Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Bullying and hostile environment made a Sussex University professor resign . Related

A region warming twice as much as the rest of the world

A very good approach. Semitism and Islamophobia as parallel manifestations of contemporary racism

Teetering on the brink of economic collapse

Strikes, civil disobedience and blockades

A déjà-vu? Many Afghans, and some foreign analysts, believe Isis-K is being supported by foreign forces, such as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI wants leverage to persuade the Taliban to co-operate in suppressing Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a jihadist insurgency that has targeted the Pakistan government. Others suspect US intelligence agencies, anti-Taliban warlords and even former members of the Afghan army of collaborating with Isis-K. “We know there are intelligence agencies and networks supporting Isis-K to challenge and create problems for the Taliban government,” Haqpal said. In India, government and intelligence officials have suggested that inter-Taliban rivalry — between the Haqqani network and a powerful Kandahar faction led by Mullah Baradar, the deputy prime minister — is stoking the violence. “There is clear factionalism in the Taliban,” an Indian intelligence source said. “It is possible that one faction is supporting the Isis-K to wipe out the dominance o

This  article requires individual or institutional subscription. Here is an excerpt: “ The West’s focus on armed violence gets in the way of understanding the phenomena of radicalisation and the commission of acts in its name. It presupposes a continuum between religious radicalisation, proclamation of jihad and international terrorism, as though going from the first to the third stage were inevitable, and conversely, as though international terrorism   created   local jihadism. Such reasoning leads to any reference to sharia law and any call for holy war being read as a precursor to global attacks. In this view, Islamist movements’ supposed proximity to terrorism is the sole criterion for determining western policy towards them. This proximity is defined on a scale of intensity that measures references to religion as much as — if not more than — actual acts of violence: the more Islamist groups mention sharia and the more they challenge the policies of the great powers, the more they