"Asia is the new ground zero for Islamist terror" Topic

"The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka rank among the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history, and underscore the metastasising scourge of Islamist violence in Asia. Radical Islamist groups, some affiliated with larger extremist networks, have been quietly gaining influence in an arc of countries extending from the Maldivian to the Philippine archipelagos, and the threat they pose can no longer be ignored.

In fact, the grisly Sri Lankan bombings are a reminder that Asia—not the Middle East—is the region most afflicted by terrorist violence. Home to the vast majority of the world's Muslims, it is also host to multiple ‘terrorist safe havens', owing to the rise of grassroots radical movements and years of complacency on the part of policymakers…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Geographically speaking, much of the "middle east" is in Asia, so…yes.

Rob

Some of it has been hidden in the news where it either gets glossed over and/or described with very generic terms. Most don't know of the attacks that occurred in China during the Olympics, but, if you worked in security circles you saw the reports.

I disagree with the premise that Asia is the region most afflicted by terrorists, but it certainly seems to be right up there with the M.E..

Governments in the region attempt to downplay, and/or totally ignore and cover-up the danger.

MM, wasn't aware, or don't recall that there were attacks during the China Olympics, but I'm not surprised.

Back in 2015 I visited Thailand soon after a terrorist bombing in Bangkok. The incident quickly disappeared from Western news. link

The culprits have still not been punished for this, but I have to hand it to the Thais for cleaning up the scene so thoroughly that one would never know anything happened there by the time I visited the Erawan Shrine. I expected the nearby building facades and/or the shrine to show some damage, but I didn't see any.

In another odd coincidence I once visited Marawi on Mindanao, but ten years before the 2017 battle between Islamic rebels and Philippines security forces.

Autocratic Asian countries control the news much better than the West. They take care of their own "internal problems" without fanfare and deny the terrorists any ammunition for propaganda purposes.