If US and British relations were confirmed, we would be faced with a frightening change in the tactics of the Islamic State. If indeed there was the shadow of the Islamic State behind the accident of the Russian airliner in Egypt, we would be facing a new phase of terrorism: a phenomenon that is evolving much more rapidly than it is doing the entire political, economic, social and military asset of the West. And, even today, that US-led coalition, despite the arrival of the Russians, has failed to deter the jihadists.
There is no doubt for the West: a bomb was placed on the Airbus A321-200. How it got on board is another problem, in some ways, the even more obscure point of the whole affair, per se tragic for the death of 224 people on board. For the Russian and Egyptian authorities, talking about a bomb is premature.
To date, we know that 23 minutes after takeoff, the civilian aircraft has lost altitude by going to impact the chaotic Egyptian peninsula of Sinai. But if indeed the Islamic State is responsible for the attack, then we will face the greatest act of transnational terrorism in the history of Sunni extremists. We could be faced with an evolution, clear and limpid, of that terrorism 3.0, just as the current one is defined.
To date, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Tunisia and other Gulf countries, but has never (perhaps avoided) spectacular attacks like those of al-Qaeda. The caliphate has always focused on kidnappings, for example, expanding the "kingdom" and creating affiliations like those that occurred in Egypt and Libya. If the Islamic matrix were confirmed, then we would be faced with the completion of the evolution of the monster: the Islamic State would now be able to carry out attacks on the planet. The organization would assume the capacity of "global terrorism". A metamorphosis, yet another, which would directly challenge the security services of the whole world.
Evolution we said. From cutthroat to tactical. From barbarians to chemists. From fundamentalists to observer purposes. It is a possibility. Spaventa. On the contrary, it terrifies because if the civilians tried only to imagine that the extremists are also conscious and prepared thinking beings (and not barbarians who have discovered fire as we want them to think), the already precarious global order would receive a jolt that would also shake the foundations of status quo.
Despite the claims, the veracity of the group's claims has not yet been proven. On a tactical level, ISIS would not even need to prove to the world that it had shot down that plane: either because doing so would jeopardize other possible attacks on scheduled flights and be because the aura of mystery could do even more proselytes. The attack (if confirmed) would demonstrate the new role of the Islamic State that is trying to "improve" its credentials worldwide. That bomb could be the fatal blow to al-Qaeda. Compared to the latter, the Islamic State has had a territorial advantage, having proclaimed itself between Iraq and Syria (here comes the old conception of State). Hitting that plane would represent that "one-up" more than other global terrorist organizations, al-Qaeda ahead.
If they were really the men of the caliph (or the affiliates), the terrorists would have launched a powerful appeal to the jihadist world. Analyzing the latest messages, there is also a diversification of targets: Russia, United States, England, France. For the first time Israel. Several Gulf countries. It is clearly a strategy that aims at the geographical dispersion of the fundamentalist group: branched in Syria and Iraq, reaching Afghanistan, via Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
The question is only one: could that bomb (if it were so), be able to stimulate more serious and decisive action by the Coalition? Translated: the attack will determine the sending on the field of a land force (which can assume the rank of invasion force)?
Obama trembles at the thought of another Vietnam. Putin, on the other hand, had considered Syria as an opportunity to promote the image of a strong and powerful Russia in a flash war in the world. Both were wrong. And history repeats itself.
