The saddest image of the day: Syrian girl "surrenders"

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How the West nurtured radical Islam

Tunisia. France. Kuwait. Somalia. The wave of deadly attacks by Islamist terrorists that swept through four countries in three continents last Friday (June 26) killed over a hundred people, including Indian citizens.

In the Somalia attack, carried out by the al-Shabaab terror group, one of the militants killed was a Briton called Thomas Evans. Known as Abdul Hakim after he converted to Islam, Evans represents an ominous trend of Europeans being indoctrinated by radical Islam.

The attack on a Shia mosque in Kuwait was carried out by a Saudi citizen, Fahad Suleiman Abdul Mohsen al-Gabbaa. It was one of the first terror attacks by a quasi-ISIS affiliate in the oil-rich, Sunni-majority Gulf sheikhdom.

After its reverses in Kobane and Tikrit, the Islamic State (ISIS) has turned to coordinated terror strikes in multiple locations. As ever, most of the victims are other Muslims. ISIS continues to attract "white" fighters form Muslim Europe - Chechnya, the Balkans and parts of Western Europe.

Why has a terrorist group like ISIS with at most 50,000 active fighters been able to defy American, British, French and Arab military firepower? The short answer: the West laid the foundation for ISIS. It is now reaping the whirlwind.

Two US presidents, father George H Bush and son George W Bush, between 1991 and 2008 destroyed the Iraqi army, turned a blind eye to radical Saudi Wahhabism and created a huge power vacuum in the Middle East. By 2011 over 1,00,000 US troops had withdrawn from Iraq, leaving the country without law, order, army or government. Read more here.