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Is US losing to terror?

Major powers and stakeholders cannot afford to wander in darkness and have to work for a better world to live in.

The State Department’s report on terror activities in the year 2014 is a telling tale of how the world is sliding into chaos and anarchy. It is simply a confession as to how the role of the world policeman, the United States, has been marginalised as terror outfits have mushroomed all over.

The rise of Daesh, and the fact that it has conveniently sidelined Al Qaeda, is an indicator that militancy is one of the biggest challenges of our times. The report says that more and more people — and that too from affluent and educated backgrounds — are joining Daesh, which is too lethal to say the least. It is no more the primitive dogma of people living below the poverty line being mobilised to fight the other’s war.

The report concedes that more than 20,000 foreigners have voluntarily recruited themselves as fighters and travelled to Syria. These statistics exceed the rate of those who travelled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen at any point in the last two decades. That is why the year 2014 saw more than 13,500 terrorist attacks worldwide with the troublesome Middle East as its pinnacle, resulting in around 35,000 deaths.

Political and communal upheavals in Iraq, Nigeria and Afghanistan are largely responsible for this deteriorating situation. The crisis in Ukraine and unrest in parts of Africa also played a major role in heightening tensions. As fatalities rose by 81 per cent, it is suffice to say that the world had never been so unsafe. Major powers and stakeholders cannot afford to wander in darkness and have to work for a better world to live in.