Malik’s death also points to the shrinking operational space for terrorist groups within Pakistan. While the killing happened in the backdrop of infighting between militants, it also communicates a larger reality. ISKP is increasingly being put on the back foot. The killing of Malik highlights the growing on ISKP’s governance. The group has undergone losses at the leadership level, coupled with sustained counterterrorism pressure, all of which indicate dilution in its operational capabilities, specifically when it comes to carrying out mass influence and operations.

A decreasing safe haven for terrorists

Over the last two decades, Pakistan has waged several counterterrorism operations aimed at gradually disintegrating organized militant networks so that extremist groups are denied safe havens. This first began with (2007–2009), mainly in the Swat region and in the tribal belt, followed by (2009), which pushed back Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) strongholds in South Waziristan.

April 2014 created a turning point for Pakistan with the onset of the phase of , which systematically targeted militant infrastructure, command and cross-border networks in North Waziristan. Capacity-building efforts were further reinforced through (2017), focusing on intelligence-based operations, urban counter-terrorism and the removal of residual extremists. These protracted campaigns attempted to disrupt terrorist sanctuaries and fracture the cohesion of pseudo-legitimate groups like the ISKP.

However, it is that militant infighting in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has weakened ISKP’s command structure and limited its maneuverability more than the operations led by the Pakistani government. Far from projecting strength, the group’s internal conflicts highlight its desperation and decline in Pakistan’s increasingly inhospitable security environment.

The role of other countries��

Pakistan has India of aiding militant groups such as ISKP and TTP with funds and strategic guidance. Thus, allowing them to function as proxies made to destabilize Pakistan’s security environment. In December , Pakistan presented a detailed dossier containing evidence of Indian financing of the groups, their training and their safe havens linked to Indian Intelligence.

These concerns were in the reports of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations Security Council in , which charted ISKP-TTP linkages and mentioned external facilitation.

Despite this apparent foreign patronage, every important terrorist that has been killed represents a major blow to the terrorist movement, and the death of Malik falls in line with this trend. His killing highlights the fact that ISKP leadership cannot withstand Pakistan’s counterterrorism onslaught that continues to shrink the operational capacity of terrorist groups. 

From the United Nations’ of Pakistan’s frontline sacrifices to senior US generals Islamabad as a “phenomenal partner in counterterrorism,” global voices have kept affirming the role of Pakistan in dismantling ISKP and other similar networks. The trajectory is increasingly evident: the ISKP is on the run. A series of Pakistani operations has reduced the footprint of this group to scattered remnants, disrupted its organizational capacity, and laid bare the external support systems that have tried to sustain it.��

Uprooting terrorism in the region��

In spite of scattered operatives, ISKP’s true sanctuary has never been in Pakistan. The UN Sanctions and Monitoring Committee Report issued in confirms that the group’s organizational hubs and training grounds are located in Afghanistan, where they receive protection and logistical support.��

Pakistan has time and time again warned against the permissive environment Afghanistan maintains and that such an environment emboldens ISKP, TTP and allied groups. From Kunar to Nangarhar, the states for terrorists become a launching pad for cross-border attacks against Pakistan. Thus, the issue of terrorist sanctuaries in Afghanistan continues to be a central point of tension between the two countries.

In a nutshell, Pakistan cannot eliminate the roots of terrorism on its own; it requires a collective effort by Afghanistan and other neighboring states. After facing more than four decades of war, the responsibility now lies with the Afghan authorities to dismantle terrorist sanctuaries and cut off support networks operating from their soil.

Peace and stability in Pakistan are directly tied to Afghanistan’s security, and by extension, the stability of the wider region and the international community also hinges on Afghanistan’s ability to address this challenge. A unified regional approach, led by Afghanistan and supported by neighbors, is critical to finally uprooting terrorism in South Asia.

[ edited this piece.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Security in South Asia: Shifting Ways of the Islamic State appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Given the central role the United States has played in global politics since the end of World War II, we observers of history need to be regularly reminded of the lens through which the US foreign policy establishment sees the world. Every lens magnifies some elements and distorts others. A key part of 51�Թ�’s vocation is not only to expose its readers and contributors to the effects of the different lenses, but also to develop our collective understanding of how those lenses reflect and refract our perception of global reality. Mine is obviously very different from Gary’s or the State Department’s.

In a piece we published earlier this month, with the title, “The Middle East 2025: The Good, the Bad and the Tragically Ugly,” Gary offered us a wide-ranging review of the key dramas unfolding across the Middle East, North Africa and West Asia. The former diplomat sounded a note of guarded optimism when he observed that “the region remains as full of opportunity as it is fraught with external and internal political tension and conflict.” His dominant tone, however, is pessimistic: “Some of the region’s struggles are as far from resolution as they’ve ever been.”

Returning to the Beltway lens, US politicians possess a set of shared ideals, which they wield as if they were holding in their hand the gavel of universal justice. “Democracy” and “human rights” are the prominent concepts that permit State Department officials and pundits alike to categorize other nations and groups as being either “on the right side of history” or the wrong side. An extreme degree of wrongness places them in an “axis of evil.” Less radically, Gary calls the evildoers “the region’s troublemakers” and identifies them as: “Iran, Russia and the Islamic State.”

But all is not well even among those who are spared the epithet of troublemaker or wheel on the axis of evil. Summing up a problem that he sees as broadly undermining democratic governance throughout the Middle East, Gary offers us this truism: “Publics remain dissatisfied with their governments, almost none of which are accountable to their people.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

��Accountable to the people:

The basic principle of democracy that founds its theoretical moral legitimacy; also, the principle that can conveniently be discarded by ensuring that the kinds of people who are elected will never be held accountable for the worst collective decisions they irresponsibly make, including the overthrow of democratic leaders or foreign countries, waging and funding illegal wars and supporting genocide.

Contextual note

Gary finds one occasion to trot out the predictable bromide identifying Israel as “the Middle East’s lone democracy.” In his mind, it’s clear that if Israel is a democracy, it must be “accountable to the people.” Gary reminds us, however, that in practice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is accountable not to the people as a whole (including Palestinians), nor even to the Jews, but to “right-wing factions” that now have “unprecedented influence in the Knesset.”

Israel’s proclaimed status as “lone democracy” deflects attention from the easily observed fact that it is an apartheid state openly conducting ethnic cleansing and systematic genocide. I agree that like “democracy” itself, those accusatory epithets are only “words,” which means they are “debatable,” designed, some will say, to “confuse the issue.”

In the nation’s moral system, thanks to the dogma of the first amendment of the US constitution, speech is free; words demand no accountability. Acts do, but for that accountability to be applied we must agree on the meaning of the words. The fact that observed acts can be dismissed as “mere words” brings home the real message: that accountability will always be elusive, especially when attempting to accuse a “lone democracy.”

Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide have an unquestionably negative connotation. That may explain why in an article about the current state of play in the Middle East, Gary never alludes to them. Instead, like Monty Python, he looks at “the bright side of life” in Israel. “Israel’s superior military prowess, technology, intelligence and firepower,” he tells us, “paired with indispensable support from America produced positive results across the region.”

It continues as Gary finds the persuasive words to make us believe. “For now, however, the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington are an unambiguous good.” Really, Gary, I have to stop you there. Unambiguous? Just before this we learn that “it is almost inevitable that Israel, with the likely assistance of the US, will attack the Islamic Republic.” In a short space we jump from “unambiguous good” to “inevitable” transcontinental war! In such a case, I wonder if the survival of humanity hasn’t itself become a highly ambiguous proposition.

This is where the question of whether governments are effectively “accountable to their people” arises. We may legitimately wonder whether the problem is confined, as Gary seems to suggest, to the Middle East. Some would claim there’s a serious problem of accountability within the US itself, the beacon of democracy. It may soon be time for some new populist leader to stand up and campaign on the slogan, “Make America Accountable Again.”

Historical note

After noting that the strength of “Iran has been significantly diminished while that of another, Israel, has been elevated,” Gary reveals how the groupthink at the State Department and among US allies functions, especially when applied to judging the positive or negative features of unfolding events. “From the perspective of the West and its moderate Arab allies, all of this is good news.”

The keyword here is “moderate,” an epithet that has been routinely applied not only to autocratic regimes allied to the US but also to groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and elsewhere in the region. As economist Jeffrey Sachs recently, the CIA’s operation Timber Sycamore, ordered by President Barack Obama, was launched to arm and train Syrian rebel groups fighting against dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian Civil War. Its principal objective consisted of aiding extremist, jihadist factions opposed to Assad. Syria’s current leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who overthrew the Assad regime last November, historically worked for both al-Qaeda and ISIS. Thanks to Timber Sycamore, those officially designated terrorists received indirect support from the US, who conveniently referred to the jihadist groups it supported as “moderate rebels.”

Every US regime has had to play a difficult and decidedly ambiguous role concerning the sides to back in recent wars in multiple Middle East countries. Gary respects that ambiguity, which has typically consisted of US presidents, independently of their party affiliation, aligning with every position taken by Israel while at the same time officially endorsing the idea, or vaguely formulated intention, of implementing a two-state solution. It’s something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, in which the good doctor attempts to play the role of an honest broker and the alter ego becomes an accomplice in atrocities. Gary dutifully reminds us that “Israel and Netanyahu bear their own share of the responsibility.” But at the same time, he studiously avoids mentioning the object of that responsibility: genocide or, at the very least, massive and persistent war crimes. Every recent State Department has done the same.

And he sticks to the script concerning the desired outcome with this undoubtedly accurate assertion: “Accepting the inevitability of a Palestinian state, as more than 100 foreign governments already have, would dramatically alter the political landscape, positioning Hamas and its extremist supporters as the enemies of peace.”

The real paradox — to the point of manifest absurdity — lies in the fact that the US has consistently used its veto at the UN Security Council to oppose every proposed resolution to grant statehood to Palestine. There’s no sign that that is likely to change under President Donald Trump.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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To understand how terrorism begins, we must first understand radicalization. Radicalization is the process by which individuals or groups adopt an ideology that employs or supports violence, including acts of terrorism, to achieve a particular political or ideological goal. The concept of radicalization has evolved, but scientifically understanding and defining it remains a struggle.

Historically, researchers have biased research on radicalization. Early researchers focused on the correlation between radicalization and specific instances of terrorism or pervasive violence, highlighting the impact of on individuals who, although not overtly violent, could potentially become radicalized during their incarceration.

In response to Islamist terror attacks in the early 2000s, like the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the 2004 Madrid train bombings in Spain, researchers turned to . Over time, several movements and ideologies took the spotlight. At one point, even the was the case study for radicalization. Most recently, the literature has focused on the effects of the internet and social media.

At the heart of this constantly changing focus lies a conceptual confusion. Radicalization is not terrorism. It precedes terrorism and may not even necessarily lead to it. A new generation of researchers now looks at radicalization as a separate process, abstracting from violent outcomes, if any are even present, to focus on the psychology of radicalization. These researchers seek to explain how radical groups arise and why they receive sympathy from the broader public.

A case study of radicalization: Hamas

While various theories attempt to explain radicalization cohesively, the core issues remain the same. If you take everything from someone, there isn’t much left to lose. Depriving individuals of life’s essentials — food, water and shelter — and compounding their suffering with personal losses such as those of loved ones, homes and land, while simultaneously providing a specific entity to blame — be it the state, a racial group or a specified community — creates fertile ground for radicalization. Individuals may become swayed to believe that extremist actions are justified or feel compelled to participate in such activities in this environment of despair and attribution of blame. Extremist groups exploit this vulnerability to offer individuals grappling with despair a sense of purpose and belonging.

Consider the case of Hamas. Hamas is undeniably a terrorist group, yet one which enjoys significant support, at one point having of Palestinians approving of them. This support cannot be solely attributed to antisemitism or hatred towards Israel; Palestinian Muslims have had a long history of life with both Jews and Christians. However, Palestinians and people worldwide cannot forget the last 80 or so years of pain.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of Gaza have created the perfect cocktail for them since. Let’s break it down. has become unprecedentedly rampant in Gaza and death from dehydration is becoming a serious fear. Palestinians have lost loved ones, including .�� Palestinians have dealt with the Israeli government bombing homes and 690 .�� Given the circumstances, it’s not surprising to see an increase in support and membership for Hamas – a voluntary group that employs direct violence against the Israeli government.

Israel’s invasion and even talk of in Gaza have already backfired. Jerusalem is increasingly isolated diplomatically, and various bodies such as the , the and the have rebuked it and its leaders. Simultaneously, support for Palestine has risen among non-Palestinians, mainly . With direct access to the horrific conditions of Gazans through social media, more and more people are starting to sympathize with Hamas. They no longer see it as just a terrorist group. However, Hama is not the only example of radicalization, nor is the outcome of their efforts.

Truthfully, no matter how different the outcome, case and group, the radicalization process remains consistent. Juxtapose the case of Hamas with ISIS in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq stands as one of the greatest blunders in American foreign policy. This resulted in the devastation of the country in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. With the Iraqi government remaining and seeking assistance from the they once disdained, especially, given its once characterization by Arab nationalism. The aftermath of the Iraq war has left millions dead, homes destroyed and necessities in severe shortage.

Terror organizations often exploit conditions of isolation and discrimination, fueling hatred towards specific groups and motivating individuals to join their ranks. Islamic State (IS) utilized the loss experienced by Iraqis left with nothing to recruit more followers to their extremist ideology, gaining more followers since their founding in the .

Unlike previous groups, like , IS had a global reach, specifically in recruitment, disseminating its anti-Western ideology through the internet and propaganda. Individuals susceptible to extremist beliefs based on their social, economic or political circumstances undergo a process of drawn by the allure of the group’s ideology. Thus, incidents like the attacks, where 14 people were killed and 21 injured and ISIS praised the shooters as supporters, were direct outcomes of IS’s radicalization efforts.

The perception of oppression can be just as potent as actual oppression, and it is not always based on the actual oppression. The clearest example is the�� January 6 attack on the United States Capital Building. Storming the Capitol required substantial support, with groups like the Proud Boys playing a significant role. Founded to polarize America, the Proud Boys employ violent rituals to train members. The attack, televised internationally, was made possible by the group’s reinforcement of within its ranks. The most significant was taking the country back, insinuating the loss of land and country, and being very vocal about their loss of identity.

While their grievances may not be entirely valid, individuals deprived of support and privilege find solace in groups that provide a sense of belonging and assign blame to immigrants, women or liberalism. Isolation breeds susceptibility to self-radicalization, making marginalized individuals vulnerable to extremist ideologies propagated by groups like the Proud Boys.

Radicalization and its relation to terrorism

As noted above, radicalization doesn’t always lead to terrorism. Most of Hamas’s international sympathizers do not take direct action. Even women who supported IS and went so far as to to its territory and marry IS fighters were not violent; they were radicals, but not terrorists. Even government officials like can express radicalization, and this Republican congresswoman voiced support for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Focusing on how we got here shows that each case is not unique and does not require handling differently, even though it may seem so. The magnitude of each group’s violence, or lack thereof, is not connected to their success in garnering support and membership. Still, it is relevant to their capabilities of forming a real movement. To effectively counter terrorism, we just need a comprehensive approach that emphasizes preventing the rise of future organizations, meaning heightened attention to both counter-radicalization and counterterrorism strategies.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, but in some cases, the reaction outweighs the original incident. Thus, we must consider every action we take to counteract terrorism of any kind because how many more terrorists are we creating in the process? Every counterterrorism operation should include an understanding of the consequences of the loss of life. Otherwise, on October 7 and January 6, Islamic State and al-Qaeda and even new cases will continue to develop as our past continues to haunt us.

Addressing radicalization requires an approach that goes beyond reactive counterterrorism measures. Let us take a comprehensive approach to counterterrorism that focuses on preventing future organizations’ success. We need to pay more attention to radicalization as well as counterterrorism tactics.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Reasons Behind Radicalization: The Erosion of Hope and Identity appeared first on 51�Թ�.

1. The 1979 Revolution – Islamic or Popular?

One common misconception is that the1979 was simply an Islamic one. In reality, the revolution was as much a popular one as it was Islamic. It involved a broad spectrum of groups and interests, some of whom were previously in conflict, now sharing a keen desire for radical change – Islamists, intellectuals, socialists, Marxists, nationalists, democrats, bazaaris, workers, technocrats, students.

Why Do You Need to Know About Mohammad Mosaddegh?

In addition to ending the corruption of the Shah’s era, many of the protesters were expecting the formation of a secular parliamentary democracy with pluralistic representation, and an end to US domination. Certainly, it was the Islamic Revolutionary Party, led by Ayatollah Khomeini after his return from exile in February 1979, which eventually took control as the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). However, they achieved this only after ruthlessly removing during 1979 and 1980 all other political parties deemed as threats. Popular hopes and expectations for democracy and an end to corruption were soon to be dashed. Professor Ali Ansari (,) provides details.

2. Female Emancipation – Non-Existent?

Females have taken a prominent role in the anti-regime movement that took off in September 2022. On the streets, they chant: “Zahn, Zendeghi, Azadi” (or in Kurdish, “Jin, Zen, Azadi”) – Woman, Life, Freedom. 

Glaring and hard-to-defend gender do exist. Nevertheless, women surprisingly possess a level of human rights and equality far greater than in many countries of the region.

An industrialized oil economy for over a century, Iran’s population has a strong work ethic. Women go out to work and occupy many posts at all levels in government, the majlis (parliament), financial institutions, public services, and companies. Across Iran’s 236 universities,female student numbers are equal to males. Women have had the vote since before the IRI was formed. They drive cars without restriction.

Revolution Erupted in Iran Because of Mohammad Reza Shah

So, what has provoked the recent explosion of anger among Iranian women and girls? At one level, it is the daily exposure to petty and banal indignities arising from the authoritarian edicts of the IRI leadership. These edicts are enforced down to every level of society by a hierarchy of loyal apparatchiks, typically the ‘Morality Police’, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) (also known as Sepah Pasdaran), and the lower level baseeji enforcers.

For example, the highly restrictive IRI dress code forbids women and girls to wear clothing in public that does not fully cover their body, arms, and legs; they must wear a hejab or scarf to cover their head; and they must not wear ‘excessive’ make-up, sunglasses or ‘ostentatious’ jewelry.

Other restrictions, affecting both women and men, limit freedom of expression in the arts, journalism, and social media, among others.  There is no press freedom. Any active support for any political parties that have not been approved by the IRI regime is also forbidden. Many individuals have been jailed or have gone into exile for transgressions. Many others have simply emigrated.

Female resentment, frustration, and anger against all such overbearing, intrusive, and patronizing micro-management have been bubbling for years. Women have become emboldened to demonstrate against what they perceive as state repression led by a bunch of finger-wagging, po-faced, grisly old men (boz-ha-ye pir or ‘old goats’). These leaders are seen as authoritarian misogynist hypocrites masquerading as benign paragons of pious rectitude.

Such a context was a slow-burning fuse looking for an accelerant, an accident waiting to happen. One was supplied in September 2022 by the death in custody of a young female protester,, under suspicious circumstances, as detailed in a later section.

The Dirty Secrets About How Reza Shah Destroyed Iran

3. Iranians Hate the West – Or Do They?

Over the past 40 years, TV news clips exist of street crowds in Tehran chanting in unison ‘marg bar Amrika’ (death to America) and ‘marg bar Shetan-e Bozorg’ (death to the Great Satan i.e. the USA), and the burning of American and British flags, which has created an impression that the people hate the West. However, this venting by small groups of faithful supporters of the IRI bears no relation to the views of the mass population of over 86 million.

The author has personally observed in Iran that there continues to be no evidence of any popular hatred in Iran towards either the British or the American people. Iranians like and admire many aspects of the West. Many Iranians value a Western higher education and even pursue professional and business careers in the West. Even thechildren of the leadership and its elite supporters do this on a grand scale. Anti-regime protesters have accused them of flagrant self-righteous hypocrisy by allowing their children to flout dress codes and live excessively self-indulgent lifestyles incountries that the IRI publicly .

Protests have rocked Iran continuously since last year and have spread through many cities. Thousands have taken to the streets. For once, the regime has appeared to backtrack slightly. In December, Iran’s attorney general said that the country had the morality police and was even considering changing its repressive hejab law for women. However, the protesters dismissed this move as cosmetic cynicism, since the IRGC and other forces are still enforcing the hejab law  The question arises: what has triggered such an extraordinary popular upheaval?

Why are Young People Protesting in Iran?

Corruption and Plunder 

Most Iranians old enough to remember the 1979 revolution have shown an ‘adapt and survive’ stoicism, a reluctance to see Iran embroiled once again in internal violence. They learned how to play the system so as to avoid being ensnared by the IRI’s repressive micro-management diktats. Indeed, a significant number simply pretended to support the IRI regime, as a cynical means to obtain favored status, privileges, access to political elites, insider commercial intelligence, and award of government contracts. 

The past 40-odd years have seen a new elite of mega-wealthy , who enjoy a luxurious existence in their palatial houses in the exclusive Niavaran, Elahiyeh, and Tajrish districts of north Tehran, alongside many IRI leaders and elite functionaries and supporters.

The personal finances of the IRI leaders, and the senior commanders of their IRGC ‘security organization’, are not made public, although research suggests that may have amassed a US$ 200 billionpersonal . Nonetheless, in the imaginations of ordinary Iranians, the country is run by , who have plundered the country’s oil revenues and other public assets for their own benefit. Their lifestyle, visible assets, and suspected millions in offshore accounts have shaped an image of duplicity and greed among the elite. 

The Iran Nuclear Deal is Dead: R.I.P. JCPOA?

Allegedly the, originally established as an elite internal national security body, has also evolved into a de facto organized crime group authorized by Ayatollah Khamenei. The IRGC has been allowed tooperate with minimal . With little impunity, the IRGC can exercise brutality against protesters, dissidents andanyone deemed to the IRI status quo as well as opportunistic abuse of state-funded activities (e.g. the bonyad charities; numerous infrastructure contractors) for personal gain. They also allegedly masterminddrug . Whatever the reality, the mass population believes the allegations.

Poverty, Neglect and Incompetence

Short periods of noisy but usually non-violent public unrest in Iran have occurred sporadically over thepast . Typically, they have had specific economic causes, such as the removal of cost-of-living subsidies or fuel price subsidies, or massive overnight price-rises for staple foodstuffs. By 2017, some street protests became violent. While disorganized and uncoordinated, these protests for the first time involved overwhelmingly working-class people who, until then, were core supporters of the regime. Open calls for regime change were made. Further street protests and strikes by bazaari shopkeepers (traditionally IRI regime supporters) occurred in June and July 2018, against austerity, water shortages, and the near collapse of the currency.

On top of a national trend of increasing anger with day-to-day hardships, regional unrest has also risen. This has resulted from decades of neglect by the central authorities in Tehran. Two provinces remote from Tehran are especially affected: oil-rich Khuzestan, on the southwest border with Iraq, and Sistan-Baluchistan, on the southeast border with Pakistan.

Derecognize Mullahs, Forge New Government in Exile for Iran

In addition to producing more than 80% of Iran’s oil, Khuzestan sustained much damage, privation, and loss of life during the Iran-Iraq War. The port city of Khorramshahr in particular bore the brunt of 8 years of vicious close-quarters fighting and came to symbolize for Iranians the nation’s heroic struggle against foreign aggression and impossible odds. Yet, despite national recognition of such huge sacrifices, Khuzestan has been sorely neglected. While Tehran has thrived, expanded, and modernized, little has been done to regenerate cities such as Khorramshahr. shortages and power cuts add to the misery of unemployment, poverty, and decay, contrasted with the affluent elitist environment of Tehran. Little wonder that noisy, and increasingly violent, sporadic public protests against the authorities in cities since 2018 became more sustained in 2022, and have been typically suppressed by armed IRGC forces.

Sistan-Baluchistan has also suffered from the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ neglect by the IRI authorities in Tehran. In addition, the neglect has aggravated a grumbling grievance over alleged discrimination by the Shia Muslim IRI regime against the local Baluchi population. The Baluchi’s are predominantly Sunni Muslims, among whom a separatist movement has emerged.

The western Iranian province of Kurdistan is also a focus of regional unrest, although centered more on and ethno-suppression by the IRI than economic and infrastructure neglect or religious discrimination.

Brutality of State Enforcers

The major provocation that ignited the current uprising occurred on September 16, 2022, when a young hejab protester Mahsa Amini, visiting Tehran from her hometown of Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, was arrested by police for not wearing her hejab ‘correctly’ during a street protest. A short time after, police alleged that she collapsed. She was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead. A���ǰ��DzԱ��’s concluded she died of natural causes related to a childhood illness, but her family and mass protesters insist that she was beaten by police. 

Whatever the truth, public anger against the regime boiled over, with mass protests in Kurdistan province. When these were put down brutally by the IRGC, street protests rapidly spread across Iran. By late November, over 150 cities and towns were involved in demonstrations. Unprecedented mass chants of ‘death to Khamenei’ and ‘death to the dictator’ continue to echo across the nation.

Why Does the Islamic Republic of Iran Fear its Kurdish Population?

The regime further inflamed matters by instructing the IRGC, baseeji, and local police to applyincreasing. Four days after Mahsa’s death in custody, a 16-year-old protester was found dead on a building site after detention by police. The police claimed that she had been released unharmed and they had no knowledge of her death. Other young protesters killed by regime forces included Sarina Esmailzadeh, aged 16, and Hadis Najafi, aged 22. An increasing number of detained female protesters, and even males, have reportedrape and sexual at the hands of law enforcement and prison officials. According to the UN, by late November at least 400 protesters including a number of children had been killed by state forces. Over 15,000 had been arrested, and an increasing number were being tried, and convicted, sentenced to , and .

Public protest in Iran has now escalated to incandescent levels of rage. A quantum leap has occurred, involving unrestrained violence against any and all symbols of the regime. Smartphone video clips spread like wildfire on social media of armed police, baseeji, and IRGC personnel being attacked by unarmed mobs on a daily basis across the country. Unconfirmed reports suggest that at least four IRGC colonels have been killed so far in separate incidents. When a seminary for trainee mullahs was attacked by an enraged mob, terrified students were filmed being beaten and stripped of their robes and turbans.

The savagery and amoral conduct of the regime’s forces,  on by an unrepentant Ayatollah Khamenei, President Raisi, and other IRI leaders (e.g. Chief Justice Gholam-Mohseni Eje’i, his adviser Hossein Ali Nayyeri, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, and IRGC Commander-in-Chief Major General Hossein Salami), has provoked a new resolve among protesters to match their level of violence. 

The failure of IRI leaders to stop the sexual abuse of detained protesters, including children, or even to publicly condemn it, is now taken as a clear sign that the regime is using rape as a terror weapon against its citizens. Since the regime has remained silent on such accusations and has failed to arrest and prosecute the state’s agents involved,  it is likely that all the IRI leaders and their subordinates down to the local perpetrators would be prosecuted for these offenses by an incoming regime.

Police officers, baseeji, IRGC, and prison officers are likely to be targeted by enraged citizens, and this may well be extended to judges, the judiciary, and court officials if harsh sentences are meted out to accused protesters. High on the vengeance list will be Mohammad Mehdi Haj Mohammadi, head of the national prisons service, Gholamreza Ziaei, Director of the notorious Evin prison, and Hedayat Farzadi, Chief Warden of Evin prison. In the escalating cycle of violence, representatives of the state, their families, and property, are unlikely to receive mercy from vengeful mobs.

New Proto-Revolutionary Signs

The decades of overbearing, misogynistic IRI rule, plus the general corruption orchestrated and nurtured by the regime against the mass population, as well as hyperinflation, perpetually falling standard of living, high unemployment, US and UN sanctions, have together built up into a nationwide coalescence of different protesting sectors of society. For every protestor, there is one common enemy: the IRI regime. This coalescence mirrors that of the 1979 revolutionary build-up.

The public mood has changed strikingly in recent years. A poll by Pew Research in indicated that more than 80% of the population wanted to retain an Islamic state in some form. By, polls showed that a similar proportion now want the opposite, a secular or non-religious state. This clearly indicates that the IRI had lost its moral authority and public trust. The current unrest reflects that mood change, but how does it differ from previous unrest?

The new characteristics include:

Unprecedented perseverance, severity, scale, and geographical spread of public protests: As of  January 24, 2023, protests have lasted 130 days without a break and spread to over 150 cities and towns across all provinces, with crowd numbers ranging from tens to thousands.

Populist character, involving males and females of all sectors and age groups, including schoolchildren and bazaari support. High-profile Iranians (e.g. former President, Ayatollah���󲹳���Ա�’s , TV personalities, film stars, sports champions) publicly backing the protesters. Sympathy strikes across many sectors (e.g. higher education and schools, oil & gas, petrochemicals, bazaaris and shopkeepers, and manufacturing). An effective 3-day national retail strike occurred in early December.

Demand for regime change. The spectrum of grievances has coalesced into a single overall demand that the IRI regime must go. Nothing less will do. Negotiation and compromise are no longer possible, especially given the regime’s increasingly murderous crackdown.

Lack of fear among protesters, especially the young and females, despite a high risk of injury, imprisonment, or death. Despite the lack of firearms or other weapons among protesters, they exhibit few qualms or reluctance to resist the regime’s armed enforcers.

Protesters use the internet and social media as communication and propaganda weapons against the regime, despite its attempts to block access or interfere with such use. Internet-savvy protesters are switching to VPN (virtual private networks) to thwart regime interference. Protesters have totally won a global and social media war against the regime, as well as public and political opinion globally including official UN position statements.

Violence against the regime’s suppression forces, and a preparedness of protesters to match or exceed their level of violence. Pitched battles by unarmed protesters against armed state agents. Protestors with a preparedness to kill are targeting more senior regime individuals. Attacking and taking over government offices and. Tearing down of IRI signs, notices, and displays.

Police siding with protesters. In Orumiyeh, videos show police fraternizing with protesters. Although such instances are limited in number so far, many officers are unhappy with the crackdown and moral pressure from their own families to disavow the regime. They are also exhausted by months of trying to quell street confrontations.

Armed resistance, but on a small scale. Public access to firearms in Iran is limited by strict gun control. However, after the Mahsa Amini killing, someIranian are now reportedly receiving arms and military training across the border in north-east Iraq. Elsewhere, the potential for protesters to steal or capture weaponry from local regime sources may become more salient.

Hindrances to a New Revolution

Despite the sustained eruption of Iranian public anger and bravery against the incumbent regime and a highly sympathetic global reaction, serious hindrances exist for those citizens aiming for a quick victory. These include:

No identifiable national leadership among protesters. Few credible national leaders inside Iran have emerged. One potential leader, Molavi Abdolhamid, a leading Sunni cleric from Sistan-Baluchistan, is a popular reformist moderate in the IRI regime. Since September 2022 and the brutal IRGC crackdown, he has openly backed radical change, including an internationally-monitored national referendum on whether the regime should be retained or not, and called for regime agents who have sexually abused protesters to be prosecuted.

Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, exiled eldest son of the last Shah, may desire a return of the monarchy, but there is little enthusiasm inside Iran, especially among all those born since the mid-1970s. Another putative leader in exile is Hamed Ismaeilion in Canada, whose wife and child were killed in 2020 when the IRGC shot down (apparently in error) a civilian airliner leaving Tehran.  Although a charismatic orator, he has neither political nor state administrative experience.

Ansari (2022) suggests that potential are many but remain hidden, awaiting pivotal cues before emerging publicly.

No identifiable organization to organize protests. Thus far, street protests have been largely local spontaneous outbursts of anger and rage. They have lacked any ostensible plan, organization, and objectives. These emotionally-driven ad hoc reactions and lack of discipline and focus render the protesters vulnerable to the dispersal and suppression tactics of the IRGC and baseeji.

No identifiable regime replacement or “government in waiting,” an extension of a lack so far of national leaders among protesters. To avoid economic and social chaos, an industrialized nation of 86 million people requires a credible and competent government continuously, with no lengthy hiatus during transfer of power.

Unequal firepower. Protesters lack (a) firearms, heavy weapons, ammunition, vehicles and other logistical supplies and (b) military training. Both are needed for effectively combating well-resourced and armed IRI forces.

Unequal finances. Whereas the regime has almost limitless finances, the disorganized protesters have very little and so are unable to create and sustain a credible national organization or to acquire weaponry or training.

Nevertheless, the momentum of the demand for regime change now appears unstoppable. Whether the regime’s survival capacity degrades fast or slowly, may depend on many volatile factors on the ground. Strikes, including a successful 3-day national retail strike in early December, have received wide sympathy among workers but frequently they are too poor to sustain even a temporary loss of income or too scared of losing their job. Unconfirmed reports suggest that state-owned companies are with wage increases and other incentives to deter them from supporting regime-change strikes.

Another pivotal factor is the position and attitude of Iran’s regular armed forces (Artesh). Thus far, they have not been deployed to crush the protesters. However, they harbor a long-standing mistrust and resentment towards the IRGC and its baseeji enforcers on three main counts: (1) although the IRGC reports directly to Khamenei, it has become a de facto independent force only weakly controlled by him while also being independent of the professional regular armed forces, (2) the IRGC enjoys disproportionately high state to fund weaponry and resources far beyond that of the regular armed forces, a source of deep Artesh resentment, (3) Artesh officers are reportedly contemptuous of the lax morality, organized criminal activity, and thuggish conduct of the IRGC and baseeji – observers have noted a parallel with the Wehrmacht’s contempt for Hitler’s SS.

For Khamenei and Raisi to deploy Artesh units to quell or crush the protests runs a heightened risk. Disgruntled units might refuse or even join the protesters against the IRGC, thereby potentially accelerating the IRI’s downfall. This fear may explain why, thus far, the regime has declined to deploy regular forces.

Potential Prognosis

Having recklessly brought their regime to the brink of disaster, what happens next? Iran has long proven to be very unpredictable. However, it is reasonable to posit a number of rough potential scenarios, for example:

Scenario 1: Protests subside over the next few weeks.

The increasingly brutal crackdown by the regime finally subdues the nationwide protests, as the protesters grow exhausted and terrified of dire consequences for them if they continue. Thus far, after some four months, there is scant evidence that the protesters are weakening. Estimated probability: (1=certainty; 0=impossibility): 0.2.

Scenario 2: Protests perpetuate but no early outright victory.

The protests continue unabated and even escalate in frequency, scale, spread, and ferocity. This projection becomes more likely the more that the protesters are supported by public figures and by multiple sector workers inside Iran, as well as globally by the media, governments, public protests, and UN bodies. Deployed IRI forces may be increasingly exhausted and unnerved and only barely managing to ‘hold the line’. Estimated probability: (1=certainty; 0=impossibility): 0.7.

Scenario 3: Protesters win outright victory within months, either by IRI capitulation or by elimination.

The protests escalate in frequency, scale, and ferocity, supported by a mass popular uprising and the emergence of a national leadership. Protesters with firearms appear on the streets, and some exhibit organization and military training. Protesters take over provincial government offices and utilities and take IRI officials prisoner. The regime’s repression agents are outnumbered, exhausted, and increasingly terrified of savage retribution by enraged citizens. Some refuse orders or even join the protesters, and the regular armed forces refuse to impose martial law. Without protection, the IRI regime is forced to quit. While a negotiated transfer of power to an interim government is plausible, it is unlikely the IRI Supreme Leader and fellow zealots (the akhundha-ye bozorg or ‘big hats’) could stomach such humiliation. They would also be at high risk of vengeful attacks and assassination, not to mention criminal charges. Therefore, fleeing the country would be their likely choice. Estimated probability (1=certainty; 0=impossibility): 0.5.

In a hybrid scenario, Scenario 3 evolves into Scenario 4, but at this stage whether, or how fast, that might occur is impossible to judge. If this scenario unfolds, by then the estimated probability of regime collapse rises to 0.8.

The regime’s fear of losing both legitimacy and control of law and order should not be underestimated, given that savage retribution by aggrieved citizens is highly likely. Moreover, an incoming regime is likely to prosecute many of the IRI regime (who escape mob justice) for waging war on its own citizens, crimes against humanity, destruction of property, and not to mentionwholesale of state finances and assets for their own personal gain.

With such a horrifying prospect, an early sign that the IRI regime may be on the skids are reports of oligarchs, IRGC senior officers, and IRI ‘big hats’ organizing their exile early rather than risk getting caught. appears to be their popular choice. A further sign will be the sudden unexplained absence of prominent individuals from public life. Apart from Venezuela, there are few countries that would be willing to offer sanctuary to such pariahs. Even in Venezuela, where may be hired cheaply, their safety may be illusory.

The IRI regime’s leaders and nomenklatura have finally lost any claim to legitimacy and moral authority. Thus far, they have managed to cling to power through ruthless repression. However, the legendary stoicism of the Iranian people has evaporated. Nothing less than regime change and secular governance will now be acceptable. It is no longer whether but when this transition occurs. The regime could have heeded public dissatisfaction with its governance, and chosen to moderate its authoritarian excesses. Instead,  they have brought about their own likely demise.

A final caveat. Although desperate for secular democracy, and having an admiration for many things Western, the mass population will not welcome a return to foreign, particularly US, domination of their government, economy, and oil, as in the Shah’s era. A new realpolitik between the West and Iran would be essential.[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Why Now?

The raid comes after IS conducted an attack on al-Sinaa prison in the northeastern city of Hasakah in January in an attempt to break free its fighters. In the assault, several Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters were . According to SDF officials, IS was  for six months. Nevertheless, the US-backed SDF recaptured the prison about a week later. 

Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona suspects that the attack on the prison “was the catalyst that led to the decision to act on what was obviously already known location intelligence on … al-Qurayshi.” Francona, who served as the US military attaché in Syria from 1992 to 1995, notes that “Over the past few months, there has been an increase in ISIS activity — more widespread and bolder in nature. This also comes at a time when Iranian-backed militias have also stepped up attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq.”

Both Qurayshi and his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were eliminated in Idlib province, in areas under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Previously, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda and initially  with IS. In 2013, however, it  from IS and has been with the group since 2014. In 2016, it also  relations with al-Qaeda and  itself as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS). The following year, JFS assumed its current iteration as it  with other groups. 

During much of the past decade, Idlib served as a  for extremists. In 2017, then-US envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, Brett McGurk,  that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Following Baghdadi’s elimination in 2019, former US President Donald Trump suggested Baghdadi was in Idlib as part of a plan to rebuild IS. Indeed, it was  to see Qurayshi hiding in Idlib as well. 

According to David Lesch, professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in Texas and author of “Syria: A Modern History,” “it seems strange that al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi were killed in [a] province largely controlled by its rival HTS and overseen by Turkey, but on the other hand it is the only area not under the control of the Syrian government and its allies or the US-supported SDF, all of whom are opposed to ISIS.”

“Idlib is now home to thousands of IDPs, therefore it was easier for the two to blend in, live secretively, and not be identified as outsiders since most everyone in certain areas of the province are outsiders,” Lesch explains. “Yet they were still found because despite all this they lived in an area still teaming with enemies who were obviously directly or indirectly assets to US intelligence.”

