Is the Sahara the newest great threat to the United States—“a terrorist training ground,” hotbed of extremism, the new Afghanistan—in the Great War against Islamic terrorism that still preoccupies the American political class and the foreign affairs community?
Mohammed Merah, a teenage loser and a petty thief who achieved instant worldwide notoriety as the latest symbol of Islamic jihad, leaves a string of unanswered questions and paradoxes in his wake.