienced 40 years of the same dictator rose up and ousted him from power in a bloody revolution. Things have been looking increasingly sour in the fledgling democracy, already British war graves have been vandalised and Westerners have been the targets of attacks. The attack of the American consulate is by far the most serious.

Amongst the four dead was the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens who only took up the post since the downfall of Gaddafi. As of yet we do not know who perpetrated the attacks and why they did so. Currently most people believe that the attack was in reaction to an American made video that was uploaded to YouTube that many Muslims have found insulting. Already there have been protests in Egypt over the video and the American embassy in Cairo was stormed! The only other explanation put forward is that the attack was meant to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11. The problem with that theory is that the attack took place on the 12^th (local time), although it would still have been the 11^th across the United States. 

The attack has also caused political issues in America, Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney initially criticised Obama for not taking a hardline approach to the initial protests in Cairo. This has not gone down well with the Obama camp who feel that Mitt Romney is trying to make political hay over a very tragic case.

Regardless of the motive, it is not a good sign for the future stability of Libya. We already know that the central government is very weak, most police work being carried out by armed militias. Disarming them will prove a difficult task.

Breivik Guilty

Today Anders Breivik was found sane and sentenced to 21 years imprisonment on the charges of mass murder of 77 people and terrorism. The result marks an end to the long episode that began on the 22^nd of July last year when Breivik planted a bomb in Norway’s capital city of Oslo and later went and killed 69 children and teenagers at a youth camp on the island of Utøya. After being declared sane Breivik made a statement in which he said; “I wish to apologise to all militant nationalists in Norway and Europe for not being able to kill more.” Before he got to say anymore he was cut off by the judge.

Many western countries have suffered from serious terrorist attacks, the United States had 9/11, Spain had the 2004 Madrid Train Bombings and the United Kingdom had the 7/7 bombings. Norway’s reaction to the tragic attack was very different from other nations, rather than weakening civil liberties, Norway reacted by making sure the country did not change. As a whole Norwegians have not reacted with hatred for Breivik, rather love for the victims and many are trying to make sure Norway becomes more multi-cultural and more tolerant of immigrants; the very thing Breivik detests.

I think Norway is a phenomenal country, very liberal with a strong social safety net and sensible government. Norway is a model for the world in many aspects, the Breivik case simply emboldens the Norwegian ideal.

Israelis be Careful, Iran is Watching

Last Wednesday five Israeli tourists were killed in the holiday resort of Burgas, Bulgaria. They were killed by a suicide bomber with fake US documents, the driver of the bus was also killed.

It didn't take long for the Israeli government in Jerusalem to accuse Iran of involvement. Israel believes that the attack was carried out by the Lebanese group, Hizbullah and its Iranian backers. The bombing occurred on the anniversary of another attack by the same group in which 85 people were killed in Argentina in 1994.

This bomb is unfortunately just the latest in a series of attacks (and foiled attempts) against Israelis. This year alone Israelis have been targeted in New Delhi, India, Tbilisi, Georgia, Bangkok, Thailand and Kenya. These attacks have dramatically increased the tensions between Israel, and its Western backers, and Iran. It does not help that Iran blames Israel for the deaths of several scientists that are believed to be part of the country's nuclear programme.

The Middle East has always been a very unstable region, wars have torn through the region in every decade. The Arab Spring has caused some of the region's most stable states, Egypt and Libya, to appear as unstable as Iraq. Egypt was always the Arab country most willing to make a deal with Israel. Now with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, brokering a deal with Israel seems unlikely.

The Iran-Israel crisis is just another reason why the Arab World is of major importance, we should watch it closely and be ready to defend Israel if Iran achieves its goal of nuclear arms.

A Symbol of Reconciliation

Today was a historic day in Northern Irish politics. Martin McGuinness, ex-commander of the IRA, shook hands with Queen Elizabeth II.

Even a few years ago this event could not have happened, but ever since 1998 relationships have become amicable and tensions seriously reduced. The visit by the Queen to the Republic of Ireland in 2011 (the first since 1911) and her visit to the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, where she laid a wreath in memory of those who fought against the British for Irish Independence, helped to further cool relations between Republicans and the Monarchy.

