Islamic State: the terror group’s second act

Governments have become more adept at heading off terrorist plots, said Eliot Wilson in The i Paper, but random vehicle attacks such as the one in New Orleans, or the one less than a fortnight earlier on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, pose a particular challenge. All lone-wolf attackers need in such cases is “determination and blood lust”, and there’s not much we can do to stop them short of pedestrianising all urban areas and banning public gatherings.

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Islamic State
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Syria

On 20 March 2019, President Trump proudly brandished a sheet of paper before White House reporters, said Adrian Blomfield in The Daily Telegraph. On it were two maps of Syria. The first, swathed in red blotches, showed how much territory Islamic State had held in the country when he became president. The second, almost perfectly white map, showed what the jihadist group now held: just one tiny area near the town of Baghuz. And that, boasted Trump, would disappear very soon.

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