A Leader of Compassion and Humility

Today, the world mourns the loss of a beacon of hope and love, Pope Francis. Known for his deep compassion and unwavering commitment to social justice, Pope Francis touched the lives of millions around the globe. His dedication to the poor and marginalized set an example for us all, reminding us of the power of love and empathy.

A Legacy of Unity

Pope Francis was not just a leader of the Catholic Church, but a unifier across religions and cultures. His efforts to foster dialogue and understanding among different faiths will always be remembered as a cornerstone of his papacy. He believed in the strength of unity and the beauty of diversity.

Remembering His Words

“The true strength of a nation is not measured by how many powerful weapons it possesses, but by how it treats its weakest members.”

These words from Pope Francis will continue to inspire and guide us in the pursuit of a kinder, more inclusive world.

A Call to Action

Let us honor Pope Francis’s memory by continuing his work: advocating for peace, justice, and compassion. May we all strive to walk the path he paved with humility and grace.

Join us in celebrating a life devoted to love and service. Rest in peace, Pope Francis. Your legacy will continue to light our way.

We no longer fight wars. We stream them.

Modern conflict has shifted shape—not merely in weaponry or geography, but in feeling. Increasingly, the battlefield is a narrative. And those who wage war in its shadowed corners, be they jihadists, lone wolves, and foreign proxies, understand this all too well.

This is the essence of liminal warfare, a term crystallized by counterinsurgency expert Dr. David Kilcullen to describe forms of conflict that operate beneath the threshold of conventional war. These are battles fought not in declared theatres, but in the informational fog between peace and open violence. In this liminal zone, war is unclaimed, unattributed, and asymmetric. It’s not about the territory you hold but the attention you hijack. A new generation of terrorists have demonstrated that they have embraced this dynamic.

Liminal warfare is not new—but its tools are. Today’s insurgents, terrorists, and hybrid actors do not merely fight to kill; they fight to be seen, and more crucially, to be shared. Mass media, especially the digital, mobile, algorithmic kind, has become both battlefield and weapon. The meme, the livestream, the viral clip: these are no longer collateral to political violence; they are constitutive of it.

The Logic of ISIS’ Aestheticized Violence

One of the most chilling expressions of this was the Islamic State’s digital campaign of aestheticized brutality from 2013 – 2017.

The function of ISIS’ execution videos, such as the killings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, functioned not merely as propaganda or deterrence, but as performative acts of sovereignty. These carefully scripted spectacles converted individual acts of death into visual dramas of humiliation, vengeance, and legitimacy. The hostages’ orange jumpsuits evoked Guantánamo; their scripted confessions accused America of its own crimes; and their beheadings, conspicuously edited offscreen, invited a visceral audience ritual of suspense, complicity, and horror.

ISIS wasn’t just killing. It was staging sovereignty, casting itself as the new arbiter of life and death in a post-Westphalian, digitally mediated Caliphate. Understanding this, and not inscribing our own western logic, is the key to understanding the alternate logic of modern terror groups. The goal wasn’t just recruitment or terror, though it achieved both. The goal was inversion; to symbolically emasculate the West, to portray the United States not as a hegemon, but as a paper tiger—impotent, criminal, and absurd. Here, what mattered was not the battlefield, but the framing.

The Weaponization of Attention

Scholars have coined the term ‘digital time’ to describe the accelerated, affective temporality in which these videos circulated. The endless, on-demand replay of brutal images collapses the space between event and response. It forces the viewer to begin ‘thinking less and feeling more’, and in doing so, becomes the default mode of online engagement with such groups.

And therein lies the mechanism of modern terror: not just killing, but curating the spectacle of killing; not just shock, but ritualized viewing that creates emotional publics, radicalized identities, and new interpretive communities. The audience becomes part of the performance. This is no longer about mass armies but mass network effects.

The Liminal Mode of Terror

Here, Kilcullen’s concept of liminal warfare becomes key to understanding this phenomenon. Liminal actors—ISIS, stochastic terrorists, proxy saboteurs—thrive in ambiguity. Their violence is often deniable, asymmetric, and decentralized. What ties it together is its ritualistic, media-first logic. Whether it’s the Christchurch shooter livestreaming a massacre like a Twitch streamer, or a domestic extremist posting manifestos as memetic call-to-arms, the pattern holds – violence as virality. Strategy becomes spectacle. Kill counts are tallied in retweets.

In doing so, traditional models of counterterrorism falter. Attribution is obscured and culpability is diluted, leading to the public being saturated by such violent content. The algorithms, indifferent to moral weight, deliver content with the same mechanical efficiency—whether it’s a makeup tutorial or a martyrdom video. In some cases, such content may even be boosted, a concept called ‘Algorithmic Radicalisation’ as its virality attracts attention to online platforms.

We are no longer asking, “Who pulled the trigger?” We are asking, “Who edited the video?”

