Terrorism Archive

The largest number of world leaders to visit South Korea in the country’s history are in Seoul for the March 26-27 Nuclear Security Summit. The delegations from the 54 countries and four international organizations that are participating include some 45 heads of state, with deputy prime ministers or foreign ministers representing the rest. The main objective of this week’s summit is to prevent nonstate actors, including terrorists and criminals, from acquiring dangerous nuclear materials, as the greatest obstacle to nuclear terrorism is not designing a weapon, concocting a plot or recruiting volunteers willing to suffer martyrdom — it is acquiring […]

Serious threats require serious action, and there is broad nonpartisan agreement that nuclear terrorism remains one of the most daunting threats of the 21st century. That is why national leaders from more than 50 countries will meet this week in Seoul, Korea, at the second Nuclear Security Summit to address nuclear terrorism. The 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington helped catalyze new commitments by states to secure loose nuclear materials, and today more than 80 percent of these commitments have been accomplished. But these measures only go so far, because there is no globally agreed-upon standard for securing nuclear material, […]

Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old who killed seven people in southwestern France over the past two weeks, was shot dead Thursday at his Toulouse apartment after a 30-hour standoff with police. The French national of Algerian descent, who said the killings of three Jewish children, a rabbi and three French paratroopers over the past two weeks were to avenge the killings of Palestinian children in Gaza, was a self-proclaimed jihadist who had visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area twice over the past two years. He represents the growing threat of homegrown extremists who identify with al-Qaida but operate on their own. And […]

It is still too soon to tell what effect, if any, Sunday’s appalling massacre of 16 innocent civilians by a U.S. soldier will have on the war in Afghanistan or on the relationship between the United States and the government of Afghanistan. This apparent war crime arrives fast on the heels of the infamous Quran burning incident that led to both riots across Afghanistan as well as the murder of several U.S. servicemen by the Afghans they were meant to be advising. Taken cumulatively, these events lead many to conclude that the U.S. and allied war in Afghanistan has reached […]

An explosion over the weekend at a bus stop in Nairobi killed three and injured more than 20. World News Videos by NewsLook

Washington’s successful efforts to kill top al-Qaida leaders, combined with the emergence of strong pro-democracy movements in the Muslim world, have led many to conclude that al-Qaida is fizzling out. But while the conventional wisdom increasingly portrays the group as becoming gradually but steadily a spent and irrelevant force, there is evidence that this optimistic conclusion is grossly premature. Judging by the mayhem and death toll the group is inflicting in several countries — including hundreds killed by its militants in just the past few days — al-Qaida appears to be catching a second wind. The dramatic Navy Seal operation […]