The recent US operation in Idlib, which was  planned over several months, has been the largest of its kind in the country since the 2019 raid that eliminated Baghdadi. Although Qurayshi was  than Baghdadi, the fact that he was targeted in the US raid confirms his .

It is worth noting that Qurayshi was named as the leader of IS in 2019, following the death of Baghdadi. While IS called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to Qurayshi as the new “caliph,” it did not provide much information about his . The use of the name “Qurayshi” seemed to be an attempt to  to the Prophet Muhammad. This is a tactic that was  ������-à-������ Baghdadi with the aim of  his leadership role. Qurayshi’s real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla but he is also known as Hajji Abdullah and Abdullah Qaradash.  

As the US continues to create an impression that it is minimizing its presence in the region, especially following its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the raid seems to have been used to demonstrate  to reassure Washington’s partners. It also  as a needed win for Biden at a time when the Ukraine crisis remains unsolved. 

However, while Qurayshi’s elimination is a positive development, it may simply be a “,” as Sean Carberry suggests in The Hill. While the operation against Qurayshi may create internal chaos within IS, ultimately, the terror group is likely to name a new leader and move on, which is what took place following Baghdadi’s assassination. Although IS was militarily defeated, the group has not been eliminated and remains a threat. In fact, there have been increased indications, such as the attack on al-Sinaa prison, suggesting that the group is in a state of resurgence. The militants might also seek to use the recent US raid to encourage revenge attacks. 

US Policy in Syria

The Biden administration’s policy ������-à-������ Syria seems to indicate that the official approach will be “,” as Abdulrahman al-Masri and Reem Salahi suggest. It should not be surprising to learn that Syria does not constitute a top diplomatic priority for President Biden. Yet while the US does not want to remain engaged in endless regional wars, it seems to  that a political settlement in war-torn Syria would only empower President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington would never back. 

Moreover, the US and the Kurds are partners, and Washington would not want to portray an image that it has abandoned those who have shouldered the fight against the Islamic State. This was the overall perception when Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from Syria in 2019, and Biden seems keen to remedy that controversial decision. 

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It is worth noting that during President Barack Obama’s tenure, Vice President Biden was one of the  when it came to what the US could achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, it  be taken as a given that as president, Biden may be in favor of removing all US forces from the country. For instance, he criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria,  it granted IS “a new lease on life.” In the same year, Biden also  he supports keeping some forces in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. 

Middle East expert and former US State Department analyst, Gregory Aftandilian doesn’t see the US leaving Syria anytime soon. Aftandilian, who is also a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, thinks “It is doubtful [Biden] will do more than the anti-ISIS campaign and humanitarian aid. In light of the attempted prison break in northeastern Syria he may put pressure on some countries to take back ISIS ��������DzԱ����.”

For the US to play a role in stabilizing Syria, there needs to be a clear strategy. Unfortunately, at the moment, that strategy is largely . While the elimination of Qurayshi is a positive step, much more work needs to be done to stabilize the country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

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So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life  to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“T�ǻ岹��, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,”  Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch  in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued  for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court  that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on  in Germany for  58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Reports indicate that the problems facing Afghanistan, particularly economic, have multiplied with the rise of the Taliban. At the same time, no nation in the world has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers. The Taliban are known by many Afghans as a group that seized power by military force. It is almost impossible for the people to recognize a group that has committed the worst crimes in recent years, including using car  on civilians. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they denied girls the right to seek an education. Since returning to power in August this year, they have doing so.

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Despite they would, the Taliban have not formed an inclusive government. What they mean by inclusiveness is a  made up of only men, the clergy and, most importantly, members of the Pashtun community. Notably, the latter are mostly affiliated with the , a militant group that has close ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Taliban cannot even a government that includes all of their members due to the lack of consensus among themselves.

The Taliban will face challenges in gaining political legitimacy, resolving the economic crisis and maintaining public order. In short, they cannot govern. Taliban militants have been trained to carry out suicide attacks and irregular guerrilla warfare. They are not trained to maintain public order and manage government affairs. For this reason, the future of Afghanistan looks bleak.

Mass Hunger

An increase in poverty is inevitable in Afghanistan. The UN Development Programme reports that  of civilians could plunge below the poverty line by mid-2022. According to a of the World Food Program (WFP), 60% of those living in the northern provinces of Afghanistan are currently suffering from hunger and this figure will likely increase in the months ahead. Aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have of an “impending humanitarian crisis.”

There is currently a severe economic crisis in the country. Many civilians, including former employees of NGOs and the previous Afghan government, are either unemployed or have no hope of earning a living. The Taliban have not allowed female staff to return to work, which means that these women, many of whom were the sole breadwinners, have no way to make money for their families. The unskilled and manual labor workforce has now minimal or no income at all. Alarmingly, farmers have suffered due to drought, winter is fast approaching and medical supplies are running in the country’s remote provinces. These incidents take place when the price of raw materials has risen . Millions of children are likely to be malnourished as a result of the growing economic crisis.

The all-male Taliban government is not capable of coping with such problems. It expects the international community to resume financial and humanitarian assistance following a freeze on in August amidst the Taliban takeover. The plight of the people and the impending famine seem to be a winning card that the Taliban are using to  with the international community. Given that it is not in their interest to do so, the Taliban are unlikely to address poverty and unemployment themselves. For this reason, with the arrival of winter, a humanitarian catastrophe will occur.

Yet the Afghan crisis is not only about those suffering from hunger. Aside from mass poverty, a new wave of conflict is likely to come.

Sectarian Violence in Afghanistan

With the rise of the Taliban, violence in Afghanistan has not only increased but has also become more complex. The biggest threat to the country is the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP), which is at odds with the Taliban. ISKP is affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group that swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014, and it has launched deadly attacks on the Hazara and Shia minorities in Afghanistan.

On October 8, an ISKP suicide bomber attacked worshipers at a mosque attended by Hazaras in the northern city of Kunduz, killing at least 100  and injuring more than 150. A week later during Friday prayers, ISKP launched another deadly attack on Shia Afghans, this time in the southern Kandahar province. At least  were killed.

According to , the Russian president, militants “from Iraq, Syria with experience in military operations” are entering Afghanistan. Although militias operating under the aegis of the Taliban do not make the group’s fighters much different from Islamic State jihadists — both groups use similar — the influx of foreign terrorists from the Middle East into Afghanistan heralds a much darker future for the country.

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Jihadists entering Afghanistan have more practical and strategic warfare experience in places like Syria and Iraq. In these countries, IS and al-Qaeda leaders recruited people by igniting sectarian tensions. This strategy has previously been used by , a Jordanian militant who led al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2005, he declared an  against Iraqi Shias, which brought death and destruction to the country. The violent turmoil of the past decade in the Middle East owes much to this strategy.

It can now be said that there is no real government in Afghanistan to stop foreign jihadists from attacking civilians. With this in mind, the gathering of fighters from across the world and the continued attacks on Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara community will eventually turn the country into a field of sectarian strife. Not only is ISKP threatening Afghan Shias, but the Taliban will also not be safe. Reports indicate that Taliban members have occasionally fallen victim to as well.

A Terrifying Future

Civilians in Afghanistan are now facing one of the worst challenges of their lives. The most devastating threat to them is not even mass poverty. Rather, it is the beginning of a much more violent conflict in a country that is on the verge of a new civil war. Indeed, Afghans have become more economically vulnerable, but not all of their problems are reduced to poverty.

We are currently seeing an Afghanistan where neither the media can operate freely, nor can human rights observers monitor impartially. Most of Afghanistan’s skilled workforce has left the country. With journalists and human rights defenders no longer living there and few job opportunities for those who remain, a terrifying future awaits.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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However, a non-trivial proportion of Afghan women might not be bothered enough by the Taliban’s rule in order to protest. Some might even support the group’s fundamentalist policies. Days after the Taliban took over the Afghan capital on August 15, of women took to the streets to welcome the group’s return to power. Millions of Afghan women took no public stance over the fundamentalist movement.

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Given the Taliban’s long history of misogyny and extremism, it might be puzzling that some women might express their public support or indifference to the loss of their rights.   

Why Some Women Support Extremist Groups

Whether globally or in the Muslim world, it is not an anomaly that some women might support misogynistic leaders or political organizations. In the Middle East, women played a role in different political Islam movements with varying degrees of conservatism. At its peak, recruiters for the Islamic State (IS) group managed to attract female supporters and convince them to migrate to their territories in Syria and Iraq at a time when harrowing stories were emerging about the organization’s treatment of women. So, even if such extremist movements are enemies of women, not all women view them in these black and white terms.

In a research published in the World Politics journal, Lisa Blaydes and Drew Linzer investigate why women might support Muslim fundamentalists. Their answer focuses on the availability of economic opportunities for women. When women lack enough opportunities to achieve their economic and social independence, they might choose to increase their attractiveness in the marriage market of a patriarchal society by becoming more conservative. Thus, limited economic possibilities can push women to trade some of their rights in exchange for financial security.

Afghan women have made significant gains over the last two decades. For example, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates, female participation in the labor force grew from 15.5% to 22.74% of the female working-age population between 2001 and 2019. This means that more women are looking for inclusion in the labor market.

Yet when it comes to unemployment rates among Afghan women, there is barely any change over the same period. The unemployment rate among women in the labor force moved from 14.75% in 2001 to 13.81% in 2019. Hence, the opportunities available to the increasing numbers of women who choose to work have not significantly increased.

Other Reasons

This economic explanation is only one side of the story. Indoctrination through various processes of socialization can also contribute to women’s conservative attitudes. Households, schools, religious institutions and online spaces are all realms where such attitudes are cultivated and reinforced.

Fundamentalist groups understand the importance of women’s indoctrination. Contemporary extremists such as IS and the Taliban rely on female recruiters to attract female members and build ideological support for their movements among women. In the early days of political Islam movements, Egypt’s Muslim Sisterhood was the female side of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sisterhood was concerned with educating women about their roles in an ideal Islamic society.

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But a more cynical explanation is that the lives of the vast majority of Afghan women are less affected by the rule of the Taliban. As anthropologists Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood out, the decry against the Taliban’s rule is merely an urban phenomenon. Most Afghan women — —live in rural communities, where conservative social norms are enforced independently of who is in charge of the capital city. For example, in 2017, the of rural women aged 20 to 24 who got married before 15 and 18 were 5% and 31.9%, respectively. This is compared to 2.1% and 18.4% among their urban counterparts.

Being away from the capital in a country plagued with underdevelopment, rural women also suffered disproportionally due to their higher economic vulnerability and exposure to the two-decade violent conflict between the Taliban and the government. Putting an end to the civil conflict may provide hope to some that their situation might improve.  

We do not know precisely how prominent female support is for the Taliban. Yet the picture is more complicated than a simple fight between women-hating extremists and freedom-loving feminists. With successive Afghan governments failing to address the root causes of gender inequalities, seeing women protesting in the streets with Taliban flags becomes a less surprising anecdote.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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After 20 years of the doctrine in action, which saw the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq that further ignited regional instability, President Joe Biden has withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan and is determined to end the in Iraq by the end of the year. Without concluding whether two decades of aggression succeeded in defeating terrorism, it can be said that the war on terror opened a new area of influence for one of the axis of evil, namely Iran in Iraq.

Opening the Gates

Thanks to its Shia population, Iraq has been a significant target of Iranian foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Due to both geographic and sectarian proximity, Iran, which sees Washington as an enemy and a source of instability in the region, was suspicious of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Deeming Baathist Iraq as a major threat to its national security, the regime in Tehran has meddled in its neighbor’s internal politics and strategic tendencies ever since coming to power. With the US toppling of Saddam Hussein, however, Iran succeeded in courting Iraq’s Shia population by taking advantage of its shared border and cultural, religious and economic ties.

The fact that significant Shia figures opposed to the Iraqi regime took refuge in Iran in the early 1980s strengthened Tehran’s relations with these groups in the post-invasion period. During this time, the Shia population has become influential in the Iraqi state and society. For example, Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organization militia, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the recently deceased vice president of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), count among some of the most prominent pro-Iranian figures in the current Iraqi political and military establishments.

The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia resistance group headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim hoping to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, was established in Iran in 1982. It became a pioneer organization for various Shia militias and political groups with connections to Tehran, incorporating the Badr Organization, then known as the Badr Brigades.

While Iran benefitted from the support of Iraqi militias during the inconclusive war with Iraq in the 1980s, Tehran redirected this mobilization against the US forces following the 2003 invasion. The Iraqi militia group Kataib Hezbollah was in early 2007, followed by Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as part of the campaign by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force against US forces.

Iran’s presence in Iraq came to light when the Americans several Iranian operatives in 2006 and 2007, among them of the IRGC. Asaib Ahl al-Haq kidnapped and killed five US soldiers in January 2007, but two months later, captured the militia’s leader, Qais al-Khazali, alongside an operative of Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy in Lebanon, Ali Musa Daqduq. It is well known that the Jaish al-Mahdi militias led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who still has distant dealings with Iran, received intensive Iranian support to fight against the United States.

The disbanding the Iraqi army and establishing the interim government by the US after 2003 provided Iran with new opportunities to secure many significant positions in the bureaucracy. In this process, many members of the Badr Brigades were integrated into the new army and police forces, their political connections winning many rapid promotions. Today, Badr is still one of the most active groups within the police, the army and the Ministry of Interior.

Consolidation of Iranian Power

The Baghdad government was formed along ethnic and sectarian quotas. As per the country’s 2005 constitution, the presidency was allocated to the Kurds, the prime minister’s office to the Shia and the position of parliament’s speaker to the Sunnis. The allocation of the executive position to Shia leaders strengthened Iran’s elbow room in Iraqi politics.

The sectarian policies of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who held office between 2006 and 2014, the Sunni society further. In addition to the fact that the Shia occupied a central position in the administrative system, the American inability to understand Sunni expectations has marginalized Sunni society. Radicalization led to the resurgence of al-Qaeda and later the formation of the even more extreme Islamic State (IS) group in the Sunni regions of Iraq.

After capturing Mosul in June 2014, IS has taken control of almost a third of Iraqi territory. All Shia groups fighting against the new threat were under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Units — an umbrella organization controlled mainly by pro-Iran armed groups — after Iraq’s top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for all those able to carry a weapon to take up arms.

The PMU militias were provided with American and Iranian-made weapons during their fight against IS. Pro-Iranian militias such as the Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq dominated the PMU. Active support by the IRGC provided to Iraqi militias and the presence of Qassem Soleimani, a Quds Force commander, at the front lines pointed to Iran’s effectiveness in the field.

Integrating the PMU as a of the Iraqi security mechanism in 2016 further legitimized Iranian influence in the political and military establishments. For instance, almost $1.7 billion was to the PMU, which consists of some 100,000 militants, from the $90-billion Iraqi budget in 2021.  

Defeating the Islamic State

After the declaration of victory against IS in 2017, tensions between Iran and the US, placed on the back burner during the campaign, reignited. While US officials argued that the PMU completed their mission and should be , pro-Iranian groups reassumed their anti-American tone.

Thanks to their active role in the fight against IS, Iran-backed militias secured their position in the military bureaucracy and were able to establish themselves politically. The Fatah Alliance, under the leadership of Hadi al-Amiri and backed by pro-Iranian militias, gained victory in the 2018 election, becoming the second-largest group in the Iraqi parliament. Iran has thus become one of the decision-makers in post-IS Iraq.

Tensions increased in 2018 after President Donald Trump decided to unilaterally withdraw the United States from the nuclear deal with Iran. Pro-Iranian forces began to attack US forces on the ground in Iraq. While Iran seemed to want to punish the US via the Iraqi militias, these attacks also aimed at forcing Americans to withdraw from Iraq. The situation has come to an apogee with the killing of Soleimani and Muhandis in the in Baghdad on January 3, 2020.

The assassinations shifted the tensions to the political arena. On January 5, under the leadership of pro-Iranian groups, a was passed in Iraq’s parliament to call on the government to expel foreign troops from the country. In addition to political pressures, as a result of ongoing attacks by pro-Iranian militias on American bases and soldiers in Iraq, the US many of its bases in the country. As a result of strategic dialogue negotiations with Baghdad, Washington decided to withdraw its combat forces and retain only consultant support. To a large degree, Iran managed to get what it wanted — to drive the US out and reassert its own influence in the region.

Pro-Iranian militias, already active in the Shia regions, started to show their presence in Sunni-dominated areas such as Mosul, Anbar and Saladin after the defeat of IS. Furthermore, Iran-backed groups pursue a long-term strategy to seize control of disputed areas between the central government and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Iran-backed groups, including the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Imam Ali, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Saraya al-Khorasani, have been active in the disputed territories since 2014.

At the same time, these militias under the PMU umbrella reject control by Baghdad and threaten the central government. So much so that Abu Ali Askari, a spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, was that “the time is appropriate to cut his ears as the ears of a goat are cut,” referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, while militias were able to against the government in the streets of Baghdad amid tensions leading up to the anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination.

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Aiming to limit US influence, Iran has been gradually reshaping Iraq‘s internal and security policy since 2003. While millions are still paying the price of the war on terror in Iraq, which resulted in the collapse of the political and economic systems followed by a campaign of terror by the Islamic State, Iran continues to consolidate its power, both in military and political spheres.

After an 18-year-long story of invasion and with the US poised to withdraw its combat forces, Iran’s hegemony over Iraq will inevitably come to fruition. The sectarian and ethnic emphasis within the framework of the government quota system not only prevents the formation of independent Iraqi identity but also keeps fragile social fault lines dynamic, an opportunity that Iran will, without doubt, continue to exploit.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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At 8:45 am Eastern time, an American Airlines flight had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within minutes, CNBC stopped discussing stocks and started covering the incident, which, at that moment, no one knew if it was an anomalous accident or an attack of some kind.

360° Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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Three minutes after 9 am Eastern, as I watched incredulously at the events unfolding, I saw a United Airlines passenger aircraft fly right into the south tower of the twin towers. In under an hour, the south tower collapsed, resulting in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. By now, there was no doubt that America was under attack.

 “We will remember the moment the news came, where we were and what we were doing,” said President George W. Bush in an  to Congress on September 20. Images from that Tuesday morning are still etched in my memory, happening, as it were, just nine days after my second child was born.

In all, 2,996 people of 78 nationalities lost their lives in four coordinated attacks conducted by al-Qaeda using hijacked commercial, civilian airliners as their weapons, making  the second-biggest attack on American soil — second only to the genocidal assault on Native Americans committed by the nation’s immigrant settlers.

Operation Enduring Freedom: America’s War on Terror

Addressing the nation the following day, Bush  the attacks “more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.” He promised that “the United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy.” The president went on to assure Americans that this “battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it, we will win.”

Twenty years later, the US has left Afghanistan and Iraq in a chaotic mess. The question remains: Did the United States win the war on terror the Bush administration launched in 2001? This was a war that has  more than $6.4 trillion and over 801,000 lives, according to Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

In October 2001, the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban government that had harbored al-Qaeda. Soon after, al-Qaeda militants had been driven into hiding. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack and leader of al-Qaeda, was killed 10 years later in a raid conducted by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In a shrewd move, Bush had left himself room to take down Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein, using an overarching definition for the war on terror. In his  to Congress on September 20, Bush also stated: “Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

True to his words, in 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq under the premise that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Bush settled his score with Hussein, ensuring he was captured, shamed and subsequently executed in 2006.

Despite reducing al-Qaeda to nothing and killing bin Laden, despite wrecking Iraq and having its leader executed, it is impossible to say that the US has won the war on terror. All that Washington has managed to do is to trade the Islamic State (IS) group that swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014 for al-Qaeda, giving a new identity to an old enemy. Following the US and NATO pullout from Afghanistan last month, the Taliban, whom America drove out of power in 2001, are back in the saddle. In fact, the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan has been so swift, so precise and so comprehensive that the international community is in a shock, questioning the timing and prudence of the withdrawal of troops.

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Setting an expectation for how long the war or terror was likely to last, the secretary of defense under the Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld,  in September 2001 that “it is not going to be over in five minutes or five months, it’ll take years.” Rumsfeld, who christened the campaign Operation Enduring Freedom, was prescient, as the war enters its third decade in a never-ending fight against terrorism.

The Winners and Losers

Ironically, Operation Enduring Freedom has only resulted in an enduring loss of American freedom, one step at a time. I still remember that I had walked up to the jet bridge and received my wife as she deplaned from a flight in 1991. Another time, when she was traveling to Boston from San Francisco, I was allowed to enter the aircraft and help her get settled with her luggage, along with our 1-year-old. It is inconceivable to be allowed to do such a thing today, and I would not be surprised if readers question the veracity of my personal experience. In many ways, al-Qaeda has succeeded in stripping Americans of the sense of freedom they have always enjoyed.

More than Americans, the biggest losers in this tragic war are Iraqis and Afghans, particularly the women. Afghan women, who had a brief respite from persecution under the Taliban’s strict Islamic laws and human rights abuses, are back to square one and justifiably terrified of their future under the new regime. The heart-wrenching scenes from Kabul airport of people trying to flee the country tell us about how Afghans view the quality of life under the Taliban and the uncertainty that the future holds. 

To its east, the delicate balance of peace — if one could characterize the situation between India and Pakistan as peaceful — is likely to be put to the test as violence from Afghanistan spreads. To its north in Tajikistan, there isn’t much love lost between Tajiks and the Taliban. Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rahmon, has  to recognize the Taliban government, and Tajiks have  to join anti-Taliban militia groups, paving the way for continued unrest and violence in Central Asia.

If History Could be Rewritten

In 2001, referring to Islamist terrorists, Bush asked the rhetorical question, “Why do they hate us?” He tried to answer it in a  to Congress: “They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

Islamic fundamentalists couldn’t give two hoots about a form of government or a people’s way of life thousands of miles away. The real answer to Bush’s question lies deeply buried in US foreign policy. America’s steadfast support of Israel and its refusal to recognize the state of Palestine is the number one reason for it to become the target of groups like al-Qaeda and IS.

America’s ill-conceived response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 during the Cold War led to the creation of al-Qaeda. It was with US funds and support that the anti-Soviet mujahideen fought America’s proxy war with the Soviets. Without US interference, al-Qaeda may never have come into existence.

During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the US bolstered Saddam Hussein by backing his regime against the Iranians. When Hussein became too ambitious for America’s comfort and invaded Kuwait in 1990, George H.W. Bush engaged Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. The US motive at that time was primarily to protect its oil interests in Kuwait.

The US created its own nemesis in Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and spent $6 trillion to kill them. In the process, US leaders have reduced Iraq and Afghanistan to shambles and created a new monster in the Islamic State.

Sadly, history can never be rewritten. The US has proved time and again that its involvement in the Middle East and Muslim world is aimed at advancing its own political interests. The only question that remains is: Can the US adopt a policy that would not aggravate the situation and, over time, deescalate it, without creating yet another Hussein or bin Laden? Without a radically different approach, Operation Enduring Freedom is doomed to endure forever, costing trillions of dollars each decade.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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China and Iran figure prominently, as do the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida. Beltway politicians will find the continuity with the fears of previous administrations reassuring. Even though the last three — the Islamic Republic of Iran, IS and al-Qaida — would not even exist today had the United States not actively provoked them into existence through its obsessive meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, many will be pleased to note that their confirmed presence on the list continues to justify the intelligence community’s ever-expanding scope. China, of course, is a special case because it has never threatened the US militarily or economically. Yet the headline of a New York Times on the report reads, “China Poses Biggest Threat to U.S., Intelligence Report Says.”

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How indeed should we understand the Chinese threat, announced as the biggest of them all? Haines explains that China is guilty of “employing a comprehensive approach to demonstrate its growing strength.” The Chinese leadership has apparently failed to understand that only one nation in the world is authorized to “demonstrate its growing strength.” They should accept that it is madness to think there may be a need for China’s strength to increase. If the Chinese simply allow the US to govern the world’s affairs, they can be assured that they will always be in safe, democratic hands.

Russia predictably appears in the full list of threats, although Haines admits that it “does not want a conflict with the United States.” That may be so, but everyone who has paid the slightest attention to the verities associated with Russiagate should now realize that Vladimir Putin’s cronies or lackies have developed a quasi-nuclear capacity to publish misinformation on Facebook, a reprehensible act that no other nation, party or person would ever think of doing. It appears that such practice can be fatal for democracy, even leading to the corrupting of an American election, the pristine model of transparent democratic procedure. 

Haines focuses on ��ܲ�������’s use of “malign influence campaigns.” This apparently means cherry-picking only negative things to say about the United States, whether factual or invented. Haines recycles the favorite trope of Russiagate enthusiasts over the past five years when she speaks of ��ܲ�������’s intent to “sow discord.” Whenever Americans don’t agree on some fundamental things about their own country, the Russians must have had something to do with it.

Haines gets to the end of her list without mention one nation some people find profoundly disturbing: Saudi Arabia, known for its extremely repressive social practices, its summary justice against anyone suspected of “sowing discord” (which may even include Washington Post journalists) and its brutal military campaigns designed to produce the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. But for the fact of its special relationship with the US based on oil and money, there might be some merit in considering Saudi as a possible threat, especially after the of three Americans by a Saudi officer in Pensacola, Florida and the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

New evidence emerged this week concerning the training in the US of Khashoggi’s murderers. It revealed a suspicious of complicity between the Saudi regime, which has funded terrorism for decades, and the US State Department, which authorized the educational collaboration. When asked for comment, State Department spokesman Ned Price explained: “This administration insists on responsible use of U.S. origin defense equipment and training by our allies and partners, and considers appropriate responses if violations occur. Saudi Arabia faces significant threats to its territory, and we are committed to working together to help Riyadh strengthen its defenses.”

�մǻ岹��’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Significant threats:

For the US government, any person, group, nation or even abstract idea that in any way challenges the global network of bulwarks and bastions, weapons and sanctions that constitute a body of resources dedicated to national defense, equally including the regimes of sanguinary dictators, predatory businesses and the actions of irresponsible mercenaries, all of whom are guided by the democratic ideals that drive such policies and actions

Contextual Note

The twin concepts of threat (the action of others) and defense (our actions) sum up the logic of the security state. So long as a threat exists — and the more that can be listed the merrier — the system of defense can thrive and grow. Haines calls the money spent on defense and surveillance an investment, which most experts on Wall Street and any true economist might find slightly abusive. Here is how she describes the value of the intelligence assessment of threats: “In short, at no point has it been more important to invest in our norms and institutions, our workforce, and the integration of our work. Doing so, provides us with the opportunity to meet the challenges we face, to pull together as a society, and to promote resilience and innovation.” Investment, in this sense, simply means more money that the US can spend, basically on creating or entertaining fear.

Fomenting fear is easy, especially if you have the means (unlimited budget) of making it appear serious, detailed and scientific. Interestingly, in her quest for thoroughness, Haines correctly designates climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic as major threats. Everyone already knows the threat is real. Rather than using her platform to trumpet what everyone knows, it might be more productive to look at mobilizing resources to confront such threats. She could, for example, have signaled the urgency of finding ways to allow the developing world to produce its own vaccines rather than beg for Western handouts. But that would raise the delicate question of pharmaceutical patents, which must be protected even at the cost of the world’s health. Instead, the threat she chooses to highlight is the “vaccine diplomacy” of Russia and China.

As for climate change, Haines highlights the grim perspective for the globe itself and especially for “vulnerable populations.” But there is nary a word about the contributing causes or the prospect for possible solutions, such as calling into question the economic system that feeds the crisis. This in spite of Haines’ that the intelligence agencies are not simply Cassandras, put in place to strike fear into brave citizens’ hearts, but have a positive role to play. “The American people should know as much as possible about the threats facing our nation and what their intelligence agencies are doing to protect them,” she says. It would be nice to learn more about the “doing” part of it.

Historical Note

Since the Second World War, the entire pattern for economic success and industrial growth has been structured around the notion of fear. The Cold War officialized fear as the major motivating factor serving to keep capitalism intact, essentially by transforming free market capitalism into monopolistically structured state capitalism (privatized socialism), in which the needs of defense drive innovation. In the first half of the 20^th century, free market capitalism had begun to reveal all the contradictions Karl Marx predicted for it. After the Wall Street crash in 1929, capitalism was on the brink of collapse in the US, which also happened to be the nation that controlled the debt of the European nations who had spent all their capitalistic resources in a catastrophic world war.

During the 1930s, Nazism and Soviet communism, two brands of militaristic totalitarianism, became the principal objects of fear for Americans. The business class feared the communists and the working class, decimated by capitalism’s failure, feared the fascists. The Nazis emerged as the threat that justified the war effort. Once that was successful, Washington’s elite elected the Russian communists to play the role.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Islamist terrorism eventually slid into the role of existential threat number one. But the policies mobilized to defeat it had the effect of seriously weakening the American system of state capitalism. With things becoming desperate, new threats were needed. Avril Haines and the Biden administration have produced the updated catalog.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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What Departing From Iraq Would Mean

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This represents the most significant US drawdown since January when the Iraqi parliament called for the expulsion of all foreign troops from the country. It also confirms that Baghdad will have to confront formidable security challenges, such as the Islamic State (IS) group’s resurrection attempts and US-Iran confrontation inside Iraq, increasingly on its own. Iraq’s new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who appears to have secured the country’s top job, will face the aforementioned challenges in a context characterized by the spread of the coronavirus and the economic blow to state revenue from low oil prices.

Daesh Strikes Back

Despite losing control over large swaths of territory in both Iraq and Syria and the killing of most of its foreign fighters, IS continues to rely on — for its ongoing covert operations — a considerable number of Iraqi affiliates. Anbari tribesmen and Baathist loyalists have constituted the bulk of its force throughout the Islamic State’s existence. It is, therefore, no surprise that Iraq is the country that continues to suffer the most from the group’s activities. ��

Most recently, the terrorist organization has been preparing to take advantage of Iraq’s preoccupation with the coronavirus pandemic and the US-led coalition’s suspension of its military operations. The withdrawal of coalition forces could further facilitate the Islamic State’s plans. The in northern Iraq and the in the country’s al-Anbar province — which were both handed over by Washington to Iraqi forces — played a crucial role in the coalition’s efforts to provide air cover and logistical and technological support to Baghdad’s forces in the fight against IS.

In recent months, IS militants have already increased the number of attacks in the region extending between the provinces of Kirkuk, Saladin and Diyala. By targeting this specific region, IS hopes to exploit and infiltrate void areas between the places controlled by Baghdad and those controlled by Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. Even more worryingly, the Islamic State is attempting to re-extort payments from local residents to provide its fighters with financial compensation.

In this context, the Hamrin Mountains in Diyala province and desert areas in al-Anbar —territories that are difficult to access and control — continue to provide shelter to IS militants. The withdrawal of the coalition’s technological surveillance assets is likely to consolidate the group’s ability to engage in hit-and-run tactics using remote areas as safe havens.

On April 13, in response to the Islamic State’s increasing , Iraq’s security forces launched a military operation against the terror group in Kirkuk province. This is Baghdad’s first major test on the ground since the coalition reduced its anti-IS efforts. Crucially, the battle experience gained by Iraq’s army and the Shia Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) during their 2015-17 pushback against IS and their superior conventional forces are sufficient to prevent the re-establishment of a territorial caliphate inside Iraq. However, Baghdad’s ongoing security crackdown against IS will inevitably suffer from the absence of the US-led coalition’s technology and from the end of those training programs that have been key to prepare local forces to counter the organization’s guerrilla tactics.

The US-Iran Standoff

The other major security threat faced by Iraq in the coming months is the risk that the military confrontation between the US on one side and Iran and its local proxies on the other escalates inside Iraq. As recently as May 6, Katyusha-type rockets a military complex used by US troops near Baghdad International Airport. In March, the US Air Force struck five weapons storage facilities belonging to Kataib Hezbollah (KH), an Iranian proxy militia incorporated into Iraq’s security forces as part of the PMU framework. This followed KH-perpetrated rocket attacks on the Taji military base — north of Baghdad — which killed three members of the US-led coalition.

The US assassination of the top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and Kataib Hezbollah’s commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in January exponentially increased Baghdad’s fears that its territory could be used as a battleground for a larger US-Iran military confrontation. The March incidents and the passing of the deadline issued by KH for all US forces to leave Iraq confirm that such fears are justified, especially if Iran continues to use its proxies as pressure for a complete US withdrawal and Washington continues to rely on military force to curb Tehran’s influence in Iraq.

The nature and priorities of the PMU represent a security issue in itself for Baghdad as Iraq’s government continues its struggle to establish full control over important PMU militias whose senior leaders maintain close links with Iran’s leadership. The country’s new prime minister, Kadhimi, seems the ideal candidate to ease Tehran-Washington tensions.

As chief of Iraq’s national intelligence, Kadhimi was able to develop a strong professional relationship with the intelligence communities in both the United States and Iran. In addition, following the resignation of former Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi — considered as closer to Tehran — and the failure of the more Washington-friendly candidate, Adnan al-Zurfi, to form a government, both the US and Iran are more likely to accept a compromise candidate such as Kadhimi.

Considering the two major security challenges Baghdad faces following the beginning of the US-led coalition withdrawal out of Iraq, the Islamic State’s resurrection is likely to be the most challenging in the short term. The terror group has already been able to increase its activities as a result of the coalition’s reduced counterinsurgency efforts, and the prospect of a further withdrawal of US-led forces is a boost to the morale of local IS affiliates.

While in the short term both the US and Iran appear to be willing to give Kadhimi a chance as a compromise candidate, both countries will continue to seek to limit each other’s influence in Baghdad. Moreover, in the medium to long term, even a more significant relocation of US military forces out of Iraq does not exclude another US-Iran military escalation inside Iraq.

*[ is a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“Now, when I came, the caliphate was all over the place,” the president  apropos of nothing during a news conference with the Australian prime minister on September 20. “I defeated the caliphate — ��������.”

At a , after pulling troops out of Syria, Trump put himself even closer to the battle with IS: “I’m the one that did the capturing. I’m the one who that knows more about it than you people or the fake pundits.”

Trump’s ability to tout his own accomplishments at the expense of others — indeed, to claim their accomplishments as his own — is legendary. But the problem here is not just Trump’s ego. It’s his understanding of geopolitics.

Donald Trump is the first truly digital president. He thinks only in ones and zeroes. He, of course, is always number one. But the category of ones also includes the leaders that he chats with or challenges. The zeroes are everyone else.

The raid on Baghdadi is a classic example of his digital thinking. Here is a president who has single-handedly revived the fortunes of a struggling terrorist organization by allowing a Turkish cross-border incursion in Syria, abandoning Kurdish allies, and otherwise helping to create precisely the kind of chaotic conditions in which groups like the Islamic State thrive.

Yet instead of focusing on this collective threat, Trump has zeroed in on public enemy number one. At his press conference after the mission, the president :

From the first day I came to office — and now we’re getting close to three years — I would say, ‘Where’s al-Baghdadi? I want al-Baghdadi.’ And we would kill terrorist leaders, but they were names I never heard of. They were names that weren’t recognizable and they weren’t the big names. Some good ones, some important ones, but they weren’t the big names. I kept saying, ‘Where’s al-Baghdadi?’

Obsessed with outshining his predecessor, Trump has denigrated the mission to kill Osama bin Laden since 2011. As for Baghdadi, Trump : “This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever.”

Yet Trump’s failure to consider the larger security environment  his singular focus on taking out Baghdadi. And it was only because of the network of relationships that America had maintained — and that Trump has disparaged if not outright undermined — that such a mission was possible.

“The irony of the successful operation against al-Baghdadi is that it could not have happened without U.S. forces on the ground that have been pulled out, help from Syrian Kurds who have been betrayed, and support of a U.S. intelligence community that has so often been disparaged,”  Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Because he has reduced the problem of IS to the problem of Baghdadi, Trump will end up not with a headless snake but a tailless chameleon: an animal that will quickly regenerate to fight another day.

Trump has always looked out for number one. It turns out that his foreign policy follows the same pattern. His visual map of the world looks much like a computer algorithm of alternating ones and zeros.

True, such computer codes can produce staggeringly complex phenomena, even something as sophisticated as artificial intelligence. But Trump doesn’t string together numbers. He is stuck with only two, zero and one.

As such, his digital mindset never rises above basic binary oppositions: us versus them, heroes versus zeroes, Trump versus the world.

One Is the Loneliest Number

Donald Trump conducts foreign policy by telephone or intimate conversations with foreign leaders. He’s deeply suspicious of anything that goes beyond the one-on-one. He can’t quite get into the group spirit of the Group of Seven. The UN is little more than a very large soapbox for his own views. He does nothing but hector NATO members. Most recently, he decided to snub a of Asian leaders for the second year in a row.

The president’s go-it-alone approach to foreign policy has already gotten him into heaps of trouble. In the phone call this summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump defied every legitimate voice in his foreign policy apparatus by soliciting foreign assistance in undermining a major Democratic challenger. In a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump collaborated in redrawing the map of the Middle East to the advantage of Turkey, Russia, Iran and Syria — and to the disadvantage of Syrian Kurds and probably the United States as well.

This mano-a-mano approach, in the hands of a more competent leader, might lead to some truly useful breakthroughs. Take the case of North Korea. There’s no question that the US foreign policy establishment has done little to advance the cause of peace or prosperity in that benighted corner of the world. Breaking with orthodoxy requires a president with strong enough backbone to buck the status quo.

But such unorthodox leaders also have to know what they’re doing. Trump is ignorant of North Korea, its leadership and its predicament. He has proceeded as if Kim Jong-un is simply a leader that can be subjected to alternating waves of flattery and threats. It’s an even cruder approach to negotiations than previous attempts at carrots and sticks that treated the North Korean government as if it were a donkey that could be coaxed along a mountain path.

Not surprisingly, it hasn’t led to any significant agreements (though it also hasn’t led to war, which is the one saving grace of Trump’s putative diplomacy). And North Korea has threatened to  on testing (missiles, nukes) at the end of the year if Trump doesn’t offer something more useful than flattery.

Trump proceeds with the same logic in his relations with China and Russia. He thinks that he can rewrite US foreign policy with his personal tête-à-têtes with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Instead, he has been badly outclassed by leaders who have a far more sophisticated understanding of their adversaries and the world at large.

The checkers-versus-chess metaphor is apt but insufficient. Trump is playing with only zero and one while his counterparts have the entire universe of numbers at their disposal.

But Zero Is Worse

As far as Trump is concerned, if you’re not a leader, you’re nothing. He’s not interested in protesters, journalists, pundits, academics, diplomats. Even successful business people, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, are threatening to him.

This “leader complex” is just as problematic a framework when it comes to entities like the Islamic State. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi . He was an academic when the Iraq War broke out in 2003. The US-led invasion prompted him to join the resistance. Arrested in Fallujah in 2004 and thrown into a US detention facility in Iraq, he quickly fell in with al-Qaeda militants, becoming an acolyte of the Iraqi branch’s leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. When the United States took out Zarqawi, Baghdadi rose in the organization to number three in 2010. When the top two commanders were killed, he became number one.

