RUTHFULLY YOURS

President-elect Trump has the opportunity to make a historic course correction, and to do so in a manner consistent with his administration’s stated goals. By renegotiating the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act, which was first initiated by the Clinton Administration, he can strengthen American exports, create new export-related jobs and foster development-oriented investment on the continent. By reforming U.S. humanitarian aid to Africa, he can cut considerable bureaucratic waste, effectively increasing assistance without upping the cost.

What’s a three-word foreign policy agenda President-elect Donald Trump can pursue that will create American jobs, reduce terrorism, challenge China and set him apart from the failings of his predecessor? Promote African development.

On the one hand, the world’s poorest continent is rife with socioeconomic problems that have paved the way for some lands to become hubs of international terrorism, posing a threat to their own populations as well as to distant countries, including the United States. Of the eighteen ISIS branches deemed fully operational by the National Counterterrorism Center, eight are in Africa. According to the latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index, the world’s deadliest terrorist group by sheer volume of lethality is not ISIS but the Nigerian Boko Haram.

These clear and present threats were built on a continent’s suffering — from example, drought in Somalia and throughout East Africa, and totalitarianism and corruption across the continent — breeding weak, failing and failed states that prove commodious to jihadist operations. Dictators in the mold of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe continue to terrorize their own populations. And the Democratic Republic of Congo risks deteriorating into civil war should the head of state, Joseph Kabila, continue on his path to authoritarian rule. In a country rich in natural resources, the population remains destitute. These diverse factors help explain why the campaign to roll back terror on the continent is inseparable from African development needs.

On the other hand, some parts of Africa are among the world’s bright spots: According to the World Bank, six of the thirteen countries with the highest compound growth annually are on the continent. Among them, Rwanda provides an example of a country that has overcome one of the continent’s bloodiest conflicts in recent memory to empower women, fight corruption and attract international investment. Similar positive trends are visible in the democracies of Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and even terror-plagued Nigeria — all of which are part of a larger pro-American bloc, stretching up to Morocco in the north, that stand with the United States in its struggle against terrorism. For Moroccan King Mohammed VI, the struggle against terrorism is inextricable from the challenge of developing the African continent. He has devised a holistic strategy to pursue both goals in tandem. And multinational bodies on the continent such as the African Union, after decades in a Cold War deep-freeze, are newly invigorated, as these like-minded African nations assert a greater leadership role within them.

One U.S. president in particular made a meaningful contribution to mitigating some of these problems: George W. Bush. He is widely viewed on the continent as a hero: His signature Africa initiative, “the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” (PEPFAR), saved millions of lives, and also drew praise on both sides of the American partisan divide. He launched the single greatest initiative to fight malaria on the continent to date, and, as a private citizen together with his wife Laura, has since been committed to the struggle against cancer in Africa.

The law that the elders of Islam bequeathed to Egypt’s Muslims, holds that all conquered indigenous inhabitants — in Egypt, the infidel Christians — must not be permitted to build churches, must not complain or ask for equal rights, and must be grateful merely for being allowed to live.

In short, not only has nothing changed for Egypt’s Christians; the deadliest church attack in modern history has now just taken place, not under Mubarak or Morsi, but under President el-Sisi. What does he propose to do about it?

The worst attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in recent years occurred yesterday, Sunday, December 11, 2016. St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, packed with worshipers celebrating Sunday mass, was bombed; at least 27 churchgoers, mostly women and children, were killed and 65 severely wounded. As many of the wounded are in critical condition, the death toll is expected to rise.

As usual, witnesses say that state security was not present, and that police took an inordinate amount of time to arrive after the explosion. Preliminary investigations point to a bomb placed inside an unattended woman’s purse on one of the rear pews of the women’s section.

The interior of St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, after the bombing of December 11, 2016. (Image source: AP video screenshot)

Mutilated bodies were strewn along the floor of the cathedral. “I found bodies, many of them women, lying on the pews. It was a horrible scene,” said one witness.

“I saw a headless woman being carried away,” said Mariam Shenouda.

“Everyone was in a state of shock. We were scooping up people’s flesh off the floor. There were children. What have they done to deserve this? I wish I had died with them instead of seeing these scenes.”

In death toll and severity, this attack surpasses what was formerly considered the deadliest church attack in Egypt: a New Year’s Day bombing of a church in Alexandria that killed 23 people in 2011.

This summer, the so-called Islamic State published issue 15 of its online magazine Dabiq. In what has become a standard feature, it ran an interview with an ISIS foreign fighter. “When I was around twenty years old I would come to accept the religion of truth, Islam,” said Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, recalling how he had turned away from the Christian faith he was born into.