Toward a New Counter-Terror Methodology

If liminal warfare is the new mode of terrorism, then narrative pre-emption, not just military deterrence, must become part of our strategic response.

The task ahead is twofold:
1. Mapping digital rituals of violence, not merely the actors or ideologies. Understanding how spectacle functions, how it recruits, humiliates, and inverts.
2. Disrupting narrative architectures before they congeal. This means developing counter-narratives that are not only informative but symbolically potent—ones that break the spell of spectacle rather than amplify it through sterile denunciation.

It also means cultivating new forms of public literacy: helping audiences discern the symbolic grammar of online violence, the scripts beneath the shock and the roles we are invited to play. To recognize liminal warfare is to understand that the first strike is often not a bullet but a clip. A viral video. A miscaptioned meme. A livestreamed grievance – these make us, the viewers, both aggregators and multipliers of the terrorist message.

The challenge of our age is not merely defending against the kinetic aftershocks of radicalization. It is recognizing that the war has already begun, perhaps not simply on the battlefield, but in social media and message boards. If sovereignty used to be exercised through territory, today it is often first exercised through screens.

And if we wish to protect what remains of peace, we must learn to read the image like a battlefield—because for many of our enemies, that is exactly what it is.

By Etienne Darcas, Research Fellow, Rise to Peace.

I see Türkiye’s politics as a tug-of-war between two camps. On one side, the AK Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2003 — first as prime minister (March 14, 2003) and then president (August 28, 2014) — pushes an Ottoman-inspired, religious and world vision. On the other, the CHP, rooted in Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular, Western-leaning legacy, leans nationalist, wary of immigration, and critical of foreign spending. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the detained Istanbul mayor, is the CHP’s latest rising star.

A History of Coups — and Blood

Türkiye’s democracy has been rocked by six major military coup attempts since 1923. The most recent hit on July 15, 2016, when rogue soldiers attacked the government, killed at least 241 Turkish citizens, and bombed parliament. Erdoğan survived, crushed the coup, and unleashed a massive crackdown during a state of emergency (July 20, 2016–July 19, 2018). Thousands — rivals, critics, and alleged “traitors” — were arrested or purged. That violent night still echoes: anyone accused of betrayal faces a harsh reckoning.

The Latest Flashpoint

On March 19, 2025, İmamoğlu’s arrest threw Türkiye into chaos. He’s a popular CHP figure polls pegged as Erdoğan’s biggest threat in a presidential race. The charges — corruption and alleged terrorist links — dropped just before the CHP’s primary (set for March 23, 2025). Is he guilty? I don’t know — maybe he’s corrupt, maybe he sided with shady terrorist groups, or maybe Erdoğan’s just neutralizing a rival. What’s undeniable is the pattern: since 2016, Erdoğan’s sidelined opponents with arrests, whether for corruption, “terrorism,” or technicalities (like voiding İmamoğlu’s degree on March 18, 2025, barring him from running).

Chaos Unleashed

The fallout’s been explosive. Clashes erupted in Istanbul on March 19–20, 2025, as İmamoğlu’s supporters defied a protest ban (March 19–23, 2025). The Turkish lira crashed to 42 against the dollar on March 19, 2025, before settling at 38 by March 20, 2025. Social media — X, YouTube, Instagram — got throttled nationwide (March 19, 2025). Türkiye’s at a breaking point: Erdoğan’s clinging to power amid economic ruin and unrest, while the CHP pushes back.

Whether İmamoğlu’s a victim or a crook, this fits Erdoğan’s playbook since those tanks rolled in 2016.

Why It Matters

Türkiye’s teetering between past promises — of democracy, stability — and a present defined by power struggles. The 2016 coup scarred the nation, but the scars keep reopening. Is this arrest justice or suppression? Either way, the stakes are sky-high, and the world’s watching.

A Personal Note

I visit Türkiye all the time — it’s a beautiful country with the best food and incredible hospitality. The people are amazing. I just pray for peace. I don’t care who runs the place — they know what’s best for them — but coming from a war-torn background, I’ve seen how war and division bring nothing good to anyone.

Ahmad Shah Mohibi, Founder of Rise to Peace.

On March 5, 2025, President Donald Trump announced the arrest of Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as “Jafar,” an ISIS-K operative linked to the August 26, 2021, bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians. While this arrest is a critical counterterrorism success, it also reinforces a long-standing truth: Pakistan remains deeply entangled with the militant networks that continue to threaten regional and global security.

Sharifullah’s Capture: A Joint Intelligence Operation

Sharifullah was apprehended near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by a Pakistani intelligence unit, acting on CIA intelligence. Once in custody, he was transferred to U.S. authorities and now faces prosecution in Washington, D.C. According to the Department of Justice, he admitted during an FBI interview on March 2, 2025, that he helped prepare for the Abbey Gate suicide bombing by scouting the area and planning the attack route to avoid detection.

