Just now I find myself @ the Racheed Hotel, located inside Baghdad’s so-called ‘Green Zone’. An Iranian fighter pilot’s devestating early 1980s suicide crash into the building: pre- 2003 US invasion, George W. Bush’s face as a stomping ground for hotel visitor’s shoes. All in all, there’s quite a history to the place . . . .
Here’s a useful think piece from Jonathan Powell arguing strongly that Western governments need both to understand and accept that sooner or later, dialogue with ISIS will become necessary. And that given that fact, they might as well start to outline a strategy for talking to Deash – not simply demonising and bombing them.
Powell’s argument here builds on the thesis of his new book Talking To Terrorists: How To End Armed Conflicts and beyond that, his own centre-stage involvement in the Blair government’s secret talks, and eventually open negotiations with, the IRA and other parties aimed at achieving a Northern Ireland peace deal – efforts that eventually bore fruit in the shape of the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement
There’s much to commend Powell’s argument in this respect, and one can only hope that policy makers in Washington, Paris, London and Moscow will give it the attention it fully deserves. Rather less convincing, however, is Powell’s contention that efforts to open up a dialogue channel with ISIS should run in parallel with the bombing campaign to which the UK has now also committed itself. Bomb and talk in other words? Its highly questionable military impact apart, the escalating Syria bombing campaign leads inexorably to two highly negative impacts: an escalation in the number of civilian casualties (after Afghanistan and Iraq, let’s just let’s hope they don’t get described as collateral damage this time round); and an effective propaganda – and as such recruitment – tool for ISIS in the region.
In any case, here’s the article:
David Cameron says we should fight Islamic State. Jeremy Corbyn says we should talk to them. They are both partly right – we need to fight and talk. Each is necessary but not sufficient. If it is really our intent to “degrade and destroy” Isis, then we need both a military and a political strategy.
Bombing is necessary. It can help stop Isis advancing, and it was crucial in allowing Kurdish fighters to retake Sinjar and hold on in Kobani. And it makes no sense whatever to bomb Isis on the Iraqi side of the border, but not the Syrian side. If the difference is supposed to be that we have the permission of the government in Iraq but not in Syria, that is a joke. I haven’t noticed Bashar al-Assad objecting to Russian and French bombing. And if the argument is that Isis will attack us here because we start bombing them in Syria, but not because we’ve already been bombing them in Iraq for a year, then that is absurd.
However, as we know from our experience in Kosovo 16 years ago, bombing does not make an army withdraw. Only ground forces can. To have a coherent strategy to drive Isis out of territory it controls we need “boots on the ground”.
But whose? Kurdish forces in both Iraq and Syria have now advanced to the edge of their territory but will advance no further. Nor should they. They would not be welcome in Sunni Arab towns and villages either side of the border.
Nor are the Shia militias from Baghdad the right forces, particularly after the destruction that followed their taking of Tikrit. There are no significant Sunni Arab forces in Iraq prepared to fight Isis, and a repeat of the 2006 Anbar awakening – in which Sunni tribes joined forces to take on al-Qaida in Iraq – does not seem possible.
Nor will Sunni forces in Syria – whatever their real number – make Isis their top priority as long as Assad remains in power. And finally it is pie in the sky to suggest that forces from other Arab countries should come to the rescue, while they are fully engaged in Yemen. If the west is not prepared to send ground forces, then who will?
However, even if we had ground forces capable of driving Isis back into being a guerrilla force once again, we would not have killed the idea behind it. That requires a political strategy, and not just one for removing Assad. General Warren Phipps, a hardened former commander of the US 101st Airborne Division, recognises that negotiating is what is required: “That’s how wars end … we can’t kill our way out of this.”
If we just dismiss Isis as merely a mad death cult we are deceiving ourselves. Unfortunately they are highly rational and shrewd, even if horrifically brutal. They know that killing a western hostage on TV in a new and grotesque manner will grab our attention in a way that beheading 70 Kurds never would. They know that an attack on Paris, or blowing up a Russian airliner, will lead to the spiral of escalation they want. If we are going to end the violence we need to respond coolly and calmly to what they do, rather than in the hot flush of emotion.