In other words, the US invasion, the US-run prison and US drone strikes all transformed Baghdadi into the putative leader of a caliphate. He didn’t grow up with a Napoleon complex. A complex set of factors gradually pushed him into a command position. The US focus on eliminating leaders paradoxically produced only more battle-hardened leadership.

It would be the height of naivete for Washington to assume that eliminating Baghdadi will make IS any less of a threat. It has watched a similar scenario unfold  in Afghanistan and . A “decapitation strategy” doesn’t work with a many-headed Hydra.

The Islamic State maintains a  — in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya and Yemen, plus sleeper cells in Europe. With Baghdadi dead, these affiliates  in a more independent direction. Some other outfit might claim the central mission of rebuilding a caliphate. But just as it’s a mistake to boil IS down to one leader, it’s a mistake to boil the organization down to a stable brand.

IS and like-minded organizations thrive in failed states, warzones, occupied territories and enclaves that feel victimized by the central government. It prospers because of a broad animus against Muslims reflected in immigration policies, inflexible cultural prohibitions (for instance, against the hijab) and the violent actions of right-wing extremists. The Islamic State is the supreme expression of polarization. It will continue to exist as long as the underlying polarization remains in place.

Trump’s obsession with number one — himself, other alpha males and top public enemies — reflects his generation’s fixation on celebrities as well as a much older “great man” theory of history. Trump’s foreign policy, in which he has substituted celebrity politicians for celebrities from Hollywood or Wall Street, could have been put together by People magazine.

But the president is also wedded to the delusion that history is made by great men (not women, not movements, not impersonal forces). Trump’s desperate desire to insert himself into this historical succession of “great men” is the real genesis of his digital understanding of the world. It’s why he ran for the presidency. It’s why he makes the most outrageous boasts that he’s the greatest president of all time. It’s why he has so nakedly coveted the Nobel Peace Prize. He wants to be admitted to what he imagines to be the pantheon of all-time greats.

Trump has learned over the years how to turn his disadvantages — vanity, ignorance, spitefulness, greed — into bankable qualities. But his hamartia, his fatal flaw of unbridled ambition, will ultimately lead to his downfall. The man who would be king, the bully who would-be hero, the leader who , is shaping up to be America’s biggest loser. The arithmetic of impeachment is starting to look inescapable: the evidence is multiplying and even the Senate might vote for subtraction.

By Trump’s own logic, the future looks bleak. In his digital universe, if you’re not number one, then you’re nothing but a zero.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Like an author of pulp fiction, Trump drew on his talent for literary creativity when the action he claimed to have witnessed in the Situation Room as it was playing out. “Trump said he watched the entire mission, noting that ‘it was just like a movie.’”

Just as Hillary Clinton had reveled in former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s horrendous end in 2011, Trump not only took pleasure in recounting Baghdadi’s extinction, but he created the scene in “.” Trump said: “He died after running into a dead-end tunnel whimpering and crying and screaming all the way … He died like a dog. He died like a coward.” Most significantly Trump wanted everyone to understand that as commander-in-chief he had outdone his predecessor, Barack Obama: “[Osama] Bin Laden was big, but this was bigger.”

Whereas US media tended to celebrate the outcome of the operation without delving too much into its meaning or Trump’s style of presenting it, The Guardian an article with the title: “Doubts over Donald Trump‘s dramatic account of Baghdadi raid.” What did Trump actually see? “Footage of the US special forces raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian compound reportedly consisted of overhead surveillance footage and no audio, prompting questions over the extent of the dramatic licence taken by Donald Trump in describing the final moments of one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Dramatic license:

The right to invent narrative sequences granted to writers of fiction and exercised routinely by politicians eager to have people believe in their own imaginary heroism

Contextual Note

The Washington Post, reviled by the White House in Trump’s war against Jeff Bezos, compounded the confusion and provided the president with an opportunity to take the moral high ground when, in its obituary, it hesitated between three descriptions of the IS leader. Initially, it Baghdadi “the Islamic State’s terrorist-in-chief,” before changing it to “religious scholar at helm of Islamic State.” Finally — under pressure from Trump — The Post modified the headline to read “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48.” It’s all about the words you use and the roles you define. The narrative is far more important than the facts.

As the world on was left waiting to hear a possibly more truthful and less bombastic account of the events from a Pentagon official, The Guardian noted that the US defense secretary, Mark Esper, “declined to endorse aspects of Trump’s cinematic account in an interview with ABC’s This Week programme on Sunday morning.” Yahoo News that a “top U.S. official who watched the raid with Trump in the White House Situation Room said he’s not sure where the president got that information.”

To justify his purple prose, Trump moralized that the “vivid terms” of his narrative were required “to deter would-be [IS] fighters.”

Evil characters die ignobly. In one historically ironic note, foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times offered a of the deceased leader telling readers: “In all, I’ve spoken to 17 people who knew him, including his teachers, his childhood friends, his aides and three of the Yazidi girls he raped.”

Since Trump relishes comparing performances, he must certainly be aware that far more than three women have accused him of rape, putting the US president clearly in the lead.

Historical Note

Trump has good company in the practice of the art of dramatic license. In her 2008 primary campaign when she was pitted against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton recounted how in 1996 she had landed in Bosnia “under sniper fire.” As she , “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” Video shot that day showed that the greeting ceremony did calmly take place and in totally secure conditions.

Joe Biden notoriously his story of pinning a medal on a soldier in Afghanistan to the point that, though it wasn’t an outright lie, his narrative conflated elements from several different events and deviated wildly from the truth. Reality is never as convincing or instructive as the hyperreality politicians are trained to elaborate. Still, Trump, the TV professional, seems to take it further than most politicians.

And yet this improvised tale of fear and trembling seems rather banal and unimaginative. Full of clichés, it depends on categories that border on insult rather than observation. It sounds like a third-rate Hollywood screenwriter’s attempt to portray a villain in an underfunded action film. As in a cheap western where the audience roots for the good guys and expects the defeat of the bad guys, Trump gloated: “Many of his people were killed. We lost nobody. Think of that. It’s incredible.” Donald, it isn’t incredible. That’s how it was scripted.

But the ultimate banality was Trump’s resorting to the “mission accomplished” meme made famous in George W. Bush’s stage of it on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf back in 2003. Obama revived it with his triumphant but low-keyed announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Trump has now simply duplicated Obama’s grand gesture with many of the same details: helicopters, bravery in the face of a formidable enemy and the discarding of the body at sea.

The narrative for all three presidents reflects two features of US culture that rely on simplistic thought: the belief in decisive moments of history that mark dramatic endings and the permanent illusion created by celebrity culture. They combine in the meme of a combat in which good definitively conquers evil, or at least proves that good will always be capable of mobilizing the forces to defeat evil. The media — whether it’s the movies or the evening news — entertains those beliefs and exploits them in its own narratives.

Popular entertainment typically creates a hyperreal world of potential moral perfection that stands outside of history. As the US media celebrate the success of the raid and encourage the belief that IS has now been decapitated and cannot survive, other voices sound a note of warning. Writing for Al Jazeera, Ibrahim al-Marashi, an associate professor at California State University, following the assassination of the IS leader: “The day after al-Baghdadi’s death, [IS] appears to be slated for a comeback. While Trump is triumphantly celebrating a PR victory at a time when he is facing impeachment woes domestically, his foreign policy decisions in Syria are likely to facilitate [the Islamic State’s] regrouping and re-emergence.”

Marashi explains that Trump’s recent decision to withdraw US troops from the Syrian border and allow Turkey to occupy the terrain, increasing the instability in the Middle East, will make it easier for IS to regroup under new leadership or for a new insurgency to emerge.

Trump has always preferred hyperreality to reality, to the point of becoming a hyperreal creation himself. He has no patience with the complexity of reality. He now finds himself playing the role of impresario of an unoriginal hyperreal event that had already been scripted by Obama in 2011, with the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Obama’s feat had the merit of finally breaking a suspense that had been building for nearly 10 years. Trump’s remake lacked the lengthy buildup and featured a second-rate lead actor who couldn’t rival with bin Laden’s international stardom. To compensate, Trump scripted his overblown dramatic voice-over composed entirely of cheap Hollywood clichés, spoken in the president’s inimitably (and unintentionally) comic voice.

So, was this a turning point in history? Al Jazeera, assistant professor at King’s College London, who called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi‘s death “mostly of symbolic importance.” In other words, it was hyperreality. But, after all, there’s an election coming up next year in the US. That’s what it’s all really about.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On April 24, he by saying: “Every indication is that this was at the very least inspired by ISIS [Islamic State].”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Inspired:

Suggested by or influenced by in some way, meaning that a cause has been found and action to suppress it is required

Contextual note

In the segment of this CBS News that has been released, Pompeo says a number of things that are worth deconstructing or at least wondering about, if not psychoanalyzing.

He tells us, for example, that: “We have Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula that still has real capacity to put the United States at risk through its expertise.” Parsing that sentence reveals the following logic. “We” (the subject: the US) have something (the object: al-Qaeda) “in the Arabian peninsula” (the location). This would seem to indicate that Pompeo sees the US as being materially present in or even part of the Arabian Peninsula. In terms of sovereignty, what could that mean?

Only an empire might make such a statement. The emperor Vespasian in 69 AD could have said we have Christians in Ephesus or Palestine, for example, because Ephesus and Palestine were governed by the Roman Empire. The “we have” indicates it is our problem and responsibility, not the local government’s problem and responsibility.

The next curious turn of phrase is al-Qaeda’s expertise. What al-Qaeda “expertise” is he referring to in the Arabian Peninsula that can put the US “at risk”? As so often in the bellicose rhetoric of Washington, politicians suggest that local events abroad are putting the homeland at risk. But the kind of political risk this evokes is unimaginable. So, the only thing it can mean is that the status of the empire — its control over certain geographical zones — may be put at risk. Which, again, is an admission of empire.

Secretary Pompeo then offers this mysterious proposition: “There are lots of pockets we could walk through.” He appears to be referring to an action to be undertaken with specific nodes in the networks. But how do intelligence analysts “walk through” those pockets? Is it about infiltrating the pockets or possibly disrupting them. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary needs to know more about CIA jargon to make sense of this.

Pompeo’s conclusion is clear: “But this challenge of taking down these networks is something the United States is going to have to continue to stay right on top of.” By “stay on top of” he means “follow through” or possibly “remain in control,” but the expression also conveys the idea that the US sits above everyone else and manages their affairs. That’s how empires operate.

Historical note

Like everyone else in US politics and media, Secretary Pompeo speaks as if the role of the US in the world is to offer guidance and assistance when necessary against evil. That’s why terrorist incidents have become so valuable and necessary. They justify actions to oppose terrorism that, when taken all together, end up curiously resembling empire.

Former West Point instructor and historian Danny Sjursen of Truthdig of the role that all presidents are expected to play, whether, as Republicans, they play it with a threatening scowl or, as Democrats, with a seemingly empathetic smile. He writes: “Obama — just like Clinton, Carter, LBJ, and Truman before him — served as little more than a polite emperor.” Contrasting the Republicans and Democrats who have held the office, he points out that “the foreign policy differentiations were more about manners than substance.” Americans see the difference between the two parties through the prism of their own domestic culture of hard-nosed individualistic meritocracy versus a tender-hearted meritocracy that distinguishes itself by the concern it shows for the downtrodden at home. When it comes to foreign policy, the president has no choice. He must represent the empire and its interests.

One interesting twist to speculate about in Pompeo’s statements is this one: “Even apart from the Sri Lanka incident, it’s absolutely the case that the capacity for ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups, Sunni terror groups remains.” As President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been essentially constructed around the alliance with militantly Sunni Saudi Arabia, coupled with an aggressively anti-Iranian Israel, currently enamored with the Saudis’ courage in opposing Shia Iran, it was tempting to think that after announcing the definitive defeat of the Islamic State’s caliphate, the Trump administration would have focused all its energies on defining the Shias, led by Iran, as the enemy.

This would have paved the path forward toward a tripartite alliance of a new alliance of virtue (the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia) against the diabolical Shias. But the empire, to maintain its imperial vocation, requires the persistence of a second front against the Sunnis, even if Saudi Arabia remains the spiritual heart and putative leader of the Sunni umma (community).

Pompeo reveals why this is necessary, as : “Yeah, almost certainly the case that they show no sign of ideologically having waivered [sic] from their desire to conduct attacks on the West. And that means we’re going to have to be vigilant for an awfully long time.”

The US needs a reason to be seen as indispensable in its actions across the globe. The “desire to conduct attacks on the West” ensures that indispensable status. Some might find it peculiar to hear Sri Lanka referred to as “the West”? For Pompeo, nothing could be more natural. Sri Lanka is a province of the empire, just like neighboring India, a nation with four times the population of the United States that has now learned it has the freedom to purchase oil from the and trusted supplier.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Mike Pompeo’s Inspired Sermon on the War on Terror appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Afghanistan has experienced a violent 2017, with the government continuing to steadily lose territory to the Taliban. According to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the Afghan government’s control over districts has deteriorated to its lowest level since December 2015, when SIGAR first began analyzing such data. US forces in Afghanistan estimate that as of August 2017, the government controlled about 56.8% of the country’s 407 districts, while the Taliban controlled about 13.2% and the remaining 30% were contested.

Concurrently, UN estimates show that armed clashes in Afghanistan are at a record high, indicating that the Taliban is moving away from a guerrilla-style warfare and to more conventional combat techniques that involve direct fighting between government forces and insurgents.

Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, the Islamic State (IS) remains active despite intensified US air strikes. The campaign included the largest ever conventional bomb used by Washington in combat in April, which reportedly killed 92 militants and destroyed a complex of tunnels and bunkers used by IS in Acin district in Nangarhar province.

The uptick in violence has placed severe constraints on Afghan security forces, evident in the increasing number of attacks in Kabul. This year has seen multiple attacks in and around Wazir Akbar Khan, the district in the heavily-fortified Green Zone that houses all major government buildings and embassies. On October 31,��a ��occurred a few hundred meters from the American and British embassies, and on May 31, yet when a car bomb killed more than 150 people and wounded hundreds of others near the German embassy. Insecurity in the capital has been so high this year that at the end of the first six months of 2017, the United Nations assessed that Kabul province had become the deadliest for civilians in Afghanistan, displacing Helmand for the first time in decades.

Attacks in Kabul have ranged from isolated shootings, IED and grenade attacks to suicide bombings and even rocket attacks, as seen during US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ unannounced visit to Kabul in September when����were fired in and around Kabul airport. Many of the incidents have been complex attacks, where suicide bombers detonate their devices outside targeted buildings, paving the way for gunmen to storm the premises and continue the attack until security forces intervene. Examples include the on the Kabul military hospital, which killed over 50 people, and the attempt to storm the that left two Afghan employees dead and three policemen injured.

Several of these attacks were claimed by the Taliban, although IS has increasingly asserted responsibility. In particular, attacks on Shia mosques — such as the that killed 72 people in Kabul’s Imam Zaman mosque — are almost always attributed to and claimed by IS, as the Taliban typically avoids stoking sectarian tensions. However, IS has also claimed attacks on major targets, including the Kabul military hospital and even the rocket attacks on Kabul airport in September, although this attack was also claimed by the Taliban. In many cases, the accuracy of the Islamic State’s claims remains unclear. The rocket attack on Kabul airport, for example, was most likely carried out by the Taliban, which has a proven history of carrying out coordinated attacks and firing rockets against critical infrastructure.

Nevertheless, in conducting mass-casualty attacks against Shia minorities, IS has demonstrated the capability to carry out major attacks in Kabul. The Islamic State’s growing activity in Kabul and elsewhere in the country indicates its intention of expanding beyond its stronghold of Nangarhar province. This, in turn, has raised concerns that the group is seeking to make Afghanistan its new base, particularly as it faces significant military pressure in Iraq and Syria, where it has rapidly lost territory over 2017. The Iraqi embassy attack, for instance, came three weeks after the fall of Mosul and led to widespread speculation that the operation was in retaliation for Iraqi military gains against IS.

Afghanistan in 2018

In this context, the coming year is likely to remain a challenging one for Afghanistan. Although the US has pledged to deploy 3,000 additional security personnel to the country — bringing the total number of US troops in Afghanistan to about 14,000 — the figure is unlikely to be sufficient to counter the Taliban’s gains, particularly in rural areas. US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats observed in May that the performance of Afghan security forces will probably worsen in 2018 due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support and weak leadership. He also noted that Afghanistan will remain dependent on external support until it either ends the insurgency or engages in meaningful peace talks with the Taliban.

Trends over the past few years indicate that Afghan forces lack the ability to win the war militarily, evident in the Afghan army’s failure to hold on to territorial gains achieved after the surge in US troops seen in December 2009. The Afghan government led by US ally President Ashraf Ghani is weak and beset by infighting, making it harder to achieve a political settlement with the Taliban. US efforts to restart the official peace process — along with Afghanistan, Pakistan and China — have faltered, as the Taliban has refused to participate in negotiations with what it sees as a US-funded government in Kabul.

The Taliban’s territorial gains also bode poorly for the prospect of peace talks, given the incentive for the insurgent group to push for further territory and increase pressure on government troops. Meanwhile, the Islamic State’s growing geographic presence in the country mean that considerable US resources, in the form of air strikes and counterterrorism activities, will continue to be diverted toward the group.

In the near term, a form of stalemate appears likely. Afghan security forces will continue to fight Taliban insurgents to ensure that the group does not capture strategic districts or overrun key provincial capitals, while both the Taliban and IS are likely to continue carrying out periodic mass-casualty attacks in Kabul and other major cities to maintain pressure on government resources.

*[This article is based on a report by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:�� /

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The figures for terrorist attacks and those as a result in 2016 are staggering as the death toll reaches 300��with seemingly no respite from the relentless killings in sight. In the early hours of 2017, the attack on a New Year’s party at the Reina nightclub seemed to signify��that the��bloodshed on the streets of Turkey will��continue.

The turbulence of 2016 has in no way given signs of an optimistic future for Turkey in its fight against either domestic terrorism in the form of Kurdish militants or indeed the continued threat of the so-called Islamic State (IS) as the authoritarian stance of President Erdogan looms large.

The July coup attempt was quashed quickly and the extent to which Erdogan went to consolidate his power was extraordinary, ruthless and capricious in nature as judges, soldiers, clerics and even teachers were incarcerated. The president has been quick to remove those who insult or criticize: In April he summoned the German ambassador to explain why a could circulate in the public domain and demanded prosecution while closing scores of media outlets within Turkey and jailing scores of journalists.

While his grip on power may be strong, his ability to deal with the escalating terrorism threats has been calamitous. Within Erdogan’s dogmatic, aggressive approach to the Kurds is buried his fear of Kurdish nationalism and the potential drain on centralized power, heightened by the war in Syria and the Kurdish momentum. In recent months Turkey has softened its stance on President Bashar al-Assad in Syria as it has aligned itself closer with��Russia, leaving rebels it had previously backed to overthrow the Assad regime stunned by the change in political course.

Lack of Direction

From a counterterrorism point of view, there is a clear lack of policy direction with little or no unified��strategy to defeat terrorism, and there are several key components of the stance that resonate both historically and with the modern authoritarian nature of the government and President Recip Tayyip Erdogan.

Firstly, there is the tradition of the Turkish military (TSK) being heavily��involved with domestic counterterrorism operations, and in turn being central to the development and conceptualization of a national security strategy. In recent years there have been increasing powers sanctioned to allow greater surveillance and detention ability—the .

This connection with the military and counterterrorism today lies at the door of the current attitude toward terrorism, particularly the prioritized fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey believes the PKK poses a credible and real threat to a loss of power and separation of territory—a direct threat to the state itself and its secular nature.

Thus, the PKK, despite its claims and previous involvement in peace talks, is not afforded political footing such as the Irish Republican Party (IRA) in Britain or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain.

Its political claim to independence is ignored entirely—there is only a hard line against its position and no room, currently, to find a solution of inclusion, hence the militarization against the Kurds and the divisive language from both the central government and Erdogan in particular. The decision has been taken to defend the state from Kurdish independence at all cost. In doing so, the Turkish government has adopted a repressive formula, a concept of “us versus them”—a securitized approach to the PKK that has only intensified fighting and no doubt increased the resolve and determination of the Kurds who have continued to unleash deadly attacks.

No Kurdish Independence

With the emphasis firmly focussed on defeating the PKK, countering��external international threats such as that posed by IS had taken a back seat. Because of the ambivalence shown to the regional defeat of IS by the Turkish authorities, the group has managed countless ruthless attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives, most notably the October 2015 attack at a peace rally in Ankara, the June 28��attack at Istanbul Airport and now the��New Year’s Day 2017 shooting in Istanbul.

However, over the last 15 months there have been efforts made to collaborate with the international community, particularly considering some truly horrifying attacks by the group and the enormous problem Turkey faces with refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria and indeed the rule of IS.

There are even arguments that fighting IS could be detrimental to the security of the state as initially IS posed a real threat to the removal of President Assad while maintaining a grip over large sways of Syrian Kurds in the border towns with Turkey. Curbing any fresh momentum by not actively fighting IS, Turkey believed it was aiding the battle against the PKK and protecting the power of the state.

The openly robust approach to defeating terrorism in Turkey may well be entering a new phase as there is now a clear vision by the government and Erdogan that state security is imperative and intrinsically intertwined with government legacy, even if it means the dilution of civil liberties and the isolation of political ideas. There are early indications in America that securitization does not work with countering radicalization, as well as lessons from Europe on a more pragmatic approach to brokering peace—but only once a genuine understanding of a group’s political ambitions are understood and accepted.

2017 may well prove to be the bloodiest yet in Turkey as the alienation of the Kurds from society and their claim for independence is further ignored and fought against while IS continues to cast a long shadow of violence as it slowly dies in the region.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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, 48.3% of the population in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is female. Yet despite their prominent place in society—and the fact that women and children are —the counterterrorism community has done little to assess their roles in preventing, promoting and participating in violent extremism in the region. As the Islamic State (IS) digs in to defend its last Iraqi stronghold in and launches a counterattack in , it is clear that a more comprehensive strategy is needed now more than ever.

From Marrakech to Tunis and beyond, the most current research on countering violent extremism (CVE) in the Middle East and North Africa demonstrates the nuanced roles women play in civil society, not just as victims but also as perpetrators of conflict and dynamic agents of community resilience.

Historically, women have (VEO) by providing structural support and serving as educators, fundraisers, recruiters and members of frontline security forces. “While conventional militaries have hesitated in bringing women on board, terrorists across the ideological spectrum have used women for a wide range of tasks, ranging from logistics and recruitment to a frontline role, say as a suicide bomber,” says former in a report for the Institute for Inclusive Security.

These roles are often heavily involved, and women have increasingly begun serving in combat roles as IS has grown in tactical and geographical scope—a major shift from strategies used by other terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which is more likely to use women solely for operational support.

Building Community Resilience

Yet women also act as dynamic purveyors of change across the MENA region, including helping to detect early warning signs of radicalization and building social cohesion and resilience networks as entrepreneurs, advocates, law enforcement officers and community leaders.

The 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit highlighted the US administration’s emphasis on building community resilience by .��The World Bank followed suit, launching a new Women for Resilience Initiative to provide business support services to female entrepreneurs in the region as a means of bolstering resilience value chains.

A great body of research affirms the value of this work, demonstrating a definite positive correlation between women’s empowerment and a reduction in acts of violent extremism. For example, a conducted in Morocco and Bangladesh confirms that when women are given access to education and are empowered economically, socially and legally, violent extremism is less likely to spread. The study reports that��“in microlending, for every $1US a woman earns, she reinvests 90 percent back into her family … and has 2.2 children who are healthier and better educated.”

These positive outcomes, when coupled with targeted CVE interventions—including training moderate female imams on promoting religious moderation and tolerance—have created effective counternarratives to radical ideologies at a grassroots level.

Gatekeepers

Women in the MENA region are also uniquely positioned as community gatekeepers and civil society leaders. CVE expert :��“Not only do��—formally or informally—strengthen its fabric, women themselves are among the most powerful voices of prevention in their homes, schools, and communities. Women as mothers, caretakers, partners, teachers, and faith leaders—can, uniquely, help build the social cohesion, sense of belonging, and self-esteem that youth might need to resist the appeal of a violent group. Community engagement in CVE requires the participation of women to be successful.”

A report from also affirms their critical role CVE efforts, noting: “[W]omen are often uniquely positioned within their families and communities to provide essential information to those working to counter extremism. In many cases, CVE practitioners engage with only certain community gatekeepers and neglect the input of women and women’s civil society groups who may also have access or intelligence. Anecdotal evidence also shows that family ties are a strong predictor of extremism, and that women are central to understanding how to leverage the role of the family in promoting positive change.”

While more empirical data is needed on the impact of programs to engage women in deradicalization efforts in MENA specifically, the US State Department is currently in North Africa to help women’s civil society groups speak out against violent ideologies.

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Several counter-messaging programs also exist in South Asia and elsewhere that might be tailored to provide culturally relevant solutions to extremism in the region.

First, Sisters Against Violent Extremism (SAVE)—the world’s first female counterterrorism platform—established , a family-centered security platform to sensitize mothers to recognize early signs of radicalization in their children. These�� now work to strengthen local resilience in communities that are most vulnerable to violent extremist ideologies, including Kashmir, Tajikistan and Nigeria, and offer a unique model of community-led prevention interventions that could be highly successful in the MENA region.

Similarly, has worked very successfully with mothers and at-risk youth to offer counter-messaging to extremist ideology in Pakistan’s conflict-ridden Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). By working holistically with various stakeholders, including clergy and elected officials, the organization has effectively educated entire communities on the impact of radicalization and the roles that individuals can play as peacebuilders.

Policy Toolbox

As international policymakers seek to develop gender-based approaches and frameworks into their CVE policies, the most obvious instrument available is to address CVE within the broader women, peace and security (WPS) framework espoused by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and the six subsequent resolutions on WPS that have followed it. The groundbreaking resolution laid the foundation for addressing women’s role in the security sector, bringing into focus the ways in which women can serve as leaders and partners in conflict prevention and resolution.

More recent legislation—namely ,��which “focuses on the emerging threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters and calls for the need to empower women as a prevention response to the spread of violent extremism”—are also highly underutilized resources in CVE policy toolbox.

The policy community should also take advantage of a recent shift in focus from conventional, security-focused counterrorism measures to counter violent extremism to approaches to prevent violent extremism, which place additional emphasis on the importance of community resilience and civil society engagement as the solution to counter groups like IS.

In a recent Brookings report, that “CVE has acted as the soft side of counterterrorism and has evolved greatly in recent years. International governments and practitioners are crucially recognizing that a preventive approach is critical to addressing the roots of radicalization and to more effectively counter recruitment into violent extremist networks. Despite women being active members in a range of terrorist organizations for many years, it is only more recently that CVE has begun to include a more comprehensive recognition of the gender dynamics at play within the processes of radicalization.”

Although US policymakers have been notoriously divided on this shift to , preventing violent extremism (PVE) was the focus of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s on violent extremism that was released in December 2015 and will likely remain at the forefront of the international community’s work to address violent extremist ideologies going forward.

Ultimately, it is well past time to transition beyond a military-focused CVE approach into an inclusive security model to defeat extremist ideologies and the groups that espouse it. At the same time, it is essential that we not overly securitize women’s roles, but rather see CVE within a broader conceptual lens of gender and security.

As a report from Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace, and Security :��“[E]ffective CVE strategies must be coordinated, multi-sectoral approaches that include high-level diplomacy and leverage military action with governance, development, and human rights programming that include the promotion of gender equality.”

CVE policy in the Middle East and North Africa can no longer avoid the role of women. The risk is far too great.

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The Yazidi people are an ethno-religious group with aspects of their religion entailing a mixture of Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. They are monotheistic, worshipping one God, but their most holy religious figure is , who meets all criteria of a prophet but is described by some Yazidis as only a saint. Their holy scripture includes Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve, Moses, Muhammad and other prophets shared in monotheism.

The Yazidis have resided in northern Iraq/Kurdistan since Mesopotamian times, along with other communities in Turkey, Syria and Armenia. However, as with the Assyrian Christian population, they have been in significant decline due to centuries of persecution, discrimination and violence. According to their narrative, they are survivors of against them.

Islamic State

In August 2014, the Islamic State (IS or Daesh) conducted a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Yazidi people, which can only be described as genocide. IS attacked Sinjar Mountain, the second holiest place of worship for Yazidis, and surrounding villages resulting in the mass displacement of people. According to the (IOM), there are more than 1.3 million internally displaced persons (IDP) from Sinjar, Mosul and other locations in northern Iraq/Kurdistan.

Unlike Christians, Yazidis are not granted reprieve from proselytization by paying taxes as citizens under the IS caliphate. They have only one choice: convert or die. Many captive Yazidi youth have been forced into slavery or recruitment as IS militants. The female prisoners are raped and sold as comfort women. All of this includes a prevalent societal discrimination by Muslims that still persists today.

This author conducted numerous interviews with Yazidi IDPs from the United Nations’ Sharya Camp in Duhok, northern Iraq/Kurdistan.

Trapped on Sinjar

Jalal and his family fled his village for Sinjar in August 2014. According to him and other interviewees, Daesh militants infiltrated villages prior the main assaults. Jalal explains that the reason for this belief was the fact that IS fighters knew too well the exact location of sensitive targets and escape routes.

While fleeing his village, Jalal witnessed a Peshmerga (Kurdish military forces) military checkpoint blown up by rockets and other Yazidis dying from starvation and dehydration on top of Sinjar Mountain while surrounded by IS militants. He describes being trapped on top of the mountain as “the hardest days of my life.”

His two most memorable moments occurred when an unidentified aircraft parachuted food and water supplies, and when the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rescued the Yazidis at Sinjar, exchanging gunfire with Daesh fighters and opening a path for Yazidis to escape.

“Without the PKK, we might have died at Sinjar,” Jalal says. The majority of interviewees at Sharya Camp echoed his sentiment.

Sharya Camp, Duhok © Siraj Davis

Yazidi Peshmerga Fighter Remembers Comrades

Najee was a volunteer Peshmerga fighter in his village of Seba. On August 3, 2014, Daesh attacked Seba at 3am.

He remembers the fierce exchange of gunfire and the Peshmerga soldiers abandoning his village. Yazidi fighters like Najee stayed behind to continue fighting. He attests that he saw Muslims he knew from neighboring villages as a child aiding and fighting with Daesh. When his ammunition ran out, he wished farewell to his comrades and started transporting Yazidi families from his village to Sinjar.

In a quick, humorous juncture in his story, he reminisces at the unbelievable sight of a man at the bottom of Sinjar Mountain offering his expensive Honda for a donkey to travel up the cliffs. The man was refused and consequently ran up the mountain.

Najee proudly showed photos to this author of some of his comrades who battled to the last bullet at his village. The pictures showed dead bodies, shot in execution style.

Daesh Captive

An IDP whose photo is not shown in this feature’s gallery is called Khansaa, aged 12. On August 3, her family’s car broke down while fleeing from IS advances on her village. They were captured while running on foot.

Khansaa witnessed the execution of captives, her male family members stripped naked and her sister physically assaulted when their father’s photo in Peshmerga fatigues within her purse caught the eye of IS militants.

Over the course of months, Khansaa was separated from family, auctioned off as a slave, not fed for eight days while drinking water from a toilet, nearly killed in airstrikes against the Islamic State, forced to care for sheep, mercilessly raped by several men, and repeatedly told by IS fighters that her torment was God’s punishment.

Prisoners like Khansaa were temporarily placed in different abandoned civilian buildings until ultimately being transferred to former Shia, Yazidi and Christian towns that were evacuated or ethnically cleansed. Male family members were sent to other locations for execution, with the exception of boys.

After several months, Khansaa finally reunited with her sister when the man her sister was sold to serendipitously dropped her off to where Khansaa was imprisoned while on his way to visit family in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Khansaa, her sister and the rest of her family escaped before he returned. For two days, Khansaa and her family laid motionless in fields and bushes during daytime, continuing at night until finally being rescued by Peshmerga. She will never forget the exact date: April 27, 2015.

Sharya Camp, Duhok © Siraj Davis

Her most vivid moment occurred en route to the first prison camp. Her Daesh captors stopped at a gas station. There were children wearing IS bandanas teasing, laughing and throwing stones at the shackled Yazidi prisoners in the back of the truck. Khansaa will never forget how her hopelessness and humiliation was entertainment for children.

The Yazidi Voice

All of the Yazidi IDPs in Sharya Camp, including the ones featured in this article, were unanimous in echoing renowned Yazidi activist Nadia Murad. They sternly call for the international community to officially recognize and condemn the Daesh genocide of Yazidis. They also affirm their deep desire to return to Sinjar, but on condition of international protection. The other alternative a few IDPs suggested was forming their own military to protect themselves.

Many Yazidi victims of Daesh violence are struggling to overcome the deep fear and distrust they feel toward their Muslim neighbors. This fear and distrust can only be repaired with positive programs by Muslims for Yazidis.

In addition, while the media focuses on the narrative of Daesh’s ethnic cleansing of Yazidis, it is important��to mention��that the perspective of the Yazidis differ. The by Muslims, Persians and Mongols since 630 AD. They identify their most dangerous of antagonists as the Ottomans—hence the fear and distrust.

That Ottoman aggression included continuous failed attacks upon Sinjar Mountain from 1752 AD to 1838 AD. The Ottomans employed even worse brutality than Daesh. And like Daesh, they failed.

After every genocide, the resilient Yazidis return to their venerated Sinjar Mountain to defy the cruelty that humans can inflict, rebuild their nation and live on.

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When Omar Arab hears the sound of shelling nearby, he does not run for cover. He runs toward the noise. Arab is an independent photojournalist living in Aleppo, Syria. Once an ancient metropolis, it is now the battleground of what the����recently described as “one of the most devastating urban conflicts in modern times.”

The Syrian regime laid siege on Aleppo in late spring, when President Bashar al-Assad’s forces surrounded its outskirts and severed all routes out of the city. In the past few months alone,��over 1,800 civilians and fighters have been����as the opposition struggles to regain control. With help from Russian aerial forces and elite Iranian soldiers, Assad has launched a brutal assault on rebel-held parts of the city. Activists on the ground have accused the regime��of��deliberately����and����throughout the siege.

Arab also claims that in addition to targeting schools and medical centers, Russian and Syrian aircraft have targeted residential neighborhoods, including his own in a small swath of rebel-held territory in western Aleppo.

“The situation in Aleppo is very bad. There are many dead after the regime targeted neighborhoods with rockets. They also destroyed my house,” Arab wrote to me back in June. The situation has only worsened since.

Spirit of the Revolution

The fight over Aleppo is emblematic of the spirit of the Syrian revolution—an uprising of a nation against its despotic leader. While there may be radical Islamist elements fighting inside the city, the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) has little presence there. It is a struggle between the opposition and the Syrian regime—the very essence of the revolution before the rise of the radical Islamist group.

This is important for the Syrians who spearheaded the revolution and those who continue to carry on the legacy of its martyrs. But the attention of the international community has shifted away from drawing red lines against the Assad regime and supporting the opposition to the fight against ISIS.

Activists feel forgotten by the international community, and Syrians hope and demand that the world redirect its focus back to the revolution and understand that empowering activists is critical for a long-term solution for Syria. Defeating ISIS alone is not the end-all solution to the conflict.

Grass-Roots Syria

The revolution began as a grass-roots effort. Inspired by the successful overthrow of oppressive leaders in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring, the Syrians sought to confront their own despot. Protests erupted throughout the country in the beginning of 2011. While there was minimal coordination on a national level, activists’ demands nonetheless tended to be uniform: for Bashar al-Assad to realize the failed promises of the 2000��—a series of reforms aimed at easing authoritarian control and expanding political rights that he has since reneged on.

The political objectives of the Damascus Spring included establishing a multi-party democracy, recognizing freedom of assembly, press and speech, the release of political prisoners, economic rights for all citizens and lifting of the 1963 emergency law. Syrian activists adopted these demands in 2011, but soon reached breaking point only a few months after the uprising began with the torture of 15 schoolboys detained for scrawling anti-regime graffiti in the city of Dara’a.

When the protests demanding the boys’ release were met with indiscriminate gunfire, they expanded to demand an end to the Assad regime.

Protests not only continued to take place but grew larger despite the regime’s brutal crackdown. The uprising began as a series of stop-and-go protests, and eventually blossomed into a full-blown revolution. The goals of the revolution transcended religious sects, with Sunni and Shia Muslims and other religious minorities working parallel, and often together, against the regime. Activists formed local revolutionary councils, the most popular being the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) aimed at helping organize protests in their own communities and supporting the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).

As the crackdown by the regime became increasingly violent, a growing number of soldiers refused to shoot at protesters and began defecting en masse. The , including��10,000 in the first year of the revolution, allowed for the creation of the Free Syria Army (FSA). Although the LCCs and activists believe foremost in the efficacy of nonviolent protest, they understood that the conflict had become militarized, and that their work would need to adapt accordingly.

Many were inspired by the efforts of the FSA and joined its fight against the Assad regime. Foreign states growing wary of the crimes of the Assad regime and feeling guilty for their own passivity began to arm the FSA, including the US,��with .

Decimated by mass desertions, depleting sources and devastating losses, the FSA today has lost the appeal that it once had. However, its creation was valuable for the work of activists, especially during the beginning stages of the revolution. Rebel-held territories like eastern Aleppo allow activists to thrive and work peacefully toward the goals of the revolution. But their efforts would become greatly complicated by the rise of ISIS, which has torn international attention away from the revolution that consequently bolsters the Assad regime, the very outcome that the activists worked so hard to avoid.

Enter the Islamic State

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had a different vision for the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) when he took over the group in spring 2011. To be successful, it needed to make greater territorial gains. Baghdadi saw an opportunity in Syria, which was on the brink of collapse.

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That summer he sent operatives inside the country and, in 2013, officially announced the creation of an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that stretched from Raqqa to Mosul. The rise of ISIS—first in Iraq and then in Syria—alarmed the international community, especially the US, after the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

The revolution was swept aside, and defeating ISIS became a priority for the international community. The US and its allies believe eradicating the Islamist group is tantamount to ending the conflict in Syria. For many Syrians, this could not be further from the truth. Their message of pluralism, equality and democracy has been lost in the shadow of ISIS.

The FSA’s resources were greatly depleted after ISIS established its presence in Syria, as a result of declining international aid and losing battleground to the seasoned foreign fighters of the Islamic State. Benefactors feared their weapons would land in the hands of ISIS either through battle losses or corrupt FSA fighters selling them on the black market. ISIS aside, by this time the failures of the FSA had become evident. Greatly weakened by factionalism and corruption, the once-revered rebels had lost the trust of the international community.

The emergence of ISIS in Syria has transformed the work of the Syrian opposition movement, especially its activists on the ground still fighting for the revolution. International media has callously conflated the opposition as a single entity that includes ISIS. It is this very misconception that has given momentum to the regime. Foreign states view Syria through a binary lens between the opposition and the Assad regime and consequentially believe that to defeat ISIS the Syrian government must stay in power.