This arrest confirms what counterterrorism analysts have long argued: the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remains a lawless corridor exploited by terror groups. Sharifullah’s presence in this zone is no coincidence—it’s part of a broader pattern enabled by decades of strategic tolerance and facilitation of extremists by the Pakistani state.

Former CIA officer Sarah Adams, who led investigations into terrorist threats including Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy, has publicly questioned the U.S. narrative. She stated that while Sharifullah met ISIS-K leaders the week of the bombing, his role was minor—delivering messages, not planning attacks.

“My biggest concern is that Sharifullah—someone so low-level—is being treated like a Bin Laden… Our government is treating him like a high-value target when he’s not.”

ISI and the Militant Ecosystem

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has a decades-long history of nurturing militant proxies. The Haqqani Network—a group responsible for high-profile attacks including assaults on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul—has been called a “veritable arm” of the ISI by Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Despite banning the Haqqani Network in 2015 after pressure from then-Secretary of State John Kerry, Pakistan never dismantled its infrastructure. Instead, the network continued operations and today has deep ties with the Taliban government in Kabul.

Sharifullah’s affiliation with ISIS-K does not make Pakistan’s role any less central. In fact, ISIS-K was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other regional militants—many of whom were trained, funded, or sheltered within Pakistani borders. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center have both highlighted how ISIS-K exploits ungoverned spaces in the border region to plan, recruit, and launch attacks.

A Pattern of Duplicity

The Sharifullah case fits into a broader pattern of Pakistan playing both sides. While accepting billions in U.S. counterterrorism aid—$33 billion between 2002 and 2018—Pakistan continued to shelter and empower groups responsible for attacks on American forces and Afghan civilians. Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad for years, just a short drive from Pakistan’s military academy, before being killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in 2011.

President Trump was among the few U.S. leaders who openly called out Pakistan’s duplicity. In a January 2018 tweet, he declared that the U.S. had given Pakistan “more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” and received “nothing but lies and deceit” in return. Later that month, the Trump administration suspended $300 million in military aid due to Pakistan’s failure to take “decisive action” against terrorist groups targeting American forces.

Pakistan’s Continued Challenges

Despite various military operations and counterterrorism laws, Pakistan has failed to eliminate safe havens for militants. Groups like the TTP and ISIS-K remain active, resilient, and capable of launching deadly attacks. The United States Institute of Peace notes that while Pakistan backs the Afghan Taliban, the Taliban continues to shelter the TTP—Pakistan’s own internal threat. The irony is deadly: Islamabad enables the very forces that later turn their guns on Pakistani soil.

Conclusion: More Than One Arrest

Mohammad Sharifullah’s arrest is a milestone, but it cannot be viewed in isolation. It is a symptom of a deeper, systemic issue: Pakistan’s long-standing entanglement with jihadist groups. Until that nexus is broken—through pressure, sanctions, and diplomatic accountability—the threat will persist.

True justice for the victims of the Kabul airport bombing requires more than prosecution. It demands that the U.S. and its allies confront the uncomfortable reality of Pakistan’s terror infrastructure. Only by dismantling the pipeline that produces men like Sharifullah can regional and global security be assured.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021—with direct support and safe harbor from Pakistan—Afghanistan has once again descended into authoritarian rule and extremism. The regime’s hardline enforcement of Sharia law has erased decades of progress, banning women from schools, workplaces, and public life. These actions have turned Afghanistan into a pariah state—isolated, oppressive, and increasingly unstable.

More critically, Afghanistan is once again becoming a haven for terrorist groups. ISIS-K, Al-Qaeda, and other extremist networks now operate freely under the Taliban’s watch, raising alarms across global intelligence communities. The arrest of Mohammad Sharifullah, the ISIS-K operative behind the Abbey Gate bombing, is a grim reminder: the threat did not end with the U.S. withdrawal—it evolved and embedded itself deeper into a region historically used to harbor and export terror.

America must not repeat the mistake of turning its back on Afghanistan. U.S. disengagement in the 1990s gave terrorists space to plan 9/11. Today, the risk is just as real. One captured terrorist does not absolve Pakistan, nor does it make the Taliban a partner. These actors have long played both sides—sheltering extremists while leveraging diplomacy for legitimacy.

Terrorists cannot be allies. The United States must be clear-eyed and firm: there can be no recognition of the Taliban and no trust extended to Pakistan simply because they handed over one operative. The stakes are too high. Afghanistan’s collapse into extremism threatens not just the region—but the security of the world. Not again. Not on our watch.

About the Author
Ahmad Shah Mohibi is the Founder of Rise to Peace and Director of Counterterrorism. He is a former U.S. advisor who supported U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Washington. He authored Inside the Mindset of Terrorists, a chapter in NATO’s Enduring Mission: Security in a Changing World, and has written more than 100 articles, including a landmark report on ISIS-K.
X: @ahmadsmohibi