First we need to consider why they have political support. It seems outlandish to us that a creed so absurd should enjoy significant popularity. But it is hard to explain otherwise how a force of some 1,000 men could take the city of Mosul with a population of 2 million.
The explanation is that for many Sunnis, after years of tyranny from Nouri al-Maliki’s sectarian government in Baghdad, Isis didn’t look so bad. Among the many mistakes we made in Iraq, one of the worst was leaving precipitately in 2011 without ensuring a serious dialogue and power-sharing between Sunnis and Shia. The result has been Sunni alienation, on which Isis can feed.
It is no coincidence that many of the deputies to the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, come from the ranks of former Saddam military officers and Ba’athist officials. There is a similar discontent among Sunnis in Syria, who have been subject to Alawite rule and the tyranny of the Assad family. Unless we start to address the grievances that underlie Sunni alienation we have no chance whatsoever of resolving the problem of Isis.
Even beyond that we have to consider the unthinkable: the probability that we will in the end have to talk to Isis. Every time we have met a terrorist group we have said we will never talk to them; but from the original IRA in 1919 to Eoka in Cyprus, the FMLN in El Salvador, the Gam in Indonesia, the Milf in the Philippines, the PLO in Palestine and the Farc in Colombia, we have ended up doing so. People say Isis is different and the rule doesn’t apply. Of course it is different, just as each of those groups was different from each other, but does that really mean that all the lessons we have learned from our previous encounters are no longer valid?
I am not suggesting for a moment that we should sit down with Baghdadi now and try to negotiate, even if he were prepared to sit down with us. But we should do what we did in all previous conflicts: open a quiet channel that will allow us to begin negotiations once both sides have come to the realisation that there is no military solution. The British government opened a secret channel to the IRA in 1972, but negotiations did not begin until 20 years later. At some stage it will become apparent that we can’t wipe out the idea of jihadism militarily even if we destroy Isis and al-Qaida. We then need to be ready to talk.
People suggest that there is nothing to talk to Isis about. But it is important to understand that talking to terrorists is not the same as agreeing with them. The British would never have discussed a united Ireland at the barrel of a gun against the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland. But when we sat down with the IRA, its leaders wanted to talk about legitimate subjects like power-sharing and human rights. The same will be true of Isis. No one is going to talk to them about a universal caliphate, but we can talk about Sunni grievances and a way of ending violence.
I am not arguing that talking is an alternative to fighting. Unless there is military pressure the armed group will never be prepared to talk. But judging by history, fighting is unlikely to provide an answer by itself. If I were an MP I would vote for bombing in Syria as in Iraq. But I would also want to know who is really going to provide the boots on the ground to fight Isis; and be assured of a serious political strategy to address Sunni grievances in Iraq and Syria.
If we learn the lessons of the past and combine all these tools – military pressure, addressing grievances and offering a political way out – and do it soon rather than trying everything else first, we may be able to spare a great many lives in the Middle East and in Europe.
I was going to post this piece of Daily Mash political satire 2 days ago. And now it seems even more appropriate.
DAVID Cameron has called on Britain to flatten the last remaining bumpy bits of Syria.
Making his case for British airstrikes against ISIS, the prime minister told the House of Commons there was an outside lavatory 15 miles from Aleppo that still has its roof attached.
He added: “It stands there, being a toilet, brazenly defying our values. If not now, when?”
The prime minster then listed seven other small buildings across Syria that remain structurally sound, including a newsagent, a car wash and a fruit kiosk that could be sheltering up 20,000 ISIS maniacs.
He added: “We have learned the lessons of Iraq. Too many buildings were left standing in Iraq. And it was in those buildings that ISIS was formed.
“We will only bring peace to the Middle East when all the buildings have been destroyed and everyone has to stand around in the street.”
Meanwhile, Cameron has not ruled out sending troops to Syria to jump up and down on any small bits of the country still sticking out of the ground in a campaign codenamed ‘Operation Snooker Table’.
The group said on Twitter that it opposed UK bombing raids.
“We are against the UK strikes on Raqqa. All the world is bombing Raqqa and the UK will not make any change in the situation. If the UK wants to help people then it should accept Syrian refugees and not close the border.
