ABSTRACT
Terrorism, defined as violent actions carried out by groups or states to intimidate unarmed populations or governments into submitting to their demands, has existed since time immemorial. Fifteen years after those attacks, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have now branched out and, in part, have transformed themselves into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL/ISIS); have seized vast territories; have declared an Islamic Caliphate, and have vowed to conquer lands beyond the Fertile Crescent. While the international outrage over ISIS's campaign of terror was triggered by successive videotaped beheadings of less than a handful of Westerners and subsequent shooting sprees of a few hundred civilians in the US and Europe, the vast majority of ISIS's victims have been and still are Syrian and Iraqi civilians, who are by no means nor in any manner responsible for the Western "War on Terror" nor for any of the previous Gulf wars or the Arab–Israeli wars.
