How is the weather today where you are?

Cold or hot?

Cold is cool.

Hot — you have to get away from it or keep very still.

Or put out the fire.

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Afghanistan

A New Season of Fighting in Afghanistan – Video – TIME.com – 8/30/2013

Freed Taliban commander now leads the fight in northern Afghan province – Threat Matrix – 9/18/2013.

Egypt

Egypt continues fighting terrorism: 9 militants killed in Sinai – Israel News, Ynetnews – 9/10/2013.

Egyptian court bans Muslim Brotherhood | Reuters – 9/23/2013.

In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood’s social work returns to the shadows – The Washington Post – 9/27/2013.

Iraq

Wave of car bombs in Iraq heightens fears of increased sectarian violence | euronews, world news – 9/30/2013.

Lebanon

Lebanese fighting in Syria urged to return home – UPI.com

Mali

Mali says Sahel needs rapid reaction force to fight Islamists – Africa – Angola Press – ANGOP – 9/27/2013.

Suicide bombers attack Mali’s Timbuktu – Africa – Al Jazeera English – 9/29/2013.

Fighting Flares Between Mali Army, Rebels in Kidal – ABC News – 9/30/2013.

Nigeria

Islamist insurgents kill 40 students in Nigeria college dorm | Inquirer News – 9/30/2013.

Pakistan

Sunday morning bomb at Christian church in Pakistan kills at least 75 – World News – 9/22/2013

At least 33 killed as car bomb hits market in Pakistan – World News – 9/28/2013.

Sudan

Sudan Revolts: Internet Blackouts and Dead Protesters on the Streets | VICE United States – 9/28/2013.

Meanwhile in Sudan: Fuel riots, a hiring spree of ex-Soviet air mercenaries and preparations for war | World Tribune – 9/30/2013.

Sudan’s Government Isn’t Going Down Without a Fight | VICE United States – 9/30/2013

Syria

Al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda branch, and the Free Syrian Army jointly seize border crossing – Washington Times – 8/30/2013.

Islamist fighters in Syria shove US-friendly rebels aside (+video) – CSMonitor.com – 9/26/2013.

Yemen

AQAP fighters storm Yemen Army base in east – Threat Matrix – 9/30/2013.

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Including Sudan in the briefest survey of an “Islamic Small Wars” campus may be a little unfair.

Although the white on black, Arab Muslim on animist warfare of the Darfur Genocide seems to have faded from immediate presence, the eruption and then simmering of revolution in this most Arab Muslim of African states seems in line with other states in the sweep of the Arab Spring.  As with those others too, internal cultural, economic, and political behavior have brought their response from powerfully governing global elements, in this instance the International Monetary Fund and its encouragement of “austerity measures” to address Sudan’s reduced cash flow, a consequence partially of the liberation of South Sudan from Khartoum’s yoke and the transfer or related oil wealth.

The man on the street may not get all of the connections; the man on the street in South Sudan has got problems too: Over 300 killed, thousands uprooted in bout of South Sudan fighting | Reuters – 8/8/2013.

State subsidizing of essentials is also a complex subject that seems to have contributed to the string of breakdowns in Arab states struggling with economic and social issues as well as “Islamism” and the phenomenon associated with Al Qaeda and equally murderous affiliates and related organizations.

* * *

Afghanistan contributed its “A” to the above alphabetized list, but seems quiet today.  As suggest by linked content, the fall drifts into “fall back” for the Taliban and so the direct expression of their Islamist pique falls off for the winter.

With Iraq, however, today’s bombing report seems indicative of activity every bit as barbaric as last week’s attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.  Less personal, perhaps, each explosion nonetheless belies death and maiming in an instant without abetting change of any kind.

All of that remains plain murder in the first degree and nothing more.

That it goes on and on as it does is insensate, accounted for perhaps by only “social grammar” — earliest learned attitudes and beliefs about others established in infancy’s language acquisition phase as a base for subsequent social knowledge and values — and deeply malignant narcissism preceded, probably, by traumatic narcissistic mortification.

All of that’s nice to know, but it doesn’t ease the mind short of suggesting that the natural impulse to invent language as well as live with it may produce a countervailing progressive cultural evolution.

Poetry matters.

* * *

Mali’s roiling today from state weakness resulting in coup and both contested and ungoverned space.  It’s fighting too is not particularly shaded by the Islamist political bent that had invaded its northern tier earlier this year in the form of Boko Haram, drawing in French forces to expel them.  Nonetheless, Mali’s shifting political sands seems to sustain an atmosphere conducive to the Al Qaeda minded (Africa desert helps breed radicals, from Al Shabab to Boko Haram to Mr. Marlboro – CSMonitor.com – 9/29/2013).

Related: U.S. Reaches Deal With Niger to Fight Africa Extremists – Bloomberg – 2/29/2013.

* * *

For sheer wear-you-down, Pakistan’s suffering seems the most profound.

I have witnessed through online media the suffering of Pakistanis at the hands of assassins and bombers, radicalized students — the curtain rose for me on Lal Masjic in 2007 — and Taliban and Al Qaeda brigades for about six years:

The assault took place at the Crime Investigation Department headquarters in a highly secured area of Karachi in Sindh province. Two vehicles, and not one as initially reported, were used in the assault, according to witness statements and closed circuit television footage analyzed by Pakistani investigators.

The first team of attackers dismounted from a jeep and attacked the guards at the front gate, killing them and clearing the path so that the second truck, which was packed with an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of explosives, could enter the compound.

Brigade 313 and Taliban team up for Karachi assault – The Long War Journal – 11/12/2010.

More recent (15 days ago): Roadside bomb death of Pakistan Major General could derail Taliban peace talks – Asia – World – The Independent – 9/15/2013.

Wait a day or two, seldom more than one week, and there will be another atrocious attack to report out of Pakistan.

Imran Khan’s overtures toward the Taliban combined with Nawaz Sharif’s responsible approach to relations with India have signaled combined weakness with aversion to the Taliban’s purposes.  Those are not coming hither to Islamabad, and Pakistanis themselves may be turning to face their own Taliban persecutors.

Blasts erode support for peace overtures – thenews.com.pk – 1/30/2013

One would expect as much, but one reading only in English publications serving Pakistan’s cultural elite, whatever its numbers and strengths may be, may not tell a whole story.

* * *

If the “Islamic Small Wars” — my coinage, and I’ve been digging on it a while — were an acknowledged word war ( instead of “oh my, that place too?”), it would not look good today from the western perspective.  The sub-state transnational spread of Islamist violence continues with weak or unprepared regions yielding innocent victims and their defenders to it while more secure parties seem unable to shut down movements and their drift with finality.

If the numbers hold up, over this week and the next, another 100 or so less involved and wholly unsuspecting Pakistanis or Iraqis (if combined, set the figure above 200) will die by way of an attack or explosion set in motion or set off in association with Islam.

Whether that association is misguided or nominal, cynical or sincere doesn’t matter because it is all so wrong, it stinks so badly, it fails so miserably in the care of humanity and reverence for God that no righteous Muslim can stand it who — turning out less than righteous — is not directly of the God Mob or, alternatively, not convinced that he might not identity with it himself and benefit from the exhibition of barbarism and any related means of acquiring thereby superficial power over others in the cause of glory unto himself.

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