By Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
July 02, 2015
“The good tidings of Friday: Factory in France, hotel in Tunisia, mosque in Kuwait, battles in Kobane, conquests in Haksaka.”
Although the latest spate of Friday attacks in three continents in quick succession bear the hallmarks of IS operation, it has not claimed responsibility for the Tunisia attacks and we are not certain about the perpetrators of the attack in France; but that is how the IS supporters vented their joy at the killings and 'conquests.' Some experts are unwilling to accept that these were coordinated attacks but perhaps motivated by the same psyche. If that be so, is it a coincidence that June 26 was exactly a year to the day that the IS made a declaration of its Caliphate?
One wonders why the Jihadis tend to become more active during Ramadan. Only a few days ago, they had urged their followers 'to make Ramadan a month of calamities for the non-believers', but their targeting a Shia mosque in Kuwait suggest that it is not only the 'non-believers' that they are after and that they have extended the scope of the definition of 'non-believers' and have taken the war to the doors of those they consider as apostates. What is surprising is that the IS has extended their violent acts in countries that had seemed fairly safe from the acts of religious violence and influence of religious extremists like Saudi Arabia. And the cradle of the Arab Spring has again come under the extremist attack in quick succession, some aver because of its successful political transition to a more open and liberal society
It really does not matter whether the attacks were the work of the IS and coordinated centrally or merely the acts of 'lone wolves'. These acts and the results are seen as a feather in the cap by the active supporters of the IS and those who share their views on an Islamic Caliphate.
Amidst all these senseless killings, whose targets have been both Muslims and non-Muslims, in fact anyone who seemed not in line with IS views have been targeted, the world, the Muslim world in particular, seems helpless to stem the rise of a deviant group within Islam. What is even more disconcerting is that a good number of the people in the Muslim countries sympathise with this group and have joined the extremists' ranks, getting embroiled wittingly or unwittingly in the pernicious efforts to implement al-Zarqawi's dream of creating a Sunni caliphate across areas of Iraq, Syria and Persian Gulf.
So what is the west going to do about the Frankenstein they have helped to create in the first place? Last year in September, President Obama had admitted, in the face of the swift push of the IS over a wide swath of land in Syria and Iraq, that the US does not have a strategy to defeat the IS as yet. One wonders if the US has one, even after ten months of that admission, although very recently President Obama had said that the US does not “yet have a complete strategy.” One wonders what a “complete strategy” would look like if the US is at all able to formulate one to stem the advance of the IS.
There are serious misgivings about the four-point anti-IS strategy of the US namely, air strikes, sending 475 more troops to Iraq, cutting off funding to IS, and ramping up humanitarian efforts, enunciated by Obama in September last year, particularly about the efficacy of air strikes. It is understandable why the US is unwilling to put more boots on the ground but the strategy exposes a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the problem. It is essential to understand that IS represents an errant group whose narrative, unfortunately, has come to be accepted by many in the Arab and Muslim world. Bombings will take out people but not ideas and most of the cases of the 'collateral damage' caused by aerial bombardment—the bodies of innocent civilians and destroyed buildings—will come in as handy tools to strengthen the IS narratives.
Bombings will kill people, not ideas. And that is where the first countermeasures must aim at. For this, it is not the US but the Muslim world, particularly the Arab world, which should take the lead. It is regrettable that not enough has been done in this regard. The vast majority of the Muslim world and their leaders have chosen to remain silent in the face of wrath that has the potential of not only causing immitigable damage to the existing social and political structure in a good part of the globe, but also has the potential to wreak immeasurable harm on Islam. It is for the Muslim world to breach the existing divide to coalesce against the IS, a breach that the IS has been benefiting from and one it would like to see continue.
Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan is Editor, Op-Ed and Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/politics/helpless-world-against-group-bigots-105898
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