“Just bombing IS in Raqqa from the sky will not defeat IS, but it will make people suffer more. IS will use the UK strikes to recruit new people in the West and new fighters and maybe they will carry out terrorist attacks.
“In the end nobody will liberate Raqqa except the people of Raqqa.”
Are you tempted? This sign, from a hotel in Kühlungsborn on the GDR coast, 1987, reads “We’re Looking Forward to Your Visit”. Enough said …..
Then this memorable image, from the newly-completed Gross Klein housing estate in Rostock, built in the 1980s in the prefabricated concrete style typical of communist East Germany. It had capacity for almost 20,000 people: progress in residential construction was measured solely in terms of the number of apartments built. The environment of those new homes was regarded as secondary. Siegfried Wittenburg took this picture in 1981 but was banned from exhibiting it at the time.
These images are part of a powerful new collection of ‘actually existing socialist’ goodies mostly taken in the 1980s by GDR photographer Siegfried Wittenburg: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-photographer-remembers-forbidden-photos-of-everyday-life-in-east-germany-a-707570.html
An insight into the nature of the beast: over 400 of those killed by ISIS since June are reportedly their own forces – executed for ‘spying’. And over 2000 – a clear majority in other words – are allegecly civilians.
In addition, according to the UK based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, during the same period ISIS killed 930 members of a clan in the northeastern Deir al-Zor province of Syria, apparently in retaliation for showing opposition to their forces. Furthermore, over the past few months over 240 ISIS executions of rival rebels and Kurdish fighters, as well as 975 members of Syrian regime forces, have been documented.
I do not support UK or other Western air strikes on Syria. At the same time, it is crucial that we have no illusions about the pathologically destructive and violent nature – as well as the continuing murderous actions – of the forces that continue to terrorize large swathes of Syria and Iraq.
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ISIS executes 3,500 in Syria since declaring ‘caliphate:’ activists
Agence France Presse, 30 Nov. 2015
BEIRUT: ISIS has executed more than 3,500 people in Syria, including nearly 2,000 civilians, since declaring its “caliphate” in June last year, activists said Sunday.
In the last month alone ISIS executed 53 people – including 35 civilians – in areas it controls in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The new figures from the Britain-based Observatory bring to 3,591 the number of people executed by ISIS in Syria since it declared its Islamic “caliphate” after seizing control of large parts of the country.
The new toll includes 1,945 civilians, including 103 women and 77 children, with civilians defined as those who are not taking part in the fighting.
Some were executed for alleged witchcraft, homosexuality and collaborating with the US-led coalition that has been bombarding ISIS in Syria since September 2014.
Members of Sunni Shaitat tribe account for around half of the civilians killed. ISIS killed 930 members of the clan in the northeastern Deir al-Zor province last year after they opposed the extremist Sunni Muslim group.
The monitor also documented 247 ISIS executions of rival rebels and Kurdish fighters, as well as the executions of 975 members of regime forces.
ISIS has also executed 415 of its own members it accused of crimes including spying, many of them captured as they were trying to desert the group, according to the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, medical staff and fighters on the ground.
ISIS controls large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
In Syria, it controls areas in the Homs and Hama provinces in the center, Deir al-Zor and Hassakeh in the northeast, as well as Raqa and Aleppo in the north.
The jihadist group counts tens of thousands of fighters and carries out abductions, rapes, beheadings and stonings in the areas under its influence.
The United Nations has accused it of “crimes against humanity”.
More than 250,000 people have been killed and more than four million have fled the country since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.
It’s all been stage-managed to a degree: some of the French players aren’t singing; and ‘RIP La France’ – as one placard proclaims – seems a monumentally inappropriate message in the circumstances. But still .. a glorious, fleeting, powerful moment of Ango-French solidarity before the kick-off of last night’s soccer friendly between the two countries.
Vive La France! Solidarité entre nous, citoyens européens et du monde entier!
Here’s an article published in Ceylon Today (15 November 2015) focused around extensive extracts from my new book – albeit on aspects of the story of Norwegian involvement in Sri Lanka that will probably be of most interest to students of the island’s recent history rather than the lay reader.
