Increasing resilience will destroy Islamic State

If the coalition deploys ground troops against Islamic State, also known as Daesh, and combines these with air raids, the rebel army will be broken before Christmas: especially if US marines take the lead in the battle on the ground. Before the New Year, marines will be able to set up an Iwo Jima tableau on the central square in Raqqa. Most people agree with this, including Steve Coll in his incisive comment on the Paris terrorist attacks in the latest issue of The New Yorker. But is a broken Islamic State a goal in itself, and will it weaken terrorism?

This all depends on who fills the void left by Islamic State, and maintains order through a monopoly of violence. Will it be the Assad regime or the Kurds and the Syrian opposition in cooperation with the Iraqi government, Hezbollah and Iran? And what will happen to Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra? Are they a part of a post-Islamic State order, or will the US marines have to fight against these factions afterwards? Or will NATO forces under the leadership of the US or perhaps France maintain post-Islamic State order? How long will they be there? For 10-15 years, before they are ordered home without having achieved a sustained and stable order?

In the same way as the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was defeated after a few months of war in October to December 2001; as Saddam Hussein was overturned and his regime crushed after about two months of war; and finally, like the successful defeat of Gadhafi in Libya in a Western-orchestrated attack, Islamic State can be defeated and removed from Raqqa, Mosul and Ramadi before Christmas, provided Obama, Hollande, Putin and Cameron can agree on deploying, let’s say, 150,000 ground troops.

Will this stop terrorism in the region and in Europe? Will it stop the flood of refugees? Of course, this cannot be ruled out, but it depends on clear answers to the questions above and, as yet, these are unknown. Not even the Russian peace move on Syria, currently being negotiated at the peace talks in Vienna, is answering the question of how a post-Islamic State order should look. Yet it does need to be divided – or demolished as John Kerry phrase it - into areas in which different militias as well as the Assad regime separately has control. But where do Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra belong in this world, and how will Turkey react to Kurdish home rule and control in the north of Syria? What will the local and other opposition groups think about the fact that, at least for a period, Assad is part of the solution, and how will the related territories in Iraq and Syria be controlled? Can we accept a sectarian Iraqi government working together with Assad, and continue to defend this militarily, while its own soldiers just sit and draw their pay without touching their weapons until the enemy is at the gates of Shia areas in Baghdad and in the south?

When the Taliban were overturned in 2001, no one had the answer to how a post-Taliban system would look. The Taliban had no significant military technology such as tanks, anti-aircraft artillery, fighter planes or combat helicopters, but as Barry R. Posen, professor of security studies at MIT, writes in The Atlantic, the Taliban succeeded in opposing the US and the coalition anyway, and today they are stronger than ever in the Afghani conflict. All things considered, a ”peace-winning strategy” was not in place in Iraq, and on closer inspection, the highly commended strategy for combating rebellion, conducted by the now degraded general Petraeus, has proved to be just Oriental idealisation. The war in Iraq, and its scandalous management largely created the breeding ground for Islamic State. Finally, there is Libya, where the price was a prolonged divide between Russia and China on the one hand and the US on the other, as well as a Libya and a Sahel tormented by conflict and terrorism, evidenced among other things by the recent tragic hostage situation in the Mali hotel.

All those who, as a result of the horrendous acts of terrorism in France, are now arguing for more bombs and deployment of ground troops against Islamic State, should provide an answer to how a post-Islamic State order should be dealt with - and by whom.

Even though it is understandable that, out of fear, powerlessness, anger and probably also a thirst for revenge, politicians want to see Islamic State bombed into oblivion, they may want to reconsider. If West is not willing to deploy large numbers of ground troops to control a post-Islamic State order for many years to come, or if the West does not have clear ideas about who could handle this task, the defeat of Islamic State will only lead to a repeat of the situation we have in Libya and Sahel today: frankly, bringing us back where we started.

Moreover, a group like Islamic State is capable of appealing to young men and women in urban ghettos in European societies, particularly in France, Belgium and the UK. This means that these polarised European societies contain a platform for terrorism that cannot be removed by defeating Islamic State in Syria, but which may potentially breed terrorists such as those behind the Paris massacre. Again and again the last ten years the iron fist has been the only tool against the riots and terrorism that have taken their rise in urban suburbs, and the Authorities will probably now use it with even more force. City suburbs are seen as breeding grounds for terrorism and not as what they actually also are: large areas with socially marginalised people, often of Middle Eastern or African origin, who do not support terrorism. On the home front, the bombs in Syria will be followed up by anti-terrorism, states of emergency and intense governmental control, surveillance and internment in urban ghettos.

This will weaken what desperately needs strengthening: resilience in local communities, whether it be in the Anbar province, Raqqa or the suburbs of Paris.

The strategy the US and the coalition have used up to now is containment of Islamic State by means of air support for local militias, as well as border controls. This has meant that Islamic State has not been able to expand its territory, and in some areas Islamic State has even been pushed back. In other areas, Islamic State has expanded its territory, for example in Ramadi, where neither the coalition nor the Iraqi army managed to support the Sunni Muslim tribes which had held their ground against Islamic State since December 2013. This is actually one of the great defeats suffered by the coalition, because their strategy is based on the belief that Islamic State will fragment from within when money and supplies run out, because groups will break with Islamic State and help the coalition by taking over Islamic State territory. However, they cannot and will not do this unless the coalition offers support and security (that it is futile to expect anything from the Iraqi government and army has been clear from the beginning). In other words, the resistance will fall.

Similarly, France has neglected to do anything definitive to address the many problems in urban ghettos, even though numerous presidents have promised to do so. Instead, these areas have been regarded as security zones, in which more or less everyone is seen as a potential criminal; even those who are against Islamic State. The result is increasing mistrust towards the government and the authorities as well as weakened resilience towards radical gangs.

Initiatives such as intensive bombings in Syria (if they do not hit Islamic State directly and precisely), and designation of the Parisian and Belgian suburbs as security zones, do not combat terrorism; in fact they risk increasing it.

Continued containment of Islamic State, and increased diplomatic attempts at a collective strategy that includes the Syrian opposition and its attitude to the Russian peace plan, that confronts the issue of the relationship with Ahrar al-Sham as well as the relationship between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey, and finally that holds the Iraqi government accountable for their sectarian policies, should be pursued calmly and patiently. There must also be a real effort to do something about the ghettos and to counteract the increasing polarisation in Europe by accommodating the marginalised groups who do not support Islamic State - and these are definitely in the majority.

There is no quick fix to Islamic State and terrorism. But it is much better to increase resilience against Islamic State in the Middle East as well as the European ghettos than to bomb and squeeze it out in the illusory belief that military solutions and an iron fist towards our own populations can be effective.