At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

For well over a year and a half now, Raqqa, the so-called stronghold of the Islamic State in Syria, has been subjected to sustained aerial bombardment by U.S., French, and Russian war planes. In recent months, the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition has reportedly killed more than 10,000 ISIS fighters, including key figures among ISIS’s leadership, most notably its senior strategist and spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. It has also launched an offensive, now in its second month, on the group’s Iraqi capital of Mosul. According to estimates by American officials, ISIS has lost about 45 percent of its territory in Syria and 20 percent in Iraq since it rose to prominence in the summer of 2014. At the same time, the flow of foreign fighters to the caliphate has plummeted, from a peak of 2,000 crossing the Turkey-Syria border each month in late 2014 to as few as 50 today. Yet still there are people making the long and precarious 6,000-mile journey from Trinidad to Syria in an effort to live there. Just three days before the release of Dabiq 15, eight were detained in southern Turkey, attempting to cross into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. All were female, and they included children.

In a recent paper in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, John McCoy and W. Andy Knight posit that between 89-125 Trinidadians—or Trinis, to use the standard T&T idiom—have joined ISIS. Roodal Moonilal, an opposition Member of Parliament in T&T, insists that the total number is considerably higher, claiming that, according to a leaked security document passed on to him, over 400 have left since 2013. Even the figure of 125 would easily place Trinidad, with a population of 1.3 million, including 104,000 Muslims, top of the list of Western countries with the highest rates of foreign-fighter radicalization; it’s by far the largest recruitment hub in the Western Hemisphere, about a four and a half hour flight from the U.S. capital. How did this happen? CONTINUE AT SITE

I recently met a woman who works with the International Christian Consulate (ICC), an organisation founded in 2015 to provide a “physical consulate” for Christians in the Middle East. As well as telling me about the sexual assaults (assaults, plural) she herself had endured at the hands of migrants on the streets of Athens, she pointed me to a report that the ICC has produced detailing the truly shocking treatment Christians are subjected to by Muslims in refugee camps across Europe.

The report is entitled ‘A Survey of Christian Refugees in Greece to Determine their Condition as a Minority Group within the Refugee Population’ and provides data taken from a sample group consisting of 65 Christian refugees at an un-named camp in Attica, Greece (60% male, 40% female). Respondents were 94% Iranian Christian, 6% Afghan Christian. Many were apostates who had lived covertly as Christians in their home countries. Their primary reason for leaving was persecution as a result of their faith.

This survey revealed many shocking realities, but the most shocking is this: Christians are terrified in refugee camps and try to hide their religion. This is solely due to violent attacks by Muslim refugees.

Conditions in the camps are generally dreadful and one doctor reported an increase in tuberculosis. Reports of ethnic gang-violence were also numerous. The UN, the report claims, is “notable by its absence. Not a single respondent .. had received any aid or support from the UN and laughed when asked how the UN had helped them since they left their home countries. One respondent answered by genuinely asking “what’s the UN?””

An American doctor working with Christian refugees said “these people are seriously threatened, because they are forthright about their faith, and that is extraordinarily dangerous in these camps”. He also claimed that the camp at which he worked “would have been fine if you were a Muslim. I wouldn’t even think of going there as a Christian trying to live there…. If you’re a Christian in there, you can forget about it – it would be really dangerous”. He added “unfortunately, they left Iran and showed up in Iran. These camps are like mini Iran or mini Afghanistan, with the same persecution as what they left in their home countries. I can see that even from what I’m looking at medically”.

Another volunteer testified that “Christian women had been raped by Afghan Islamists in the camps”. This anonymous witness also complained that the “use of Muslim Afghan translators by the UN and other agencies [was] making it difficult for Christian refugees to be open about their situations when applying for asylum”.

The report is littered with examples of Muslim violence against Christians, including testimony that Islamists in the camps warn that they will be killed. A staggering 87% of respondents had either witnessed this or experienced it first hand. Threats of death to apostates are common and Christians take these seriously. Gangs of Islamists were reported to have deliberately singled out Christians for violent attack: “We saw fanatic Muslims fighting against Christians. There were so many of them I couldn’t count how many there were – they purposefully came together to attack Christians”.

Two schoolgirls carried out simultaneous suicide bombings in the Nigerian town of Madagali. The attacks on a crowded market left at least 56 people killed and dozens wounded.

The attacks bore the marking of the Islamist terror organization Boko Haram, known for targeting civilians in northeast Nigeria as well as in neighboring Cameroon and Niger.

Although attacks by the group have been less frequent in recent months as the Nigerian army has been attempting a push back to its original stronghold in the enormous Sambia forest, this latest attack shows the group – which pledged its allegiance to Islamic State – is far from defeated.

Attacks by school girls are one of the group’s latest and most sinister operational surprises. The girls, many of them kidnapped by the group, will volunteer for such missions as a way to end their horrific lives under captivity, which include relentless hunger and sexual abuse.