Syrian Activism Today

“Activists on the ground feel forgotten. They feel like they were betrayed by the rest of the world. It’s sexier—a hotter topic to talk about ISIS rather than talk about the wants and demands of Syrian civilians, which is a free and democratic nation,” Ala’a Basatneh, a young activist born in Syria but raised in the US, emphasizes to me during an interview. Basatneh is the main subject of the documentary��,��which depicts her bold efforts to help activists in Syria coordinate with each other through social media. Even with the rise of ISIS, she explains, dethroning Assad continues to be a priority for most activists.

“[Assad] was a big factor in creating ISIS. He has won time, he has won allies worldwide—it’s not only Russia, China and Iran [that] are aiding him or are lenient on him because of ISIS. So, the only one benefactor for what’s going on in Syria and what ISIS is doing is the Syrian regime.”

For Ola Karman, a Syrian activist living in Aleppo, ISIS has not overwhelmingly affected her work because eastern Aleppo where she resides is protected by the rebels, which has helped preserve it as a hub of revolutionary activity. It has not changed her determination to work toward the “fall of the regime and liberation.”

Karman also points out that in some rarer instances activists must resort to drastic measures to stay afloat: “Activists who work in regions controlled by [ISIS] limits their work a lot … Unless, if they work��with����������.”

As Syrians are bombarded by both state forces and radical Islamists, LCCs have expanded their experiment in self-governance by organizing much-needed humanitarian work. The opposition has built clinics and hospitals, organized makeshift schools for the youth and helps support first responders like the revered�� rescue volunteers. Syrian activists who coordinate with rebels to channel aid to besieged and liberated territories are often targeted by the regime and, more recently, Russian airstrikes. The revolution now is not only an ambitious effort to depose the Assad regime, but also to survive.

The opposition movement has thus had to resort to moving underground. As the documentary��#ChicagoGirl��shows, even before the rise of ISIS clinics gradually moved underground. However, that has not stopped the regime from finding and targeting them in direct airstrikes. The clinics Basatneh visited and brought medical supplies to in 2012 have since been destroyed.

Postcards from��Hell

Instead of organizing protests against the regime, activists have shifted focus to documenting the revolution and atrocities committed by Assad and his accomplices, mainly Russia and Iran. Thanks to the work of citizen journalists, the conflict is considerably the most well-documented of its kind. Through a variety of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activists like Omar Arab expose the actions of the Assad regime to the rest of the world.

“I am a photographer and document the crimes of the regime in pictures and video because I have to be a witness and prove that the regime is not aiming at terrorists but civilians,” says Arab.

His photos depict the grim reality of everyday life in Aleppo—the daily bombs that pound the city, the destruction and the human compassion of ordinary Syrians helping each other survive.

If they stop, no one else is talking against Assad. If they stop, then hundreds of people will have died for nothing. These protesters and people who were targeted during protests by barrel bombs and sniper bullets—they are demanding for Assad to go.

Ala’a Basatneh also points out that their work embodies the long-term picture of a post-Assad Syria: “The more documentation we have the more we are able to bring people into account after the topple happens in the Syrian regime, after Assad is gone.”

This is perhaps why the SNC—the loose umbrella organization claiming to speak on behalf of Syrians opposed to Assad—has repeatedly refused to join the Geneva peace talks with the regime and members from the international community.

Many Syrians not only want to see Assad relinquish his power, but also to be held accountable and brought to justice for his actions as president. Documenting them is therefore not only critical for raising awareness to the rest of the world in hopes of garnering support and aid, but also for the long-term.

Syrians are not calling for the international community to redirect its focus to the revolution in order to minimize the real threat that ISIS poses, but rather because they strongly believe that supporting the revolution will help put an end to the terror wrought by the group. Activists help lay the foundation for a free and democratic Syria by developing a robust civil society that works toward solidifying the values of the revolution—mainly promoting equality, justice, pluralism and freedom of speech and religion.

Karman emphasizes the importance of civil society in the revolution because of individuals who have helped lessen Syrians’ dependence on the government: “The role of Syrian activists is really important in the Syrian revolution between doctors, teachers, first responders, etc., because they have the ability to build institutions and schools outside of the regime’s control [which] might negatively affect Assad’s regime.”

Those active in the revolution understand that a free and democratic Syria will not come with the overhaul of the existing regime alone, but of state institutions as well. A smooth transition to democracy is incumbent upon avoiding a power vacuum that could empower ISIS even more. The activists are working to guarantee that they are prepared for a post-Assad Syria.

International Community

This past summer alone, ISIS has launched a wave of terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds around the world. It is undeniably a global threat. The Syrians know this better than anyone. By boosting funds to groups like the White Helmets to appease the preconditions of the opposition in order to encourage them to join the peace talks and, most importantly, supporting Syrian activists by following their fight against the Assad regime, the international community can make headway in helping the revolution while simultaneously fighting ISIS.

The alternative is the status quo, with the international community continuing to look at the Syrian conflict through a binary lens between the Assad regime and ISIS. Even if the world has given up on the revolution, the activists are the ones keeping the country from an irreversible collapse and are the best hope that Syria has for a stable future.

“If they stop, no one else is talking against Assad. If they stop, then hundreds of people will have died for nothing. These protesters and people who were targeted during protests by barrel bombs and sniper bullets—they are demanding for Assad to go. Their work, the activists that continue their work, they are the ones that continue that legacy to make sure that Assad goes. If Assad doesn’t go, then ISIS will grow, and more chaos will grow, in not only the Middle East, but also in the West—and we won’t see ISIS back down if Assad doesn’t go.” So Basatneh.

The greatest goal of the revolution was to have the voices of the Syrian people heard. It is time the world started listening.

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Abu Otaiba, the nom du guerre of a self-taught imam and Islamic State (IS) recruiter in Jordan, uses soccer to attract recruits.

“We take them to farms, or private homes. There we discuss and we organize soccer games to bring them closer to us,” Abu Otaiba told����in a recent interview.

Abu Otaiba said he was recruiting outside of mosques because they “are filled with intelligence officials.” Mosques serve him these days as a venue to identify potential recruits whom he approaches elsewhere.

A similar development is evident in Jordanian universities, where sports clubs and dormitories have become favored IS hunting grounds because they so far don’t figure prominently on Jordanian intelligence’s radar.

ISIS and Soccer

The Islamic State’s use of soccer reflects that suicide bombers often emerge from groups with an action-oriented activity. It is also symptomatic of jihadists’ convoluted relationship to a sport that they, on the one hand, view as an invention of infidels designed to distract the faithful from their religious obligations and, on the other hand, see as a useful tool to draw in new recruits.

Attitudes toward soccer are complicated by the fact that many jihadist and militant Islamist leaders are either former players or soccer fans. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s caliph, was a fervent soccer player while in a US prison in Iraq where he earned the nickname “” after Argentine superstar Diego Maradona.

Osama bin Laden was believed to be an Arsenal Football Club fan who had his own mini World Cup during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Teams formed by foreign fighters based on nationality played against one another in downtime. While in exile in Sudan, bin Laden had two squads that trained three times a week and played on Fridays after midday prayers.

Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah manages clubs in Lebanon, while Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, a former player, has organized tournaments in Gaza.

An����conducted in 2014 by Vocativ of jihadist and militant Islamist Facebook pages showed that their owners were often soccer fans. However, jihadist empathy for the sport does not stop them from targeting local games in a geography stretching from Iraq to Nigeria, as well as big ticket European and World Cup matches whose live broadcasts hold out the promise of a worldwide audience.

An in a soccer stadium south of the Iraqi capital, killing 29 people and wounding 60. The bomber chose a match at a small stadium in the city of Iskandariya, 30 miles from Baghdad.

The London-based at around the same time that boys in IS military training were instructed to kick decapitated heads as soccer balls.

In July, crowds in Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa were forced to attend the public execution of four players of the city’s disbanded Al Shabab SC soccer team—Osama Abu Kuwait, Ihsan al-Shuwaikh, Nehad al-Hussein and Ahmed Ahawakh—on charges that they had been spies for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia that is on the frontline of confronting IS on the ground in Syria.

“Jihad Olympics”

Yet with IS under increased military pressure in Syria and Iraq, the group—desperate to project a degree of normalcy in areas it still controls—appears to be turning to sports and soccer, in particular. Breaking with its past that was muddled with the banning of soccer despite its use of the sport as a recruiting tool, IS has urged boys in various towns, including Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Tal Afar in Iraq, to participate in what it dubs the “Jihad Olympics.”

Boys, despite a ban on soccer jerseys and the execution of 13 children in early 2015 for watching an Asian Cup match on television, play soccer or a tug of war during the events and are awarded sweets and balloons if their team is victorious. The boys’ families are invited to watch the games.

IS appears to have been struggling with the notion of using soccer as a way of placating its population and projecting normalcy for some time. The group authorized the showing of the FC Barcelona and Real Madrid derby a week after the Paris attacks in November 2015 that targeted a major soccer match among others, but at kick-off rescinded the permission and closed down cafes and venues broadcasting the match due to a minute’s silence at the beginning of the game at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in honor of the victims of the attacks in the French capital.

A precursor to the “Jihad Olympics” was an exemption of children from the ban on soccer as well as video clips showing fighters in a town square kicking a ball with kids. Confusion within the group about its policy toward soccer is reflected in the fact that age limits for the exemption vary from town to town. In Manbij, a town near Aleppo recently conquered by US-backed militias, children older than 12 were forbidden to play the game, while in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria the age limit is believed to be 15.

Similarly, foreign fighters have been allowed to own decoders for sports channels and watch matches in the privacy of their homes.

“IS policy towards soccer is driven by opportunism and impulse. The group fundamentally despises the game, yet can’t deny that it is popular in its ranks and in territory it governs,” said a former Raqqa resident.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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yet again. On July 14, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old of Tunisian origin, drove a truck approximately 2 kilometers through large crowds of people who were celebrating Bastille Day in the southern resort city of Nice.

At least 84 people have killed, including children, and hundreds more wounded.

, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a contributor at 51�Թ�, gives an initial assessment in this video.

*[This article was updated on July 18, 2016.]

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The war seems lost. What happened on the French Cote d’Azur on Bastille Day—the day that sparked the French Revolution and the formation of a Republic based on liberty and freedom—seems to highlight France’s hopeless security frailties.

The images of bodies sprawled across a mile of the promenade in Nice as the last of the fireworks came to an end were some of the most disturbing I have ever seen. France has a serious problem, and one that now needs significant leadership and a substantial dose of reality.

The death toll currently sits at 84 and may well rise with 50 still in critical condition.

France has been subject to three significant attacks within the last 18 months that have claimed over 230 victims. Over the coming days, French��authorities will continue to piece together the events leading up to 31-year-old Tunisian-born Mohamed Bouhlel����and brutally executing individuals, families and children.

The national state of emergency, which French President Francois Hollande announced was due to end on July 26, has been��extended��by a further three months and 10,000 soldiers are to return to the streets.

Holes in Intelligence

Once again, experts will point the finger at the government and intelligence services, describing their lack of ability to protect the French population from terrorist attacks. These cheap and theoretical arguments are deeply out of sync with the enormity of the problem faced by the threat to the country.

There are currently 11,000 individuals on the watch list in France; there are 4 million Muslims living in the country, many of whom live in the poorest areas; borders with highly-radicalized countries like Belgium; borders on the Mediterranean with numerous former North African colonies; and an ongoing influx of migrants from Syria and Iraq—the problem is simply impossible.

More funding and more manpower have already been poured into tackling the holes in intelligence. We saw the huge effort that went into the 2016 UEFA European Championship with the��, which ended without major incident.

The brutal truth is that France is both a soft target and is actively engaged in fighting back against terrorism at a time when the rules have been turned upside down by the so-called Islamic State (IS). While France has seen vehicles used previously in attacks in����in 2014, they were not close to the scale of Nice.

Early indications are that the driver was known to authorities for petty crime, nothing more, and that he wasn’t known by security services. IS, unlike al-Qaeda, has a very simplistic��raison d’être—to recruit everyone it can and kill all who do not buy into its ideology. Sleeper cells and loners are becoming more and more deadly with every inch of land that IS loses in Iraq and Syria, and as its numbers dwindle within these held territories, the global punch of the ideology seems to intensify.��With major attacks spanning France, Belgium, Tunisia, the US, and the Gulf all within the last two years, it is edging toward becoming the norm.

Time to Reconsider

France now must seriously consider its position in the War on Terrorism. It is becoming clearer day by day that there is no single road to radicalization, and France has in many ways taken on the baton from the United States��in leading the fight against Islamist extremism with conflicts in Mali, Libya and the continuing fight against IS.

It is impossible for France to keep its guard up continuously as the ideology and teaching of IS encourages its followers to kill non-believers by��—a gun, a knife or indeed a vehicle will suffice.

It may be time to take a view that only the eradication of the source of the ideology can truly reduce or even end the bloodshed in France and the wider world. France now has the mandate to take on IS with troops on the ground—an unpopular idea without a doubt, but the danger of becoming paralyzed by sentiment is proving most dangerous of all.

If France cannot cope with the scale of the threat that would leave any nation��struggling, then it must consider all options. Otherwise,��the country stands in danger of becoming a nation that is used to mourning the victims of religious, ideological terrorism: more flags at half mast, more hashtags, more candles and more tears, but seemingly no end in sight—and the reality that it will all happen again all too soon.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the first-ever largescale , gunmen stormed Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale restaurant in the Gulshan neighborhood, on July 1 and held the patrons hostage in a siege that lasted 12 hours before Bangladeshi commandos ended it. The assailants were armed with grenades, sharp weapons and automatic guns, and��, were killed.

Foreign nationals were the clear targets: The café was owned by expatriates and was popular with foreigners in Bangladesh. The assailants also separated Muslims from foreigners before killing nine Italians, seven Japanese, one American and one Indian, along with two Bangladeshis.

The attack marks a distinct escalation in the Islamist violence that has gripped the country since early 2015 during which tens of bloggers, activists and members of minority groups have been killed in what have mostly been machete attacks targeted at specific individuals.

Possible perpetrators

The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the Dhaka attack, with the Amaq news agency—which is affiliated to the group—stating on Twitter minutes after the assault that “Islamic State commandos” had orchestrated it. Amaq also posted photographs that appeared to show the aftermath of the bloody attack inside Holey Bakery. If true, the Dhaka episode represents a major shift in the group’s presence and capability to carry out a planned attack of this magnitude in Bangladesh.

IS has made a conscious effort to focus on Bangladesh, with its propaganda magazine Dabiq in November 2015 carrying a eulogy for Bangladeshi IS fighter named Abu Jundal al-Bengali. In April 2016, the magazine also carried an interview with the leader of the Islamic State’s Bangladesh chapter, Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif. After the Dhaka attack, IS released a propaganda video in which a Bengali fighter said that Bangladesh “must know that it was now part of a bigger battlefield to establish the cross-border caliphate the group proclaimed in 2014.”

While IS has made several claims for the targeted killings in Bangladesh��—including the murder of an Italian aid worker in September and a Japanese national in October last year—there has been little concrete evidence that the group is present in the country. Instead, it appeared to be the case that IS—keen to be seen as expanding its geographical influence, particularly in the volatile region of South Asia—made claims to any killings with Islamist motives. If it emerges that IS had definitive links to the Dhaka attack, then it would mark the first successful footprint of the group in the Indian subcontinent, which has long been viewed by rival al-Qaeda as its sphere of influence.

Diplomats from countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan have called for��tighter security��in Dhaka and criticized the government for failing to follow up on intelligence provided by other countries.

Bangladeshi authorities, however, have dismissed IS’ claims and instead blamed domestic militant groups such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which has pledged allegiance to IS, and Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) for the attack. In particular, senior police officials have said that JMB is likely to have played a major role in putting the team of Dhaka attackers together. JMB was notorious for carrying out several attacks in Bangladesh during the early 2000s—most notably it orchestrated about 500 bomb blasts simultaneously at 300 locations across the country in 2005—but it was significantly weakened after most of its top leaders were executed in 2007.

It is as yet unclear which group the perpetrators belong to. If, as security officials in Bangladesh claim, JMB is indeed responsible for the attack, then the operation suggests that the group has significantly improved its capabilities. And while JMB claims to represent IS in Bangladesh, there has been little information to indicate that both groups have concrete links. However, the scale and sophistication of the Dhaka attack suggest that the attackers very likely received outside help in terms of guidance and resources. Whether this was the result of direct links and clear coordination with IS remains to be seen, although it is worth noting that the focus on foreign nationals is in line with the Islamic State’s choice of targets.

Disjointed government response

The Dhaka attack has exposed serious deficiencies in the government’s security apparatus. The fact that the assault took place inside the heavily fortified diplomatic zone, which contains several checkpoints and CCTV cameras, has raised concerns over the quality of security in the capital.

Diplomats from countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan have called for����in Dhaka and criticized the government for failing to follow up on intelligence provided by other countries. A political adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government also told Reuters that authorities monitoring social media picked up references to an imminent attack in Dhaka but only increased security around embassies and large hotels, which they thought were the likelier targets.

Moreover, there have been conflicting accounts of who is responsible for the attack. Some security officials have said that��, while the home minister said that the attackers were members of JMB and had no ties to IS. The suggestion of a coordinated strike between JMB and ABT is dubious, given that JMB has pledged allegiance to IS and ABT is affiliated to al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), and the broader transnational groups are competing with each other to establish a foothold in the Indian subcontinent.

The uncertainty over who engineered the attack is exacerbated by the government’s tendency to vehemently deny the presence of international jihadist groups in Bangladesh and consistently blame domestic outfits for the growing tide of violence. Besides IS, AQIS has claimed responsibility for some of the killings that have occurred since early 2015, an assertion that has also been disregarded by the government.

Furthermore, authorities have attributed the spate of violent attacks to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which they claim is trying to destabilize the country along with its ally Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party. Part of this allegation stems from the fact that Bangladesh saw an increase in Islamist violence in 2013, when sustained rioting saw over 60 people killed after a Jamaat-e-Islami leader was executed on charges of committing war crimes during the 1971 conflict with Pakistan that led to the country’s creation.

Before the Holey Bakery attack, the government’s response to targeted killings was to launch a blanket crackdown across the country in which����on charges of supporting or participating in Islamist violence. The absence of a nuanced and considered approach from Dhaka has meant that there is general uncertainty over the militant groups that are active in the country and the kind of capabilities they possess.

The Outlook

The Dhaka attack marks a significant change in the kind of violence Bangladesh has witnessed over the past year. The high level of coordination and the weapons used in the operation suggest that the threat of Islamist violence has escalated from isolated unsophisticated attacks to planned mass-casualty attacks. Six days after the Dhaka episode, five armed with grenades, guns and “sharp objects” during Eid prayers. One policeman died in the blast, while another was stabbed to death. A woman was also killed in the assault.

The Dhaka episode also points to the possibility that IS either already has a base or is close to establishing its presence in the country, at a time when the group is seeking to gain a foothold in Asia—whether in Afghanistan or in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where it has already managed to carry out attacks.

Alternatively, if authorities conclude that IS was definitely not involved in the Dhaka assault, the Holey Bakery mishap could mean that domestic militant groups have significantly improved their capabilities. In either scenario, further largescale attacks are likely in the coming months in the absence of a coordinated response from security officials.

The government’s investigation into the attack and its efforts to improve security in the capital and elsewhere will determine both the security risk and the resultant economic impact on key industries such as textiles. The Dhaka attack has already prompted Japan’s Fast Retailing Co, owner of the Uniqlo brand,��to , and other garment markets are reportedly reviewing their operations and the threats to their staff. Additional attacks will, therefore, have a detrimental impact on the $28 billion garment industry in Bangladesh, which accounts for 80% of its exports.

*[This article is based on a report by��.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Baga, Beirut, Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Ankara, Orlando, Istanbul, Dhaka. We bear witness to so much senseless violence perpetrated upon innocent victims on what is now a regular basis that a sense of individual grief is transforming into a larger, all-encompassing sorrow.

The scale of destruction is both incomprehensible and numbing, uniting these deeply personal losses into a universal tragedy that affects, in one way or another, all of us.

The deadliest in the line of these recent terrorist attacks occurred in a Shia neighborhood in Baghdad, when a lorry packed with explosives detonated on a bustling shopping street in Karada, busy with families preparing for Eid. With over 280 dead so far and countless more missing, it is one of the worst attacks Iraq has seen since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Below is a tribute to some of those who have lost their lives in this atrocity.

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After at least 15 years of violent extremism within its ranks, Islam has still not organized an effective counter campaign toward the proponents of extremist Islam, such as the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda and others. One need only look at the events of last week during Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan.

Terrorist attacks in��,��,����and����have claimed the lives of , mostly Muslims. The latter occurred in Islam’s second-most revered city, Medina, home to the mosque and tomb of the Prophet Mohammed. All of the attacks are believed to be the responsibility of the Islamic State. One might also add the Orlando nightclub attack of June, whose perpetrator claimed to be acting in the name of IS.

A Rising Death Toll

According to the organization����(TROP), this year’s Ramadan “bombathon” is responsible for 238 attacks and 1,850 deaths. Since 2001, there have been�� in some 28,700 attacks by terrorists. In 2014 alone, more than��, nearly twice as many as the previous year.��Almost all of these were claimed by, or believed to be the responsibility of, groups designated as Islamic extremists. In 2016, we have seen 1,218 extremist Islamic attacks in 50 countries, taking the lives of more than 11,100 people and injuring 13,420.

These numbers stagger our minds and rock our faith in humanity. In the West, the reaction to extreme violence in the Middle East and Muslim world is increasingly . And in the region, citizens wonder if anything can be done other than helplessly watch this tragedy play itself out. How can this happen? And why has the rampage been able to continue for so long?

Islam at War with Itself

In 2015, to take up the battle against extremist groups responsible for terrorism. While acknowledging that both regional (largely Muslim) states and the international community have a responsibility to confront Islamic extremism, he rightly asserted that: “It is mainly our battle, us Muslims, against those who seek to hijack our societies and generations with intolerance and��takfiri��ideology.” The latter is the practice of declaring someone an “unbeliever,” justifying the taking of the unbeliever’s life.

And if there is an act to underscore that��, it’s the attack by one extremist Islamist group on Muslims in the city of Medina, the burial place of the prophet.

Islam has no single unifying leader behind whom to unite. Catholicism has its pope and orthodox Christians have their counterparts who speak up in the name of the faithful and are largely, though not blindly, followed by the faithful.

Terrorism experts and political leaders around the world largely agree with King Abdullah II. The war, battle or campaign against Islamic extremism is one that only Muslims can lead. That includes leaders at national levels, organizations, local institutions and individuals, all acting to stamp out such violence, the beliefs that justify them and the campaign to spread their infectious and deadly ideology. Non-Muslims can and must contribute to the effort. But it must be led by Muslims.

So, why haven’t they been able to unite? The reasons are several and do not bode well for future action.

Why Inaction?

First, sectarianism is real within Islam.��Today, Sunnis remain genuinely concerned about what is happening to them in countries like Syria and Iraq, where Shia are seen as if not the enemy, then at least adversaries. And while Sunnis are not lining up behind Sunni extremists like IS or al-Qaeda, they are nevertheless reluctant to openly oppose groups like IS aggressively taking on Shia antagonists and their Iranian backers.

To Sunnis, the largely Western-led counteroffensive appears one-sided—i.e., eliminating violent Sunni extremists while seemingly only talking about the role of the Shia aggressors. That view is shared at the local level as well as at the most senior levels in countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Therefore, uniting Sunni and Shia in a common undertaking to defeat extremism in all of Islam is simply untenable and unlikely in the near term.

Second, Islam has no single unifying leader behind whom to unite. Catholicism has its pope and orthodox Christians have their counterparts who speak up in the name of the faithful and are largely, though not blindly, followed by the faithful. Islam has influential imams and sheikhs but no single person. Iran, in the person of the supreme leader, has its unifying figure but he certainly doesn’t speak for Sunnis or even Shia outside the Islamic Republic. In fact, Islam even lacks a charismatic or political figure, not necessarily clerical, who could speak to and for all Muslims convincingly.

So, without someone like a John Paul II to confront communist repression, or a Lech Walesa or Vaclav Hovel to unite a nation in common cause, or even an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Andrei Sakharov to speak to the moral imperatives, it is hard to imagine all Muslims coming together behind a unified effort.

It must be pointed out, however, that a lack of unified effort does not mean the absence of widely shared antipathy among the worldwide Muslim community toward religiously motivated violence. Muslims the world over do, in fact, condemn such violence. But in the absence of a moral authority as unifying figure, they haven’t actuated that rejection or coalesced behind a common effort.

Third, if Muslims are the only ones who can lead the effort against this ideology, it stands to reasons that they must have a countervailing ideology. While there have been many condemnations and criticisms of the extremists’ ideology, no one has offered anything so persuasive that it has convincingly set back or eroded the attractiveness of that of the terrorists.

One idea perhaps might be simply to promote Islam as a “religion of life and humanity,” as opposed to the culture of death promoted by so many of the extremists, from the Islamic State to Hamas and Boko Haram to Abu Salaf. John Paul II and Solzhenitsyn, for example, were able to expose in compelling fashion the evils of communism and also offer more humane philosophies for human interaction, governance and behavior even in conflict.

Fourth, governments in the Arab world are not consensual. So, leaders and senior officials lack the mandate to call people to action other than through the sheer exercise of power. This insecurity may lead to inaction or hesitancy to place their positions on the line, so to speak, by taking a hard and firm position and then calling their citizens to genuine action with real authority. Their publics simply lack faith and trust in their leaderships, a serious detriment to common and concerted action.

Finally, when it comes to initiative on most issues outside of self-preservation, governments of the Middle East have an unfortunate tendency to depend on the West. And the latter is often all too eager to step up. The current effort to staunch the Islamic State is led by the United States with strong backing from other Western governments. Arab governments had failed to act outside their respective borders.

The West’s support is certainly vitally necessary, but one must ask why was initiative so late in coming until the West—i.e., the US—acted? And when will Muslim leaders and governments seize the initiative to come together to present the desperately needed, overarching counter-narrative to the extremists as only they can do?

Looking at some of these reasons for failure and the continued absence of leadership on this issue in the Muslim world, one may have to conclude that prospects are slim for rapid change. Little action can be seen in any of the cited areas at the moment.

Until these shortcomings are addressed successfully, we may have to endure more Baghdads, Dhakas and Istanbuls.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Istanbul, Dhaka and Baghdad have dominated headlines this week. All three cities suffered spectacular terrorist attacks. , at least 43 people were killed and a further 239 wounded. , 22 died and 30 were injured. , at least 125 died and more than 150 were injured. The Islamic State (IS) claimed credit for all three attacks.

Although full details are unknown, the facts that are emerging are telling. Turkish government officials declared that the three suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on June 28 are “.” Many pass through Europe’s third busiest airport on a regular basis. The attack has certainly created an atmosphere of fear and will have a chilling effect on .

There are three issues to��note in the Istanbul attack.

First, Turkey has already experienced a string of deadly terrorist attacks, and this is the . As the Islamic State faces setbacks in Syria and Iraq, Turkey is its new battleground even though the country turned a Nelson’s eye to its rise for years. Now, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has drawn swords against the Kurds and all political opponents, has little choice but to focus on IS.

Second, the three suicide bombers prove that foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq are a frightening proposition. The that “between 27,000 and 31,000 people have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State and other violent extremist groups.” The organization’s December 2015 report makes for chilling reading. Foreign fighters have come from at least 86 countries, demonstrating the Islamic State’s cross-border appeal to a section of young Muslims. Strikingly, the numbers from Russia and Central Asia have increased by 300% since June 2014.

Now that the Islamic State is being pummeled by and has been , it is expanding its operations abroad. The Soufan Group’s report observes that the essentially local and regional phenomenon of the rise of extremist groups in Syria and Iraq might be about to change with the reverse flow of foreign fighters. The attacks in Istanbul demonstrate that there is another twist to the story. The flow might not necessarily reverse but go in different directions and cause carnage in its wake.

Unlike Istanbul, the Dhaka attack is more confusing. The Islamic State claims credit for the attack but the Bangladeshi government disputes this.

The terror inflicted by the Islamic State is acquiring a bigger footprint and greater unpredictability as foreign fighters leave for home or for other locations. North Africa faces a big threat. So do France and Belgium. They provide the highest number of fighters per capita, and immigrants in both these countries feel highly marginalized. Of course, Turkey that shares a border with both Syria and Iraq has a real fight on its hands.

Third, the origins of the suicide bombers highlight the increasing Islamic radicalization in North Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Russian President Vladimir Putin first emerged as a political leader by crushing the Chechen insurgency. His policy of blood and iron has arguably brought Chechnya, Dagestan and other parts of North Caucasus to heel. Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin’s loyal satrap, has been accused of and murdering Anna Politkovskaya. The smoldering resentment in the region is resulting in young men becoming susceptible to the propaganda of IS.

The Financial Times reports a different reason for the . In these countries, regional or local identity is far more important than the religious or national one. However, when immigrants from these places move to Russia, they lose their community and replace their local identity with a religious one.

Struggling economies and high unemployment contribute to the growing radicalization of young men from Central Asia and the North Caucasus. Tatars and Bashkirs, two predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in Russia, are also vulnerable. Russian officials initially allowed if not encouraged . This was their way of buying peace at home. Unsurprisingly, Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, points out that . For these men from the North Caucasus and Central Asia, Istanbul provided a soft and sensational target.

In the future, blowback will come to Russia too. Muslims form 11% of its population, numbering 16.5 million. Another 4 million migrants from the North Caucasus and Central Asia are Muslim too. In the post-Soviet era, Russian identity revolves around ethnicity and the Russian Orthodox Church. The minorities are reverting to Islam as identity as well. Hence, ��ܲ�������’s largely 20 million Sunni Muslims are for the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad. The region is a tinderbox waiting to explode.

Unlike Istanbul, the Dhaka attack is more confusing. The Islamic State claims credit for the attack but the Bangladeshi government disputes this. It blames Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh (JMB), a local militant group. On July 1, young men from well-to-do local families who studied in private schools and universities attacked a famous bakery in the posh neighborhood of Gulshan, killing mainly foreigners. Over the last two years, , using little more than . The latest attack demonstrates that the likes of JMB are upping their game and becoming more dangerous.

In November 2015, . It blamed the feud between Prime Minister Begum Sheikh Hasina Wajed and opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia, the “Battling Begums,” for the phenomenon. In classic Americano fashion, the venerable Washington, DC-based think tank is only part right. There is much more going on. What is happening in Bangladesh is tied inextricably tied up with identity in the Indian subcontinent. Is identity ethnic, linguistic, religious, national or something else?

Till 1971, Bangladesh was East Pakistan. The taller and fairer West Pakistanis believed they were racially superior to their cousins to the east and ruled them with an iron hand. The idea of Pakistan was based on a simple premise: The Muslims in India, regardless of language, sect or caste, formed one nation. East and West Pakistan were more than 2,200 kilometers apart but were as one nation by .

The partition of India was an unmitigated disaster. It led to , mass abductions, savage sexual violence and the biggest migration in history. It turned out that the so-called East Pakistanis liked speaking Bengali instead of Urdu, disliked discrimination and desired dignity. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the current prime minister, and the Pakistanis refused to honor the result, the die was cast. Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation in 1971 with Indian military support despite .

Unlike fairy tales, life did not turn out happy ever after. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was murdered in a military coup and General Ziaur Rahman took over as Bangladesh’s big boss. The military man made Islam become a part of Bangladesh’s constitution. Bangladesh did not return to the East Pakistan days, but General Rahman harked back to its toxic mix of religion with politics. The general, in turn, was murdered later and it is his widow who now leads the opposition.

In Bangladesh, politics is a multi-generational family feud that puts The Godfather to shame. Yet the fundamental issue of identity still remains at stake. To put it horrendously crudely, Sheikh Hasina wants a more Bengali identity while Khaleda Zia wants a more Islamic one.

Add youth unemployment, rising inequality and an influx of Saudi money into the mix, and you get an increasingly .

The crumbling colonial system makes things worse. British-era legislation no longer makes sense, the police is little better than a gang, the courts are a joke, the press is dire and political parties are fiefdoms of the two Begums. Unsurprisingly, an angry and fearful people are susceptible to radical Islam.

When it comes to Baghdad, the blood is barely dry after the blasts on July 3, but it is part of an all too familiar pattern. The Islamic State conducted a massive blast during Ramadan to target shoppers who would be out late at night. It is payback for Fallujah and a clear message for Iraq’s Shia-led government. The Islamic State might have lost on the battlefield, but it can still hurt Baghdad.

In 2015, this author pointed out that the world created by Sir Mark Sykes and Monsieur François Georges-Picot had fallen down like Humpty Dumpty. In its place, a messy regional conflict with multiple parties and shifting agendas has emerged. It is . There will be blood for quite a while yet as rivalries, vendettas and agendas play out in this ravaged and ruined land.

Outside sunlit Silicon Valley, this is fast becoming an age of fear, anger, hate and terror. To quote The Economist, “depressed and down-at-heel” places are supporting the likes of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen. Technocratic elites have failed the people and taxpayer-funded bank bailouts have robbed the poor for the rich. It is little wonder that people are supporting demagogues who promise to take back control. They are the so-called First World’s answers to the Islamic State, and the monsters on both sides feed off each other.

If the weak have a stake in prosperity, if they believe their voice matters and if they have hope, doomsday purveyors of perverted ideologies like the Islamic State and rabble rousers like Farage will have less of a following. For that to happen, elites might have to display just a touch more humility, heed the concerns of the marginalized and develop a bit of a sense of service. Surely, that is not too much to ask.

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visit����and enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

Why Brexit and the Success of Trump Should Not Surprise You

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The global economic crisis has greatly contributed to the rise of far-right politics in the West manifesting itself in outcomes such as Brexit and the unprecedented rise of Donald Trump.

On June 23, the��United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union��(EU) with the full effect of the economic, social and political ramifications of the decision still unknown. While the historic decision has disturbed and surprised many, the foundation for such a seismic change is squarely the product of profound social and cultural tensions—some of which are being simultaneously echoed by the United States.

Aside from the weight of the decision to leave the EU, the demographic breakdown of those who voted to leave—with a median age of over 65 years old—is notable. The bloc of voters vehemently behind the campaign for the UK to remain part of the EU had a median age of 21, according to British pollster YouGov. The discrepancy is…

Radicalization in a Historical Context

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Is��radicalization necessarily a bad thing?��

Following the pusillanimous and gristly assassination of Jo Cox, member of Parliament for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire, the subject of radicalization is prominent in British news once more. This ought not to surprise: The arrested and charged suspect, Thomas Mair, allegedly had a��relationship with neo-Nazi movements��stretching back to the 1990s and links to pro-apartheid groups going back still further. Even though dedicated��academic units��exist to examine radicalization, the concept is fundamentally debated amongst scholars and remains poorly understood amongst the general public.

The word fundamental is deliberate. Via the Latin��radicalis, originating some seven centuries back, the term’s medieval pedigree had two central attributes: It was a philosophical term and carried with it positive or neutral—but not negative—connotations. In fact, radical has only really taken on a political hue in English over the last two centuries, and again usually was intended positively. Thus, in the…

First Steps for Post-Brexit Government

UK Home Office

The next British government has a lot of work to do when it comes to negotiating new trade agreements. Former Prime Minister John Bruton explains.

Now that the��United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union��(EU), the first step has to be taken by the British government. It must decide what sort of relationship it wants to have, trade wise, with the rest of the world. At the moment, that is governed by agreements negotiated—for the UK—by the EU.

If Britain simply leaves the EU, all those agreements will��fall apart, as does UK membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Agreements with dozens of non-EU countries will have to be negotiated again—at the same time as negotiating��with the EU. There is clearly a lot of work to be done.

So, the British government will have to choose choice between three options: leave the EU and, like Norway, apply to join the…

Water, Energy and Food Security is More Complex Than You Think

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Over-reliance on technological innovation means insufficient consideration given to how��societies can change and function on limited natural resources.

The total global population is increasing and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, with an estimated��70% living in towns and cities. These trends of population growth married with rapid urbanization and rising living standards are placing increasingly competitive demands upon finite natural resources for agriculture, energy and industrial production.

If these trends continue, by��2050 water demand is projected to increase by 55%, energy demand is projected to increase by 80% and food demand is projected to increase by 60%, with the��growing global middle classes being the main consumers��of electricity, oil, food, beverages, household appliances, cars and other goods and services suggesting an increasing disproportionately large demand for nexus services.

The��Rio+20 Declaration��emphasizes the need to integrate economic, social and environmental concerns in economic development while addressing food, water and energy security challenges…

Mexico Faces Uphill Battle at Summit

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It��is unlikely Mexico will reach its objectives at the North American Leaders’ Summit on June 29.

In mid-June, Mexican Secretary of Finance Luis Videgaray��traveled to Montreal��to deliver a speech at the inaugural session of the��International Forum of the Americas.

Videgaray affirmed that Mexico remains one of the main proponents of further and deeper North American integration as a source of joint prosperity and security for Mexico, Canada, and the United States. He made explicit Mexico’s interest in working closer together with its partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to protect the region’s economically competitive position, amid a global environment characterized by uncertainty and ensuring its continued physical security.

While brief, his main message, aimed at North America’s policymakers, was clear: The bilateral and trilateral economic exchanges and cooperation arrangements between Canada and the US with Mexico on development, health, education and energy matters are vital to their own security and prosperity…

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post The World This Week: The Age of Fear, Anger, Hate and Terror appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The terrorist attacks in March carried out by the Islamic State (IS) in Belgium brought about an enormously emotional response. Mainstream media went into overdrive covering the Brussels attack in a breathless attempt to broadcast the outbreak of violence, while politicians kept butting heads over what to do next. At the same time, many pundits took to the stage saber-rattling against IS in Syria and Iraq, while others argued that a massive military intervention would be detrimental and would just enhance the outreach of the so-called caliphate.

However, notwithstanding the paranoid reactions of many, a thorough assessment of the threat posed by IS to the West is far from conclusive. Especially in this moment of fear and knee-jerk reactions, a sober and balanced breakdown of the IS phenomenon is needed.

New Kind of War

The first issue that needs addressing is: Who are the people that carried out such the attack on Brussels, and what is their strategy?

In order to tackle these questions, terrorism as a phenomenon needs to be framed within a historical context that takes into account the widespread change which occurred after the Cold War.

The Cold War saw a dramatic decrease in the number of violent interstate conflicts. At the same time, the postmodern era witnessed a dispersal of control over organized violence to many forms of non-state actors that could hardly be held accountable for their actions. Indeed, while modern wars were fought by formally organized, hierarchical��armed forces between nations, postmodern wars are fought by a disparate range of forces across and within states’ borders without a formal declaration of war.

In addition, while once military forces counted on state-based production and a state-run process of bureaucratization, nowadays the main actors of conflict rely on global, informal networks or private production for drawing material sustenance. Drug-smuggling, human-trafficking, hostage-taking for ransom, money-laundering, plunder and theft take place on a daily basis in the war-making economy.