Still, both the stories Mohan hones in on are good ones: unfettered Indian – or more specifically, Tamil Nadu – support to the LTTE in the 1980s; and smuggling LTTE strategist Anton Balasnigham out of the country for an urgently-needed kidney transplant – with a bit of help from the Norwegians . ..
SULOCHANA RAMIAH MOHAN
Political and cultural history of the tiny mango shaped island on the planet earth attracted the world, way back in the 60s when Sirimavo Bandaranaike was made the first woman Prime Minister in the world. But in the aftermath of the 1983 ‘Black July’, whenever a Sri Lankan introduced his or herself to anyone anywhere in the world, the immediate reaction one would get was that ‘Oh it’s that guerrilla fighting country isn’t it? That is how Sri Lankans were recognized and that level of popularity for Prabhakaran was due to the blessings ushered by former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), ‘Ronald Regan of Tamil Nadu’, which cannot be disputed. Every time Prabhakaran ambushed and killed the government forces-
Political and cultural history of the tiny mango shaped island on the planet earth attracted the world, way back in the 60s when Sirimavo Bandaranaike was made the first woman Prime Minister in the world. But in the aftermath of the 1983 ‘Black July’, whenever a Sri Lankan introduced his or herself to anyone anywhere in the world, the immediate reaction one would get was that ‘Oh it’s that guerrilla fighting country isn’t it? That is how Sri Lankans were recognized and that level of popularity for Prabhakaran was due to the blessings ushered by former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), ‘Ronald Regan of Tamil Nadu’, which cannot be disputed. Every time Prabhakaran ambushed and killed the government forces, the people in the world wondered how could he do it having a tiny set of armed militants and Prabhakaran himself admitted their strength came from MGR till he died in 1987.
Today, LTTE’s 30 years of war has been reviewed and retold by many persons locally and internationally exposing how the war began, and who were the actors who played for them and against them before being wiped out. Mark Salter, author of the book To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka has done the very same, but with more information that was not revealed before.
Since Oslo’s involvement with then peace envoy Erik Solheim and Vidar Helgesen, who went on to become household names in Sri Lanka on account of their role in their country’s peace facilitation effort, Salter has some very interesting ‘inside stories’ of this association.
One of the chapters in Salter’s book talks about how MGR has been the ‘pillar’ of Prabhakran’s revolt. MGR’s (the silver screen’s) ‘revolutionary leader’ in fact adored the ‘real life revolutionary leader’ Velupillai Prabhakaran and this fact was revealed by Prabhakran himself.
Freedom fighter or war monger
From the year 1970 to mid-1987 Tamil Nadu government has been ‘dear’ to Prabhakran. The Tamil Nadu people recognized him as a ‘freedom fighter’ and admired his personality while others called him a ‘war monger’. Prabhakran himself recalled how MGR had been his backbone in running the LTTE’s strategic war operations and helped him to become the most powerful guerrilla outfit known in the world.
MGR heard about Prabhakaran when he and his rival – PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, exchanged fire at Pondy Bazaar and the Tamil Nadu Police arrested Prabhakaran and his fellow fighter Raghavan on the same day.
They were granted conditional bail. Prabhakaran recalled in an interview that ‘Tamil Nadu people started to see them and their politicians began to support them’. When Prabhakaran was about to be repatriated to Sri Lanka after the shoot, the first man to oppose it was MGR along with Nedumaran and Vaiko.
While number of Tamil militant groups were operating in Tamil Nadu, MGR attempted to unite them, had called a meeting of the leaders of those groups. MGR wanted to see who this man called Prabhakaran was, making news in the tiny island – Sri Lanka. Instead of Prabhakaran, his senior cadres Shankar, one Subramaniam and Dr. Anton Balasingham went to meet MGR in Chennai.
MGR – Prabha’s ATM
Prabhakran referred to MGR as ‘Anna’ (elder brother) while MGR assiduously promoted the struggle from the very first day he met Prabhakaran. MGR who met Sankar, Dr. Anton Balasingham (Bala) and Subramainam initially had promised he would do anything for the LTTE, in fact MGR could be called the ‘automated teller machine’ (ATM) of the LTTE.