One girl, 16, identified only as Fati, who was kidnapped from her village but managed to escape, told CNN, “They came to us to pick us. They would ask, ‘Who wants to be a suicide bomber?’ The girls would shout, ‘me, me, me.’ They were fighting to do the suicide bombings.

“It was just because they want to run away from Boko Haram. If they give them a suicide bomb, then maybe they would meet soldiers, tell them, ‘I have a bomb on me’ and they could remove the bomb. They can run away.”

ISTANBUL—Turkey declared a day of mourning after two suicide bombers killed at least 38 civilians and police officers deployed to guard a Saturday evening match by Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts that occurred two hours after the game outside the team’s stadium on one of Istanbul’s major waterfront thoroughfares and urban parks. But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Sunday that evidence suggested the blasts were the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey, the U.S. and Europe deem a terrorist group.

Turkey has been rocked by several terrorist bombings this year by attackers believed to be members of Islamic State and by splinter groups of the PKK, which has been fighting for decades against Turkish security forces for autonomy in the country’s Kurdish-majority southeastern regions.

The Interior Ministry said early Sunday that at least 13 people had been detained in relation to the weekend bombings that also wounded more than 150.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the nation in a televised address that Turkey would fight “the scourge of terrorism to the end,” and promised that the attackers would pay a “heavy price.”

Most spectators had already left the sleek Vodafone Arena when the blasts occurred around 10:30 local time Saturday night. Large numbers of police routinely assigned to the normally sold-out matches remained in the area, however, as did many die-hard fans enjoying the unusually mild late autumn weather.

The force of the explosions shook buildings almost a half mile away from the stadium along the heavily traveled road that leads from Istanbul’s waterfront road to Taksim Square, and could be heard across the Bosporus, according to witnesses.

The first attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a group of riot police who had assembled on the west side of the stadium to wait for transport back to their barracks.

CAIRO—A bomb exploded at Cairo’s main Coptic Christian cathedral compound on Sunday morning, killing at least 25 people and wounding another 49, in the largest attack on a Christian house of worship in Egypt since 2011.

The blast went off on the women’s side of the worshiping hall in the small church of St. Peter and St. Paul, attached to the Coptic cathedral in the capital’s Abassyia district, state media reported.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was quickly condemned by the Egyptian government and the head of Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque, the seat of Sunni Islamic learning and one of the world’s oldest institutions of religious teaching.

Survivors described the church as being packed with worshipers during a national holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth. The blast shattered the silence of the hall as those gathered listened to a sermon partly honoring a deceased church member.

“The turnout was bigger than normal,” said Tahani Gabriel, 65 years old, who sat in the third row of the church. Her cousin Souad Atta, the widow of the man mourned, was in the first row and was killed, Ms. Gabriel said.

The death toll is expected to increase, and most casualties were women, Deputy Health Minister Sherief Wadee told state television. Egypt’s top prosecutor ordered all nearby surveillance cameras be reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, state media said. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Journal is reporting that the Pentagon is putting together options for the Trump Administration to intensify the campaign against Islamic State, and right on time. ISIS jihadists re-entered the ancient city of Palmyra on Sunday, driving out Syrian government troops despite Russian bombing. President Obama asserted last week that the campaign against Islamic State is making steady progress, but the militants have other ideas.

Meanwhile, terrorists struck no fewer than four cities around the world in an especially murderous weekend. The carnage began Saturday afternoon in the Yemeni port of Aden. A suicide bomber detonated his vest near a barracks where troops had gathered to pick up their paychecks, killing 48. A pair of suicide bombers attacked Istanbul’s Vodafone Arena in Turkey the same day after a soccer match. At least 38 died, most of them police officers guarding the arena. A pair of suicide bombers, almost certainly the work of ISIS’s Boko Haram affiliate, maimed 17 in Nigeria on Sunday. And in Egypt, a nail-bomb at Cairo’s St. Mark’s Cathedral killed at least 25 Coptic Christian worshippers. Though no one had taken credit as we went to press, Egypt is besieged by more than one Islamist group. The Trump Administration is inheriting a dangerous world.

Somewhere in the Kremlin Vladimir Putin must be laughing. The Russian strongman almost certainly sought to undermine public confidence in American democracy this year, and as the Obama Administration leaves town it is playing into his hands.

That’s the real story behind the weekend reports that U.S. intelligence services have concluded that Russia intervened to assist Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The stories are attributed to “senior administration” officials who won’t go on the record but assert murky details that are impossible to verify without seeing the evidence.

Mr. Trump is denouncing the claims with his usual subtlety, but he has a point about their timing and nature. “I don’t want anyone hacking us,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News Sunday, while blaming the leaks on Democrats. “I think it’s ridiculous” and “I don’t believe it.”

Democrats are still in shock from their defeat, and many want to add the Kremlin to FBI Director James Comey, fake news and the Electoral College as excuses that cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s victory.