Richard Fernandez calls them the people of the shadows, the ordinary people terrorized by their own “freedom fighters”:
What’s sometimes overlooked in the news coverage of “militant” organizations like Hamas is the role they play in oppressing their own people. Historically terrorist organizations have had to kill many more of their own people than the enemy, for the simple reason that maintaining control over their population, not defeating the enemy army, is their political priority. Rarely have the absurdist consequences of this been so clearly demonstrated than by events in Mosul.
A suicide bomber on a bicycle in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul targeted a protest condemning Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, killing one civilian and wounding 16 on Sunday, police said.“One civilian was killed and 16 were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up when he rode his bicycle into the middle of an anti-Israeli demonstration in the city,” local police Major Wael Rasheed told AFP….
Mosul, the country’s second largest city, is believed to be the last urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has been behind hundreds of bombings since the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
It makes sense in a bizarre kind of way. In the terrorist calculus, attacking one crowd is as good as another. It garners the same amount of publicity and sows the same amount of terror; greater even for being so unpredictable. To paraphrase Crosby, Stills and Nash — when you can’t kill the one you hate, then kill the one you’re with.