Spreading its tentacles

WHEN Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in June last year he dropped “Iraq and Syria” from his group’s name. From then on, he said, it should be called simply Islamic State (IS), which was more in line with its ambition to spread its ghastly version of “Islamic” rule across the globe. A year later it does indeed have influence well beyond those countries’ borders, as the bloody past week shows.

Groups using the name of IS claimed responsibility for the shooting of tourists in Tunisia (see article) and the bombing of a Shia mosque in Kuwait on June 26th. French officials say IS may also be linked to a beheading in Grenoble on the same day. Days later IS said it was behind the bombing of a mosque in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, while some speculated that it was also behind a bomb that killed Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s prosecutor general, in Cairo. (IS has not claimed that attack, but earlier threatened the judiciary.) On June 29th it grabbed a town in Afghanistan. Two days after that, Egypt’s IS-linked group was in gory action against the army.