The public, including hard-line Republicans and hard-line Loyalists, seem to be largely delighted with the handshake. Both sides recognise that normality may finally have come to Northern Ireland after almost 100 years of violence and trouble.

The Queen and Martin McGuinness shaking hands

Yet there is still work to be done, Northern Ireland is far from perfect, to move forward Northern Ireland needs investment and new infrastructure. In moving forward the past should be left behind, but not forgotten, so we can build a better, brighter future for Northern Ireland.

Breivik on Trial

The trial of the Norwegian terrorist extremist, Anders Breivik has begun in Oslo, Norwat. Breivik took the lives of 77 innocent people, mostly teenagers. His first attack, in the Labour government, killed eight people in Oslo. After this he drove to Utøya island, to a youth camp and open fired on children. The evil man believed that he was doing good, that he is a foot soldier in a war against Islam and multiculturalism. It is his belief that his attack was the first in a war that will drive Muslims from Norway and Europe.

Besides admitting to having carried out the attacks he denies first degree murder and claims self-defence. He began his case with a salute to the far right.

Although Breivik will almost certainly be convicted, the trial does have one potential benefit for him, as a platform to air his views. To limit this Norwegian authorities are restricting cameras in court to minimise any effect of his words.

Breivik is such an extremist that his words may not touch many but he only needs to inspire one that can kill many more people. We must suppress his voice, he should not be heard.

More Taliban Attacks

The Taliban have struck across Afghanistan today in co-ordinated attacks. The majority of the fighting took place in Kabul, here the Taliban targeted embassies, including the British and German embassies as well as NATO headquarters and the Afghan parliament. The Taliban claim that this is the beginning of their 'Spring Offensive', if so then maybe they should call off the rest of any planned attacks. The attacks were largely unsuccessful as there were few casualties on the defending side. Also important is the fact that it wasn't NATO soldiers who primarily fought off the Taliban, but Afghan soldiers and police. After many stories of Afghan soldiers turning on the people who were training them and killed NATO officers, it is a welcome relief. It gives us some hope that the lives of allied servicemen were not wasted and that Afghanistan will not return to the failed state it once was.

South East France on Terror Alert

Just hours after a horrifying attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse, the whole region has been put on the highest level of terror alert possible. The reason for the high alert level is because the gun used to kill three children and a rabbi was the same gun involved in the murder of three French soldiers in two separate incidents last week. The authorities believe him to be an ex-army officer who was discharged recently due to links with the far right. Authorities believe his next attack may occur on Friday, as each of the attacks occur four days after the previous one, let’s hope it’s just coincidence and he carries out no more shootings.

The attacks come nine months since the terrifying killing of 77 people in Norway by Anders Breivik, the right wing extremist; this displays a worrying trend to me. Europe prides itself in tolerance when compared with other continents, but tolerance is slowly being ebbed away. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in racist talk and even racist laws, the banning of the face veil in France and the ban on building minarets in Switzerland are very dangerous to European culture. Although the vast majority of people who voted for these laws would oppose the ideology of these men, these laws legitimise their attacks in a way. The murderers see a general move in society to be anti-immigrant from this they convince themselves that this means that society would support the ideas and so carry out these attacks. I understand if my argument lacks logic, but that’s the point, find me a right-wing extremist whose logic makes sense and I’ll find you a pig that can fly.

We must tackle racism head on in Europe and not allow racist people dictate policy to the majority of people who are good, decent and tolerant.

Success in Somalia is far from Complete

After writing about Yemen on Sunday, today I go across the Gulf of Aden to Somalia. Somalia has been torn apart by a generation of violence and bloodshed. The violence has contributed to the harshness of the famine currently affecting much of Somalia. Tomorrow an international conference is held in London to discuss what should be done to deal with Somalia. Just like Yemen, Somalia is of strategic importance, it lies on a major trade route between Europe and the Far East as well as Australasia and the Indian Ocean, billions on barrels of oil flow through here every year. The country is also a problem as the area is one of the worst affected by piracy, Somali pirates raid many ships each year and cost the global economy billions of pounds! An international consensus on how to tackle the pirates is required to make the area safer, British crews in the UAE monitor much of the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters and international crews investigate any disturbances. Yet the vastness of the area needing to be patrolled and the money that pirates can earn will make stamping out the piracy very difficult and very expensive. It’s not only the waters surrounding Somalia that are unsafe, people are frequently kidnapped from neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia. The kidnappers mostly target white people (due to the chance of a higher ransom), last year a British man was kidnapped from his holiday villa on the Kenyan coast and many more have been kidnapped over the years.