This new form of unleashing war is the result of globalization. With its advancement in the field of information technology, communication and transportation, globalization has resulted in the loss of sovereignty by the state, and it has worked as a facilitator and motivator for the��—corporations, ideological movements, environmental and human rights organizations, and terrorist networks and organized crime syndicates.

As a result, these new types of conflict perpetrated by non-state actors��are labeled with different names, but it is widely known as��. This kind of war-making deviates from the norm. It is defined as a military strategy in which combatants employ a multilayered mix of military and non-military tactics in order to affect a counterbalancing force exploiting vulnerabilities to negate the superior conventional strength of adversaries. These actors know very well how to use their strengths such as����against the weaknesses of a more powerful adversary.

Here is where IS becomes particularly relevant. Despite the fact that many commentators depict IS as a collection of irrational and fanatical “actors,” the endorsement of asymmetric tactics—such suicide terrorism—is far from a new military instrument and, moreover, has a strategy and logic of its own.

Several scholars have dealt with this issue using scientific methods—quantification, game-theory, cost-benefit analysis, focus on human capital and environment—and have��. In pursuing their interests, terrorists are rational utility maximizers. This means they are strategic actors who undertake highly rational and carefully designed plans to achieve political and secular goals—such as control over resources and territory—despite the fact that they look and operate much differently than a conventional state adversary.

Cyberspace as Realm of War

As Carl Von Clausewitz��, war always reflects the era in which it occurs. Nowadays, asymmetric warfare and its own unique politico-cultural form of organized violence are a byproduct of modernity.

Along with integrating a combination of capabilities, such as conventional and non-conventional weaponry use (mostly low-tech and hand-made),��. Think about the����around the world that have been used to camouflage the instigators and perpetrators of attacks—so as to sow seeds of confusion and provoke doubt in the minds of the public and in those charged with counterterrorism.

Irregular actors, such IS,����and as an instrument to reduce or eliminate the technological advantage of modern states. While democracies are well-equipped to fight conventional actors, modern states have to resort to specific strategies of emergency and exception against these hybrid actors—including extensive mass surveillance, targeted assassinations, invalidation of habeas corpus—that,��.

Thus, hybrid actors are able to level off their asymmetry of forces, for instance, playing on the sensitivity of public opinion of a democratic state to its own casualties or to the attrition of fighting without calling off security concerns and freedoms (of movement, speech and so on). In the long run, the recourse to non-democratic practices by modern states to fight terrorism is��.

WHERE THE ISLAMIC STATE COMES FROM

Since the end of Cold War, ideological conflicts have diminished accordingly. However, ideology still holds a powerful appeal, especially in some Muslim communities. The rise of fundamentalist ideologies in Middle Eastern countries must be attributed����such as high youth unemployment, a downbeat perception of future economic opportunities, oppressive leaderships and corruption.

In addition, as far as external factors are concerned, the breakdown of colonial borders imposed at the end of the First World War following the Afghanistan and Iraq wars disrupted the balance of power among nations, sects and tribes, and led to the current situation of instability.

With the attacks in Paris and Brussels, IS aimed to steal the spotlight. As previously outlined, it considers information warfare as a key point to its own strategy.

In the backdrop, another external factor is the clash for regional dominance between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In order to counter the rise of Tehran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers have����the ascension of jihadist groups as proxies for their own interests.

To make matters worse, the 2010-11 Arab Spring uprisings that swept across the region further exacerbated tensions that��resulted in civil and sectarian insurgencies in Syria, Libya and Yemen, and in the ascension of IS.

Such a group was able to flourish within a political vacuum. Along with proving itself as a well-armed and disciplined force in comparison to many others in the region, IS demonstrated a great adroitness in becoming a quasi-state.��The , but a religious group with carefully considered beliefs that holds a complex top-down structure of power built on a propagation of violence and the exploitation of a transnational criminal network.

The Islamic State is highly effective at exploiting social media for information warfare. Notwithstanding the airstrike campaign aimed at degrading and destroying it, the group pursues an����in order to recruit new militants and counter Western media.

Related to this last point,����communities—in the gloomy suburbs of a Western megalopolis with narrowness of future economic opportunities. These “new terrorists” are and detached from wider society,��and who could find a way of life through new forms of sophisticated recruitment campaigns and social media imbued with extreme religious expressions.

These self-recruited individuals—the so-called lone wolves—are drawn to the idea of joining the battle that is just a click away. They are not supported or financed by larger organizations, and their tactics mostly consist of low-tech attacks on soft targets.

Concerns have also increased over the potential return of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq to their home countries in Europe or the United States who could potentially participate in or support terrorist attacks from within. However, over the last decade, most —notably in the Middle East. The perception of the enemy within has been blown out of proportion by the media and the internet, which��has provided terrorists with new capabilities to reach across time and space and “spectacularize” their attacks, creating vulnerability in a state-based system where control of information equals power.��

ADDRESSING TERRORISM

Many have contended that the main goal of the Islamic State is political: to revive the caliphate and reunite the Muslim umma (community) around it. Leading scholars explain that an organization chooses terrorism by making a����in order to promote values and preferences. In doing so, IS would have renewed tactics such beheadings, crucifixions and slavery, as well as attacks at the core of the Western world, in order to usher in a world without infidels.

Many others maintain that, as IS-held territory in Iraq and Syria is shrinking, the group has gone global in a desperate attempt��to instill fear and anxiety and, ultimately, disarticulate society among the target population. This would be central to what IS aims to achieve since, after all, it is an immediate goal of most terrorist groups��.

In order to tackle these questions, terrorism as a phenomenon needs to be framed within a historical context that takes into account the widespread change which occurred after the Cold War.

With the attacks in Paris and Brussels, IS aimed to steal the spotlight. As previously outlined, it considers information warfare as a key point to its own strategy. The group seems to have understood well how the control of massive flows of information became a form of power and exploits it accordingly. Therefore, in one of the most delicate moments in European Union (EU) history—the ongoing refugees crisis, a potential Brexit looming—the Islamic State seized the moment to further its narrative of civilizational war between Islam and the West.

The narrative, in turn, is further heightened by some far-right European leaders. IS has been able to deal a blow to the already-fragile architecture of the EU, which is now more fragmented than ever before—the Schengen agreement is now called into question, and steps bucking the trend of democratic properties are under way in several European states.

As long as dissatisfaction and grievances pile up in the Middle East, due to domestic and external factors—such as stagnant economies, political corruption and a lack of opportunities for youth, along with the failures to stabilize both Afghanistan and Iraq, a final solution for the burning issue of Palestine, and a real end to wars in Syria and Iraq—groups like IS could flourish, and ideological and religious wars are likely to be a major feature of future conflicts.

Military solutions are not the only way out. For that matter, following the path of targeted killing with the use of drones����within fragile states with weak governments, unless the conditions in which terrorism proliferates are addressed properly.

Thus, to better tackle this issue—alongside intelligence measures, sharing information and greater cooperation among security services, law enforcement and the so-called homeland security strategy—a real manner of effectively engaging with youth in the ostracized Muslim suburbs in Europe and beyond��is a vital component of any future strategic approach for stemming terrorism. Arab countries, as well as the EU and the US, should focus on dissatisfaction and mistrust that ease the recruitment of prospective terrorists and��.

The threat posed by terrorist groups should not be overrated. At this point, the narrative carried by the mainstream plays along with this misrepresentation. As previously pointed out, mainstream media and information technologies hype up the terrorist threat, which plays into the hands of groups like the Islamic State.

To put it simply, we are more likely to be��.��The media, then, should play their role in properly assessing the threat of terrorism—and so too should politicians. Without plunging into hysteria and calling for more government intervention into citizens’ lives, they should remember that the danger of terrorism is relatively small. Politicians should clarify that the likelihood of such attacks is not zero, but that absolute security is not possible.

A sober assessment of the terrorism phenomenon is necessary but also essential in order not to fall into the trap of a “culture clash” that IS and some far-right politicians stir up. The main step toward conceptualizing responses to and understanding terrorism is essential to navigating the complexity of the multifaceted world we are living in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Inequality in the distribution of water resources and risks of shortage are contributing causes of tension and conflict between states. The conflict in , characterized by rivalry between local communities and tribes for access to arable land and water resources, is a prime example of such a relationship between conflict and scarcity of natural resources.

Yet there is another dynamic: Armed conflicts also damage water resources both in the short and long terms, compromising both the health and, in some circumstances, the survival of local populations.

Attractive Targets

Unlike peacetime legislation, the law of armed conflict (or international humanitarian law) contains few rules that relate directly to the protection of freshwater resources. Nevertheless, access to and the protection of water installations may be significantly affected by wars. Dams and dykes have often represented an attractive target for the parties in a conflict. A 2016 report of the points out that the control of strategic dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have been at the center of military operations carried out by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. Control of the in 2014 set off alarm bells around the world.

The control of water installations allows IS to dispose of large amounts of water and energy to sustain the extraction, processing and selling of crude oil that continue to provide the financial basis to the militia. The supported both the Kurdish and Iraqi armies to ensure the control of the dams in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and impeding the control of these strategic installations that strengthens the powers of the caliphate in the Middle East.��However, major dams such as those at and are still in the hands of IS.

The risks entailed by the control of dams are multiple. The first type of risk is that too little water is available to the civilian population. Whoever has the control of the dams can cause downstream droughts and cut energy and water supplies to entire towns.

The is the release of too much water, flooding kilometers of farmland areas, killing livestock and causing casualties and displacement.

A third type of risk is the insufficient quality of water. It has been reported that IS poisoned drinking water supplies in Aleppo and Baghdad. Moreover, this threat risks to be exported in Europe. In 2015, there has been a risk of an attack on the water supplies in that was prevented just before its planned execution.

Indirect Effects

The effect of armed conflict on water resources can also be indirect. During the 1999 NATO air strikes in Kosovo, the destruction of refineries and other industrial facilities located in the banks of the Danube caused the release of polluting substances in the river and groundwater resources. The report of the , jointly established by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the UN Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS/Habitat), affirms that their “findings indicate that the Kosovo conflict has not caused an environmental catastrophe affecting the Balkans region as a whole,” it recognizes nevertheless that “pollution detected at some sites is serious and poses a threat to human health.”

Haditha Dam, 2007 © Flickr

In another assessment report of , UNEP observed that, during the conflict in Kosovo, the use of depleted uranium caused the contamination of some groundwater resources. Although the contamination of the sites has not exceeded the levels recommended by the (WHO), the UNEP study points out that the��sites where the contamination have been detected and should be monitored.

The protection of water during armed conflicts should be strengthened. In 1994, an expert meeting organized by the (ICRC) in Montreux affirmed that, in times of war, the lack of access to safe water and the problems of public health may kill as many people as bombing. After more than 20 years, in 2015, an underlines that 50 million people are affected by armed conflicts in urban areas and suffer from limitations in water supplies. Armed conflict can impact water services either directly, such as a reservoir pierced by a tank shell, or��indirectly, when��insecurity can prevent engineers from gaining safe access to keep water and electrical networks operational in the long run.

The Law of Armed Conflict

International humanitarian law expressly mentions that military attacks against drinking water installations and supplies as well as irrigation works are prohibited ( of the 1977 First Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and of the 1977 Second Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions). Drinking water installations are not the only civilian objects that may be indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. Other examples include power plants providing water supplies. During armed conflicts, attacks against them are very common. One example is the bombing of the power plant in in 2006.

The 1977 protocols provide an illustrative list of protected objects. This��list could be expanded to include other objects such as power plants supplying energy for water supplies. In fact, it makes no difference whether a drinking water facility is attacked and destroyed, or is made inoperable by the destruction of the electrical plant supplying its power. In either case, civilians suffer the same effects: They are denied of the use of a public utility indispensable for their survival.

Another specific rule dealing with the protection of water during armed conflicts concerns the prohibition of attacking dams. Both 1977 Protocols provide for this rule— of the 1977 First Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and of the 1977 Second Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Dams may often provide water supplies to urbanized areas. A case in point is the Inga dam located near Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). During the occupation of some regions of DRC during the 1990s, Ugandan military forces took possession of this hydroelectric facility and threatened to cut water supplies to the civilian population of Kinshasa.

Other rules which can ensure protection of water during the conduct of hostilities deal with the protection of the environment. The First Protocol provides two articles regarding this issue. and protect the environment against “widespread, long-term and severe damage.” The adjectives “widespread, long-term, and severe” used in the First Protocol mean that it is a triple, cumulative standard that needs to be fulfilled.

This is a very high threshold of application. The conditions of application of Articles 35.3 and 55 are extremely stringent. For example, the notion of “long-term” employed by the protocol was defined as lasting for a period of decades. The application of these articles could be only invoked in situations of extreme pollution of freshwater resources.

Comprehensive Protection

The protection of water resources and water-related installations in armed conflicts has been viewed primarily through the lens of international humanitarian law. However, this . A more comprehensive protection of the access to water may be provided by the recourse to human rights instruments.

The UN Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) Committee is charged of the interpretation of the rights embodied in the . In 2002, the ESCR Committee adopted on the right to water, which recognizes that this right relies on Articles 11 and 12 of the Covenant. General Comment No.15 analyzes several facets of the right to water, in particular aspects linked to quality, quantity and accessibility of water. It also explicitly recognizes the link between human rights law and international humanitarian law. In particular, it affirms that the right to water consists of “not limiting access to, or destroying, water services and infrastructure as a punitive measure for example, during armed conflicts in violation of international humanitarian law.”

LAKE BUNYONYI, UGANDA © Shutterstock

A further reading of the relation between water and armed conflict concerns the protection of this natural resource as such. In this context, the development of various instruments regarding transboundary water resources plays an important role. These instruments continue to be applied in times of armed conflict. For example, the 1997 and the 2008 contain similar provisions dealing with armed conflicts. Article 29 of the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention affirms that transboundary freshwater resources “shall enjoy the protection accorded by the principles and rules of international law applicable in international and non-international armed conflict and shall not be used in violation of those principles and rules.”

International water law norms could provide a tool of cooperation between parties involved in a dispute. In regions that have been pointed out as at risk of “water wars,” instruments dealing with transboundary water resources have served as a basis of dialogue between riparian states. This was the case, for instance, for the agreement concluded in 2002 between Syria and Lebanon on the and the 1980 established between Turkey and Iraq, which allowed for Joint Technical Committee meetings relating to water resources.

The joint application of international humanitarian law and international water law has the potential to enhance the protection of water resources during armed conflicts. It is not rare for watercourse states to continue to apply international watercourse treaties in times of armed conflict. The scarcity of water may encourage the parties to cooperate while also creating riparian tensions.

The continued application of the 1960 between India and Pakistan in times of armed conflict represents a model of cooperation between two countries whose relationship has been very strained on several issues. Because of the vital nature of water resources and their uses, watercourse countries are willing to continue to cooperate even in time of armed conflicts. The termination or suspension of international watercourse treaties would endanger the states’ mutual rights and obligations.

The Way Forward

While one cannot deny that norms exist to protect and cover the manifold functions of water during armed conflict, these are limited. The use of different bodies of rules such as those provided by human rights law and international water law may contribute to the strengthening of the protection of water.

Although international humanitarian law deals directly and indirectly with the protection of water and water installations, directing attention to how these rules can be further developed play an important role in dealing with water issues in a more comprehensive manner. In particular, it seems appropriate to think about the regime of protection of water in light of a larger conception which takes into account the developments on the discourse of the qualification of water as a human right and as a transboundary natural resource.

The protection of water resources in times of armed conflict must be developed in a way that takes into account the wide range of existing rules of international law. These standards are drawn from a broad corpus of international law. To protect water resources and ensure access to these resources, the law applicable to water resources during armed conflict must be read in a context extending beyond the boundaries of international humanitarian law. Such a reading of the law can limit the impact of armed conflict over water resources and, indeed, can promote conditions that foster the consolidation of peace after armed conflict.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In 1954, a single book destroyed the popular notion that children are innocent souls. In that book, a plane of such innocent souls crashes on a deserted island. There, in a paradise of coral and coconuts and wild pigs, the survivors soon revert to a state of nature. But such a state, author William Golding warned us, is not an idyll of flower-sniffing and poetry-writing. In��, the children turn savage, inspired not by beauty or the common good but, rather, the will to power.

The Lord of the Flies��takes place during a time of war. On a tropical island far from civilization, Ralph, Piggy and Jack reproduce the dynamics of the heartless society from which they’d been torn. The children become savages because savagery is an integral part of the modern world, with its trench warfare, nuclear weapons and periodic genocides. The island to which devilish Jack sets fire during the final hunt for Ralph mirrors the world of their parents: a world in flames.

It’s no longer a shock to learn of what the very young are capable. In Britain in 1993, two 10-year-olds abducted, tortured and killed a 2-year-old boy, James Bulger.��, two 6-year-olds beat their 5-year-old playmate with stones and left her in the snow to die. In America, which seems to be suffering an epidemic of children killing children, an 11-year-old last year����neighbor because she wouldn’t let him see her puppy.

By the time they become adolescents, young people become even more prone to��. They also reveal a greater susceptibility to peer pressure that can translate into gang membership or an obsession with cults. Our school shooters are usually teenagers. Our suicide bombers also tend to be quite young—the����of the 9/11 hijackers, for instance, was 24 and of suicide bombers in Israel only 21. Of course, that’s also the age when young people acquire the legal right to kill when they enlist in armies.

What’s most unsettling is the sheer unpredictability of youth-on-youth violence. Consider the recent����about a soccer game last month in an Iraqi village 40 miles south of Baghdad.

Dozens of kids had gathered to play a tournament final and cheer on their friends. One of the boys standing on the sidelines was wearing a thick jacket on an otherwise warm day. He couldn’t have been more than 15 or 16 years old.

“When the match ended, the boy in the jacket joined the scramble of boys converging at the podium to watch the awarding of the trophy and the medals, said Anmar, who attended the match with his 13-year-old brother, Bilal, and a group of friends.

“‘Then he blew himself up, and I felt a fire hit my face,’ Anmar said. ‘And then I ran away.’”

The teenage suicide bomber had killed nearly 50 people, the majority of them younger than 17.

The soccer game violence was the latest atrocity committed by the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) against Shias in Iraq. IS claimed in its post-tragedy statement that it was targeting members of a Shia militia, and two members of the militia attending the soccer game were indeed among the victims. Like all of the paramilitaries deploying child soldiers around the world, IS has no compunction about putting weapons into the hands of combatants of all ages—and sheds no tears over the young victims of its acts.

The imperative to send the very young into battle is nothing new. During a horrific, decade-long conflict in the 1980s, Iran sent waves of young martyrs into battle against Iraq. During the US Civil War, young Johnny Clem, 10 years old, put down his drum at the battle of Shiloh, picked up a rifle and shot dead a Confederate officer—a story����by the Union PR team. Also during the Civil War, Willie Johnson��—at the age of only 13. Going back much further, Joan of Arc was a young woman of 17 when she led her forces into battle, and David was a young teenager when he went up against Goliath—both foundational stories in Western tradition.

When states have tried to keep the very young away from the battlefield, they have naturally focused their efforts on other states. The ban on child soldiers has been a long time in the making. Although the Geneva Conventions barred signatories from enlisting children, only����banned governments from recruiting those younger than 15. Later, in 2002, an ��to the Convention on the Rights of the Child raised that age to 18. The United States, which has signed but not ratified the convention, continues to militarize teenagers through��.

But much of the violence perpetrated by youth comes from non-state actors, not from government militias. Like nuclear weapons, the use of child soldiers can provide what seems to be an asymmetrical advantage. If some of these non-state actors removed children from their ranks, their militias would practically disappear.

Kids These Days

The al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia known as al-Shabab—or the Youth—started out as a group of young people affiliated with the Islamic Courts Union. Their ranks are now fed by younger herders radicalized by fundamentalist preachers and by young Somalis in the diaspora who return home to fight. Al-Shabab also����into its ranks to fight, carry supplies and prepare food.

“I had come prepared for anti-Western hostility from a gang of hardened jihadist militants,” journalist James Fergusson��,��The World’s Most Dangerous Place,��about his visit to a camp of al-Shabab deserters. “Instead I found a crowd of school age teenagers, spirited, unruly, and for the most part instantly likeable. Their average age was fifteen.”

Young people also formed the core of the Taliban, which coalesced in the early 1990s. “Taliban” means “students,” and many of the fighters were originally Afghan students in Pakistani madrasas. The civil war in Afghanistan had left many orphans in the Pashtun community who ended up over the border in these schools of religious instruction. In 1996, assisted by the Pakistani government, the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan. Simple math would suggest that the Taliban, particularly its military leadership, would be quite seasoned at this point after two decades of battle and five years of controlling the country. But thanks to a decapitation strategy delivered largely by drone, the US and its allies have managed to reduce the age of the military command.

“When we got there, it was estimated the average regimental or battalion commander — whatever you want to call him — in the insurgency was about 35 years old,” Marine Major Gen.��Richard Mills����after serving a year in Helmand province. “When we left, he was 23. Why? Because the rest of them are dead. What does that mean? It means they’re promoting younger and younger men — less-experienced men — into greater responsibility, and that’s a weakness.”

The leadership of Boko Haram in Central Africa is also getting younger. James Schneider ��about how Cameroon’s Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) has followed a similar decapitation strategy:

“The average age of Boko Haram’s fighting force keeps dropping. Now, the majority of fighters are teenagers. In battle, Boko Haram tends to have only a small number of older fighters coordinating the militants. They are identifiable by their walkie-talkies or satellite phones. So, BIR developed an 8-week sniper course. Now, BIR aims to pick off the older leaders at the start of any engagement. This strategy has exposed Boko Haram’s battlefield reliance on young, often poorly trained teenage fighters.”

Boko Haram has also increasingly been relying on children for their suicide bombings. “The number of children involved in such blasts grew more than tenfold, from four in 2014 to 44 in 2015, according to a report released by the U.N. children’s agency on Tuesday,”��. “And more than three-quarters of the children are girls — some as young as 8 years old.”

And now we have the Islamic State, which has elevated the use of children to the level of demonic performance art. The youngest recruits, the “cubs of the caliphate,” have been taking center stage more and more in recent months, as����by Charlie Winter in��The Guardian:

“In January, a young Kazakh boy was filmed as he shot a man in the back of the head; in March, Isis propagandists released a video in which a French child aged no more than 11 executed a Palestinian accused of spying for the Israeli government; in May, a young Russian was shown doing the same to an alleged member of the Federal Security Service; in June, 25 teens were filmed as they each shot a pro-Assad regime soldier in Palmyra’s Roman Theatre; and, less than a month later in July, Isis supporters circulated footage of a young Syrian boy beheading an officer, also in Palmyra.

“This downward spiral of depravity arguably reached its nadir in December, when six small boys were shown playing Isis “hide-and-seek,” running through the ruins of a castle in eastern��Syria, racing each other to kill one of the handful of captives who were tied up and defenceless inside.”

The Islamic State knows what it’s doing. It uses children to sell its “product” knowing full well that the videos will garner outrage far and wide. The videos also demonstrate that IS will do whatever it takes to win.

The Failure of the Modern

And yet, the Islamic State is failing to appeal to its core demographic. A year ago, according to , 60% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 rejected IS. This year, that number rose to 80%. And the respondents wouldn’t change their mind even if IS were to abandon its brutal tactics.

To sustain its current operations, IS only needs to attract a tiny percentage of youth in its general vicinity. But as with Donald Trump, a high disapproval rate suggests a tenuous future.

© Shutterstock

When asked why IS continues to attract support, respondents in the poll pointed not to religious reasons, but overwhelmingly to economic conditions. During the Arab Spring, young people who couldn’t get jobs went into the streets to protest. Those options have now narrowed. And the states of the Arab world are still not providing jobs to the young. The youth unemployment rates in the Middle East and North Africa are����(28% and 30% respectively), and they’re only getting worse. Modernity has failed the young people of the Middle East. No surprise, then, that they are casting around for anti-modern alternatives.

There was a chance, at the beginning of the Arab Spring, for the West to invest heavily in the new and fragile democracies in Egypt, Tunisia and eventually Libya. Such resources could have solidified the post-authoritarian political gains. But resources on the order of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East were not forthcoming. The US and Europe were suspicious of the Islamist forces that came to the fore in those countries. Only Tunisia has succeeded in avoiding chaos and autocracy—thanks largely to their own efforts not the beneficence of outsiders.

But now Senator (and former presidential hopeful) Lindsey Graham is calling for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. Graham����Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel with huge sums of money—“access to lower-interest loans, preferential trade agreements, and bolstering their civil society”—in order to fight the Islamic State. Talk about waiting until the horse is out of the barn. Egypt is back under military rule. The Arab Spring didn’t really touch Lebanon and Jordan. And Israel certainly doesn’t need any more American largesse. Marshall Plans, however, need enemies, and the Islamic State quite literally fits the bill.

Even if Congress does untie its purse strings, which is doubtful, it’s not going to stop young people from signing up to kill young people. Any US money flowing into the region will serve to prop up unjust and often unpopular governments. It won’t go the source of the discontent. In previous eras, the left offered young people a way to channel their desires for economic and social justice. But the left is moribund in the Middle East. To a certain extent, political Islam speaks to a thirst for justice. As��, “Islamists decry the corruption, lawlessness and economic inequalities that they see in their own societies. They have also protested against Western policies –promoted by governments or international institutions – that have perpetuated these injustices.” The Islamic State, in its perverse way, takes advantage of that desire for justice.

The generational despair is not limited to the Middle East. You can find it throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even in the US, young people are fed up with the status quo. Listen to����on why millennials support Bernie Sanders: “[B]ecause their generation is so fucked, for lack of a better word, unless they see dramatic change. What’s their experience been with capitalism? They have had two recessions, one really bad one. They have a mountain of student-loan debt. They’ve got really high health-care costs, and their job prospects are mediocre at best. So, that’s capitalism for you.” And that’s in one of the richest countries in the world.

If the Middle East doesn’t produce its own versions of Bernie Sanders—and ones that can win and hold onto office—then the terrible children’s crusade will continue. Enough young people will be attracted to the Islamic State’s message of thoroughgoing transformation to keep the would-be caliphate going in some form. Enough young people will sustain operations like al-Shabab and Boko Haram as they abduct little children and turn them into killing machines. And enough young people will be attracted to the job of piloting the drones that are killing other young people throughout the Muslim world to keep the war on terrorism going in its latest incarnation.

We adults can bewail the use of child soldiers by all those thuggish brigades around the world. But as in��The Lord of the Flies, those young people are just enacting the savageries of their elders. They are both victims and perpetrators. If we don’t fundamentally care about the livelihood of the next generation, it’s no surprise that some members of the next generation don’t care about their own lives or the lives of others.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your����is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a��.

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Terrorism is in the news a lot these days. Beautiful European capitals like Paris and Brussels have been attacked. Historic cities in the Middle East like Baghdad and Aleppo have suffered carnage. A splinter group from the Taliban struck Lahore in Pakistan, once home of the Mughals, at the end of March. Even have not been spared.

Paul Ashley, a retired professional from the British Armed Forces, has mused that . Many worry about a “” that might combine conventional explosives with radioactive material. Two of the bombers involved in the Brussels attacks appear to have .

This week, US President Barack Obama hosted the Nuclear Security Summit and fretted about mad men getting “.” A 2014 report by the (NTI) estimated that “nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe.” The NTI report points out that some of these sites are poorly secured and that terrorists might have acquired the ability to build a bomb.

Obama focused on the Islamic State (IS) during his remarks to the summit. He pointed out that IS “.” The organization is hemorrhaging men, material and money. Incessant pounding by airstrikes have decimated its oil infrastructure, slowing revenues to a trickle. , the stunning ancient city that IS damaged with fanatic ferocity. The so-called caliphate of the Islamic State is shrinking by the day, but the ideas it represents live on.

Attacks are taking place with disturbing regularity in different parts of the world. It is unlikely that IS operates a global command and control center coordinating attacks. What is definitely true is that many young Muslim men are inspired by this fanatical organization and are emulating its methods.

Disaffected young men who feel marginalized can often be harmless. However, once they feel extreme injustice and are exposed to toxic ideology, they can be deadly dangerous. Once these young men have a belief to live for and die for, they have few limits. This is not a new phenomenon. more than 200 years ago in the name of justice and virtue. He was in many ways the father of modern terrorism. By the second half of the 19^th century, terror became a political tool for those who were fighting for justice, equality and political change. Rulers continued to resort to repression.

Terrorism increased in the 19^th century because of severe political, social and economic strain. It is the same today. A scandal that has been breaking out at the time of writing this demonstrates how the . The global . A debt crisis and a chronic lack of jobs are hobbling the economy. Inequality is increasing and social contracts are fraying.

There is real and palpable anger among people who feel cheated. In Europe, the far-right is gaining ground. In the United States, is exuding machismo. Bailing out of banks resulted in wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. Quantitative easing has increased inequality exponentially. In poor countries, rigged privatizations, politically directed bank loans and crony capitalism have resulted in new societies of masters and slaves. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, thousands of families are mourning their dead and aiming to slake their thirst for revenge.

This is an age of anger. Elites are discredited. They have been deemed to be avaricious, arrogant and asinine. Villains, old and new, are popping up. The lazy Arab, the dirty Jew, the African American welfare queen et al provide potent examples of this phenomenon. Such widespread anger can easily be directed into violence when fanatical faith or millenarian ideology comes into play.

At the same time, many states are withering. Obama’s summit involved more than 50 states but many of them are losing control. Pakistan is a classic example. Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, could not attend the summit because of the . At least 72 died and more than 200 were injured.

This violence is now endemic in the land of the pure. In 2013, Anwar Akhtar detailed how . Pakistan was founded by a Shia lawyer as a homeland for Indian Muslims who were supposed to comprise one nation. That theory was disproved when East Pakistan broke off to form Bangladesh in 1971. In a more recent ironic twist of fate, .

How did things in Pakistan come to such a pass? It all began innocuously enough. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The US decided to support the mujahidin, holy warriors, who were battling the Soviets. General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the then dictator ruling Pakistan, signed up for the Afghan adventure. From now on, .

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) used this money to train the Taliban. The ISI also built a sprawling complex of madrassas, mosques, training camps, weapons warehouses and military bases. Today, there are . Some of these boys end up joining jihadist groups that operate in Afghanistan and India. These groups now carry out operations in Pakistan as well. The fabled Pakistani deep state has created a Frankenstein it can no longer control.

As of March 2013, Pakistan had in the so-called War on Terror. The violence continues unabated. As a result, the Pakistani state seems to be losing control. In 2014, Rafia Zakaria wrote a chilling article for Dawn, arguably Pakistan’s most famous English-language newspaper, on an increasingly repressive country, “equally unable to deliver freedom or justice.” She observed that . He was ordering the murders of those suspected of blasphemy.

Qadri was no ordinary criminal. He killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, for defending a poor Christian woman in jail who had been accused of blasphemy. Qadri was finally hanged a little over a month ago, but . Pakistan’s post-colonial state is being stretched to breaking point. Its runs a closed club. Social mobility in the country has fallen since independence in 1947 like Isaac Newton’s proverbial apple.

Pakistanis have lost faith in their elites. Institutions no longer matter. Zahid Hussein, a noted Pakistani intellectual, quoted a general under Zia as saying that . Osama bin Laden spent his last days a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s mythic military academy. More pertinently, devout young Islamists are infiltrating the Pakistani state relentlessly. Hence, Pakistan’s nuclear material is at great risk of theft or misappropriation. Lest we forget, it was none other than . Khan is the “father of the Islamic bomb” and a national hero in Pakistan.

As a state, India functions much better than Pakistan. Yet its nuclear material is not as safe as it seems. India’s , its and the is legendary. Its short-sighted elites care little for strategic matters and India’s nuclear material is not as safe as it seems.

North Korea makes India look good. Russia makes India look angelic. President Vladimir Putin did not even show up in Washington, DC. With the Pakistanis and the Russians not present, Obama’s summit did not quite have the oomph he desired.

The US itself is going through strange times. Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has suggested that South Korea and Japan could do well to have instead of rely on the US. This flies in the face of nonproliferation efforts by the US for decades and . To add to his woes, the summit might be living on borrowed time because no US presidential candidate seems interested in keeping it going.

In his early career in the US Senate, , a Republican senator, to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. States like Ukraine and Azerbaijan participated. Things have changed since. As stated earlier, many states are declining and their writs are weakening. At some point, some crazy group will acquire the knowledge, ability and material to make a dirty bomb. Of course, states have a duty to prevent the making and using of such a bomb, but at some point they will fail. When this happens, the best response for all decent good people around the world has to be to keep calm and carry on.

Sadly, a nuclear terrorist strike is not merely possible or probable. It is inevitable. It is time to start preparing for it.

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visit����and enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

The Question of Sovereignty in the EU Referendum

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A vote to leave the European Union will be life-changing for the British people.

Whilst many issues are being discussed in relation to the forthcoming European Union (EU) referendum in the United Kingdom, the issue of “sovereignty” is the one that divides the remain and leave camps. The highly respected think tank Open Europe, which is backing neither side, has made it clear that the economic effects of the��two options are marginal in this report. While there may be disruption in the short term, it is likely that the UK will prosper in either scenario.

The issue is thus about sovereignty and who calls the shots on important issues such as border control, environment, defense and security, all of which require government intervention. Trade is not an issue, as it is not governments who trade in either manufactured goods or in services. It is entrepreneurs and their businesses that generate the wealth that governments then spend wisely…

Ignoring the Plight of the Rohingya is a Mistake

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The State Department’s minimization of the plight of the Rohingya is sending dangerous, mixed messages to Myanmar and its neighbors.

The US State Department’s��recent declaration of the��Islamic State��(IS) being��responsible for genocide��against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims,��captured headlines across the globe. The news��came out of a��congressionally mandated��report.

However, the biggest story out of that report was not about IS, but rather the failure to find anything more than “discrimination” and “persecution” against the Rohingya in western Myanmar. Such a shockingly understated conclusion and downplaying of atrocities against Rohingya sends a dangerously mixed message at a time of important transition.

It is not so much that the State Department did not find that the Rohingya are facing genocide. Proving intent is always a difficult and controversial barrier for genocide determination. Rather, the greater damage is in the blatant minimization of the plight of the…

Donald Trump is Foreign Policy’s Useful Idiot

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It��might take someone of Trump’s vapid visibility to drive home the point that “world’s policeman” is not a viable role for the US to play.

He wants to cut back on US military commitments overseas. He calls the Iraq War “one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country.” He promises to make deals with America’s adversaries. He’s comfortable with the����é�ٱ�Գٱ���with Cuba. And he really pisses off the stuffed shirts at��The Washington Post. So, what’s not to like about Donald Trump?

Well, a great deal, of course. The man is an incoherent, misogynistic bully. But his foreign policy vision, a kind of fun-house version of Reaganism, is upsetting Beltway mandarins, shaking up the Republican Party, and pointing to a potential rupture in the informal liberal-conservative consensus on foreign policy that has prevailed in Washington since the end of the Cold War. It’s hard not to enjoy a frisson of��schadenfreude…

Don’t Overlook Obama’s Visit to Argentina

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Argentina is the only major player in Latin America with a forward looking agenda that offers hope to its people.

In the crush of events that always weigh down a US president, and the daily eruptions of the 2016 election campaign, it would be a monumental mistake to underestimate the importance of President Barack Obama’s��recent meeting with newly elected Argentine President Mauricio Macri. US outreach to Latin America never seems to garner sufficient priority, and the personal attention by Obama to one of the most interesting new leaders in a hugely influential country south of the border should not go unremarked.

Macri’s electoral��victory in 2015 represents a long awaited change��from the path taken by many of Argentina’s neighbors, where corruption and ineptitude seem pervasive in places like Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil. Succeeding Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose fame, or infamy, rested on her accommodations with neighborhood thugs—not to mention her various deals with��Iran’s…

What Does the Economy Need to Recover?

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After the global financial crisis of 2008, a change in the economic paradigm is needed to avoid future downturns.

In economic theory, “one person’s spending is another person’s income,” which drives aggregate demand in the economy. Often, this cycle breaks due to flawed economic policymaking that ends in economic crisis. The global economy has always been susceptible to financial upheavals that have brought economic hardship. Although a global crisis creates impediments for the economy to grow, at the same time it requires a change in the economic paradigm.

Despite of what we have learned from the most recent economic crises, the world is still in recession. The global economy’s recovery pattern is fragile. Financial flows and excessive debt have dominated many economies since 2009, and there is a prevalence of a volatile and decelerating global gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate. Brazil, Japan and half of Europe are already moving in the recessionary phase. The reason why the…

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The as Fan Jinghui, a freelance consultant from Beijing, by the Islamic State (IS) in November 2015��has sent a clear message to the Chinese government of the risks of investing in unstable areas. Although this was the first and so far only known case of deliberate killing of a noncombatant Chinese citizen by jihadist groups in the Middle East, it is unlikely to be the last.

In recent months, Uighur jihadists—who have been , the Taliban and IS in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions—have showed their efforts and intentions to strike at China’s overseas interests. To meet its growing demand for critical energy and mineral resources, China, through its state-owned enterprises, has been investing or promised to invest heavily in a number of conflict-affected countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. As these countries’ security remains fragile, lacking the capacity to provide sufficient security, Chinese investment projects and citizens are likely to become easy targets for Uighur militants operating in or near these areas.

Uighur Militancy in a New Phase

The ongoing turmoil in Syria and Iraq has been a key factor behind the expansion of Uighur militancy from China and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region to the Middle East. As such, the terrorist threat to Beijing has become transnational and multi-faceted. At present, nearly 1,000 Uighur fighters and their family members from China’s Xinjiang province have joined the Nusra Front—an al-Qaeda affiliate—and the Islamic State in the Middle East.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, remains a traditional battlefield of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), or the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is the most prominent Uighur group with close links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. TIP is believed to have approximately 300-500 militants in Afghanistan. There has been no evidence to suggest that IS has any Uighur members in the country.

While the majority of Uighur fighters in the Middle East have joined the TIP’s Syrian branch known as Turkistan Islamic Party in the Levant (TIP-L), a few hundred Uighurs appear to have aligned with IS. TIP-L, as a close ally of the Nusra Front, is now part of Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), the new coalition of jihadists that has been fighting against the Syrian army in the northern Aleppo and Idlib provinces since March 2015.

Economic Interests under TIP Threat

TIP militants have been strengthened by their experience of fighting against government and coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East. They have gained significant advances in tactics and strategy as a result of their ideological and operational engagement with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Nusra Front.

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Since its creation in 1997, TIP’s ultimate goal has been the establishment of an independent Islamic state by the name of “East Turkistan” in Xinjiang. Undoubtedly, TIP has perpetrated several acts of violence across China operating from the Af-Pak region. However, currently, such organized entities pose only a limited threat to China’s domestic security because they lack widespread support, and high security measures at borders prevent their entry from overseas.

