Istanbul has now joined Riyadh — and Casablanca and Jakarta and Karachi and Mombasa, among others — as a new theater of al-Qaeda’s global jihad. A brace of suicide bombings killed some 27 people at the city’s British consulate and the headquarters of the London-based bank HSBC on Thursday, following on last Saturday’s attacks on two synagogues that killed 25 people. The attacks, for which al-Qaeda affiliated groups have claimed responsibility are a reminder both of the group’s resilience, but also of its new form. And the fact that Thursday’s targets were British served a dual purpose: They sent a defiant message to Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush, meeting in London, that al-Qaeda has survived the U.S.-led onslaught; and they also issue a violent challenge to the status quo in Turkey, a relentlessly secular Muslim state affiliated with NATO and allied with Israel, and in the process of joining the European Union. Full Story
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