On the second occasion it was Prabhakaran who met him along with Shankar. It is revealed that Shankar smilingly had told MGR that they needed weapons to protect their Tamil homeland. “How much do you want?” was the next question. “Is it possible to give us Rs 20 million posed Shankar, and MGR has queried “is that enough?” It is said even Prabhakaran was surprised when he had said he would not hesitate to give that cash. “We could not believe it when he agreed to give us that money. Was he saying he is going to give money?” Shankar and Prabhakaran could not believe their ears but looked at each other puzzled. The following day MGR met Prabhakaran and handed over the money he needed. It is said that MGR kept giving money for Prabhakaran every time he asked.
Salter’s book To End a Civil War Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka also recollects MGR’s friendship with Prabhakaran as told by Bala to Solheim.
Bala revealed to Solheim that in the 1980s MGR was immensely popular among Indian Tamils; a popularity that stemmed partly from his having played the hero underdog in many films … MGR ‘adopted’ Prabhakaran and gave massive support to the LTTE.
Bala told Solheim how he and Prabhakaran had become the darlings of MGR, and received vast amounts of money as a result.
“On one occasion, for example, Bala related to me how by chance the LTTE had refused to attend a meeting of Tamil militant groups summoned by MGR’s main political rival Karunanidhi. That was much to the taste of MGR. The following day Prabhakaran and Bala were asked to meet him. The Tamil Nadu first minister simply asked them: ‘How much do you need?’ Prabhakaran mentioned an amount in millions of rupees and MGR apparently replied, ‘That’s far too little, you need more.’ Then he went to his bookshelf, picked up a huge pile of cash and put it into Prabhakaran’s hands—ten times the amount that Prabhakaran had asked for. Later, when the weapons had been purchased and delivered to Chennai harbour, MGR again came to the LTTE’s rescue. The military hardware was loaded into cars and taken with police escort to the safe house where Prabhakaran and Bala were hiding. Later it was transported across the Palk Strait to Sri Lanka,” Solheim narrates.
It is said on several occasions Prabhakaran ran to MGR and he just kept assisting without any hesitation. While the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister was increasingly protected and kept out of the public eye, Prabhakaran and his clan could always meet him. “He never treated us as talking to a Chief Minster. MGR told us to take the struggle forward till we capture Eelam,” in an interview Prabhakaran gave on Vanni news.com.
“He said in our struggle his part is always there and would support us throughout till we take the Eelam. I will give you weapons too he said. That support made us strong and could take forward the struggle successfully during that period,” the LTTE leader said. On screen and off screen the two ‘revolutionary’ leaders admired each other’s friendship as their thinking was on the same line – heroism, patriotism, nationalist, love for the people, mothers and children.
Despite the Indian government applying pressure on the LTTE to stop the arm struggle and applying conditions on him, Prabhakaran was adamant because MGR was there to say don’t listen to the Centre. MGR said the pressure was not from him, and the two leaders boosted each other’s on screen and off screen images till their deaths, many opined.
The kidney transplant saga
Bala, spokesperson and advisor to the LTTE had been ailing from a kidney related disease and was a chronic diabetic like Prabhakaran. However Bala suffered immensely till he met with his death. The book To End a Civil War Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka quotes how Bala had to reach Oslo for a kidney transplant and then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s (CBK) government knew about it.
The Government of Sri Lanka often had to ‘rough out’ or ‘rub shoulders’ with the LTTE due to their tactics and on this occasion where Bala fell seriously ill, thought it would be ideal to ‘fix a deal’ when the call to help move Bala out of Sri Lanka for medical assistance came from Prabhakaran.
A kidney transplant appeared to be the obvious solution” Solheim says in Salter’s book. “In Norway there are two ways to get an organ: through a close relative, or you sit in line and wait for one as a result of a traffic accident or some such event. Bala had found a relative, a Vanni Tamil with the right blood type who offered a kidney.