A dearth of opportunities to fight at home against China seems to make Uighur militants overseas turn to targeting Chinese economic interests in various conflict-ridden areas in which they are operating. In August 2015, a propaganda video issued by TIP featured Uighur militants ambushing vehicles carrying local security personnel of Chinese state-owned copper mine��“”��in Afghanistan’s Logar province, close to the capital Kabul.

The Metallurgical Group of China (MCC) has a $3 billion deal with the Afghan government to mine and process copper from Mes Aynak, the largest undeveloped copper field in the world. Given the drawdown of Western forces in Afghanistan, the threat from TIP to any prospective Chinese infrastructure projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to grow.

Uighur’s Global Jihad Rhetoric

In recent years, TIP’s propaganda has adopted global jihadi rhetoric to publicize the Uighur minority cause and call for violence against China’s global interests. In July 2015, , al-Qaeda’s branch in Somalia, when the group’s car bomb attack on a hotel in the capital Mogadishu damaged the Chinese Embassy nearby, killing at least one embassy staff member and injuring three others. Although the strike on the Chinese Embassy appeared to be unintentional, TIP claimed that it was a “practical response to the Chinese aggression” in Xinjiang and encouraged al-Shabab to carry out more of such attacks.

The safety of the growing Chinese investment and workers in Iraq is also under threat. Beijing has heavily invested in Iraq’s petroleum sector. In 2014, Iraq was China’s fifth largest oil exporter. Chinese companies own five oilfields, four of which are located in the southern and one in the central parts of Iraq. Moreover, there are more than 10,000 Chinese workers in Iraq, mostly with Chinese oil companies.

Although Chinese and Iraqi officials expressed their confidence that oilfields in the southern regions are “completely safe,” the possibility of IS, which now controls large swathes of northwest of Iraq, striking major oilfields in the south cannot be ruled out. Uighur fighters who appeared in an IS propaganda video in August 2015 claimed that they are “fully aware of how Uighurs are being oppressed” in China, Thailand and elsewhere, and warned that they will target China wherever possible.

Need for Better Response

The protection of its overseas economic interests is crucial for a rising China. Although Chinese state-owned enterprises and workers based in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have been protected primarily by local military and police, these countries’ domestic security remain volatile and inadequate.

Given the capacity and intentions of the current transnational network of Uighur militants, the threats to Chinese investment and citizens in these countries are expected to increase. China’s new anti-terrorism law that was enacted on December 27, 2015, has paved the way for Beijing to deploy its military for overseas counterterrorism purposes.

To effectively deal with evolving risks, China now needs to take preemptive measures and recalibrate its responses within the framework of its longstanding noninterference foreign policy. In the long-run, there is a need to develop comprehensive counter-radicalization and community engagement strategies, relying less on hard power and more on winning “hearts and minds” of its Uighur minority community in Xinjiang.

*[This article was originally published by��the��,��a partner institution of��.]

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The Republican presidential candidates have been the originators of some provocative sound bites in reference to battling the Islamic State (IS—also referred to as ISIS or ISIL), including talk about “carpet bombing,” “waterboarding,” banning Muslims from entering the United States, and creating agencies for the promotion of Judeo-Christian values. With the possibility that one may be elected president in November, their proposed strategies for continuing President Barack Obama’s����deserve a closer look. After all, this is the campaign that former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described as possibly a “.”

The race for the Grand Old Party’s (GOP) nomination has dwindled from an impressive starting bench of 17 candidates to just three: Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump. With 17 Republican primaries to go over the next three months, here is an in-depth look at the remaining candidates’ strategies for defeating IS.

Bombing ISIS Back to the Stone Age

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants to defeat IS, but is not interested in����or stability operations in Syria. His priority would be to target the terrorist organization while attempting to . The candidate was once adamant that US ground troops should not being involved in an “” in Syria, but later conceded that he would “.” Of course, making it a priority to defeat the strongest and most organized group fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is exactly the opposite of not being involved in the Syrian conflict.

When it comes to how IS would be defeated, Cruz infamously said that he was in favor of��, but revealed he either did not know or did not care what the term actually meant when he elaborated, essentially describing standard precision close air support within the framework of legal airstrikes. On the one hand, Cruz said he would “pound Raqqa”—the de facto IS capital in Syria—into a “parking lot,” and “.”

But on the other hand, he said: “You use air power directed—and you have embedded special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.” This makes it seem like Cruz is more interested in blustery talk than a new form of��law-of-armed-conflict-be-damned, hyper-anti-counterinsurgency��policy.

Cruz also supports directly arming the Kurdish Peshmerga—a militia in autonomous Kurdish Iraq—whom he claims can “” if supported by American air power. While they have successfully repelled IS from traditionally Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, Peshmerga forces have avoided fighting too far into Arab areas. It was mainly Shia militias, not the Peshmerga, who . Cruz seems to think that the Peshmerga would easily roll through both IS-controlled Iraq and Syria, despite the numerous armed and experienced actors in Syria who would make this—at the very least—difficult.

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What is clear is that Cruz’s plan to defeat the Islamic State is full of contradictions. Ironically, for someone saying ,��Cruz’s plan as he has explained it thus far is only different from the Obama administration’s in that it is less involved and less thought out. From his double talk on US ground forces and the air campaign, to his unrealistic expectations from one militia in the midst of dozens, it is unlikely that Senator Cruz could defeat IS using the meager��plan he has described. On , his IS strategy is tellingly limited to “calling the enemy by its name—radical Islamic terrorism—and securing the border. Border security is national security.”

One Up on Degrade and Destroy

Ohio Governor John Kasich’s plan for defeating the Islamic State is much more hawkish than Obama’s, adding the intent to��“” to the president’s stated “degrade and destroy” goal, though it is unclear exactly how wiping out is different than destroying. Inspired to action by the Paris attacks of November 2015, Kasich favors an American-led coalition of European and Middle Eastern allies sooner rather than later, but does not support using .

In addition to an urgent coalition including American ground troops, Kasich, like Obama, is in favor of arming moderate rebels in Syria. He supports arming both Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish militias, unlike Cruz. And unlike Obama and Cruz—but like��—he supports the creation of no-fly zones in Syria.

Kasich’s plan is firmly in the interventionist camp, but he also knows that military action alone will not defeat IS. While he once called for the creation of an agency to promote “,” he later walked back this statement, instead suggesting to “breathe life” into Voice of America, a US government-funded news organization that broadcasts around the world.

However,��his vision of a broad military coalition operating in Syria and enforcing no-fly zones while not taking action to depose Assad is nonsensical. Enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria means shooting down Syrian��and Russian��aircraft should they encroach on this hypothetical airspace. In that event,��it would be very unlikely that American ground forces could avoid��combat with the Syrian army, and enforcing a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft might lead to a war much bigger than the one against IS.

Additionally, supporting Kurdish militias and moderate Sunni Arab rebels against Assad will one day lead to either confrontation between these actors, or de facto federalization, or even the breakup of Syria. This is not strictly a problem that applies only to Kasich, because the current administration is also betting on multiple horses in this race. But it is meaningless to attempt a strategic distinction between fighting Assad directly and fighting Assad via proxy, especially if American ground troops are readily available in the area of responsibility as targets.

The three candidates’ plans for defeating Islamic State may differ tactically, but they all want to put American troops on the ground in Syria to fight IS while avoiding involvement in the Syrian Civil War.

Ultimately, Kasich’s plan might defeat IS, but it would likely trap the US in an expanded war against multiple actors in the region, including the Syrian government, Russia, Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias, Jabhat al-Nusra and so on—something the Obama administration has been attempting to avoid for the last four years. Ironically, while attempting to avoid the regime change blunders of the last decade, Kasich’s war against IS could make President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq look well-planned.

Torture and Oil

If any candidate has said more senseless��things about the Middle East��than former candidate Ben Carson, it is Donald Trump. Before he was an official candidate, he hinted at knowing a “foolproof”��, but either he still has not told us, or his definition of foolproof is very loose. Interestingly, in that same��interview��with , Trump��suggested talks with IS, perhaps the only candidate to do so, but a peaceful resolution has not been brought up since.

Instead, he has said he wants to , ban��, enter into a de facto alliance with Assad and Russia as they while the US fights the group in Iraq, and use airstrikes and ground forces to seize IS-controlled oil fields and , using perhaps 30,000 American��.

Essentially, Trump’s plan is three-pronged: bomb IS, send in ground forces and take its oil fields. He has justified his reluctance to depose Assad by saying the US must avoid fighting two wars at once because it cannot win.��While the last decade and a half in the greater Middle East might support his theory, it is important also to understand that wars are not what you want them to be, they are��.

Carl von Clausewitz, the revered Prussian military strategist often considered to be the West’s Sun Tzu, wrote deftly: “The first, the grandest, and the most decisive act of judgement which the statesman and general exercises is rightly to understand in this respect the war in which he engages, not to take it for something, or wish to make it something, which by the nature of its relations it is impossible for it to be.”

Put another way, simply because he might��choose not to fight Assad does not mean Assad��will not fight the US directly or via proxy, especially when��his oil fields are occupied by American troops and Exxon.

It is also��necessary��to stress that there is no research which suggests��that Trump’s plan to expand the legal authority to torture IS fighters and his suggestion that their ��would hasten an IS defeat. On the contrary, torture is��. It encourages false confessions and bad intelligence, promotes battlefield reciprocity, and obviously damages American standing in the world. As such, it is possible that IS emerged partly in response to US torture. Indeed, IS prisoners wear orange jumpsuits to mimic����prisoners, and the treatment of prisoners by Americans is frequently mentioned in IS propaganda videos.

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As the French learned in the Algerian War, torture is not only counterproductive—it also “corrupts the��torturer as much as it breaks the victim.” A quote from a French paratrooper in Alistair Horne’s��A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962��shows the suffering of the torturer himself: “All day, through the floor-boards, we heard their hoarse cries, like those of animals being slowly put to death. Sometimes I think I can still hear them … All these men disappeared … I felt myself becoming contaminated. What was more serious, I felt that the horror of all these crimes, our everyday battle, was losing force daily in my mind.”

US interrogation contractor Eric Flair����similar sentiments about his time torturing Iraqis in 2004 and 2005: “As an interrogator, torture forced me to set aside my humanity when I went to work. It’s something I’ve never been able to fully pick back up again.”

For someone who supposedly has made��veterans’ issues a��, Trump might��consider more deeply the lasting effects of conducting a war in this way on��those who serve.

Agree On One Thing

The three candidates’ plans for defeating Islamic State may differ tactically, but they all want to put American troops on the ground in Syria to fight IS while avoiding involvement in the Syrian Civil War. This is the type of half-planning that needlessly endangers Americans troops and exposes the US to blowback.

The power vacuum in Iraq and Syria that facilitated the rise of IS has been attributed by many Republicans to President Obama’s miscalculating the consequences of the Iraq withdrawal and inaction in Syria. But to advocate putting American troops in Syria to fight IS while keeping them neutral against Assad’s regime is not just bad strategy—it is wishful thinking.

Many mistakes were made that led to the Islamic State’s rise, and the consequences of those mistakes have been felt by millions of people from Syria and Iraq to France and Belgium. The next president’s first priority when it comes to defeating the Islamic State is to avoid making more strategic errors—the most important being understanding more than superficially the war Americans will be fighting, perhaps for decades.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The ’s (IS) so-called caliphate is being shrunk by the Russians and Syrians in northwestern Syria. On January 26, the Syrian army captured the key��location��of Sheikh Maskin, which lies on a key crossroads with Damascus to the north and the government-controlled city of��.��In the east of IS territory, Peshmerga forces from the autonomous area of not only hold their own, but also push the Islamic State back. In the southwest, the fall of��Ramadi��to the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed militia in December 2015 was a severe blow to the terrorist organization.

Together, all parties involved have contributed to IS losing large portions of its previously held territory at the beginning of 2016.

The latter part of 2015 saw the ��target��oil locations, vehicles carrying oil and the Islamic State’s main bank, costing the group millions of dollars.��So much so that there were ��as money became scarcer.

In Syria and Iraq, the various forces fighting the terrorist organization will have to ensure that the successes in 2015 will be built on in 2016. What will still be in place is a huge propaganda machine capable of turning quiet, innocent people into murderers on its behalf. Like any group, IS will at some point have to fight back as it finds itself losing ground, having its back against a wall. It will lack the funds, fighters and equipment to retaliate.

With individuals and groups outside of Syria and Iraq claiming allegiance to IS, some have allegedly secured recent successes for the organization by taking terrorism to the streets. It will not be difficult for IS to organize and create chaos in summer tourism spots or around Europe.

People have already seen the consequences of the horrific Tunisian attack on its tourism industry, populated shopping malls being targeted in Kenya and Somalia, and innocent people enjoying a night out in Paris. The Islamic State will strike at any soft target that is available.

In January, that they had thwarted another��Paris��strike. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve pointed out that since spring 2015, French intelligence services had foiled 11 terrorist attacks that had been planned by IS—those of which were prior to the November 2015 Paris attack. Since that incident, French authorities have placed the country in a “state of emergency” and have declared that it will remain in place until the Islamic State is defeated.

So far in 2016

The year 2016 started well for international terrorists when the in northwest Pakistan on January 20, killing 30 people and injuring dozens more.

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A day later,�� restaurant-hotel in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, resulting in approximately 20 people losing their lives. Al-Shabab had pledged its allegiance to IS in October 2015, having once been allied with al-Qaeda. The interesting point regarding this assault was that it was a two-pronged offensive: Suicide bombers struck the front of the restaurant, while a sea-borne assault raided those on the beach.

This style would allow for very few people to escape. There were even reports of white people being checked to see if they were dead. This was probably in response to the French government and others issuing a guide as to what to do in the event of a terrorist attack.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the incursion and claimed that its militants wore suicide vests. Suicide vests are one of the latest and new additions to a terrorist’s method of attack. The first time the vests were used was during the Paris attack in November 2015.

STRATEGIC TARGETS AND TACTICS

Terrorists are learning from each coordinated attack and, with it, the capability to strike, organize and cause death and chaos with slightly different tactics. Like any military-style operation, there will be people who look at the procedure and see where they can improve. It is interesting to note that after the 2008 Mumbai attack, al-Shabab raided a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in what appeared to be a similar operation.

In��January 2016,�� regarding IS changing its modus operandi. The paper gave no indication over��the change in tactics, but did say that IS has a special forces-style group that would be used in future terrorist attacks it conducts, outside of IS territory.

If the Islamic State attempts to “set Europe alight” with acts of terrorism, what would the targets be?

In recent years, terrorist organizations have started favoring the Mumbai-style assaults, where small groups of gunmen attack a soft location and kill as many people as they possibly can. This type of attack gives the terrorist group huge media and press coverage. With that, the world watches as the event unfolds, while various newsgroups search for exclusive shots or information.

Terrorists will also be following the live events and watching for ways to improve, as well as taking note as to how authorities respond. News staff attempting to analyze and preempt what is happening, what has happened and what the authorities are doing gives the terrorists some food for thought for their next attack.

Tourism and Refugees

Tourism may be a key target for 2016, especially around popular coastal holiday resorts since the successful Tunisia attack in June 2015 at����by Seifeddine Rezgui, an affiliate of IS. Thirty of the —the others from the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Portugal, Tunisia and Ukraine.

Within Europe, there are numerous targets to choose from. As the so-called IS caliphate is threatened in Syria and Iraq, the more it will want to strike outside its borders.

The Tunisian attack, although carried out by a lone gunman, may have been a rehearsal for later attacks. The death toll from one man and the impact on the country’s tourism industry were huge. Tunisia is currently undergoing some civil unrest between last year’s attack and the announcement of several UK tour guides that they were not selling deals there.

Since the Tunisian attack on the holiday resort, tourists are now feeling unsafe in North Africa and will seek different locations to go on vacation. Southern Europe has many tourist spots that people will now look to for their summer holidays, especially after a��British government-issued��statement outlining the .

With many , it is possible that some of these may be members of IS. If that is the case, the ability to set Europe alight will work in the group’s favor. The more ground that IS loses, the more desperate it will become, sending signals out to sleeper cells to ignite the fuse.

Directing forces toward specific targets will have to be strategically considered: the hard target versus the soft target, the sophisticated target versus the unsophisticated target. Any attack on a sophisticated target will be well-planned against government buildings or personnel, organized with the correct logistics. If IS militants attempt to take a government-controlled building, this would act as a huge propaganda coup. Softer targets would include shopping malls and tourist areas.

Targeting a School

A turn of events could occur if . Over recent years, terrorists have attacked schools and schoolchildren around the world: Pakistan in December 2014 at the Peshawar Army Public School by the Taliban; the Beslen School siege in September 2004 by Chechens in Russia; the lone wolf attack in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011; and the recent attack on Bacha Khan University in northwest Pakistan on January 20, 2016.��No target is beneath them.

In January 2016, a number of��schools��in the . While an online pro-Vladimir Putin group claimed responsibility, the number schools affected would have stretched British and French authorities in . The act would not have gone unnoticed by terrorists, who may look at using this as a method of attack in the future. On January 31, the Islamic State announced that it would��attack��the UK with an act so horrific it would turn “.” Is this an indication that IS would attack a school?

The ability for terrorists to strike is for them to decide. Within Europe, there are numerous targets to choose from. As the so-called IS caliphate is threatened in Syria and Iraq, the more it will want to strike outside its borders.��Statements by the group claiming that it was going to and take them over the border to be beheaded cannot be taken lightly.

that the November attack in Paris was a dress rehearsal and there is worse to come. There is a high possibility that 2016 could become very bloody. With IS losing ground, it will want to take reprisals.��Europe and North Africa may well carry the brunt of its retribution.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Despite what its name suggests, the objective of the “” (IS) is the creation of a stateless society, a global caliphate that effaces all borders and unifies humanity under a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. In the terrorist group’s eyes, this means freedom, a release from��the bounds of secular law and the moral corruption of a secular society.

That IS would replace this with a regime of merciless brutality for any non-conformist—be they homosexual, apostate or unbeliever—should not, however, be taken to mean that all visions of a stateless society are equally abhorrent.

Growing up alongside IS’ monstrous worldview, like an antidote to its poison, is another vision of a stateless society that is the opposite of the Islamic State’s in every way. The in Rojava can be seen as IS’ alter ego: Whereas the Islamic State is misogynistic, Rojava is avowedly feminist; whereas the Islamic State is Islamo-fascist and sectarian, Rojava is a democratic and secular rainbow nation that respects all creeds.

So what is Rojava, and how has such a progressive and inclusive society come to emerge from the hellscape of the ? And what can we, in the West, learn from this experiment in radical democracy?

DEMOCRACY IN ROJAVA

Rojava is the name given to three cantons in northern Syria, bordering Turkey. In 2015, they were�� by Kurdish forces with the help of the Free Syrian Army. The region is now governed by a coalition of parties led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that has been fighting a 40-year war for Kurdish independence from, or more recently autonomy within, Turkey.

That the PKK is deemed to be a terrorist organization by Western governments is a fact. That it has carried out attacks that have cost the lives of thousands of civilians is also true. Whether the PPK is actually a group of freedom fighters defending Kurds against a campaign of terror waged upon them by the Turkish state is a not a debate that concerns us here.

What is of interest in this case is what happened when the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, picked up a book, , by American political theorist��. Originally a communist, then an anarchist (before growing disillusioned with that too), Bookchin began to develop his own theory that eschewed the failed idea of class struggle and replaced it with what he called “libertarian municipalism.”

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Libertarian municipalism is a system of direct democracy whereby citizens, constituted in people’s assemblies and operating at a municipal level, propose and act upon legislation themselves rather than delegating power to political representatives, as is the practice in representative democracy. Bookchin envisioned these assemblies as initially bypassing the organs of state before ultimately supplanting them, resulting in the reorganization of the political landscape along the lines of a confederation of people’s assemblies.

Before coming into contact with Bookchin’s writing in a Turkish prison cell, Ocalan and the movement he led was of the old school Marxist-Leninist variety. After reading Bookchin, he began to adapt his ideas to the Kurdish situation, and thus, Ocalan’s version of libertarian municipalism, which he called “,” was born.

In 2015, when the Kurds flushed IS out of Rojava, the relative peace allowed them to begin putting Ocalan and Bookchin’s theories into practice. Last year, they ratified their��, “All governing bodies, institutions and committees must be made up of at least 40% of either sex” (Article 87); environmentalism, “The Charter guarantees the protection of the environment and regards the sustainable development of natural ecosystems as a moral and a sacred national duty” (Article 90); and cultural and religious pluralism, “Everyone has the right to express their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and gender rights” (Article 23a).

Of course, most constitutions make grandiose statements about the rights of citizens, only to be belied by the actions of the government. Rojava has also����for the use of child soldiers and potential war crimes in the razing of Arab villages taken from IS.

But given the cultural norms of the region and the fact that it is a conflict zone, they have managed to institute a system of governance that is radically democratic, gender balanced and ethnically and religiously representative, which marks Rojava out as a small beacon of hope for a region in despair.

FIRST-PERSON DEMOCRACY

It is deeply lamentable that of the two visions of a stateless society—the one proposed by IS and the other by Ocalan—it is the former that seeks to export itself the world over. But it is also true to form. It is in the nature of religious extremism to want to expand the realm of its dominion. Conversely, democratic confederalism could never be imposed from above. The moment it sought to do so is the moment it would cease to exist.

This is something that we in the West could learn from Rojava and the writings of Murray Bookchin. If we concentrated more on closing the democratic deficits in our own societies rather than trying to impose democracy on others, we might not be facing this perpetual state of crisis in the Middle East.

Perhaps it is time that we in the West reflected upon our own political system, and asked ourselves if instability in the Middle East could be the result of weaknesses in our democracy. And if so, what can we do to strengthen it?

One way to start might be by acknowledging a flaw at the heart of our system of governance. At best, representative democracy, vaunted as it is for being the least bad of all options, is democracy in the third person. That is to say that the political power of citizens is outsourced to third parties, professional politicians, who purport to wield it in our interest.

By comparison, the system of governance devised by Bookchin is a form of democracy in the first person, where political power remains vested in the citizen rather than a venal political class. Currently, for most people, their democratic duty consists of a single day’s participation every two to five years—too preoccupied with their own lives to pay much attention to what happens in between.

This leaves a space, a democratic deficit, between the electorate and the elected, which is then filled by��. Electoral promises come undone and ulterior motives come into play, allowing corporations to run rampant. Western governments’ support for every dictatorship that welcomes these corporations into their country is in no small part responsible for the perennial state of instability in the Middle East. Thus, the democratic deficit at the heart of our own political system results in destabilization elsewhere in the world.

The beautiful thing about democratic confederalism as a remedy for this situation is that it does not call for violent revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat; all that stuff can thankfully be consigned to the nightmare of 20^th century history. At the risk of sounding gimmicky, the purpose of this transition would not be to overthrow the state, but rather to overgrow��it.

By turning our attention toward the attainment of pro-social outcomes for our own communities, the wherewithal for corporations to run their smash and grab operations overseas will wither, and the incentive to meddle in the affairs of other nations decrease.

And then, just maybe, we can avoid situations like Syria in the future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This week, the pound plummeted. It had its worst week since the recent financial crisis. The United Kingdom’s����faces a real potential for divorce. Its current account deficit is growing, setting off alarm bells. Already, the pound has fallen to under $1.40 and Deutsche Bank estimates it will��.

Chinese stocks also kept falling. The����this year already. The Chinese renminbi lost value��������-à-��������the US dollar. China’s slowdown has ominous implications for the rest of the world. There is real fear now that the use of loose monetary policy to prop up the economy might be reaching its limits. There are limits to fiscal policy too, particularly for aging countries burdened with debt.

Large numbers of people are fleeing or migrating to some of these aging debtor nations. As per the International Organization for Migration,����so far. In 2015, the figure for new arrivals until July was around 100,000. People are risking death by drowning as they cross the Mediterranean Sea while Europe faces a big crisis.

In the midst of these developments, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria. Diplomats are suitably pleased that they have an agreement on Syria for the first time since the country imploded into a bloody civil war.��. The UNSC resolution aims to install a transitional government in the first six months and envisages elections within the next 18 months. To many the agreement represents “.”

Yet the agreement is deafeningly silent on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It also fails to mention which opposition groups will engage in peace talks. What we know is that there will be no peace with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. This agreement is no modern day Treaty of Westphalia that will bring to an end what this author has called��.

The agreement is flawed in its assumptions and wishful in its thinking. The Syrian state is dead. It was a product of Sykes-Picot agreement between the British and the French to divvy up the Middle East. They drew arbitrary lines on the map and created centralized states with overbearing capitals and a web of patronage. Native successors to the British and French masters ruled with an iron fist, but the smoldering volcanoes have erupted in the region.

When the Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein, they unleashed civil war in Iraq. Democracy does not automatically spring up in deeply divided postcolonial states with no institutions. Dour Scots from state schools might not like cavalier English Etonians, but they have been arguing with each other for more than 300 years in the British Parliament.

Iraq has a different legacy to the blessed green isle of Britain. In its infancy, more than 100,000 armed tribesmen rebelled against British rule. This����was quelled by dropping 97 tons of bombs, firing 183,861 rounds and killing nearly 9,000 Iraqis. The British spent more to crush this uprising than they did to support the Arab revolt against the Ottomans inspired by Lawrence of Arabia. In this season of Oscars, it is pertinent to note that no one is likely to make a film on this 1920 Arab uprising.

This uprising is important for another key reason. The British had long been past masters at bringing rebels to heel. In the history of the empire, as Jeremy Paxman memorably puts it, “rebellions were always met with savage retribution.” Winston Churchill was then secretary of state for war and air. He was “strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes” to “spread a lively terror.”

Arthur Harris, who later came to be known as “Bomber Harris” or “Butcher Harris,” was commanding the 45 Squadron in Iraq. He more or less invented the heavy bomber by adding bomb racks to Vickers Vernon troop carriers. He also came up with night “terror” raids. In World War II, he would put lessons of Iraq to good use by bombing cities like Hamburg and Dresden, and��.

In 1921, John Adrian Chamier, the father of the Air Training Corps, was serving in Iraq too. He posited that the best way to demoralize local people was to concentrate bombing on the “most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected the attack with bombs and machine guns must be��.”

Local dictators like Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad have taken to heart the lessons of their former colonial masters. Saddam conducted����and����during his time in power. Assad has����like Saddam. His Russian allies have taken a leaf out of the British playbook and bombed Aleppo with gusto, targeting civilians to drive them from their homes and teach them a lesson.

Borders are meaningless in the current conflict. Iranians are helping Assad by providing Shia troops from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Islamic State was born in Iraq and grew up in Syria in the power vacuum after the uprisings against Assad, and drew support from desperate Sunnis who found their backs against the wall. This messianic organization was created in Iraq because Sunnis there resented the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

Today, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon are divided along sectarian and tribal lines. Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, assorted Shia and Russia form one gang. The Islamic State with its Sunni supporters forms another gang. The US is the biggest bully in the playground who cannot make up his mind as to which gang is more dangerous. It just wants to return to the age of innocence when order prevailed in the region. Neat lines of its elder European cousins are sacrosanct for the US. Sadly, these silly lines in the sand have been washed away by frothy waves of blood.

After years of bloody civil war, mistrust, suspicion and hatred divide communities. Ethnic cleansing has created monoculture areas. Like , Iraq and Syria have fallen off the wall. All of Uncle Sam’s planes, drones, missiles and men will not be able to put them back together again. Yet the US refuses to recognize the��fait accompli��and come up with imaginative new ideas. It persists in selling old wine in new bottles.

Last year, US President Barack Obama declared that Assad would have to leave for Syria to stop bloodshed and enable all the parties involved to move forward in a nonsectarian way. Obama might be right about tensions cooling a wee bit once Assad leaves. However, the real battle in Syria, Lebanon and even Yemen is between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. The former is a theocratic regime with a whiff of democracy. The latter is a��.

Throw Turkey and Israel into the picture along with Russia and the US, and you get a truly explosive cocktail. Add the Kurds and Palestinians to make this cocktail toxic. Do not forget wonderful human beings like British Prime Minister����to shake, not stir things up.

Essentially, the inter-state balance of power has been disturbed and most actors think they can do better. Then there are non-state behemoths like the Kurdish Peshmerga and the infamous Islamic State that��has declared a caliphate. At the same time, many��states themselves are sputtering.

In the Middle East, things are falling apart. This UNSC resolution cannot hold.

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visit����and enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

UK Exit Affects All of European Union

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Should European citizens vote on the United Kingdom’s new “special status” with the EU?

European governments have let a member state of the European Union (EU) cherry-pick the terms of its place in the union, potentially setting an irreversible situation. But should the United Kingdom remain an EU member under its new agreement? This question should be asked to all EU citizens.

After talks in Brussels, British Prime Minister��David Cameron emerged victorious��on February 19 and claimed he had won a “special status” for the UK. Cameron went on and set a date with destiny by scheduling a June 23 referendum on the country’s EU membership. For the next few months, the UK will be at the mercy of a pros and cons debate over the EU. The pro-EU camp, led by Cameron, will underline the economic benefits without any political and social restrictions, while the anti-EU side will highlight national sovereignty, immigration and British exceptionalism…

What’s at Stake in the Iranian Election?

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Without a cooperative parliament, Rouhani will find it difficult to follow through on promises to restore the economy and enact human rights reform.

The election of President��Hassan Rouhani��in 2013 brought hope to many Iranians. The historic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, its successful implementation and the lifting of many sanctions have raised hopes. However, should the February 26 elections for the Iranian parliament fail to bolster reformist forces in the country, true change and progress will be all but impossible, especially when it comes to human rights.

Rouhani came into office on a two-pronged platform. The first was to resolve the nuclear stand-off with the international community and reintegrate Iran into the global economy.

Critically, Rouhani’s second promise was to enact key human rights reforms within Iran. Rouhani has not always prioritized his human rights agenda. But when he has supported positive measures—whether allowing greater��freedom of expression��at universities, loosening Internet restrictions��or lifting…

The Right to Health is a Human Right

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Social rights can no longer be relegated to a secondary position in the US Constitution.

According to a study by the��Toronto Initiative for Economic and Social Rights, more than 90% of 195 constitutions around the world guarantee at least one economic and social right. Nearly 68% of those constitutions contain a provision addressing��health. The question of whether health is even a right is hardly contested. In the United States, however, the question still prevails.

All rights—civil, political, economic or social—were intended to be the same. Under��international human rights law,��little distinction is placed between types of rights. In other words, the right to life or the right to vote is not deemed to be different from the right to education or health. The��Universal Declaration of Human Rights��even establishes that all human rights are “interdependent, indivisible, and interrelated.”

Despite this understanding, however, the underlying question that came to prominence at the international…

Black Muslim Americans: The Minority Within a Minority

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Maria Khwaja Bazi speaks with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative about engaging in racial justice conversations within the American Muslim community.

In 2005, Boston University hosted the largest Muslim prayer of the year for Eid-ul-Adha. As we ushered in members of the community, I noticed, for the first time in my student life, a large number of Black Muslims.

I remember, in particular, a very tall man with very long dreadlocks who smiled at me as he restrained his infant son from squirming out of a stroller.

It never occurred to me to ask what part of the city he had come from with his family, or which mosque they attended normally, or why we had never seen this part of the community before. It is only now, ten years later, that I wonder at my younger self and question my own indifference. It is clear that America is at a crossroads in its discussions on race. The rise…

Republicans Miss the Point of 13 Hours

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Will Michael Bay’s film prove to be a political success for the Republican Party?

Director Michael Bay’s latest film,��13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, has attracted the attention of the Republican Party, who view it as a condemnation of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as US secretary of state and the Obama administration’s handling of a terrorist attack on a��US diplomatic outpost in Libya��on September 11, 2012.

The film depicts an attack by numerous Ansar al-Sharia militants on a US diplomatic compound and, later, a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) annex. Four Americans died during the twin attacks, including US Ambassador Chris Stevens and two former Navy SEALs-turned-CIA military contractors: Glen Doherty (played by Toby Stephens) and Tyrone Woods (played by James Dale).

Republican presidential hopefuls have encouraged Americans to see the film, believing it will demonstrate Clinton’s incompetence and dent her popularity in the run-up to November’s presidential election.��Ted Cruz, for example,��told Americans…

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Saudi Arabia recently��announced that the kingdom was prepared to to fight the Islamic State (IS). Days after the Saudi announcement, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) followed suit,��revealing it was also ready to to “help support and train an international military coalition” against IS, “provided such efforts were led by the United States.”

The announcements raise many questions but few answers.

First, why not start with more airstrikes? The US formed its coalition, of which both nations are members, to carry out an air campaign against IS almost 18 months ago. Both countries’ air forces have carried out air sorties against the terrorist organization, but relatively few have been conducted by non-US coalition members.

According to the ��(DOD),��3,375 strikes against IS were carried out in Syria through February 10 of this year. Only 209 of those were flown by the nine non-US coalition partners whose aircraft fly in Syria, about 6% of the total. The DOD��does not report the number of strikes carried out by individual coalition members other than the US. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not released numbers of their respective airstrikes. So, while the exact numbers of Saudi and Emirati airstrikes are unknown, it is safe to assume they were a fraction of the 6% reported by the DOD.

The reason the Saudis and Emiratis have not conducted more airstrikes against IS in Syria is that their aircraft are far more fixedly engaged in the war in Yemen, which is doing nothing to counter IS anywhere. Anecdotal reports indicate that Saudi and Emirati aircraft have become a non-factor in the coalition air war against IS in Syria. But now they are apparently prepared to enter a non-existent coalition ground war against IS.

Second, in what capacity would these Arab forces be used? US Defense Secretary ��for greater coalition engagement in the war against the Islamic State for weeks. So, it is heartening to see Saudi Arabia and the UAE step up. The Saudi offer was non-specific, while the UAE proposal specified for “support and training of an international military coalition.” So, there is no apparent offer of combat forces from the UAE. This author’s own presumption is that the Saudi troops would limit themselves to the same mission—i.e., no combat.

Third, what are the conditions of deployment of their respective forces? The Emiratis seemed to make it fairly clear: to “support an international military coalition.” Moreover, spokespersons for both countries implied that they would expect coalition buy-in for any ground campaign. Media reports have also speculated that they would expect such a campaign to be led by the US. That may be the final rub.

US President Barack Obama has been emphatic that he is not prepared to deploy US ground forces to fight IS in Syria—or anywhere else in the Middle East, for that matter. That does not apply to the 50 or so US Special Operators already in Syria. Nevertheless, it is clear that to carry the fight to IS in Syria as well as Iraq, more coalition forces are necessary in varying capacities—e.g., special operations forces, strike and reconnaissance aircraft, weapons and munitions, training assistance and combat support.

Such external support is certainly needed, but there is a final and more important question: Who will do the actual fighting on the ground? (One might also ask, where was all that support when it was needed three or four years ago?)

Fall of Aleppo

Syrian moderate opposition forces in the north, specifically in the vital city of Aleppo, are��and on the verge of being surrounded, if not wiped out, by Syrian regime forces supported by Russian airstrikes and Iranian-led Shia militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The moderate opposition forces operating in the south near the border with Jordan may be next. Any remaining forces in Aleppo are likely to either abandon the field and flee as millions of their countrymen have or, if truly committed, join Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State.

If Aleppo is retaken by the regime and opposition forces are defeated, there may probably be very few actual moderate opposition fighting forces left to support in Syria. The only opposition forces left to confront IS may be those remaining in the south—whose principal objective to date has been battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and not IS—the YPG (People’s Protection Units) Syrian Kurdish forces and a handful of eastern tribes allied with the Kurds. That is hardly a force cable of “degrading and destroying” the Islamic State, which is the US-led coalition’s ostensible mission as enunciated by President Obama.

The Syrian Kurdish forces have been the most effective moderate opposition group confronting IS. However, their . Picking up on the changing winds of fortunes, the Syrian Kurds’ principal political organization, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is sidling up to Moscow now, where it has opened its first overseas office. The welcome mat is surely out for them, given increasing tensions between Russia and Turkey, and Ankara’s deep suspicion and distrust of the PYD and its military force, the YPG. YPG forces sympathetic to Russia would mark a major setback for opposition forces fighting IS, and for the US-led coalition against the group.

Furthermore, the bulk of Syria’s estimated�� have been directing their efforts against regime forces, and only secondarily against IS.

This further begs the question: With a significant number of those forces facing defeat, if not annihilation, or considering switching sides, who is going to fight IS? What fighting forces are Saudi Arabia and the UAE proposing to support? More pointedly, to which forces is Defense Secretary Carter asking that more international support be directed? The scattered remnants of the Aleppo disaster? The Syrian Kurds? The dispersed eastern Syria Arab tribes?

The Saudis and Emiratis seem to imply the answer: an international coalition, preferably US-led. And that seems hardly in the offing without a significant change in US policy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The post Arab Military Forces to Take on ISIS: More Questions With No Answers appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Last year saw an increasingly unstable picture for global security, with a significant rise in terrorist attacks across the world, further unrest in , continued violence on both the east and west coasts of Africa, and a Middle East in seemingly endless turmoil. The breadth of international terrorist activity had displayed a diversity of tactics, with more lone-wolf attacks by operators both known and unknown to intelligence agencies, acting on a vast geographical scale as international security services become ever more stretched.

Groups such as continue to be largely unaffected by international action, while the (IS) show its ability to strike globally from both command and local operators. There appears to be no significant downturn in home-grown extremists willing to carry out operations in IS’ name. The threat of the Taliban in Afghanistan is once again real, and al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for both European and African attacks in the last 12 months in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Mali, and was arguably responsible for the .

Trouble at Europe’s��Door

Europe finds itself at a considerable crossroads, with 2015 providing substantial challenges that call into question the European Union’s (EU) capability and capacity to manage a crisis. Borders are closing, fences are going up, the military is mobilized and refugees are escorted out, and numerous terrorist attacks have taken place. Tensions significantly rose across member states as the , adding to economic tensions while continuing to fuel the flames of the far-right across the continent.

It is perhaps this bed of volatility that made the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 see the most significant domestic policy changes: extra funding for security services, police and special forces to the tune of €425 million in France. Britain swiftly��, reacting with an extra £2 billion for special forces, u-turning on the planned policing cuts of around 20-25% at least until 2020 and recruiting significant numbers for intelligence services.

The men who carried out the included French and Belgian nationals and, most significantly, at least one suicide bomber, Ahmed Almuhamed, made his way on the migrant trail from the Greek island of Leros to Paris via Serbia, Croatia and Austria. This revelation has caused concern and reaction to the fragile nature of the Schengen zone’s security, with many across Europe—particularly the northern economic powers—now debating plans for greater security on its’ borders or a significant “reduction” in the size of the Schengen region, excluding countries such as Greece and the Baltic states.

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The����was the first to draw up options for debate in parliament. In recent days, the finger has even been pointed at the failings of Greece to cope with security at the border, sighting responsibility to Europe. France has since evoked special powers to close its borders, while numerous countries have double or tripled their own border security measures.

