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I'm trying to get my head around the whole IS ISIS ISIL Daesh thing. Although I don't know much about military strategy, I can believe that mere military might is not going to defeat them. I'm also too much of a cynic to believe that the group's actions are motivated, at base, by religious belief and not greed or powerlust. So I'm going to read a bunch of articles people pointed to in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris, and try to answer two questions: one, if bombing Daesh won't work, what will? Two, what's their real motivation?
There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS, Esquire, 14 November 2015. The writer, Charles P. Pierce, points out that attacking military targets in the Middle East won't stop terrorist attacks in the West. His alternative is to cut off the funding for terrorist groups coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters, The Nation, 21 October 2015. The Iraqi prisoners Lydia Wilson and fellow researchers interviewed were not motivated by Daesh's ideology, but by other factors, such as the prospect of adventure and a chance to escape the indignities of American occupation and Shia oppression.
Here's What a Man [political scientist Robert Pape] Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS' Motives, The Nation, 3 December 2015: "What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly." Pape discusses Daesh's short- and long-term goals in some detail, but in brief, their aim is not to bring about the Caliphate and/or the end of the world, but to get the US and its allies to withdraw from the Middle East.
What ISIS Really Wants, The Atlantic, March 2015. This is the odd one out, arguing that Daesh is all about fanatical religious belief, apparently taking their statements at face value - in fact, I think the article's main use is giving a lot of detail on Daesh's stated ideology, though I guess writer Graeme Wood could be right that we can predict their strategies from that ideology. The repeated description of Daesh as "mediaeval" doesn't jibe with Waleed Aly's analysis in People Like Us, which describes groups like the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida as "radically modern"; but the Atlantic article cites Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel's view that Daesh are "authentic throwbacks" to the seventh century (discarding the centuries of Islamic tradition since then). But do Daesh want territory because, to qualify for the job, their caliph must have territory - or is the caliphate a great excuse to grab territory? Are its cruel practices a strict interpretation of the Koran, or "a holy order to scare the shit out of them [its enemies] with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict," as a supporter tells Wood? (Cf the Aztecs' mass sacrifices of POWs in front of enemy leaders, or the seizure of accused witches' property. Religion was the stated reason, power and money the underlying one.)
There are plenty of critiques of the Atlantic article, but perhaps the most valuable is What The Atlantic Left Out About ISIS According To Their Own Expert [ie Bernard Haykel] from ThinkProgress (20 February 2015). It concludes: "Taken together, Haykel's comments appeared to argue that effectively combating ISIS will require more than discerning what "ISIS wants," theologically speaking. Instead, it also requires a deep, abiding dedication to providing what most Muslims in the region want, and what Wood only briefly addresses in his article: stability, jobs, education, and, most of all, peace."
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ETA: Rundle: same old murderous song and dance as we bomb IS again (Crikey, 23 November 2015). Scorching. "There is not one iota of geopolitical strategy involved in this — it is simply the political caste/class looking busy, so that the public, in their fear and uncertainty, doesn’t turn on them."
There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS, Esquire, 14 November 2015. The writer, Charles P. Pierce, points out that attacking military targets in the Middle East won't stop terrorist attacks in the West. His alternative is to cut off the funding for terrorist groups coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters, The Nation, 21 October 2015. The Iraqi prisoners Lydia Wilson and fellow researchers interviewed were not motivated by Daesh's ideology, but by other factors, such as the prospect of adventure and a chance to escape the indignities of American occupation and Shia oppression.
Here's What a Man [political scientist Robert Pape] Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS' Motives, The Nation, 3 December 2015: "What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly." Pape discusses Daesh's short- and long-term goals in some detail, but in brief, their aim is not to bring about the Caliphate and/or the end of the world, but to get the US and its allies to withdraw from the Middle East.
What ISIS Really Wants, The Atlantic, March 2015. This is the odd one out, arguing that Daesh is all about fanatical religious belief, apparently taking their statements at face value - in fact, I think the article's main use is giving a lot of detail on Daesh's stated ideology, though I guess writer Graeme Wood could be right that we can predict their strategies from that ideology. The repeated description of Daesh as "mediaeval" doesn't jibe with Waleed Aly's analysis in People Like Us, which describes groups like the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida as "radically modern"; but the Atlantic article cites Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel's view that Daesh are "authentic throwbacks" to the seventh century (discarding the centuries of Islamic tradition since then). But do Daesh want territory because, to qualify for the job, their caliph must have territory - or is the caliphate a great excuse to grab territory? Are its cruel practices a strict interpretation of the Koran, or "a holy order to scare the shit out of them [its enemies] with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict," as a supporter tells Wood? (Cf the Aztecs' mass sacrifices of POWs in front of enemy leaders, or the seizure of accused witches' property. Religion was the stated reason, power and money the underlying one.)
There are plenty of critiques of the Atlantic article, but perhaps the most valuable is What The Atlantic Left Out About ISIS According To Their Own Expert [ie Bernard Haykel] from ThinkProgress (20 February 2015). It concludes: "Taken together, Haykel's comments appeared to argue that effectively combating ISIS will require more than discerning what "ISIS wants," theologically speaking. Instead, it also requires a deep, abiding dedication to providing what most Muslims in the region want, and what Wood only briefly addresses in his article: stability, jobs, education, and, most of all, peace."
__
ETA: Rundle: same old murderous song and dance as we bomb IS again (Crikey, 23 November 2015). Scorching. "There is not one iota of geopolitical strategy involved in this — it is simply the political caste/class looking busy, so that the public, in their fear and uncertainty, doesn’t turn on them."
