A first installment on account with terrorism

Against this background, it was logical to assume the fingers of the occupation were behind the terrorist operation, as if they were responding to His Majesty the King and saying to the West: This is what Christians get in the King's country. But this is one thing, and adopting the conspiracy theory that intends to exempt ISIS from responsibility and hang it on external forces is another. This is an old debate that was about to be renewed had it not been for the immediate exposure of the identity of the perpetrators, and then quickly reaching those who stand behind them across the border. I remember that the first reaction from some voices among us to the hotel bombings exempted Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers from responsibility, and blamed it on agents of Zionism and Western forces hostile to Islam to distort its image. We said that agents get paid to carry out terrorist operations and do not sacrifice their lives.

It is true that the phenomenon of religious extremism and terrorism serves the occupying enemy and everyone behind it, and it is certainly infiltrated by them financially and through intelligence. But it is primarily a local intellectual, political, and social phenomenon, whose context and history we know. It was indeed used and openly supported in the conflict with the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union, and the war in Afghanistan, until it turned back on our countries and reached its peak with ISIS. We in Jordan had to see the martyr hero pilot Muath Al-Kasasbeh burned alive so that the voices playing the role of camouflage and covering up the dirty laundry would be silenced. Today, after the remnants of the fading ISIS have returned to strike with malice and filth that did not cross the imagination in the core of the national fabric, we see voices appearing surreptitiously and shyly to shuffle the cards and shake the national consensus. They will develop their discourse to curb the official and popular momentum to confront the phenomenon in its intellectual and social roots.

It is not only the task of the state, but of society with all its political, cultural, and intellectual components, to participate in a sustainable strategy to dry up the sources of obscurantism, extremism, and terrorism, in parallel with the security effort to eradicate the remnants of ISIS from among us.

Militarily, Jordan has a direct account to settle with the forces of terrorism abroad that attacked our country and the lives of our citizens, and yesterday's strike is a first installment on account.