Category Archives: Terrorism

Arts, Books, Britain, Government, Iraq, Islamic State, Politics, Syria, Terrorism, United States

Book Review – Black Flag Down: Counter-Extremism & Defeating ISIS

BOOK REVIEW

Intro: In his new book Liam Byrne MP argues that the British government is making critical mistakes in its methods of combating home-grown extremism. Defeating Islamic State will probably mean taking on the digital caliphate.

THE WORLD was caught by surprise in June 2014 when the infamous terrorist group Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. Within the space of just a few short months, like a rapidly spreading avenging fire, it had scorched across Syria and much of Iraq. In so doing, the group carved out an empire stretching more than 400 miles from Aleppo to the Iraqi town of Sulaiman Bek, a town just 60 miles from the Iranian border.

IS, also known as Isis, or Da’esh, seemed unstoppable at first, but it has now been pushed back, possibly decisively. Since the group inaugurated, it has lost an estimated 45,000 jihadists, as well as a slew of key towns and resources it previously controlled. Its most direct enemies – Kurds, Iraqi troops and Shia militias – are largely contained in Iraq’s second city, Mosul, and are advancing on the group’s de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa.

In this timely book, the Labour MP Liam Byrne, points out that the fight against Isis and its brutal ideology has many fronts. Isis is obsessed with controlling territory, as well as having higher aspirations by creating a global caliphate. For many years, though, the group existed without any territory. With its war on the world going badly, its digital caliphate is becoming ever more important.

Byrne offers up a wide-ranging and discursive study. In his book, he elicits and concentrates on what is arguably the most significant fight of all: the ‘battle of ideas’. Whilst his journey has taken him to northern Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, his most interesting discoveries are found and reported upon within in his own parliamentary constituency of Birmingham Hodge Hill. Here, Muslims boast the highest share of the population of any area in the UK.

Byrne is assertive that Isis and other jihadi groups such as Boko Haram and al-Qaeda are fundamentally heretical by nature. Essentially, he says, they are death cults, with as much relevance to most Muslims as David Koresh has had on mainstream Christianity. Ironically, however, Isis claims to espouse the purest form of Islam, the creed and doctrine pursued in the 7th century by the Prophet Muhammad. It believes that it has the power to repudiate and excommunicate apostates, an act known as takfir. But as the world has come to witness, this has metastasised into exterminations and genocide, as Christians, Kurds, Yazidis, and Muslims in the Middle East can attest.

In the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the group, notoriously known to the world as al-Qaeda, morphed with Saddam Hussein’s avowedly secular Ba’ath Party. What emerged was something yet even more ferocious as the terrorist group had a firm apparatus in which to operate from.

The objective of Isis was to trigger conflict between Iraq’s Shia majority, which came to power after the invasion, and the Sunni minority, which hitherto had the reins of power. The group’s global aim was to foment division between Muslims and everyone else.

Mr Byrne is of the firm believe that the British government is making a critical mistake in its methods of combating home-grown radicalism and extremism. He says its doctrine is symptomatic of a ‘clash of civilisations’ which makes Islam the problem. Counter-extremism programmes which operate in the UK such as Prevent are based on a ‘conveyer belt’ theory that specifically highlights religious conservatism as the trigger for radicalisation. But the author, citing security and academic sources, argues that anger and resentment, often engendered by a sense of marginalisation, are more powerful factors.

We should – at the very least – recognise the true nature of the extremist threat we face. The U.S. president-elect’s declared solution to dealing with Isis including heavy bombing and barring all Muslims from entering his country are, though, the very antithesis of proper reason and rationality which seems to be in such short supply these days. For clear insight, we could do worse than reach for Liam Byrne’s excellent and revealing narrative.

–     Black Flag Down: Counter-Extremism, Defeating Isis and Winning the Battle of Ideas by Liam Byrne is published by Biteback at £12.99

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Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, Terrorism, United Nations, United States

The ramifications of liberating Mosul

IRAQ

IRAQ-CONFLICT-MOSUL

Iraqi Peshmerga fighters fire a multiple rocket launcher east of Mosul as part of a broad coalition to retake the city from Islamic State.

Intro: The long-awaited attack on the Iraqi city of Mosul has begun. Taking Mosul will force IS to change its tactics.

Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, is the last big prize that Islamic State hold. It is the city from which they announced the creation of their caliphate in 2014. The city means a lot to them and they might well decide that this is a last stand. That will mean a long and arduous battle, close-quarter urban and asymmetric warfare which will become bloody and slow. Civilian casualties are likely to be high as IS seek to be protected through the use of human shields.

The UN will have been making plans for this contingency and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has issued an appeal for an additional $61m (£50m) to provide tents, camps, and winter items such as blankets for displaced people inside Iraq and the two neighbouring countries. The fears that residents could be used as human shields – by, for example, being placed on rooftops in an attempt to deter airstrikes – and, that as many as a million people could be forced to flee their homes, has the makings of another humanitarian tragedy. Surely the governments involved in the broad coalition in the war against IS will ensure that the UN have the money and supplies that they need.

Worryingly, there may be another tactic that is more attractive to IS. There is likely to be a realisation within the organisation that the caliphate will not remain, which is likely to suggest that in pursuit of their long-term goals it would be better to flee in to the desert. That could involve as many as 10,000 fighters who could re-group and re-build. If they stand and fight in Mosul what may be left? The threats to Western societies are very real.

Regardless of tactics and time, however, there are two virtual certainties in this situation. The first is that Mosul will be re-taken by pro-government forces, it is only a matter of when and at what cost. The second is that IS will not be wiped out, but will turn in to an even more hardened terrorist organisation, not merely a territory-holding army, and be capable of conducting a campaign of insurgency. The big question here is just how effective it could be and what resources it could command.

When IS first took over its towns and cities there were local reports of at least some support for the organisation’s objectives: a deep distrust of the government and its supporters existed. But, by many accounts, that tacit support has now disappeared, and IS’s brutal regime has been uncovered for what it actually is. It is imperative that the disaffection with Islamic State be maintained, as all insurgent groups need the help and support of at least some of the indigenous population to be effective.

That is why it is vitally important that no sectarian violence occurs when towns are liberated from IS, and the undertakings given on this aspect must be delivered.

Equally as important is that there is a long-term plan to ensure the governance of these areas is as inclusive and equitable as possible.

It is in the interests of all the nations currently ranged against IS that these longer-term plans are instigated and that they continue. History clearly tells us that structures set up in the aftermath need to be adequately robust to ensure that any remnants of IS is not allowed to thrive.

Appendage:

mosul-map

Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, is the last stronghold of Islamic State. The threat now is that IS fighters may flee to the desert.

 

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Europe, France, Government, Islamic State, Society, Terrorism

Europe and Islamist attacks

TERRORISM IN EUROPE

Intro: President François Hollande of France may think that declaring war on the extremists will shore up his own fragile political position

THE INSTINCTIVE RESPONSE on horrors such as those that have taken place in France and Germany in recent days is to look for a pattern, a narrative that might go some way to explain the inexplicable.

The brutal and bloody murder of an 86-year-old priest in Normandy invites such thinking, since it follows years of attacks on Christians in the Middle East: first by al-Qaeda and then by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Is radical Islam seeking a war with Christianity?

The very suggestion or notion of such a conflict between faiths would delight followers of ISIL, but it is hard to reconcile with that group’s dreadful persecution of fellow Muslims. ISIL has killed many more Muslims than it has Christians or Jews.

Or are the Islamists targeting Western liberal values more broadly, seeking to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate that once existed across the Middle East and parts of Southern Europe?

If so, that end has been poorly served by the enormity and mayhem in Normandy and Bavaria, lands that were never home to Muslims in the middle ages and which have only come to have Muslim residents as a result of those liberal Western values.

Seeking some kind of explanation for the evil that has been perpetrated is perfectly natural, but we should not impute too much calculation or design to those individuals who carry out such heinous crimes.

Whilst we may look for explanations the truth is there is no rationale or logic, nor any coherent argument in explaining away why Europe is suffering such appalling atrocities on its streets. These are the acts of inadequate and disturbed individuals with a nihilistic desire to destroy anything that challenges them and their ill-formed and warped idea of the world.

We must harden our defences against such acts, but we should be wary of the idea that those acts represent a clash of cultures – for that suggests some sort of parity between irrational extremist ideology on the one hand and a civilisation of shared traditions developed over thousands of years on the other.

President François Hollande of France may think that declaring war on the extremists will shore up his own fragile political position. Such a response, however, also risks validating the arguments of Marine Le Pen’s National Front (i.e. that the French establishment has failed to face up to the existential threat of terrorism).

Security and intelligence operations should be reviewed in the face of these latest attacks, particularly as the numerous intelligence agencies that operate in France are highly dysfunctional and disjointed. Great care must be taken not to dignify the attackers or their pathetic dreams of grandeur. They are murderers only deserving of contempt.

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