At a certain point Bala informed that the kidney donor transport had been organised, but he requested that the donor should be allowed to stay in Europe afterwards. ‘At our request the young man was brought to Jakarta by the LTTE. We had a very able ambassador there, Sjur Torgersen, with wide experience of ‘out of the box’ diplomatic activities. Sjur took care of him and put him on a plane to Europe. It was the man’s first trip outside Sri Lanka and I still recall his surprise over the escalators at Amsterdam Airport. He gave his kidney at the Norwegian National Hospital, and later went to the UK, where I think he remains to this day,” Solheim notes. The transplant took place in Oslo in February 2000.
Solheim explains further that the operation itself was kept secret, basically [out of deference to] Colombo. But the news was out in the Tamil community in Oslo within hours of his arrival in town. There were Tamils working at the hotel where he was staying as well as at the national hospital. They recognized him in a second, while no Norwegian even blinked. It speaks loudly for the discipline of the Tamil community that no one leaked this to the media. What was the reaction to all this from Colombo? ‘We kept them informed’, says Solheim. ‘They had no difficulty with the way in which Bala had managed to get out of Sri Lanka. Chandrika said it was a humanitarian issue. And after she announced the peace process, news of Bala’s kidney transplant was taken positively.’
The book states that after it became apparent that the terms for allowing Bala to exit the country being put forward by GoSL were unacceptable to the LTTE, a decision was taken to ‘smuggle’ him out of the Vanni by the Sea Tigers i.e. by ship to Phuket, Thailand on 23 Jan. 1999, ‘most likely with CBK’s knowledge and consent.
Events leading up to Bala’s departure from SL are also covered in some detail in Bala’s own book War and Peace and Adele Balasingham’s book ‘The Will to Freedom‘.
If there is a reliable strategic purpose to terrorism it is simply this: to shake things up. To change things. To kick over the table and play a different game instead. The best way, always, to win that particular game is not to accept the invitation to play.
Thoughtful, focused openDemocracy commentary on the IS Paris attacks.
For the terrorists, best would be to be left alone to consolidate. Next best would be an epic all-out confrontation with western infidel ground forces. We should not give them what they want.
On Friday’s massacres in France, I predicted that the attacks would turn out to have been centrally organised by IS – as opposed to being by locals acting in their name, or by Al Qaida.
It was hardly going out on a limb, but it has indeed turned out to be accurate.
So, what now? It is always risky to read too much into any one terrorist attack. The Madrid train bombings, for example, have often been interpreted as the straightforward culmination of a jihadi strategic study, published online called Jihadi Iraq, Hopes and Dangers, which argued that Spain was the weak link in the ‘crusader’ alliance, and that knocking it out could create a domino effect that would severely undermine the US’s coalition in Iraq.
It was too neat though. It read back from the highly contingent fact that Jose Maria Aznar’s Partido Popular would go on to be defeated in the election that followed, to assume that this was what the attackers must have had in mind all along.
In reality, the electoral defeat had more to do with the discovery that Aznar had lied about the identity of the attackers than the attacks themselves, and the conspiracy behind the Madrid train bombings would turn out in any case out to have deeper, more complex origins.
It also forgot the longer history of jihadist violence in Spain, such as the El Descanso bombing in 1985.
There is a deeper lesson about terrorism here. Terrorist attacks are unpredictable in their effects. Indeed, they are inherently so. Where violence occurs in order to achieve a clearly comprehensible and immediate outcome, we tend to refer to it as something else. Those who don’t share the agenda of a given terrorist group almost inevitably cast around for tactical or strategic explanations, and often the terrorists do so as well. But the seeming rationality of strategic accounts is often illusory for all that.
Did IS attack France in order to deter? Or in order to provoke? Whichever it was will no doubt seem obvious in hindsight. Already, President Hollande is referring to the attacks as an‘act of war’. But was it so whenever this operation was being put together? Overrating the strategically rational motivations of terrorism is often, I suspect, to do with a failure to truly appreciate the seriousness (usually dealt with using the conveniently colourless word ‘ideology’) with which terrorists take the morality of their own acts.
