"It’s an amazing moment in history we’re living in, and even if my life personally isn’t much, I’m glad to be in it. Just imagine, a figurehead middle-management Jihadi executive issuing whiny memos about marketing the Holy War to a mixed bag of Salafist scalawags in Timbuktu, mixing up Mao’s adages about winning the populace with the Quran and focus-group jargon. I just hope Droukdel wasn’t a casualty of the withdrawal, taken out by a French air strike somewhere north of Kidal."