Terror for Profit: High Tide

high Tide:

When the highest part, or crest of the wave, reaches a particular location, high tide occurs.

Shamima Begum, the ISIS child bride, is never far from media reporting in the UK.

Leaving her schooling behind at 15 she travelled to Syria and married an Islamic State fighter. From that point, what she did remains shrouded in the chaos of the Caliphate, but she had her British citizenship stripped in 2019 and remains in legal limbo while abandoned and sleeping in a tent in Northern Syria.

Begum’s story is a useful individualized morality tale that provides an insight into the rise and fall of the Islamic State, which attracted fighters and supporters from across the world to their new ‘Islamic Utopia.’

In Part 3 of the book, Terror for Profit, I illustrate the backgrounds of these supporters, the naivety of some, and what attracted them all to what became a hell on earth. I point out the direct parallels with the historic emergence of mercenaries and, as no author has done before, I pinpoint the conditions that gave rise to their mirror image and adversary in the shape of the Wagner Group.

Terror and crime were never far from the agenda of the Islamic State or Wagner Group, evil twins born in the crucible of 21st century post-state conflict.