African Union troops have managed to push insurgents
out of Mogadishu but they still have a lot of work left.

More importantly though than the security of shipping lanes, defence of trade and a few foreign people is the people of Somalia. Shebab insurgents have held the capital, Mogadishu, for a long time now and only today were African Union troops, led by a group of Ethiopians, able to push them back. The fighting is far from over, the Al-Qaeda allied insurgents have a strong following in the country, chiefly to do with the high level of poverty in Somalia. Just like Yemen, what Somalia needs is money and lots of it. But just like Yemen, nobody knows where the money will come from as the West is broke. The people of Mogadishu and other recently freed areas are only just beginning to rebuild a society that has been destroyed by years of perpetual warfare. I hope that the London conference can produce exactly what Somalia leads and spur the international community on to do some good for the Somali people.

Yemen, the new Afghanistan?

In 2011 Ali Abdullah Saleh, the President of Yemen, announced his resignation after 30 years in power. Tomorrow (Tuesday 20^th of February) the Yemeni people will go to the poll to elect a new President, the problem… There’s only one candidate, the old Vice President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, there’s no doubt that this isn’t very democratic but nonetheless most people are just delighted that the old president is gone. In most dictatorships, the dictator’s family is very important and Yemen is no exception, many of Saleh’s family control many areas of Yemen politics including army commanders. Getting rid of Saleh will require more work than many people think.

Yemen isn’t just an ordinary country though, although oil makes up 90% of its exports, it isn’t a major oil exporter (which is unusual considering its geographical location). Likely more oil will be discovered in future. Regardless of the oil it owns, it is one of three countries on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the others being Djibouti and Eritrea. The strait is incredibly important as it connects Europe to the Far East. The security of the strait ties Europe strongly to the country in the hope for oil and good links to the Far East. The even worse problem is this, Al Qaeda is very strong in the country and many fear that it could become the new Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is growing stronger by the day in Yemen, this core reason for this is the terrible poverty experienced by most Yemeni people, 500,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation and most people can barely feed themselves. If Yemen were to fall into Islamist hands it would be a devastating blow to the West’s “War on Terror” as having to deal with one Afghanistan is hard enough. After WWII America funded many European states through Marshall Aid. The point of the aid was to try and help Europe recover and to try and stop the Soviet advancement west-word. It worked, all countries that received Marshall Aid didn’t fall to Communism and began to grow and prosper. The problem now is, America is bust and so is the rest of the West. The only countries that could help to stop Yemen’s fall into anarchy would be the likes of China, and China is not threatened by Islamists.

Yemen is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait

Terrorism

Last year was very important for the West in terms of terrorism. It marked the ten year anniversary of the September 11^th attacks in which thousands of innocent people were murdered. Somewhat fitting it was that four months before the anniversary, the mastermind (or at least the figurehead) of the attacks was killed by US soldiers in a raid in Pakistan. The outpouring of joy from many Americans was not unexpected, but it was still slightly disturbing. I’m opposed to the death penalty on principle, but even more so for people like Bin Laden. In killing him the Americans have given him the death he would have wanted, to him and his followers it would be honourable (died fighting for his cause) and the Americans have also made him a martyr. A far worse punishment for him would have been to send him to an American prison where he would rot for the rest of his life.

What we need to think about is the people who lost their lives on September the 11^th and their families that feel the loss of Al Qaeda’s attacks every day.

Islamic extremists weren’t the only group to get huge international attention this year, for in Norway the right-wing extremist Anders Breivik set off a bomb in the centre of Oslo, targeting the government which killed eight people and then proceeded to travel to the island of Utøya dressed as a police officer and shot 69 people, most of whom were teenagers. The horrifying attacks were originally thought to be another Islamist attack, but instead it was soon revealed to be the opposite. The attacks shocked everyone as Norway is one of the world’s most peaceful countries, his actions were the worst incident of its kind since Nazi occupation during WWII. 

Fight war with peace, hate with love and repression with liberty.

The front cover of Time magazine following Bin Laden's assassination.