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| The Iraqi and Lebanese insurgencies, BlueHypercane, (Wiki.) |
The terrorism
threat of ISIS/Daesh is composed of phases. The first phase is military. This can only be dealt with using a
coordinated military strategy. It can only happen on the ground, in a specific
location, that is to say Syria and Iraq and contiguous territories. This is
just what you don’t have with so
many players, so many factions, and so many splinter groups.
They’re fighting each other just as much as they’re
fighting ‘the West’. They are fighting for independence, they’re fighting for
ideology or religion, they’re fighting in some cases for national survival. ISIS/Daesh
is fighting to found a fundamentalist nation-state, one with obvious
expansionist aims.
Combatants are scattered all over the place and this
is why outside powers will often choose a side or group to act as proxies.
I can’t say whether Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau’s election promise to pull aircraft out of the conflict is the right
decision. My instinct is that it’s not. If you don’t contribute to the effort,
you have little moral weight in negotiations that may ultimately lead to a
solution.
The Canadian news establishment has just reported that Mr. Trudeau
has told the
G-20 conference that Canada will withdraw strike aircraft and focus on
training Kurdish fighters—to be our proxies, and this will be our contribution.
In the past, ISIS/Daesh threatened
Canada and its citizens. As a citizen, I suppose I’ve calculated the odds. I’m
not too worried about it. Yet some of my friends are worried and people do
worry. They will worry. There is that hysteria after a successful attack. Hysteria
is no basis for sound decision-making.
It really isn’t that difficult to pull off a
successful attack against unarmed civilians, in a peaceful, orderly context
such as the typical Canadian city. This is especially so with the martyr
mentality, where personal survival is not a big consideration.
Some have argued against allowing 25,000 refugees into
this country. The public relations ‘victory’ that this would bring is a plus.
Screening will be done on all applicants. I have a fair amount of confidence
that this can be done properly, and yet at the same time, it probably is a good
way to sneak moles, long-term undercover operatives, into Canada or any other
country.
Yet the fact is, that they will be thoroughly screened.
With everyone’s attention on refugees, the next terror
cell leader may very well fly in from Tokyo on an Indonesian or other passport.
The fact that everyone is focused elsewhere, would be a big help to such an
individual, especially if they haven’t attracted prior notice and if they’ve
been in and out of the target country multiple times with no issues already.
Yet refugees will no doubt be monitored, some more closely than others, after
arriving in this or any other country. Most would cheerfully accept that, in
some limited sense, serene in the knowledge that they are innocent, and that
they are welcome here, and then there is the whole fact of their escape, their survival,
and ultimately, they will prosper and come to love this country. I have no
doubt they will thank their God for that mercy.
The people who are arguing against admitting refugees
are essentially conservative in their views—they’re going to argue against any
form of immigration, under any circumstances and it is best to note that
tendency.
The
second phase is terrorism. This can be fought in several ways,
some of which take place at our own borders and within those borders. It can
also be approached on the ground in the Middle East, (or any great
international transportation hub), using intelligence resources and the surveillance
techniques available. This is in order to identify and apprehend bona fide terror suspects before they
reach our borders.
After a successful terrorist attack, the natural
impulse is to react—to do something under the pressure of events and public
opinion.
After 9/11, the United States, its citizens and its
government were humiliated. They were grieving. They were in a state of shock—and
loud voices cried out for justice, for vengeance, and for war. Ultimately, they
got their way, they got their victory, and it was impressive enough when seen
on TV. The legacy of that is symbolized by Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. also lost a
lot of moral authority among secular, moderate Muslims, and because of their
actions, have contributed to the radicalization of some of the more marginal
members of that and their own society. This is true even with modern,
precision-guided weapons, which cannot guarantee that there will be no
collateral damage among innocent civilian populations.
The ‘successful’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really
haven’t negated the problem of terrorism. Some of that terrorism was refocused
on the region, as factions engaged in a power struggle which still ensues. We
have won a thousand battles and the war continues.
The
third phase is financial. Wars, insurrections, cannot be
conducted without funding. This is the most covert phase and therefore the most
difficult to combat. Air strikes to take out oil targets, all that seems simple
enough. Who are the customers buying the oil? Where is that oil going? I tried
to explain to my brother that it really doesn’t have to go that far. It just
has to be cheap, and available, and someone will buy it. There are a thousand middlemen. There are pipelines,
roads, trucks, ships all over the region, and everyone likes money. Some of
them probably do hate ‘the West’, or at least don’t like us quite so much as
they like their own people. That part is understandable. Using Intelligence to
follow the money trail and the arrest and criminal prosecution of principals
would appear to be the only effective strategy. It is also extremely time-consuming
and requires long-term commitment from a number of parties. It also requires
thorough cooperation among quite a number of countries, some of which are
unstable, disintegrating like Syria, or ambiguous in their attitudes.
Some of them are not particular friendly to the West,
like Iran.
Some of those states have limited control within their
own borders. Some of their infrastructures are known to be corrupt, and
sympathetic to the enemy. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Muslim country. They may well
sympathize to a certain extent, in ISIS/Daesh’s struggle with the Shia Muslims,
whom they view as heretics. Yet the inevitable result of a strong,
fundamentalist state right on their borders can only be to destabilize the
Saudi kingdom. Internal opposition forces, conservative or fundamentalist
social forces can also see that and try to take advantage of it for their own
political gain. There is no doubt that some of the money supporting the
terrorists and ISIS/Daesh comes from within Saudi Arabia. It comes from plenty
of other places as well, including the U.S., the U.K., and probably every
western country where there is money to be made and, essentially, sent home to
fuel the revolution. Foreign governments and security services can only offer
so much assistance.
They will do whatever they want within their own borders,
this is the logic of power and the holding of power in your own country. To act
unilaterally within the borders of Saudi Arabia can only be perceived in
negative terms by the Saudis. The fact is, it is up to the Saudis to clean up
their own backyard—with all the attendant risks of doing so. For the record, it
is also true that the state of Israel, with its continuing policy of
occupation, colonization and exploitation of Palestinian lands contributes
greatly to instability in the region. This festering sore of western foreign
policy (for we have not been able to stop it), also contributes to the
radicalization of individuals.
The
fourth phase is informational. It is the war of
information, and I think it’s vital how we frame this to ourselves and others:
this is not and should not be about ‘Islam’, it is and should be about terror,
violence, and the rule of law, both domestic and international.
The
war of information is broken down into several aspects. The
enemy tries to learn about us and we learn about them. That’s
intelligence-gathering. Then there is the propaganda war, where they make
statements in the media and we make statements in the media. We’re talking back
and forth to each other, essentially, an important and timeless aspect of war. Then
there is the whole problem of surveillance of friendly populations who may
harbour small numbers of enemy operatives. There is a huge amount of
information to be collected, analyzed and disseminated. In any conflict, there
is communication between enemies. The apocalyptic message of ISIS/Daesh will not
appeal to many, and this is certainly true among Muslims themselves. Many of
them are secularized and would like nothing better than to continue on that way, making small and incremental social
changes that are relatively non-threatening and do not destabilize their own
country and their own home. They can make those social and political decisions,
reflecting the will of the common person, using their own value system and
paying heed to their own sensibilities.
It is so much better if they have the opportunity to
do that in peace, plenty and prosperity.
There will always be information and disinformation in
a conflict.
This is as true in peace as it is in war.
END
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