The migrant crisis and perceived fragile security of the EU has led to significant concern over the very future of the union, as warned at Davos: “Europe could lose its historical footing and the project could die quickly. The project could fall apart in months.”

The year 2016 may prove a defining one for Europe. The question over free movement has never before been so prominently under the spotlight with numerous senior officials calling for a cap on migration. Britain’s own referendum on EU membership will be eagerly anticipated by countries uncertain of their own security, particularly France and Germany—two leading NATO partners.

A continent that enjoys freedom of movement and a single currency understands that they go hand in hand. Yet the importance of security cannot be underestimated. The year ahead may well see more walls going up and a significant reduction in the Schengen zone, unless there is agreement over perimeter security and, ultimately, funding for the extremities of Schengen.

IS Flexes its Muscles

Globally, the Islamic State flexed its muscles on a much wider scope in 2015 with attacks in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and the shooting in , California, carried out by IS sympathizers. This increase in activity will pose interesting questions as 2016 progresses: What are the strategic outlays of IS, and where will it expand its activity? There have been advancements into Europe and Asia, most notably, and these may prove to be regions of continued operations for the group.

Perhaps more importantly, as IS hits out against an increasing number of powers, there may be a more concerted, concentrated effort to tackle the group through a multilateral approach as more and more nations gain vested interest in defeating it. As attacks grow, the message from the United Nations to support action also increases, and those who choose to support the Assad regime in Syria and that seemingly lack interest in tackling IS may find themselves ostracized.

Last year also saw Russia directly affected by IS with the downing of a passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. This brought new dynamics to the table as ��ܲ�������’s strategy in Syria continues to contradict and strain relations with the US and its allies. The bombing raids carried out by the Russians in Syria continue to be controversial as the nature of targets remains ambiguous, leading to the coalition having to tread carefully in its own operations.

The UK has previously fought enemies—domestic and foreign—who do not play by the same laws of armed conflict, but the potential of combating IS or even Boko Haram would push the attributes and abilities of the forces to new levels…

In the United States, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has been a champion of the fight against IS, and his rhetoric has certainly built further resentment and anger among many in the GOP against Muslims at home and abroad. If there is a significant increase in Islamophobia, there may well be further cases of extremism, and the watch list in America could grow.

China has been consistent in its lack of policy when it comes to international terrorism. However, it has invested heavily across the world, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, and more recently pushing its’ interests in the United Kingdom with nuclear investment, starting with the Hinkley Point facility at an estimated cost of��. As its economy slows, there will be a greater determination to project Chinese interests overseas.

China has already started a more aggressive policy protecting its international waters while making claims to further territory, disputed by its neighbors. There has been a dramatic increase in scale and activity of its navy within the South China Sea, causing increased concern internationally and potentially sparking an arms race with Japan.

British Concerns

Britain reacted to heightened risk levels in 2015 with both domestic and international security questions looming large. The first question that the home secretary must address is the continuous supply of homegrown terrorists, as Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations Mark Rowley alluded to in a closed speech at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank, late last year. There is an increasing burden on resources as the number of individuals on the watch list steadily rises.

��and dealing with it effectively throughout communities is proving a significant challenge. While there have been initiatives to impose travel bans that have indeed worked in numerous cases—Abu Haleema, the north London-based radical who preached alongside Siddhartha Dhar, who recently carried out executions in Syria, is a case in point—it also creates further resentment and hate preaching from those left. Individuals do not have to travel to the Middle East in order to carry out the work of IS.

The British government may also seek to push for further powers to help security services access the “dark space”—the area of the Internet that is difficult to view, and where it is easier to hide communications and data within social media. It is becoming increasingly harder for intelligence organizations to track suspects, including the delay in arrests and prosecutions. There is anger within the police and intelligence agencies over the lack of cooperation and transparency with some social media firms (unnamed by the police), who they believe are making investigations increasingly difficult.

Academics are also now turning their attention toward “joined up” counterterrorism strategy—the correlation between domestic and military cohesion that has previously been lacking. It looks at how overseas military intervention or reaction to terrorist attacks, such as the war in Iraq or the bombing campaign in Syria, must be linked more closely with domestic security. Ultimately, the UK must realize that unless it is efficient in its overseas military action, security budgets, threats and attacks may well spiral over the coming years.

The latest����review published by the government in November 2015 has left the armed forces in a gray area moving into 2016. On the one hand, the special forces have received excellent funding for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, likely with an eye on both international and domestic capabilities. However, Russia poses a real menace to peace in Ukraine, simmering the potential for armed conflict the UK is simply no longer equipped for.

Thus, there is a degree of ambiguity in military planning. Is Britain designing a force for resilience, or one capable of counterterrorism operations?

The danger is the creation of what appears to be a boutique force that does not have either the agility or resilience required. How this force is ultimately structured and just how it is configured into an overall strategy by the government is imperative. The UK has previously fought enemies—domestic and foreign—who do not play by the same laws of armed conflict, but the potential of combating IS or even Boko Haram would push the attributes and abilities of the forces to new levels and significantly test the nation’s appetite for conflict even further.

The year 2016 looks like it might prove even more testing for the international community. A change of guard in the US gets closer, a lengthy campaign against IS will continue, and a European Union that may not exist by the end of the year—at least not in its current format, with the British referendum looming and the questions over Schengen. There is no sign of terrorism decreasing, and there may be a spike in activity by the time the year draws to an end if the Islamic State and Boko Haram are not addressed.

The major trends to watch this year include the potential shrinking of the Schengen zone; further homegrown terrorists attacks in Europe; China’s reaction to global insecurity; further laws enabling intelligence agencies access in the social media space; continued uncertainty in ��ܲ�������’s role against IS and the Syrian rebels; a building of sentiment for ground troops in Syria and Iraq; and Boko Haram to continue its operations with potential attacks further afield in Africa.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the 13^th��century, the Italian town of Lucera was a Muslim island in a sea of Christendom. Here Frederick II, the head of the Holy Roman Empire, established his own shadow cabinet of scholars and advisors from among the Arabs that he invited to live in this walled city near the eastern coast of Italy.

It was a bold, unconventional move during a precarious time in Christian-Muslim relations. The Fifth Crusade had failed to retake Jerusalem. In Iberia, however, Christians had nearly taken back all of al-Andalus from the Muslims by mid-century. And in Sicily, Christians were persecuting the Muslims who remained from what had once been a thriving emirate before Norman mercenaries destroyed it in 1071.

Lucera was thus both refuge and reservation.��Karen Armstrong, a religion scholar, writes��in : “Yet though Frederick certainly enjoyed Lucera and his Arab friends there, this was a policy not of toleration but of exploitation. Lucera was certainly a city where Islam was tolerated and protected: Frederick would not allow papal missionaries there to harass the Muslims. But Lucera was also a refugee camp and a reservation. The Muslims had to live there and had no choice but to be loyal to Frederick because he was their only protector.”

Lucera, in other words, was the very definition of a gray zone. It was an enclave of Muslims in Europe who were more or less prospering. It had official support from the authorities in the person of Frederick II. But many Christians considered the city an outpost of the enemy.

A gray zone, according to the (IS), is a place where Muslims have rejected an “us-versus-them” world of belief and unbelief that puts the caliphate in the right and the “crusader coalition” in the wrong. From the perspective of IS, the Muslims who live in predominantly Christian realms have to make a choice: They can drop everything, travel to Raqqa and take up arms on behalf of IS. Or they can stay in the enemy camp. IS intends its bombings to make it more and more difficult for Muslims to choose the second option, because they’ll find their stay in “crusader countries” increasingly inhospitable.

A year ago, before the , an article called “The Extinction of the Gray Zone” appeared in the English-language newsletter of IS. It����the stark choice available to Muslims in Europe: “Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands so as to force them into a tolerable sect of apostasy in the name of ‘Islam’ before forcing them into blatant Christianity and democracy.”

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IS, in other words, views all forms of Islam that don’t correspond to its own peculiar Salafist interpretation as not only apostasy, but as way stations on the road toward the ultimate abandonment of the religion.

The nationalist backlash against Muslims in Europe—represented by Pegida in Germany, the National Front in France, or the in Britain—has a similarly suspicious view of Islam in Europe. These view European Muslims not in transition toward Christianity and democracy, but on their way to becoming sleeper cells for the Islamic State.

For both IS and the Islamophobes, the gray zone represents an intolerable state of ambiguity, engagement and political debate where people freely adopt multiple identities. To be simultaneously Muslim, French, European, a doctor, a woman, a parent, a voter: This is anathema to the extremist. They care about one identity only: Are you on our side or not?

As much as anyone could in the 13^th��century, Frederick II was a man of the gray zone. He was, to be sure, a leader of the “crusader coalition.” But he also spoke Arabic. He consulted closely with the scholars of Lucera. He even included Muslims in his armies. Perhaps most importantly, he managed to retake Jerusalem not by force of arms, but by successfully negotiating a treaty of peaceful coexistence with Meledin (Sultan al-Kamil) that turned over several lands to Christian control. The deal on Jerusalem preserved access to religious sites for both Christians and Muslims.

For his efforts to work with Muslims, among other subversive activities, Frederick II was deemed the “anti-Christ” by Pope Gregory IX and excommunicated four times. Then, as today, collaboration with Muslims was a tricky business. As for Lucera, French armies under King Charles of Anjou wiped out the Muslim enclave in 1301, killing the Muslim inhabitants and turning the mosque into a church. Christian Europe wouldn’t see another such gray zone for many centuries.

In Gaza

From the perspective of and most of the US political establishment, Gaza is not a gray zone. It’s a green zone—that is, an area controlled by Hamas, and therefore a hotbed of radical Islam.

Although Hamas came to power through the ballot box in 2006—solidifying its control by ousting its rival Fatah in 2007—it has endured political isolation courtesy of the international community and an economic blockade courtesy of Israel (and Egypt). The green flags of Hamas have become a symbol—for the countries that would prefer that the Palestinian party didn’t exist—of violence, intolerance and non-compromise.

It might come as a shock, then, to discover that the Islamic State views Hamas very differently. IS disparages Hamas as too pacific, tolerant and willing to compromise. It’s called for Palestinians to overthrow Hamas because it prioritizes secular goals (national liberation) over religious ones (expanding the caliphate). A video posted on June 30, 2015, featured three IS fighters lecturing the authorities in Gaza: “The point of jihad is not to liberate land, but to fight for and implement the law of God.”

Hamas, in other words, doesn’t rally around the black flag of the Islamic State. Its green flag isn’t a symbol of uncompromising extremism. Rather, Hamas is firmly in the gray zone.

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As Sarah Helm writes in a����in��The New York Review of Books, Hamas reacted immediately to the video by cracking down on IS, arresting supporters, picking up bearded guys at checkpoints, and shutting down suspicious social media sites. IS responded by bombing Hamas and initiating attacks against Israel.

Here’s the kicker: The less likely a two-state solution becomes—thanks to Netanyahu and his right-wing minions In Israel—the more attractive the caliphate grows. This logic applies all the more to Palestinians who have returned to Gaza after fighting in Syria. “Some of the returnees openly switched allegiance to the��IS��caliphate,” Helm writes, “calculating that viewed from the rubble of postwar Gaza, the prospect of a caliphate might seem more realistic than a Palestinian state.”

For Israelis who don’t want a two-state solution, Hamas was a godsend. Look, they could say, it’s clearly impossible to work with such a ruthless and uncompromising partner. Hamas was a deal-killer—for a deal that Israeli extremists considered deeply flawed.

When confronted with the possibility of the Islamic State ousting Hamas in Gaza, a realist would immediately open up negotiations with the latter in order to prevent the former from seizing power. But Netanyahu and company aren’t realists.

If the Islamic State took over in Gaza, it would set back Palestinian aspirations for yet another generation—and that would be music to Bibi’s ears. He could then launch military operations in Gaza against IS, and a grateful international community would applaud. Such Machiavellian calculations prompted Israel several decades ago to��—who would eventually create Hamas—in an effort to counterbalance Yasser Arafat and his secular Fatah movement.

As in the Middle Ages, extremists on both sides are cooperating to eliminate the gray zone.

Countering Violent Extremism

Counterterrorism is out; “countering violent extremism” (CVE) is in.

CVE has become the strategy of choice inside the Beltway. The White House����on the topic in February 2015. The Department of Homeland Security has , thanks to����from Congress. There was even a����devoted to CVE in September to coincide with the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

The idea behind CVE is to prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first place by nipping radicalization in the bud. But given the veritable explosion of violent extremism over the last year—with IS-linked attacks on virtually every continent—it would seem that CVE is no more effective than its predecessor. Perhaps it has nothing to do with the validity of the CVE techniques themselves.

Rami Khouri����on the fatal flaw of the approach: “These efforts, which typically emanate from U.S. or other Western political institutions, see political violence as only a reflection of extremist values or behavior that are anchored in Arab-Islamic societies. They refuse to see the causal influence of Western policies in this grim cycle of global violence. Violent extremism, it turns out, is the consequence of policies of Western and Middle Eastern states, and radical changes by both are required to stem the problem.”

It turns out, then, that extremists on both sides are not the only ones responsible for extinguishing the gray zone. In addition to their IS targets, US bombs destroy towns, political institutions and civilians. In the midst of all this destruction, the only thing left to do is pick up a gun and fight—with us or against us.

CVE is failing for the same reason that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009—on pushing the reset button on relations between Islam and the West—didn’t ultimately rescue the reputation of the United States in the Muslim world. Bombs, alas, speak louder than words. And bombs, whether they come from above or below, are the enemy of the gray zone.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In July 2015, at the BRICS Summit, Afghan President : “While threats to global order in general and to the state system in particular are increasing, the response is too��fragmented and��episodic.” Similarly, in a statement during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit, “Terrorists are not fighting Afghans, but the state system in the entire region. Terrorists want to pursue their international agenda by destabilizing the regional order.”

The foundation of today’s international order was laid down by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the in Europe. The Westphalian model created common grounds for cooperation through nation state structures in Europe and, later, encapsulated other regions, including the Muslim world.

Despite colonialism and the emergence of transnational groupings such as the United Nations and the European Union, the Westphalian system remains strong and continues to define international order. However, the system could never end inter-state wars completely. State-sponsored terrorism, interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and plots against national sovereignty are still significant in international relations.

The rise of militant jihadists such as the (IS), the Taliban and al-Qaeda threaten the survival of the Westphalian model. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are the most direct victims of these groups. But how can the state system be strengthened and offer international policies to counter the threat of militants?

Underestimation of the Threat

Challenges include the underestimation of the threat in international policy discourse and policy fragmentation. Since the end of colonialism, as , this is the first time that the state system has been profoundly threatened by terrorists such as IS. According to him, jihadists are against the state system and he labels them as “the post-Westphalia dystopia.” However, according to Mihatsch, while the “Taliban and most other Islamist movements function in the Westphalian state model, IS rejects it. It is effectively the first post-Westphalian entity to arise since the end of colonialism, and the consequences could be dire.”

But the history of other jihadist groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda tell a different story. Al-Qaeda, too, , the notion of nation state order, and the Taliban was ideologically inspired by al-Qaeda with which it enjoys strong affiliation. The differences of jihadist movements should not overshadow their ideological and political similarities. For jihadist movements, the Westphalian paradigm is the product of Western modernity, which is perceived as jahiliyya (ignorance of divine guidance).

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However, the movements started to fight first against their own “infidel” governments. As , jihadist movements are “zealots” who fight against modern values such as individual liberty, democracy, gender equality and religious pluralism. In fact, these “zealots” not only oppose these values, but also attempt to change the state-centric international order. South Asia could be the next victim of these militarized zealots, if there is not interstate cooperation in the region.

Analysts such as that the jihadist “accepts the state-based international order as an organizing principle,” adding that “they do not seek a limited fix to particular problems in the international system, but to overthrow the state-based Westphalian order and establish an alternative order in its stead.”

Militant jihadism also demonstrates a cultural and sociopolitical pathology under the platform of violent religious movements. It is contradictory with civilizational development of the modern world and all other civilizational heritages. From the Taliban to the Islamic State, they are against cultural heritage of the Muslim world. In March 2001, the Taliban destroyed the , and in 2015, IS destroyed the ancient Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria.

These patterns of destruction of civilizational heritage reflect the ideological similarities of militant jihadism, which is the “” worldview of such groups.

Despite the clarity and similarity of jihadist movements’ ideology and actions, there is a continued hesitation to understand them as a threat against state-system order and the future of the world. In particular, there is no strong discursive position in the regional and international leaderships to recognize the threat posed.

Regional Expansion of the Threat

International policy fragmentations provide opportunities for jihadism to expand. The spread of IS from the Middle East to Africa and South Asia poses a significant danger to the state system in these areas. In North Africa, jihadists have launched attacks in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has already pledged allegiance to IS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In July 2015, IS-affiliated militants carried out numerous attacks in Egypt that killed at least 100 people, including the assailants. In Tunisia, IS killed 38 people in June last year. Instability in Libya has provided IS and other jihadist networks with fertile ground for recruitment and training for the whole region. The terrorist organization is becoming a for the Middle East and North Africa.

As such, from Morocco and Algeria to Tunisia and Egypt, jihadist movements are actively seeking to establish a caliphate or other forms of Islamic law-based order such as the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” in Afghanistan before 2001. The Islamic State’s goal is to establish a Sinai province of its caliphate in North Africa. Other jihadists have the same ambitions in different regions. They aim to establish their own territorial rule within a defined area of a given state, in order to organize themselves for their transnational strategy.

The lack of consensus among regional countries to fight against IS was disastrous for the Middle East. Militant groups are still used as a foreign policy tool in the region.

The practical mechanisms of expansion of IS in other regions are based on four strategic processes. First, IS tries to recruit more people from other regions such as South Asia and North Africa for its local military establishments or as foreign fighters.

Second, other jihadist movements in these regions have pledged their allegiance to IS and fight for the group in their own regions. For instance, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), Boko Haram and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have all pledged their allegiances.

Third, members of other militant jihadists such as the Taliban in Afghanistan switched their position individually to join IS and al-Qaeda. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for the coalition’s mission in Afghanistan, : “[W]e have also seen a few Taliban rebrand themselves as Daesh [IS], likely in an attempt to garner resources and attention.”

Fourth, jihadists will support each other to achieve their shared goals without organizational integration. For instance, the Taliban and al-Qaeda back each other in Afghanistan, and other militants supported each other in the 1980s in Afghanistan.

The strategic goal of IS in South Asia is to transform Afghanistan and Pakistan into one of its caliphate provinces. They refer to the region as Khorasan, the old name for a land that once consisted of parts of Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and Pakistan.

At the same time, after a decade of war in Afghanistan, the threat of the Taliban is still serious. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have proven that they can fight the insurgents militarily, but the reemergence of the Taliban is down to the wrong policy pursued by the international community.

There are four reasons behind this.��First, the international community refuses to deal with the regional dimension of the Taliban and their sanctuaries in Pakistan and beyond. Second, the international community did not increase the number of ANSF at the beginning of War on Terror in 2001. Third, the international community has not equipped ANSF well enough to fight effectively against terrorism, and the Afghan Air Forces (AAF) are yet to be provided with effective air equipment in a mountainous country such as Afghanistan. Fourth, the international community did not focus on state-building and infrastructure in Afghanistan at the beginning. After 14 years, Afghanistan does not have infrastructure to grant socioeconomic stability. On other hand, weak institutions and corruption in the government have not helped.

Therefore, poor policy, regional fragmentation, state-sponsored terrorism and corruption have opened the space for the strengthening of militant jihadism and the destabilization of Afghanistan and the region.

Regional Fragmentation and International Ambiguity

There is not only the lack of regional and international action or political consensus, but also a reductionist approach to the threat. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, IS and the Taliban are not simply the effects of push factors such as “.” ��These factors play important roles, but to limit jihadism to these causal dynamics excludes other equally important aspects of a very complex phenomenon.

Violence is not only a strategy for militant jihadism; it is a justified worldview that is creating meaning for such groups. They have raped, tortured and beheaded many innocent people to get their messages across. As , “[W]hen it comes to the use of the politics of brutality, IS is not too far ahead of some other extremist groups, such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram.”

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Hence, more serious analysis is needed instead of a reductionist point of view. In today’s world, the takfiri (apostasy) system of thought and antagonism toward state system order and human rights should be viewed as a trend or path-dependency with a discursive power projected through offline and online communication processes. Thus, no single country would be able to stop the influence of IS and other militant jihadists, nor are they the enemy of a single country, but the enemy of the nation state system.

During the war against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan, most foreign fighters came from the Muslim world . But its impacts have lasted for generations in Afghanistan, with important consequences for the international security. During the Taliban regime, foreign fighters joined them and established safe havens with support from regional countries.

But in the case of IS, a significant number of its foreign fighters come from Western countries, with most contingents from other Muslim countries. Up to 20,000 foreign fighters have joined IS and around 4,000 of them come from Western countries. Similarly, have joined IS. According to a recent , there are 1,600 fighters from Central Asian countries too.

The lack of consensus among regional countries to fight against IS was disastrous for the Middle East. Militant groups are still used as a foreign policy tool in the region. South Asia has suffered from the same problem. Moreover, there is no strategic consensus on the part of the international community to deliver practical measures to enforce cooperation at the regional level. Despite 9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, a discursive trend to recognize and designate jihadism as a threat against the state-system order does not come in policy practice.

Therefore, there is a need to go beyond of self-help measures in an anarchical world and see the solutions in collaboration among states. The international community can reinforce states to fight against this threat and not use it as foreign policy tool against each other. The reality is that the danger posed to state system order is a different and requires strong consensus among nations to fight it. But there is no such thing yet as ’s “society of states” that can defend itself.

Reinforcing Cooperation and Rescuing Order

During the drawdown of international troops from Afghanistan, jihadists such as the Taliban, IS and the Haqqani Network have increased their attacks. But the Taliban’s operational capability depends on the levels of their regional support. that the Taliban “is shaped, aided and armed from across the border by one of the world’s most powerful armies [such as Pakistan].” , the former Pakistani ambassador to the US, despite Afghanistan’s cooperative approach toward Pakistan, the country kept “playing its usual double game.”

In September 2015, the Taliban’s operation in Kunduz showed that there is no difference between IS and the Taliban in terms of . But the international community could not fight well against this disease in order to protect values and order.

In fact, the credibility of the international community has been undermined by ignoring the regional dimension of terrorism and the expansion of militant jihadism. To a large extent, from states in South Asia and the Middle East. The international community would run the risk of losing its legitimacy and leadership by pursuing a policy of negligence in this regard, particularly if by the Quadrilateral Coordination Group end without a result.

While the US has designated as terrorist organizations, it is not enough. A result-oriented policy requires state to state cooperation for the eradication of terrorism sanctuaries.

Therefore, the required practical measures at the regional and international levels are three-fold: First, to defend the state system order as an international framework for relatively peaceful interaction; second, to promote regional cooperation and stabilize the sub-international system levels; and third, to support anti-extremism organizations, institutions and governments.

The presence of a US-led coalition in South Asia can be used to bolster regional platforms such as , , and the , and enforce cooperation against militant jihadism in Asia. But the precondition of peace and cooperation is the eradication of resources and sanctuaries of militant jihadism in the region through international support.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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When the academic published the book Strategic Depth in 2001, on the eve of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rise to power, he set out a foreign policy vision for Turkey that included the concept of “zero problems with neighbors.” It became a key plank of AKP policy as he became minister of foreign affairs in then-Prime Minister ’s government.

Fast-forward 15 years, and the political landscape has not only come full circle, but is now heading into unknown waters. Davutoglu is now prime minister. Yet his carefully built policy of zero problems with neighbors has been consumed by the multiplying crises of a region in turmoil. Turkey is now suffering the consequences of the Syrian-Iraqi war perhaps more than any other country outside those battlegrounds.

The latest on January 12 highlight just how many enemies the Turkish state now has. This is not an isolated act of terrorism, but one in a rapidly growing list of atrocities that reveal Turkey as a territory in which multiple conflicts are now playing out simultaneously. This is extremely dangerous for the country.

Enemies everywhere

The Istanbul attack appears to have been the work of a 27-year-old Saudi-born Syrian working on behalf of the (IS). As such, it is a further example of IS bringing its war onto Turkish territory. It first did this in July 2015 when the terrorist organization attacked Kurdish volunteers at Suruc on the Syrian border. This was followed by the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history on a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara in October.

The latest attack is a departure in that its target was very deliberately the Turkish state, not the Kurds. Sultanahmet is the epicenter of the Turkish tourism industry, in the shadow of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia—Turkey’s most recognizable symbols abroad. As such, it is both a physical and a symbolic attack in much the same way that 9/11 was in the United States.

Turkish policy under the AKP to this point has appeared to be predicated on the assumption that Islamist terrorism could not affect Turkey. It is after all a Muslim state governed by a party with Islamist roots. This was reflected in the low priority given to combatting IS, which at one point appeared to be a potential counterweight to resurgent Kurds in northern Syria aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

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The Islamic State was also seen as a counterweight to the Assad regime in Syria, which has likely hit Turkish territory with terrorist attacks through proxies such as in Reyhanli in 2013. In both cases, there was a clear temptation for the Turkish state to view its enemy’s enemy as, if not a friend, at least no threat to itself. This calculation needed reviewing from the moment Turkey relented to US pressure to use Incirlik airbase for strikes against IS and openly joined the coalition against the group.

The result is a situation where Turkey now has a bewildering cast of enemies—IS, the PKK, the Syrian Kurdish YPG units, the Assad regime and, increasingly, and Iran—not all of whom are on the same side, but all of whom can use Turkey’s many conflicts as leverage in their own struggles with the AKP government.

The aftermath of a terrorist attack that strikes at the heart of the Turkish state might seem a strange moment for reconciliation. However, despite the rhetoric of the Turkish government, terrorism is rarely tamed and never ultimately defeated through arms alone. In the current situation, Turkey needs to draw down the long list of enemies fast.

This is a tall order in the circumstances. Much of the current chaos in Turkey is due to the Syrian-Iraqi war. While it rages, there is limited capacity to stem its destabilizing effects on Turkey’s southern border. The crux of the problem for the AKP government is that Turkey has little power to leverage the situation within Syria or Iraq. The initiative is with its enemies and Turkey is at the mercy of forces beyond its control.

However, there remains one key dimension in which Turkey can directly influence the situation both at home and beyond its borders. The dialogue with the PKK, which has been allowed to unravel in the last half a year, must be reexamined. It is the one area over which Turkey has control and can change the status quo. Only through reengaging the PKK can the government stem the negative impact of YPG gains on Turkey and the ability of the Assad regime and its supporters to undermine Ankara.

Tourism Industry

The fact that everyone is discussing the attacks in Istanbul once again raises the issue of Western bias that emerged after the Paris attacks. The deaths of Westerners make global headlines and cause far greater shockwaves than the deaths of people from elsewhere. This is a sad truth that the perpetrators of such attacks understand and utilize.

Most people would have trouble naming a terrorist attack in the past year aside from those in , Istanbul and . All were attacks on Westerners. The worry for Turkey is that while an attack in Paris creates a fierce determination to defend the homeland, attacks in Tunisia or Istanbul are more likely to make ordinary Westerners choose Greece or Spain for their vacation next year.

The result is a hardening of the line between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, just as the Islamic State intended. For Turkey, this could mean greater isolation, fueling introverted nationalism and a further descent into the ethnic and sectarian conflicts that are tearing apart not only Turkish territory, but the entire Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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What is it that the United States, its Arab and Western allies, and the Syrian people seek in Syria? The objectives are several:

1) The complete defeat and annihilation of the Islamic State (IS);

2) The end of the regime of Syrian President ;

3) Formation of a transitional government that would begin the process of revising Syria’s constitution, holding elections and establishing a democratic government representative of the Syrian people;

4) The return to their homes of the maximum number of Syrian refugees and other displaced Syrians;

5) The departure of all foreign forces and fighters from Syria.

The Obama administration’s current focus is on eliminating IS. However, aside from air support, it provides little material support and, of course, no ground troops, other than a very limited contingent of US special operators. Meanwhile, it pays lip service to the removal of Assad and his regime.

Yet by directing its efforts solely against IS, Washington is playing into the hands of Assad by carrying the battle, such as it is, against his most powerful sworn enemy: the . Meanwhile, he directs his dwindling forces—aided by Russia, Iran and foreign Shia militia forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—against those opposition forces that the US and Arab states support.

This strategy has little prospect of success. No one can even define what success of such a strategy would be. Eliminate the Islamic State—an admittedly far-fetched objective at this point—and empower the Assad regime. Take out Assad—even more implausible today—and Syria becomes a failed, terrorist-run state.

So, here’s a new approach.

“Defeat the Islamic State and We’ll Recognize You”

First, turn to the opposition forces like the Northern Free Syrian Army, the Southern Front, the more moderate elements of Jaesh al-Fatah, Kurdish opposition forces and other moderate forces and tell them, “Defeat IS in Syria, take control of the areas controlled by them, declare a transitional Syrian government that complies with the Geneva��, and the US will recognize you.”

The aforementioned forces and others number more than 70,000, according to British government figures and��. This ought to be more than enough to take on and defeat the estimated 30,000 fighters of IS. Most of these IS fighters are not Syrian, and history has shown that over the long term, a dedicated force of indigenous fighters will defeat a smaller-sized foreign force. Their prospects improve with the dedicated support of governments like the US and Arab states. The US and others must ensure that these forces have the weapons, intelligence, air support, training and financial resources to decisively finish the Islamic State.

© Shutterstock

Second, and simultaneously, the US and others must also extend similar support to the Iraqi army, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and especially Iraqi Sunni tribes battling IS in Iraq. Attacking and defeating IS simultaneously on both the Syrian and Iraqi fronts will ensure that its fighters will be caught in an inescapable vice from which they cannot escape.

Of critical importance to the moderate Syrian opposition forces’ battle plan is taking key strategic towns and cities, especially Palmyra, Aleppo and, of course, Raqqa. Not only would these deprive IS of its urban centers, but also ensure that key benchmarks for the borders of its future territory are established. From the northern city of Aleppo, the transitional government can declare itself and begin to operate.

Third, the US and allied nations would declare no-fly and/or safe zones for the opposition forces initially and then later for displaced Syrians not wanting to leave Syria. Subsequently, these zones would be controlled by the transitional government—with continued international protection and humanitarian support—and would transition to zones of “free Syria” where refugees could return eventually. Furthermore—and vital for the ultimate removal of Assad’s control of Syria—Syrians wishing to flee his dictatorial regime could “vote with their feet” and relocate to these zones or other areas under the control of the transitional government and its forces.

Fourth, having defeated IS in Syria and set up a transitional government, the opposition forces would control actual territory with borders and, therefore, be prepared to earn international recognition, including from the US and Arab governments. That would pose the most serious and devastating challenge to Assad to date, one from which neither the Russians nor the Iranians could rescue him.

A Syrian Solution to IS and Assad

With time, foreign investment and development assistance, the new free Syria state could effectively challenge the regime in Damascus for the title “Government of Syria.” The challenge need not necessarily be military. With increasing recognition, stability, international support and a likely preponderance of Syria’s population, the new government would eclipse the Damascus regime, which would either wither or degenerate to an Alawite rump state—the latter unable to really sustain itself over the long-term.

There is a Syrian solution to the Syrian crisis. But before it can begin, there must be resolve to implement and carry it through…

The plan is not without challenges. The first is convincing the opposition forces to turn their efforts for the time being toward defeating IS and then giving them all the support they need, including some US and other ground forces. The opposition forces need not abandon all efforts against Assad, but their priorities would have to be redirected toward battling and defeating IS. The incentive for them would be the promise of recognition and concomitant withdrawal of recognition of the Assad regime. Moreover, stepped-up support for forces fighting IS in Iraq, especially the Kurds and Sunni tribes, is also imperative as the defeated Islamic State leadership and fighters in Syria must not be able to find a haven in Iraq, or anywhere else.

This approach cannot succeed without US leadership, support and involvement. In fact, it is indispensable. The US must be at the forefront in convincing the opposition forces that this approach represents their best and most direct path to a free and democratic Syria, rid of both Assad and the Islamic State. The US must also rally other nations to support this plan, including the pledge of eventual recognition, and to lend their political as well as much-needed materiel and financial support.

The foreign forces needed to carry out the strategy should be limited, mostly to ensuring logistical, intelligence and communication support, security in and around the safe zones, and training. The vast bulk of fighting forces should and must come from the moderate Syrian forces. Actual combat forces from the allied nations supporting the opposition forces would be limited to special operators, rangers and the like. But the total amount of foreign troops necessary to ensure success would probably number between 5,000 and 10,000. While US troop participation is necessary, there must be significant contributions from other governments.

Finally, much hard work is necessary to begin to organize the transition government. Those wanting to participate would have to subscribe to the Geneva principles and eschew both Assad and designated extremist groups of Syria. That process would need to start no later than the opposition forces’ first move against IS. It would signal to these fighting forces, IS and all the people of Syria that there is now a genuine effort to rescue the nation of Syria from the hands of a barbaric dictatorship as well as the depredations of an equally heinous and brutal terrorist movement.

This approach, or one incorporating its principal elements, is now imperative to save Syria from disintegration. In fact, it may be the only way to do so without the insertion of large numbers of foreign forces, which seems hardly likely today, and the consequent creation of a problem that would belong to the owner(s) of those forces rather than the people of Syria.

There is a Syrian solution to the Syrian crisis. But before it can begin, there must be resolve to implement and carry it through, and give hope to the 23 million Syrians who have been losing such hope for almost five years.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Today, Indonesians are mourning. Our people were taken away from us, and dozens of others were injured as a result of horrendous that you claimed responsibility for. Several hours later, Indonesian authorities and the media reported that the attacks were perpetrated by Daesh, aka the “Islamic State.”

For us—the people who adhere to the same faith that you claim to belong to—the incident is painful. You have slandered our religion that does not propagate violence or murder against innocent individuals.

Do you realize that by committing such actions, you actually demean Islam itself? Have you ever thought what non-Muslims must think when they learn that an organization with the name “Islamic” is killing innocent people in such brutal and barbaric ways? Did you ever stop and think that the people whom you target may themselves be your brothers and sisters in Islam?

Do not forget that the country you attacked on January 14 has the largest number of Muslims in the world.

We do not understand exactly what you want. But if you aim to separate Indonesians into an “us” and “them,” it will never happen. We, the people of Indonesia, have implemented the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad to live side by side with those of other faiths. We understand the noble values of religion as an expression of affection, and we uplift these values in the form of humanitarianism. We share happiness, not fear. We promote peace and tolerance, not hate.

If you do not believe this, then come to Indonesia. Put down your gun. Pick up a pen. And watch and record our daily lives.

To our��brothers and sisters in Daesh, we understand your anger over the wars in various parts of the world that are perpetrated by Western governments. But we also read in newspapers that you target Western nations.

Brothers and sisters, we need more concrete and savvy ways to promote peace. Whether you know this or not, Indonesia has made several efforts to help our oppressed brothers and sisters around the world. An Indonesian hospital in Gaza that was recently opened is one example. Although our government was initially reluctant to accept Rohingya refugees escaping persecution, we put pressure on Jakarta to act. We also have humanitarian aid workers who are struggling day and night in Syria, Palestine and Myanmar.

If that is not enough, please tell me how much more we should do rather than committing acts of terrorism in our country.

Today, you have murdered innocent people. The ones who did nothing wrong. The ones who perhaps did more��sadaqa (charity) than you. The ones who may have stood at night for Qiyam al-Layl (night prayer) to bow down to the almighty. The ones who perhaps did good deeds that only God knows about.

You have taken the lives of people we care about. It is very painful. But we will move past this. Why? Because we cling to brotherhood and kinship, not revenge and violence.

What have you done in Jakarta will not divide Indonesians. Our non-Muslim community will embrace and love us and we will embrace and love them. Our mosques, churches and temples will continue to be places of peace and tolerance. We are not afraid. We will stick together and keep struggling to create a better world.

We have no idea what you plan next for our country. But if you read this letter, we pray that you may be given guidance from God.

Regards

The people of Indonesia

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Since June 2015, there have been four major terrorist attacks in Turkey. One in particular, in Ankara, was the worst in Turkish history.

On January 12, 2016, a . At around 10:20am (GMT+2), in the heart of Sultanahmet, just yards from the iconic Blue Mosque, ten people were killed and 15 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device. Six of the deceased were German tourists.

Questions were asked about the perpetrators. Was this the actions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)? Or was it the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a pro-Kurdish splinter group responsible for the recent mortar attack on Istanbul’s second airport in December? Was it the DHKP-C, a leftist revolutionary movement responsible for the January 2015 suicide bomb attack—also in Sultanahmet—that killed one police officer and injured another?

It is now known that a 1988-born . The gender of the assailant has not been made clear. Rumors abounded earlier that it was a female. According to unnamed government sources mentioned in the media, the Islamic State (IS), which was accountable for the worst terrorist attack of Turkish soil when two bombs killed 102 mostly young Kurdish peace activists in the center of Ankara in 2015, is implicated here.

Calm Before the Storm

Some might say these recent acts of terrorism spell a new era for Turkey. It is true that there has been relative calm since the peace process with the PKK that began in 2012, and since 2003 when there were no acts of terrorism in Turkey carried out by international groups.

The current period has been marked by the fourth term in office held by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The June 2015 Diyarbakir and the July 2015 Suruc bombings occurred around the same time that Turkey’s general election resulted in a hung parliament. For various reasons, a coalition government could not be formed. It led to a period of tremendous instability and insecurity over the future of Turkey. The country seemed rudderless, the Turkish lira was collapsing, and international investment fell dramatically.

Turkey was the darling of the Middle East during the early 2010s, with the economy soaring, trade booming and investments rising …��But now matters have never looked so uncertain for Turkey.

In October 2015, the Ankara bombings created further alarm over the state of Turkey, reducing confidence in the country and its leadership, both home and abroad. It has been argued by some that this bombing helped to cement the return of the AKP, who began to promise stability and security at a time when Turks were most troubled over the future of their country. The AKP were able to form a majority government in the November general election, and now seems to be on course to establish the executive powers he so enthusiastically seeks.

During this period, however, tensions between Turkey and the so-called Islamic State have grown to the extent that the once-fruitful relations between the two to help remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power turned sour. In November, Russian President Ankara of buying oil from IS, after a .

Turkey was the darling of the Middle East during the early 2010s, with the economy soaring, trade booming and investments rising. The country seemed to have managed the balance between capitalism, democracy and Islam. Turkey looked to the East and West at the same time with confidence, even as the fires began to burn in Syria and Greece was about to fall—both at the same time, both neighboring states.

But now matters have never looked so uncertain for Turkey. Terrorism and war in southeastern Turkey are quite possibly the new normal.

No clear answers will emerge as to where Turkey goes from here, how it responds to the challenges that are raised, and what the implications of its actions will be. But there will be many questions that continue to be asked today as the world looks on with horror, and over the days and weeks to come as Turkey looks for the foes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over the past couple of weeks, Iraqi security forces have had to battle (IS) militants pretty much on their own—without the involvement of al-Hashid al-Shabi units—in the ongoing fight for Anbar province. So far, they have made marked advances in Ramadi, and they are standing their ground where it matters. Emboldened by the support of Iraqi and US-led coalition air power, the military is waging a spectacular comeback.

