The French Prime Minister said terrorism was going to be part of French people’s lives for a long time after a Tunisian man attacked crowd in Nice. The French authorities identified the attacker as Mohamed Lahoualej Bouhlel.
Reports say the man was also shooting through the window until police officers finally killed him. 84 people died including women and children, and more than 200 were injured. Later, ISIS took the credit for the incident. This kind of attacks have been particularly deadly in France, and last year, the central government imposed a state of emergency due to the terrorist attacks in November 2015.
However, that did not keep Bouhlel from tainting one of the dearest celebrations in the country with the seed of hate. As a result, many people are wounded and angry blaming, among other things, the police for not being able to stop this from happening. The site of the attack was re-opened so people can go and pay their tributes, and many of them are writing hateful messages in the exact place Bouhlel was shot down.
Waging a war on terrorism is not being effective
Terrorism is very useful because officials are trying to wage war on it. The problem is that its objective is to spread hate and confusion which means even if an extremist is killed in the act, the idea moving him is still alive, and probably was fueled by his death.
People are very frustrated and angry with police officers for not preventing it, but the attack in Nice is especially unpredictable. Mohamed Bouhlel was a 31-year-old man from Tunisia. He had lived in the city for years without showing any signs of radicalization. However, he wasn’t a stranger to the law. He had been accused and convicted of several violent crimes. In 2016 only, he was in a courtroom twice in January and in May. The authorities say they never saw a connection between the man and terrorism, so they suspect he was radicalized in a very short period.
The war on terror is useful in the Middle East where the Jihadists are losing ground every day, but not without taking its toll on the civilians who are living the horrors of an armed conflict by force. To respond the international coalition, Al-Qaeda has been urging “lone wolves” to kill civilians in the countries that are supporting the war effort against the Caliphate.
It is important to understand people that access terrorist websites, and in general, consume this kind of information, are not regular citizens. There are a lot of factors that can make a person more susceptible to this sort of recruitment tools, and the results are clear, individuals that have never shown any sign of being extremists doing horrible things out of the blue. They are sleeping cells that are impossible to detect through conventional methods.
“Terrorism will be part of our daily lives for a long time,” said Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France.
Source: ABC News