Magazine says despite war on terror, world faces expanded threat

Published: 2004-09-30

ROME (CNS) -- After a three-year "war on terrorism," the world is facing an expanded terrorist threat by groups that seem to have lost all sense of humanity, a leading Jesuit magazine said. Although Islamic terrorists have been unable to reach major objectives, they have kept up a steady stream of vicious attacks ranging from Spain to Saudi Arabia to southern Russia, said the magazine, La Civilta Cattolica, in an editorial to be published in its Oct. 2 edition. The journal's commentaries are considered reflective of Vatican thinking because they are approved before publication by officials at the Vatican Secretariat of State. The editorial said a "tragic line ... the line of Islamic terrorism" runs from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States through subsequent attacks in Indonesia, Tunisia, Spain, Turkey, Morocco and Moscow. It said the most recent addition was Beslan, Russia, where pro-Chechen rebels killed more than 400 people in a school. That does not count the innumerable attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places of open conflict, the editorial said. "This means that three years of fighting Islamic terrorism have produced few results. The heads of al-Qaida have not been captured ... and if many terrorists of the middle or lower level have been killed or captured, probably a greater number have taken their place," it said. "The United States has not succeeded in defeating terrorism; on the contrary, with the war on Iraq, the United States stimulated its birth and growth in a country -- Iraq -- where before the war it did not exist," it said.

Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .