Containing the IS
But that’s exactly what the IS wants to provoke in audiences worldwide: Shock and awe in their enemies and admiration in some weak-minded Muslims, young and old, that upon seeing these super-violent and dramatic acts will want to join the IS and fight for their so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Our sense of powerlessness and anger after seeing scenes like this leads us sometimes to hasty reactions that only help the IS to recruit new members. Egypt bombed IS targets in eastern Libya in retaliation the day after the massacre, and with the help of the Libyan Air Force, says they killed more than 60 fighters. Earlier this month after the Islamic State released another gruesome video showing the captured Jordanian pilot Maaz Al-Kassasbeh being burned alive in a cage, Jordan hanged the Al-Qaeda terrorist Sajida Al-Rishawi and another one in retaliation. Did this really help in the battle against IS? Not exactly, but it was a necessary act for King Abdallah to appease the demands of some of the influential tribes who were calling for revenge for the death of the pilot.
So what to do? Four years after the start of the Arab Spring the Arab world is in a mess, with Syria torn by civil war; Iraq divided between areas controlled by the IS, the Kurds and the Iraqi state; Yemen is without a Parliament and elected government after the Houthis invaded the capital and took power; and Libya is in chaotic disorder, divided into areas controlled by an elected secular government and others by Islamist forces. Many leftist critics lay the blame on western powers and their toppling first of Saddam Hussein and then of Muammar Qaddafi, blaming them for the current destruction of the Arab world. I agree that the invasion of Iraq by the US was a big mistake, which the Americans will regret for a long time to come.
The current policy of only bombing the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has produced some results, but cannot be the only way to deal with this threat. As Sarah Leah Watson, director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said in a recent article, after six months and 16,000 airstrikes against IS, US policy has been a failure. She blames the fact on IS being able to recruit new members so easily in Iraq after years of sectarian atrocities promoted during the government of Nouri Al-Maliki in which Shiite militias killed Sunnis indiscriminately. Because of this, even former high-ranking military members of Saddam Hussein’s regime joined the IS to take revenge of the Shiite majority abuses and are using military equipment captured from American forces, that the Iraqi army now has to face.
But why does the IS still not seem to be suffering that much from the coalition airstrikes? Maybe it’s because the US so far has refused to bomb targets in the capital city of the IS, Raqqa, in northern Syria. According to a recent report in our sister publication Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, US President Barack Obama refuses to bomb Raqqa, both the city and the province of the same name, despite having a list of more than 100 military targets, according to Iraqis who helped compile the list. Targets include the house of the self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, two barracks, the headquarters of the religious police, the treasury of the caliph and two bridges over the Euphrates River linking Raqqa to Turkey and Iraq. There are several oil fields and refineries that IS controls that the Americans could bomb. The Americans deny they are allowing IS to maintain a refuge in Raqqa, insisting that there are no military targets in the area, and that Obama is anxious to avoid collateral damage.
The IS is certainly a terrorist and criminal organization. But we need to understand how it works and why so many people, especially young Muslims are attracted to it. In the current issue of The Atlantic magazine journalist Graeme Wood has an extensive article about what the IS really wants. Based on interviews with several members of the group, he reports that key members of IS have an apocalyptic vision in which they think they will accelerate the arrival of Judgment Day by engaging in endless battles with the West and all who are not Sunni Muslims.
If it were only this religious and apocalyptic vision, it would be one thing, but the IS problem is that it encourages excessive use of violence by its members, as we have seen. The American academic, Audrey Kurth Cronin, explains this brilliantly in her article in the latest issue of the Foreign Affairs, saying “the group attracts followers yearning for not only religious righteousness, but also adventure, personal power and a sense of self and community. And, of course, some people just want to kill — and ISIS welcomes them, too.”
Much more than airstrikes will be required to contain the growth of IS. De-radicalization programs in Islamic communities will have to be expanded; the intervention in prisons by non-radical Muslim leaders is needed urgently, since we saw that the radicalization of many terrorists occurs within jails; an advertising campaign on television, radio and social networks against extremism must be launched across all Muslim countries and countries with large Muslim minorities, and economic aid given to poorer Muslims. Doing all of this together, of course along with the military actions against IS, will give us a chance to one day win this battle against the hatred and horrific violence of IS.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point of view