From IS’s point of view, it is simple. It is fighting for Muslims against ferocious, predatory monsters who will do everything in their power to annihilate all it holds dear. Apropos of this, it is worth making the point that France – while not a particularly prominent country in IS’s official communiqués to date, is somewhere for which global jihadists arguably reserve a special hatred. In 2009, the pioneering jihadi ‘fan’ magazine Jihad Recollections published an article arguing the case for regarding Europe, and especially France, as even worse than America, and deserving a special priority on that account. When George W. Bush said after 9/11 that al Qaida hated America for its values, that really wasn’t reflective of AQ’s main priorities at the time. But this is a line Francois Hollande could more legitimately lay claim to this time around. Jihadis utterly despise secular republicanism.
This is all the more reason for France to truly live up to its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity for all French citizens, striving to deliver that promise unflinchingly, but without hypocrisy, inequality or covert racism.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the attacks on Paris yesterday reflect a genuine change in strategic choice by IS. Analysis of the group’s past statements has not encouraged the view that it has previously had a serious longstanding interest in ‘going global’ with its attacks, as opposed to consolidating its territorial all-but state. Besides which, the chillingly effective simplicity of the attacks themselves – striking for the most part at relatively nondescript targets that will never be a top priority for protection, using familiar and readily available weapons, argue against the idea that IS has been trying to do this for a very long time without success.
No doubt major attacks have been thwarted. But if this sort of thing is what IS, at its present level of capacity – really wants to focus on – then all the sophisticated intelligence sharing and surveillance in the world won’t be able to stop it completely from doing this sort of thing.
So what does this tell us? The most obvious implication is that the present strategy against IS is working. Up to now, pessimists have been swift to point out that air strikes have not apparently damped IS’s offensive dynamism or ability to control territory, while slow, painful advances against the group, as in Tikrit, have usually been rapidly compensated for by counter advances elsewhere. But as the analyst Will McCants observed in a BBC interview yesterday, that may be beginning to change.
The killing of Mohammed Emwazi (whose murderous brutality, revolting as it was, apparently posed no immediate strategic threat to the UK warranting the claim of self-defence) nonetheless does indicate that probably no one in IS, however high up, can expect to move around safely any more. The recapture of Sinjar by Kurdish forces is, similarly, a morale boost. But more than that, it is indicative in the bigger picture of the fact that IS, however much it tries to re-assert its momentum, is now locked into precisely the kind of war of attrition which fanatic passion and daring ingenuity cannot win.
For IS, losing to a coalition of local militias with air support is clearly the least optimal outcome. Best would be to be left alone to consolidate. Next best would be an epic all-out confrontation with western infidel ground forces.
If there is a reliable strategic purpose to terrorism it is simply this: to shake things up. To change things. To kick over the table and play a different game instead. The best way, always, to win that particular game is not to accept the invitation to play.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/gilbert-ramsay/is-attacks-and-not-playing-game
There’s some simplification, more than a few touches of stereotyping and hyperbole: it doesn’t offer any solutions; and it comes from a traditionally robustly conservative UK media soource. But in the main this article offers a well-articulated analysis of the serious challenges facing Sweden on the back of Europe’s continuing refugee crisis.
Choice quote: ‘Britain is a country that is unsure of immigration, but loves immigrants. In Sweden, sadly, it’s the other way around’.
The Daily Telegraph 12 Nov 2015
When it opened 15 years ago, the Öresund Bridge was seen as a glistening symbol of the new Europe. Sweden and Denmark had been joined together by a motorway with no border controls, fusing together economies and even blurring national identities. Many Swedes in Malmö have come to relish the city’s growing reputation as a suburb of Copenhagen, just half an hour away by train. It seemed to embody many dreams about the future: a continent where national borders would come to mean nothing. That dream was shattered at noon today.
After months of fretting, police finally introduced border controls on the Swedish side of the bridge: the latest symbol of Europe’s unravelling free movement project. There are many others: the razor wire separating Slovenia from Croatia; the border patrols on trains between Germany and Austria.
This has been painful for everyone, but devastating for Sweden because its main political parties barely know how to respond. Openness is the closest thing the Swedes have to a national religion, this policy is visibly failing – and there is no back-up plan.
When David Cameron set up the Northern Future Forum five years ago, it seemed like application for honorary British membership of Scandinavia. Then, it seemed to make sense. This was the land of snow, sea and supply-side economics – where tax cuts had steered the country out of recession long before any other European country. Sweden seemed to be lodestar to the world: George W Bush had copied its pensions policy, Tony Blair borrowed its hospitals policy, the Tories aped the free schools. The most socialistic country in the free word – yet still so entrepreneurial that it could sell cider to the English.