The national confidence in Iraqi forces is slowly but steadily gaining momentum. By contrast, IS, which boasts its terrorism on victory and expansion propaganda, is losing momentum. The group is increasingly losing not only its top leaders and field commanders, but also some of the territory it once administered.

This moral and material success is likely to embolden Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is the most popular national figure in , according to a recent poll by . In the same poll, sampled Iraqis were overwhelmingly displeased with the work of the government, especially regarding its failure to provide services.

They are right to be unhappy. So many intolerable conditions were painfully evident during my time in Iraq only a few months ago: roads had been blocked by powerful party-backed militias; garbage collectors left piles of filth to rot on the streets; major transportation arteries were clogged with hundreds of checkpoints—only a few of which actually performed a useful service; public employees were working three hours a day; a number of hospitals, bridges, public housing projects and schools were only structurally finished after being under contract for years; and, finally, existing schools had to accommodate the influx of students by shortening the school day to two hours. Iraqi state institutions are eroding.

Poor Governance

At the heart of it all, Iraq’s institutionally empowers leaders along ethnic and sectarian lines. By prioritizing political-religious membership above qualifications, the governing structure has brought some of the most incompetent individuals into positions of power.

Everyday Iraqis understand that they are all victims of the system, and that the sole beneficiaries are Iraq’s leaders. While they may be disenfranchised on many levels, what unites a corrupt Sunni politician and a corrupt Shia politician, or a theologian-turned-politician, is the politics of sectarianism ingrained in the quota system. This point is often lost in the polarized debate surrounding Iraqi politics that is more likely to blame individuals, tribes and religious sects, while overlooking the deficiencies of the political arrangement itself.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that systematic bad governance, mismanagement, alienation, patronage and corruption would eventually lead to the rise of another radical group, even if the Islamic State were to be eliminated.

The problem in Iraq today is widespread and noxious, as an unfit system of governance and an ill-designed constitution invariably produce plights.

The post-2003 power-sharing scheme has led to unanticipated changes in the domestic political landscape. Exclusively sectarian constituencies vote parties in, giving rise to a system of institutionalized sectarianism. Corruption and other political ills follow inevitably from this set-up.

As such, what it takes to restore Iraq to normalcy is to uproot the arrangement known for engendering fragmented and inefficient local governments by incentivizing thinking along narrow, short-term and sectarian lines. What is needed instead is a system that incentivizes broader thinking and long-term visions for inclusion and prosperity. Citizens of all ethnic and religious affiliations need to feel a mutual sense of justice, political and social inclusion, and belongingness to a single nation.

A New Constitution

Abadi must capitalize on the victory in Ramadi, his growing popular approval, and religious backing by the influential Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to initiate serious reforms to Iraq’s governing system. This may be the only hope for mitigating the country’s sectarian tensions and authority dysfunction.

Anything short of this is improper. If history teaches us anything, it’s that systematic bad governance, mismanagement, alienation, patronage and corruption would eventually lead to the rise of another radical group, even if the Islamic State were to be eliminated.

It is key to bear in mind here that institutionalized alienation of Sunnis—real or perceived—has given IS the ammunition it needs in its propaganda to portray the government as sectarian.

Some Sunni tribes and volunteers have shown a willingness to align with the government if it shows genuine will for inclusiveness, and some have already done so in Ramadi. The ability to maintain this momentum is a significant achievement. It provides a glimmer of opportunity for the future.

The international community has a role to play, and major world powers need to do their best to encourage a change in Iraq’s style of governance. The Obama administration, for example, can utilize its ongoing political, security and military communications with Iraqi leaders to demand the structure of the government be modified. The US should call for a change to the unconstitutional division of power among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds for the designations of prime minister, president, chair of parliament, cabinet ministers and heads of local municipalities, which are becoming mafia-style institutions.

Amendments to the constitution should follow a process of partial rewriting, offering it for a popular referendum in which all societal groups take part, unlike in 2005. These changes should then be ratified in a parliament where all Iraqis are meaningfully represented.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On December 1, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled a signature footprint inside , confirming a prominent shift toward intensified direct-action raids targeting (IS) leaders. This —albeit modest—prominently features the deployment of a new specialized expeditionary targeting force, tasked with conducting coordinated raids with Iraqi and Kurdish forces; though the Pentagon reserves the as conditions warrant.

US Policy in Iraq

The plan outlined to members of the House Armed Services Committee aligns with the Obama administration’s :��Ramadi, Raqqa and raids. But more profoundly, it points to a coalesced conviction against ground troop deployments, and instead a firm support for counterterrorism measures as the lacking component in the counter IS campaign.

The Pentagon’s position, which rightly insists that local forces must lead the ground effort, was notably affirmed on December 27, as the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, army and federal police of Ramadi—though several vital installations and adjoining . Despite this initial success, prior anti-IS campaigns in Baiji and Tikrit suggest that the more arduous task of cementing control beyond Ramadi’s core is largely dependent on the restoration of relative civilian security: local Sunni governance, defense against residual IS attacks, and the application of a persistent counterterrorism pressure on the remaining vestiges of Islamic State resistance.

The progress in Ramadi fits squarely within the Obama administration’s stated policy of escalating military assistance, as Iraqi security forces demonstrate their ability to prosecute the ground campaign to decisive victories. In Anbar province, where this challenge is particularly acute (though for reasons germane to Iraq’s distinct sectarian strife), fusing US special operations support with serves two allied objectives.

First, it introduces the menace of unexpected raids targeting the group’s top echelons and disrupts the Islamic State’s coherence in leadership.

Second, counterterrorism pressure on the organization—if persistent—secures much needed time for Iraq’s conventional army to mature its expanding capabilities; though such an outcome is subject to a variety of logistic, institutional and political circumstances .

Ash Carter © Shutterstock

Achieving the first objective appears probable, given the relative competence of Iraq’s counterterrorism forces. Nonetheless, the likelihood of the Iraqi army melding into a competent ground force, capable of permanently defeating the pseudo-caliphate remains quite uncertain. As the seat of the Islamic State’s insurgency, the complex human terrain in western Iraq requires a first-class ground force able to integrate military tools with a population-centric approach that not only flushes out militants, but also consolidates the liberating force’s control once the fighting concludes. Current evidence of the US-led training effort suggests that is yet to achieve this level of competence. Nonetheless, the history of special operations engagement between the US and its Iraqi counterparts provides excellent insights on how this new plan will likely materialize.

At the height of its operational performance, the Iraqi fielded three brigades of special operations forces, a training institution, and functioned with the full-benefit of integrated support and assistance from US Special Forces under . The applied a strict screening criteria to minimize insurgent infiltration and ensure relative sectarian parity in personnel representation. Induction into this highly specialized force was restricted to those candidates who attained similar operational standards as the US advisors who the new force into operational maturity. Professionalism and empowerment of the rank-and-file were governing features of the development process, which translated into a highly capable .

Decline in Iraq

Beginning in 2007, however, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of a laborious effort undertaken to insulate the counterterrorism service from the divisive politics that shackled other security service sectors. Maliki, in a 2007 executive order, civilian oversight and placed the entire directorate under his direct control.

What followed was a slow cannibalization of the entire counterterrorism service and its transformation into an agency of . By the time , the strongest bastion of Iraq’s security sector had substantially declined.

In the absence of a strong conventional Iraqi security force, capable of prosecuting a territorial capture-and-hold mission, Iraqi counterterrorism forces largely adopted the laborious task of leading ground offensives against IS. This diversion from the core counterterrorism mission left the Islamic State’s highly of leaders relatively unchallenged until the commencement of US-led airstrikes in September 2014.

Here, the role of Iraq’s Shia militias—Iranian-backed or otherwise—deserves prominent mention. These groups certainly serve a pivotal role in the anti-IS fight.

These fighters spent years fighting American forces inside Iraq, and the intractable conflict in Syria only fortified their overall competency. They have since provided the skill and coherent leadership that transformed the insurgent group into a tactically , while cementing an internal sense of invincibility among the group’s most committed fighters. Faced with persistent coalition airstrikes and , IS maintains a defiant posture, exercising a seemingly ubiquitous reach in territories outside its core——while maintaining an in Anbar province.

That the Islamic State is an is of minimal surprise. The group’s routing in Tikrit supplied ample learning on the lethality of coalition air power, particularly when the risk of collateral damage is relatively low. On the defensive in Ramadi, it , restricting the massive humanity outflows that often precede major confrontations with Iraqi security forces. This keen adaptation to the US-led coalition’s initially chastened application of airpower likely contributed to the, at times, stalled counteroffensive to retake the pivotal city. Despite the , IS militants maintained an entrenched presence in Ramadi for eight consecutive months after its initial in early May 2015.

What Needs To Be Done?

Securing a sustainable counterterrorism edge against the Islamic State is indeed possible if the Iraqi government—with the support of the international coalition—proceeds along the following lines of effort.

First, cementing ground victories in Ramadi (and later Fallujah) denies IS the prime geographic sanctuary it requires to operate. Such an outcome is, however, contingent on the expedient maturation of Sunni forces, who must lead the ground campaign and secure the local legitimacy required to govern. For this particular reason, introducing —absent invitation—greatly undermines this effort and fuels existing suspicions of a gradual return to American occupation.

Second, applying sustained counterterrorism pressure through high-frequency raids ensures that upon withdrawal, militants who egress into the countryside and beyond are persistently pursued and harassed by the enduring threat of capture or worse. The joint conducted by Kurdish special forces with the assistance of US special operators serves as a template for such collaboration—though it clearly displays the during such engagements. The Obama administration certainly measures such risk, and while its sights remain fixated on IS targets, there still lurks a peripheral threat entrenched within Baghdad’s own leadership.

Here, the role of Iraq’s Shia militias—Iranian-backed or otherwise—deserves prominent mention. These groups certainly serve a pivotal role in the anti-IS fight. Their impressive performance against IS has certainly elevated their prestige across public and political spheres, securing indispensable against the prime minister and the US-led coalition. They, however, represent a that seeks to undermine Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s governance. It beggars minimal surprise that the country’s most dominant militias—the , and — the deployment of additional US forces.

Such opposition need not deter or derail collaboration between Iraqi counterterrorism forces and their US counterparts. In Abadi, the US has a committed and willing partner whose aids the rapprochement of aggrieved Sunni communities despite . Indeed, the strengthening of a specialized, apolitical counterterrorism force might serve as an effective counterbalance to the militias’ widening military influence and further strengthen Washington’s ties with the central government in Baghdad.

Here, the US has a role to play. An aggressive and fully committal approach by America will likely shepherd Iraqi counterterrorism forces into more hard-fought victories against IS, further cementing their public prestige to Abadi’s benefit.

Given , however, the development of an internally robust counterterrorism capacity engenders the risk of coup-proofing the regime to the detriment of effective governance. For this reason, the depth of institutional engagement between US trainers and advisors is critical. If Iraq’s counterterrorism forces expand in a manner that sustains relative sectarian parity among personnel (both officer and enlisted), enshrines professionalism and maintains an apolitical posture, the threat of transformation into a coup-proofing force is mitigated, though not entirely eliminated.

Ensuring such an outcome requires that US forces maintain engagement with their Iraqi counterterrorism partners beyond in the post-Islamic State era. While the Obama administration’s current counterterrorism efforts are solely focused on defeating the Islamic State, the recent history of US counterterrorism assistance and support for regional partners suggests that in the , these local forces are more likely to collapse.

Effectively addressing this particular handicap requires more budgetary commitments, greater diplomatic engagement and deeper institutional support throughout the Iraqi security sector. President Barack Obama’s is well-poised to expressly address these concerns, but none of these financial and/or diplomatic measures will serve as panacea of Iraq’s numerous ails absent meaningful sectarian reconciliation. The US can certainly muster the financial, diplomatic and military tools to assist the Iraqi government, but without Sunni empowerment and governmental reform, these expensive measures will likely falter.

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There have not been many epochs in recent memory that come close to the confusion, complexity and chaos that have defined the modern in 2015.

In the past year alone, we have seen an acceleration of the conflict with the (IS) on multiple fronts in Iraq, Syria, France, Tunisia, Turkey and Lebanon, among others; the largest refugee migration since World War II; Russian military intervention in Syria; more US boots on the ground inside Iraq; a brutal war in Yemen being led by Saudi Arabia; a potential unity government in Libya; and, of course, there was the signing of a landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

Did I forget something?

Almost assuredly so, however, it is time to have a look at what 2016 might have in store for the Middle East. Are we expecting more of the same? Or will 2016 be the pinnacle year by which the endemic cycle of violence is finally broken in favor of pragmatic political solutions that might accommodate the complex challenges of a region in crisis?

That might be a tad bit optimistic, but let’s evaluate where the Middle East is taking us from the view of some key players in the region, and what might happen from a national and international perspective.

This is all deliciously complex, so please bear with me.

The Islamic State of Hysteria

The Islamic State has suffered some serious upsets in 2015, which have included an aerial campaign gratis of France, the US, Jordan, Britain, Russia, Canada, Turkey and even the United Arab Emirates. There have also been some battlefield successes in Iraq that have chipped away at the territorial integrity of the group’s so-called caliphate in places like Tikrit, Baiji and now Ramadi.

Nevertheless, IS must be defeated on four military fronts for any victory to be sustainable: as a conventional combat force; as a terrorist network; as an insurgent movement; and, most importantly, as a political and religious ideology. And so far, we have only managed to succeed in targeting the organization as a conventional combat force, which means we are no closer to defeating IS now than we were in July 2014, when the group .

The entire IS equation, however, is by no means balanced by military intervention alone. We often overlook the fact that the Islamic State’s successes are not just attributable to military prowess or religious fanaticism—although they play a part—but are also the result of political failures that gave agency to its cause in the first place, especially in Iraq and Syria. Therefore, political solutions must run congruent to any military operation for there to be long-term success in defeating IS. Unfortunately, at the end of 2015, these political solutions remain in short supply by the regional and international powers.

The good news is that in 2015, the IS caliphate finally hit the limit of its territorial expansion. And the group will continue to lose ground next year given the overwhelming international response aligning against it. The recently released audio message of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, rallying his troops and supporters, underscores the fact that the Islamic State is feeling the pressure.

But as IS suffers more battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria, it will inevitably look to make up that deficit by engaging in acts of global terrorism. We have already seen the direct result of this in France, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia, and in 2016, we should expect to see more terrorist attacks that can be attributed to IS.

Iraq’s Forever War

We certainly cannot talk about the Middle East without talking about , since the Islamic State was born in the chaos of US occupation and because former Iraqi army officers populate the upper echelon of the group’s military leadership.

In any case, Iraq is not faring well and 2016 will prove just as challenging. The precipitous drop in the price of oil has ravaged Iraq’s hydrocarbon-based economy, which will go into deficit only to be saved by loans from the and the —contingent on governmental reforms that might not necessarily be deliverable. Coupled against ongoing military expenditure that has not been balanced in the war against IS, and Iraq has a pending economic crisis that could undermine the entire war effort.

While there has been some progress made in reclaiming territory from IS, what has become clear over the past year is that seizing territory in Iraq is not the same as holding territory in Iraq. The preeminent anti-IS fighting force has now become the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as the Hashed al-Shabi, and it comprises the various Shia militias with names such as the Badr Organization, League of the Righteous and Kitab Hezbollah.

For a lot of Sunnis, the fear of these militias and their history of sectarian violence far outweighs their fear of IS, making long-term political reconciliation in Iraq extremely difficult. This provides a strategic and tactical disadvantage for the Iraqi government, since the militias cannot hold or be garrisoned on Sunni land (long-term) due to the potential for sectarian reprisals. And without a process to reabsorb former IS territories back into the political orbit of the Iraqi government or national legislation to govern how the PMU operate, these areas will remain susceptible to terrorism and other forms of insurgency. Regardless of what happens on the battlefield, this will give IS an open corridor to maintain influence in Iraq for 2016.

Disclaimer: The United States

I must now offer you a disclaimer, because I have to break up our section on into two distinct parts: What is left of the Obama administration, and what foreign policy plans are being advanced by the various presidential candidates, because these two things are uniquely linked. With regard to the latter, be happy that there are only 11 more months of campaigning left, since we have not even remotely scraped the bottom of the proverbial foreign policy barrel just yet.

John Kerry © Shutterstock

President Obama’s Foreign Policy Gambit

US foreign policy in 2015 was of mixed success, and it is unlikely that Washington will augment its current strategy for the Middle East in any significant way in 2016—barring the universe of unforeseen circumstances that might arise from the current instability.

President Barack Obama has engaged in what might be called a “Fabian Strategy” with regard to IS. This strategy precludes a major military engagement in favor of smaller, more nimble operations that revolve around things like airstrikes and Special Forces missions. In theory, this kind of strategy will lead to victory by attrition, having exhausted the resources of IS, while giving local forces space to maneuver and attack. The problem with this strategy is that it is not running congruently with a firmly articulated legislative solution that can course-correct the kinds of political grievances that gave cause to IS in the first place.

In the most simplistic of terms, this leads to a position of intractability that favors the conditions that IS can thrive in.

None of this is likely to change in 2016, given the temerity of election year politics and their ability to adversely influence US foreign policy. What is likely to happen is that the US will continue to work through global partnerships such as the International Syria Support Group and the United Nations (UN) to affect change in Syria, while working bilaterally with countries such as Iraq, Russia and Turkey to deconflict airspace, coordinate operations and develop methods to deny IS access to global financial markets.

These, unfortunately, are baby steps and are not indicative of an overarching foreign policy that can accommodate the many state and non-state actors who will shape the modern Middle East’s future. Until that happens, the US will struggle to maintain credibility in areas where the Islamic State is most entrenched: Iraq and Syria.

US Election Year Politicking

Where does one even begin? Let me first state implicitly that you should always be wary of candidates who claim to have a silver bullet solution to the foreign policy challenges in the Middle East. The situation has grown beyond any one plan that might shape outcomes clearly favorable to the US. And as the presidential elections grow closer, so too will the unsubstantiated rhetoric about what is possible in the war against the Islamic State.

The good news is that in 2015, the IS caliphate finally hit the limit of its territorial expansion. And the group will continue to lose ground next year given the overwhelming international response aligning against it.

This is a dangerous trap for the unsuspecting to fall prey to, and here are some examples why.

A no-fly zone in Syria is not possible, given ��ܲ�������’s military support to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. If implemented, the US and Russia would potentially be in direct military confrontation over airspace, which would not only exacerbate the conflict, but offer zero net result in either the fight against IS or the removal of Assad from power. This policy might have been possible in the early stages of the conflict in 2011, but that time has now definitely passed.

The “boots on the ground” scenario (beyond Special Forces) will not be possible for one simple reason: US troops would have to stage from Iraq, and the Iraqi government along with Iraqi civil society would neither authorize nor accept such a deployment, making this scenario little more than casual blunderbuss.

Then there are calls to arm the Kurds directly. Assuming this is the Peshmerga, it is important to remember that they are also part of Iraq, and to arm them outside of the central government in Baghdad is to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi state. This would also set the Iraqi government and the US in opposition to one another, since arming a faction independent of Baghdad could potentially lead to a breakdown in cooperation over fighting IS and provide space for countries like Iran and Russia to further increase their influence.

Moving away from these talking points, what will soon be obvious is that all serious foreign policy proposals from the US presidential candidates in 2016—regardless of which party—will slowly start to resemble one another. This is because most options are quite limited, and most serious foreign policy professionals know this. They might differ in tone or rhetorical presentation, but in practice they will not be wildly different from what is currently taking place.

Syria’s Hard Tomorrow

There has been some good news for Syria at the end of 2015, even if only tentative. After meetings held in Vienna in November by the International Syria Support Group, the UN Security Council has unanimously agreed on a resolution to map a path toward an eventual peace process, starting sometime in January 2016. This resolution, however, deviates along some very serious fault lines that have yet to be predetermined.

Bashar Al-Assad © Shutterstock

For starters, it does not address the issue of Assad personally. This is obviously an attempt to placate Russia, but it also undermines the legitimacy of the resolution for the Syrian rebel groups who will be insistent on his departure. Nor does the resolution address the question of rebel groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, which the US labels a terrorist organization, yet is one of the most powerful factions in Syria.

Then there is the critical issue of how to implement a ceasefire in a country that has, for all intents and purposes, broken down into various statelets and cantons—not to mention whose authority this could possibly be executed under.

Nonetheless, the diplomatic push is a significant development leading into 2016 and should be viewed as a victory for US Secretary of State John Kerry, who managed to bring together countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to support this resolution.

The year 2016 will be a capstone moment for Syria, given the burgeoning UN agreement and global alignment on IS, but the prognosis is still unfavorable. Policy positions in Syria seem to be retroactive under the premise that the country can be put back together again, which is highly unlikely for all the reasons mentioned above. On top of this, there is still no regional strategy that accounts for the fact that Iraq and Syria have become one continuous battlefield, and until that happens, the conditions to defeat IS will remain elusive.

Happy New Year

There you have it, a quick and dirty round-up of where 2015 finished and what 2016 might look like from some of the key players in Middle East. Hopefully this overview has provided you a modicum of perspective that might be useful as you move into 2016 (or as conversation starters for any New Year’s Eve cocktail party).

But just to reinforce how complex the situation will remain in 2016, I did not even attempt to touch upon Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Russia, Israel and Palestine, or how they connect to the foreign policies of Western coalition countries. For that, I would have to write you a much longer missive, but that will have to wait until the new year.

*[Note: This article was updated on December 30, 2015, at 18:00 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On December 15, ’s young and inexperienced defense minister made up of nearly three dozen mainly Sunni Muslim states, stretching from Morocco to Bangladesh. The Saudi-led alliance’s stated purpose is to defeat global terrorism in five nations: Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Mohammad bin Salman’s announcement followed months of increased pressure from US officials on Arab Gulf nations to fight Daesh (“”) more forcefully. However, given the conflicting interests and lack of military experience on the part of the coalition’s members, there is ample reason to conclude that this alliance lacks substance.

A “Coalition” of the Weak, Divided and Unwilling

The Saudi-led coalition includes Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Comoros, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

A number of these nations are failed states or just above that classification, beset by their own civil wars, Islamist insurgencies and endemic corruption. Several are among the world’s poorest countries.

For a variety of reasons, the announcement of this so-called coalition was bizarre and surprising. The leaders of Pakistan—one of Saudi Arabia’s most important allies—never officially agreed to join, and only learned of their purported membership from news organizations.��Malaysian officials also expressed reservations and ruled out the possibility of Kuala Lumpur making any military contribution to the alliance.

Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf Arab states took part in the US-led campaign against Daesh in September 2014. However, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members’ contributions to the campaign were insignificant and came to an end after the Washington-led coalition’s initial missions were completed.

Like Saudi Arabia, the smaller GCC members, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have showed a deeper commitment to fighting the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen—viewed in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as an extension of Iranian influence—than to combating Daesh in Iraq and Syria. It is unlikely that the GCC members’ priorities will change in light of Saudi Arabia’s announcement.

Split Interests

Among the Saudi allies with relatively powerful militaries—including Turkey, Egypt and the UAE—it is doubtful they will cease to pursue their own respective interests, which certainly conflict.

Ankara’s top priorities in Syria entail toppling the Assad regime and preventing the Syrian Kurds from establishing a proto-state governed by a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) affiliate group along Turkey’s southern border. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that NATO member Turkey has actively supported �ٲ������’s sale of oil to the global markets in order to advance these two objectives.

As Russia has stepped up its direct military involvement in Syria to fight certain militias, which Saudi Arabia sponsors yet the Kremlin considers “terrorist” organizations, it is difficult to imagine how the Riyadh-led coalition would interact with Moscow given the conflicting interests among the member nations. Saudi allies in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo and Manama welcome ��ܲ�������’s intervention in Syria, sharing Moscow’s interest in preserving the Syrian nation-state and defeating Daesh. On the other hand, Ankara and Doha staunchly oppose ��ܲ�������’s direct military intervention in Syria, as underscored by the Turkish military having in November. Such geopolitical divisions undermine the potential for Riyadh to unite the Sunni Muslim world against “terrorism.”

Moreover, the stated objectives and strategies of this coalition are vague. Aside from Daesh, which other “terrorist” groups in the five target countries will this pan-Sunni alliance combat? Where will the intelligence to combat them be derived? Which countries in this coalition will deploy most of the troops? How many soldiers will be required to be effective?

Although many of the coalition members have combated extremist groups unilaterally, the task of defining terrorism will be problematic if they are to effectively fight such organizations within the framework of a NATO-like alliance. Among the 34 states, there is ample disagreement as to which non-state actors are “terrorist” organizations.

Turkey, Sudan and Qatar support the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East and North Africa region. Yet Egypt and the UAE consider the Islamist movement to be a “terrorist” organization. Saudi Arabia and other members of this coalition consider Hezbollah and other Iranian-sponsored Shia militias in Syria and Iraq to be “terrorist” organizations. Given that these groups—along with the Syrian and Iranian militaries and Kurdish fighters—serve as the most effective forces against Daesh, will the Saudi-led military coalition combat both Hezbollah in addition to the Daesh fighters?

Counter Iran

Certainly, the objectives of the coalition are unclear and most likely highly unrealistic. All of these questions leave one wondering why Riyadh bothered to make the surprising announcement. The answer has to do with , not Daesh.

Given that Saudi Arabia’s coalition deliberately omitted the “axis of resistance” (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah), Riyadh is determined to create a pan-Sunni alliance committed to countering Iranian influence in the Arab world. The declaration of this alliance underscores new geopolitical realities in the Middle East, in which Washington left the Saudi leadership with the impression that the US had abandoned much of its commitment to the kingdom’s security in favor of a rapprochement with Iran—Riyadh’s archrival. Saudi Arabia undoubtedly came to believe that it had little option to but to rely on itself and its perceived allies to establish a Sunni Muslim equivalent of NATO to provide a counterweight to Tehran.

The absence of a serious commitment on the GCC’s part to fight Daesh has been a source of frustration for many in Washington and other Western capitals. The Obama administration and members of the US Congress may issue statements expressing support for this anti-terrorism alliance led by Saudi Arabia. Yet both President Barack Obama and his successor will find Riyadh to be an awkward and highly problematic ally in the battle against groups such as Daesh. Given the history of the kingdom’s religious establishment promoting anti-Shia Islam and other forms of religion-inspired bigotry, there is little reason to wonder why Saudi Arabia has more of its own citizens fighting on behalf of Daesh than any other nation in the world aside from Tunisia.

Now that Daesh has set its sights on the kingdom and has expressed its commitment not only to��ridding the Arabian Peninsula of Shia Muslims, but also to��toppling the House of Saud, Riyadh faces an enemy largely of its own making. Despite Saudi Arabia’s proclaimed coalition against Daesh and other terrorist groups, the reality is that this disparate collection of nations is unlikely to weaken the “caliphate,” as its members are neither capable nor interested in doing so.

Indeed, if the Saudis were genuinely committed to weakening Daesh, officials in Riyadh would cease to finance religious schools worldwide that spread Wahhabism, �ٲ������’s ideological foundation. Without making such efforts aimed at addressing the root cause of jihadist terrorism in the broken Middle East, there is little reason to expect this coalition to effectively weaken the “Islamic State.”

*[Note: This article was updated on December 24, 2015.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over two weeks, the Islamic State (IS) carried out three attacks of global significance: downing a Russian passenger airliner over Egypt’s Sinai desert, killing 224 passengers on their way to St. Petersburg; bombing a , which claimed the lives of 40 civilians; and killing at least 130 people in Paris, the worst history.

The fear that IS instills is fueled by a profound lack of understanding of the group’s motives. Many have marked the violence as irrational and nihilist. A , for example, described IS as “not great strategists; their policies are often haphazard, reckless, even preposterous” and contests that “we are not only horrified but baffled.” Similarly, the group’s goals are inflated; for example, in the remarks of US President Barack Obama that “this is an attack on all of humanity and the values we share.”

But in order to craft an effective strategy to , we must go beyond a mere assertion of nihilism and understand what IS hopes to achieve. How does the group aim to deploy terrorism as a strategy to achieve political ends?

Carving Out a Plan

Terrorism experts Peter Neumann and M.L.R. Smith outline a , in which terrorism is to be understood as: “[T]he deliberate creation of a sense of fear, usually by the use or the threat of use of symbolic acts of physical violence, to influence the political behavior of a given target group.” While the Islamic State is undeniably a religious group, its brutality—however nihilistic it may seem to us—is geared toward a political goal: the consolidation of the caliphate that the group has declared in Syria and Iraq.

IS has begun to explain its grand strategy through its online magazine, Dabiq, communicating its military strength, showcasing its governance programs and spreading its vision of what the caliphate will become. These efforts underline the Islamic State’s desire to demonstrate its under its control and withstand the military challenges of its adversaries.

The Islamic State’s leadership has coldly calculated its religious beliefs with the aim of controlling and expanding its territory and attracting new recruits. Files recovered from Syria detail how Islamic law, the use of religious courts and prescribed piety all and control over the population. Using takfiri doctrine, IS seeks to purify the world. , precisely because it is predominantly Muslim populations that inhabit or border the territory that IS seeks to control.

But the recent attacks in Egypt, Lebanon and France show a shift in IS strategy: from attacking regional countries toward international terrorism. These attacks are born out of weakness more than strength. In recent months, IS has suffered , increasing defections, stalling recruitment efforts and many battle deaths.

These developments, as well as the decision of Russia to join the fight against IS, have changed the calculations of the organization’s leadership. Going beyond attempting to inspire, the group now seems determined to actively coerce and divide its adversaries by means of a global terrorist campaign—with three key steps.

Disorientation

The first step by which terrorists look to achieve their ends, according to Neumann and Smith, is : Making citizens distrust their authorities by portraying them as incapable of providing public order and defending their population, “leaving the individual confused, fearful and alienated.”

Disorientation has been evident since the Paris attacks. The Financial Times’ Simon Kuper whether he and his family can safely stay in Paris after two terrorist attacks have occurred in 2015. Many, such as the editor of French newspaper Le Figaro, have for turning a blind eye to the “war” it is engaged in and have castigated the lack of progress on counterterrorist measures.

The Islamic State’s capacity to disorient comes from three sources.

First, it is skilled in its use of social media to radicalize young Muslims and create what is called “homegrown” terrorism. As in The Atlantic, Sheikh Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, for example, encouraged Muslims in Western countries to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock” or “run him over with a car,” blending ancient practice and modern technology. That IS takes responsibility for each of these attacks makes it appear as a potent, omnipresent organization; however, many of these attacks were conducted by “lone wolves” and IS took responsibility only after they occurred.

Attempting to inspire homegrown terrorism predates IS. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—the al-Qaeda brand responsible for the in January—called for “open source jihad” in its magazine, Inspire, which featured articles with suggestive titles like, “.” It also advised to draw on the experience of the .

IS, however—and this is its second capacity to disorient—has taken open source jihad to a next level. It employs using modern communication tools such as Twitter, and Skype to persuade both men and women to travel to the self-declared caliphate. Behind closed doors, many Western security services are with having their radicals travel to Syria—rather than planning attacks in their own countries. But those who return are battle-hardened criminals that have networks which can link them to IS’ central leadership. And as none of these supposed fighters wears a uniform, the fear that those who wish to harm Western societies live among us gives way to a feeling of powerlessness.

Third, the recent attacks in Egypt, Lebanon and France appear to have been carefully planned by IS leadership. The planning of the French attacks , and the downing of the Russian airliner took place only weeks after Moscow had joined the fight against IS. Will McCants, author of The ISIS Apocalypse, emphasizes that the linked to developments in Iraq and Syria, as the Islamic State “is putting its major adversaries on notice that if they continue to impede its state-building … they will pay a price.” This seems to be confirmed by a statement released after the Paris attacks, in which IS warned France that the attack is the “” and vowed to continue attacking the country “as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign.”

© Shutterstock

The possibility that IS’ vast resources are now used in a global terrorist campaign are disorienting, indeed. But it is important to stress that this is precisely how IS wants us to feel. And for IS to achieve its goals, a lot depends on the reaction of governments that are currently in its crosshairs.

The Syrian quagmire

The second step of strategic terrorism is the “target response”: To “set the target a series of (military) dilemmas and challenge it to respond.” Neumann and Smith that most governments will be tempted to overreact, believing that “they possess overwhelming power as well as the legitimacy to crush any challenge to its authority.”

The danger of overreaction looms large in the immediate response of the French government. President Francois Hollande was quick to declare a , and he denounced the attacks as “an act of war, committed by a terrorist army” and vowed a “merciless response.” French warplanes almost immediately bombarded Raqqa, the stronghold of IS.

Hollande has employed the same rhetoric as George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But the “War on Terrorism” was an from the start, and 14 years of ongoing aerial campaigns have not prevented jihadist groups from emerging in the Greater Middle East. To be sure, there have been “lessons” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Ground troops are out of the question for France, or any other member of the G20 for that matter.

This leaves France with virtually no other option than an intensification of the bombing campaign, for which it has dispatched the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier. There are, however, three immediate problems with this strategy.

First, upping the airstrikes will increase the flows of refugees to the European Union, which already seems desperate to “” and has recently offered Turkey to patrol its borders. But Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan continue to struggle with millions of refugees on their own territory. IS knows there is a real risk at further destabilization and disintegration of these countries, and the bombing in Beirut was clearly geared toward that.

Second, extending airstrikes to the Syrian heartland will increase civilian casualties. Since the Paris attacks, IS has . The US previously decided against bombing Raqqa, but it now provides for France’s campaign, even though it knows that civilian casualties fuel the discontent IS feeds on.

If dividing French society is part of the Islamic State’s strategy, sticking together is the right response. Zero risk remains an illusion in an open society. That means committing to the values of egalité, fraternité and �����������é that make la République great.

Third, increasing airstrikes is not a change in coalition strategy, but just a minor increase of the US attempt to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. This may be effective in the long-run; containment as a strategy against terrorist group has worked against in Somalia and in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But this will be a long-term effort that leaves IS in possession of vast resources, a safe haven to train and plan international terrorist attacks, and the motives to carry out those attacks precisely because it is slowly squeezed out of the territory it holds so dearly. In short, things might get worse before they get better.

A more effective strategy would be to add serious diplomatic, economic and ideological elements to what has been a predominantly military response to squeeze IS out of its territory. At the same time, France is using its diplomatic momentum to craft a true global coalition that directs its unequivocal attention to combating IS. France has pushed the United Nations Security Council to adopt condemning violent extremism and urging the need to prevent travel and support for foreign fighters.

But many countries do not go beyond paying lip-service to the necessity of fighting IS. There are that Turkish intelligence services, occupied by the Kurdish regional aspirations, provide support to IS. Russian President Vladimir Putin has actively opposed the installment of a no-fly zone in Syria and has predominantly targeted the rebel groups that the US has relied on for taking the fight to IS. Cooperation between Russia and Turkey, coincidentally, suffered a severe blow when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on November 24. And the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—condemned by NATO countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council, but supported by Russia and Iran—hangs over the negotiations like a sword of Damocles.

A part of the diplomatic push needs to focus on cutting off the financing of IS. So far, the West has turned a blind eye to Turkey, which has facilitated —a major source of revenue for IS—across its borders. And it means addressing the problem that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait never stopped IS, despite being part of the anti-IS coalition.

The revenue streams of IS are unlikely to be sustainable in the long-run. Financial accounts show that of its revenue comes from “confiscations,” primarily of its own population, and another large part derives from . But again, without addressing the larger revenue stream, this will amount to a long and slow squeeze that leaves IS capable and determined to attack Western interests.

© Shutterstock

Finally, there must be an ideological response. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the narrative of a “clash of civilizations” . The evidence, however, points into a different direction. Muslims from across the world the Paris attacks and Muslim populations for IS. It is, therefore, no surprise that those fleeing IS territory chose to come to Europe, which exemplifies the stability and security they have lost in Syria and Iraq. And even many foreign fighters have become with life in the Islamic State, but know they cannot return.

Any serious ideological response must, therefore, be inclusive toward Muslims. However, electoral considerations at home push Hollande in the exact opposite direction.

The French snake pit

The final step, as Neumann and Smith , involves the wider response to a terrorist attack, in which many governments suppress moderate, nonviolent opposition. The repression can radicalize a minority of the population and increase the belief among some in the illegitimacy of Western governments that IS preaches. Terrorizing French society becomes instrumental in IS’ strategy.

Some repressive measures are already taking shape. Under the state of emergency, there have been at least , 165 arrests and 266 people have been placed under house arrest.

It is understandable that a swift and strong response is demanded from the French government, especially considering the popularity of the far-right. The leader of the National Front, , has said that France must rearm, ban Islamist organizations, close radical mosques and expel “illegal migrants that have nothing to do here.” Former President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wants to “electronically tag” all the 11,500 people on France’s watch list.

With a , however, France must avoid blindly lashing out. While heightened security can be justified in the short-term, France must be careful not to legalize minority repression in the long-term. Lashing out is what IS hopes for, because it has the potential to alienate the wider Muslim community and provide fertile grounds for radicalization.

Avoiding overreaction and repression is all too hard, for no politician wants to see another attack occur on their watch. But shows that terrorist groups primarily targeting civilians do not achieve their political objectives. So from a strategic perspective, restraint is required. The Islamic State aims to provoke governments into using extra-legal actions that, in the long-run, increase the support and legitimacy of the organization. The prime example is, of course, Guantánamo Bay, which became a primary .

And as the US Patriot Act showed, measures for increased security and surveillance are very hard to repel. France already used the emergency laws to put during the COP21 summit earlier this month.

If anything, the Paris attacks have exposed the flaws in France’s reliance on internal and external intelligence services to identify all leads on violent extremism. There is a necessity to shift the focus toward prevention, addressing radicalization before it occurs.

This means that France will have to face the fact that its post-colonial integration policies have failed. Disgruntlement among the young in the banlieues has been evident for years, most notably during the 2005 riots in Paris. Other countries face this problem too. The support cell for the Paris attacks was traced back to the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, a region in Belgium that has suffered from segregation and a lack of integration. For the young generation of Muslims that faces high unemployment and limited opportunities, IS’ online propaganda provides escapism from the burden of existence.

One possible example is the “” that British government set up to counter extremist messaging. It has a multicultural and community-based focus and, as the name suggests, attempts to detect individuals before they radicalize. While the PREVENT program has had , such as making the Muslim population into a “suspect community,” there is that orthodox and non-violent extremist organizations can be engaged at the local level to help a government pick up early on radicalization of individuals in Muslim communities.

If dividing French society is part of the Islamic State’s strategy, sticking together is the right response. Zero risk remains an illusion in an open society. That means committing to the values of egalité, fraternité and �����������é that make la République great. Above all, it means defending the very civil liberties that IS attempts to destroy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: / ��/��

We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your����is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a��.

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