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  • Al Qaeda has dominated the narrative surrounding terrorism for the majority of the post 9/11

  • era. Recently, that narrative has expanded to include groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

  • But even that is just a fraction of the story. Terrorism is an enormous and pervasive problem

  • worldwide. So to illustrate that point, here are a few terrorist groups that have been

  • active this year, that the general public may not even be aware of.

  • Al Shabaab (shah-bob). Last month this Somalian terrorist group killed 50 people in a single

  • attack on a Kenyan resort town. Some of the people killed were watching the World Cup

  • at the time, so the story did make it onto a few US news feeds. But the group has existed

  • since the mid-2000's, they've been affiliated with Al Qaeda since 2010, and is the target

  • of on-going US drone strikes. But still, the general public is largely unaware of this

  • group.

  • Another recently active terrorist group is The League Of The Righteous in Iraq. They're

  • an extremist Shia group that killed between 27 and 34 people in a brothel in Baghdad last

  • month, reportedly scrawling "this is the fate of any prostitute" on a door of the building.

  • This made some headlines in the US, because of the brothel angle, but the general public

  • continues to be largely unaware of this group.

  • Finally, a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Party in the Xinjiang (shin-jung)

  • region of China, this past April killed 4 people and injured another 79 in one organized

  • attack, involving knifings and bombing. This group is recognized by the US and UN as a

  • terrorist group, but they aren't new. Some reports claim that they've committed well

  • over 200 terrorist attacks in the 1990's alone.

  • So, why haven't we heard of these terrorist groups or the hundreds of others out there?

  • The sad truth is, we don't generally hear about terrorist groups from poor or war-torn

  • nations. We also don't hear about the smaller groups in places like Iraq, that already have

  • bigger, more well-known terrorist groups. And we don't generally hear about those from

  • world powers with tight media restrictions, like China or Russia - which by the way was

  • hit with at least 31 terror attacks in 2013. Terrorism is a huge global problem, and it's

  • gotten so big that we're not even able to keep up with all of it.

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Al Qaeda has dominated the narrative surrounding terrorism for the majority of the post 9/11

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