Sitting on the terrace of a quiet cafe in Mdina, I kept thinking and wondering why the Islamic State terrorists killed scores of people in Paris who were guilty only of enjoying themselves on a Friday night. It’s incomprehensible, beyond my understanding.

Before the massacre in Paris there was the rampage in Beirut and the bombing of the Russian plane bound for St Petersburg which exploded in mid-air killing all the passengers and crew. And if this was not enough, more devastation unfolded last Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.

In an era of jarring violence in the Middle East and in Europe, political observers are still struggling to understand not only the forces driving the attacks butalso the very nature of what they are seeing. Assailants, heavily armed and spraying bullets tothe left, right and centre, aremowing down innocent men, women and children for rotten ideological fantasies.

As the list of victims grows, there seems to be no end in sight to these atrocities. The forces of law and order seem to lack a clear strategy addressing the absence of professional ground troops in Syria, the missing diplomatic plan for a Syrian settlement, the growing tension in Libya and the impact of the terrorist threat there which is spreading by the hour.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that the combined efforts by France, Russia, the US and the UK in this affair, by their continuous bombings of Isis strategic positions, do not add up...