The headlines now suggest a country that is coming apart. Just last month, an asylum centre in the picturesque town of Munkedal was set alight, the latest in a series of arson attacks against refugees. Anti-Semitic incidents in Malmö have raised such concern that Swedes have now started “kippa walks”, gathering in their hundreds to accompany Jews home from the synagogue in a show of solidarity. The Sweden Democrats, a party routinely denounced by Swedish media as “neo-fascist”, is now leading in the national opinion polls. Economically, Sweden remains strong. But politically, it’s in crisis.
The problem stems from its famous openness. Swedes have long seen their country as a humanitarian superpower – one that may avoid military conflict, but stands in the front line of helping the world’s dispossessed. In the late Sixties, it welcomed Eastern Europeans who fled the Soviets, my wife’s parents among them. They were given everything by this wonderful country – food, accommodation, lessons in Swedish and even help to make sure their Stockholm-born daughters could still speak Czech. My family is one of many with reason to be grateful for Sweden’s habit of treating its openness as an article of faith.
But this became the problem. When the migration situation changed, Swedish policy did not. The numbers now arriving were never envisaged: this year alone, almost 200,000 are expected to arrive in this sparsely populated country. Adjust for population size, and it’s like Britain finding space for a refugee population the size of Birmingham each year. Sweden’s immigration agency has already run out of beds, and has been accommodating asylum-seekers at its head office.
Refugees crossing Slovenia, October 2015
The problem of professional Romanian and Bulgarian beggars is, for visitors, the most striking. They sit outside Stockholm’s underground stations and coffee shops, often piling their belongings in plastic bags on the street. This seems to advertise that the authorities have lost control. A violinist friend of mine who lives in one of Stockholm’s main shopping streets complains that, if she’d start busking, she’d be removed by police very quickly. But the beggars literally camped outside her front door are undisturbed. It doesn’t take a xenophobe to feel a sense of injustice – and yet, right now, the only party articulating the injustice is the Sweden Democrats.
A man ascends on an escalator as signs put up by the Sweden Democrats political party are seen at Ostermalmstorg subway station in Stockholm Photo: REUTERS
If the finest political minds in Sweden had set out to incubate a far-Right backlash in the world’s most tolerant country, they could not have done better than what has happened over the last few years. First, run an open-door immigration policy making your country the top destination in the middle of a global migration crisis. Next denounce as “neo-fascist” anyone who raises objections. All of this has handed entire sections of the electorate on a plate to the Sweden Democrats. Its leader, Jimmie Åkesson, was on sick leave for five months – he need not have returned. His rivals have been doing all his work for him.
During the summer, I spent a few days at the Swedish political festival in Almedalen, in the island of Gotland. It was, itself, an advert for openness: an open-air party conference with no security checks. The Prime Minister wanders around, addressing anyone who pulls up a chair. At the time, David Cameron’s election victory was being much discussed. The Swedes were taken aback, some even appalled, at the language used: stopping migrants from claiming benefits for four years? Pulling out of the European Union? How can a globally minded nation like Britain have such dirty-sounding politics?
The explanation is simple: Britain is a country that is unsure about immigration, but loves immigrants. In Sweden, sadly, it’s the other way around. Britons fret about border controls, but we don’t hesitate to hire immigrants when they arrive. In Sweden, immigrants are twice as likely to be unemployed as natives, one of the worst ratios in the developed world. Accepting immigration at such a level, while being unable to integrate it, is the recipe not just for a political crisis but a national identity crisis.
A few weeks ago, a nursery near my wife’s family’s home announced that it would do its bit, by accommodating some asylum-seekers. The next night, it was set ablaze. Such stories would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. A surfeit of compassion is not the worst vice for a country to have – yet this has, now, ended up roiling far darker forces which it is struggling to contain. Sweden has spent almost 20 years being admired and imitated for reasons that are still valid. But in misjudging the immigration crisis, it now stands as a tragic example of what not to do.