Covid-19 variants affecting global terrorism in different ways

With the spread of the new Covid-19 Omicron variant, scientists have become more involved in the search for a vaccine or medicine to limit the spread of the epidemic.

People's hopes are, meanwhile, concentrated on laboratory results. They look forward to the creativity of scientists in their various specialties.

This comes as extremists work to deal with the pandemic on the ground, considering it a divine curse.

They believe resisting the pandemic via scientific methods is tantamount to objection to God's will.

As governments and scientific institutions seek protection from Covid-19, terrorist organizations work to put themselves in order and lay out a new map of the areas where they should gain a foothold in the coming period.

Expansion

Terrorist groups believe the pandemic is the 'wrath' of God. Some of these groups release publications that call for suspending the scientific search for medicines for the virus.

Inherent in these calls are the extremists' wishes that humanity will go down the road to destruction. This shows their ugly face.

The Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, which is widely known as Etidal, has followed up the activity of four terrorist organizations.

These organizations are ISIS, al-Qaeda, Tahrir al-Sham and Boko Haram.

The center, founded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, documented about 2,000 accounts broadcasting extremist propaganda between April and November of 2021.

It said 782 main accounts of the 2,000 accounts surveyed belonged to these four organizations directly.

The center added that 42 of these accounts were reactivated.

It noted that the accounts also included 934 others that belonged to the sympathizers of these organizations.

With regard to ISIS, the center said, it activated 305 accounts, 241 of which are in Arabic, 20 in Urdu, 9 in Persian, 8 in Turkish, 7 in English, and 20 accounts in different languages.

In Africa, Etidal found 25 accounts that were affiliated with Boko Haram.