The UAE stands firm against the global scourge of terrorism and is an important part of the international fight-back against the evil murderers who rejoice in the deaths of innocent men, women and children. Within hours of the terrible mass murder in Paris leaving at least 127 dead at more than six sites, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan expressed the UAE’s complete solidarity with France at this difficult time, and its support for all measures aimed at fighting and eradicating terrorism.
The random horror of this latest brutality reminds the world of the attacks on the Parisian magazine Charlie Hebdo in January this year, but many thousands of other victims across the world have also been killed in the global assault by organised terror.
Last Thursday there were two horrific attacks in Beirut, killing 43 and leaving 240 wounded, and in Baghdad on Friday, 19 people died in a suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque. Both these attacks were claimed by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
The fight against terror has both immediate and long-term components. It is essential that the French authorities have all the help they can get to find and bring to trial the murderers who committed these ghastly acts. And the same applies around the world where other states have less coherent institutions and are struggling to contain the threat of terror.
There also needs to be a vigorous and sustained assault on the places where these terrorists have claimed control of territory and where these malevolent leaders use their freedom to act without legal constraint to train terrorists and brainwash doubters into being ready to commit these dastardly crimes.
There is also a long-term requirement to regain the initiative in the intellectual battle to confine this minuscule group of terrorists to the necessary obscurity that they deserve and reinforce the refusal to accept that they represent Islam in any way at all.
