Op IMPACT: CAF in the Iraq & Syria crisis

[Edward Campbell]

Terror and terrorism are "tactics," usually used by the weaker opponent simply because he doesn't have the resources to fight any other way.

When Churchill told SOE (also known as the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare") to "set Europe ablaze,"he wasn't talking about giving Hitler a birthday party: he meant "be terrorists, use terror to unsettle the Germans wherever you can strike at them." It was the classic tactic of the weaker side ... it's been around for centuries:

         

Counter-terrorism, assuming there actually is such a thing, is hideously complex ... think, in recent times, Viet Nam from the 1940s through to the 1970s, of Cyprus and Kenya in the 1950s, and so on.

I don't know enough about Sri Lanka except to say that there was much more than enough wrong on both sides to keep all the gods busy for eternity.One can only hope that few other countries descend into such a hell ... but some will.

 

[Tuan]

Terror and terrorism are "tactics," usually used by the weaker opponent simply because he doesn't have the resources to fight any other way.

Precisely, you've hit the nail right on the head Sir; and this is exactly why some analysts call it a asymmetric warfare!

 

[YZT580]

As most who follow this site are aware, our very word assassin originates in the middle east amongst the ancestors of ISIS.  We are currently confronted with the descendants of the original 'assassins' who have 1. declared themselves an independent country and 2. subsequently declared war on Canada specifically (amongst others) and 3. are currently engaged in butchering or worse all those remaining within their declared sphere of influence who oppose them in any way.  Soft power will only work to help those who having experimented with ISIS, been revolted by its actions, and now want out if we can provide a safe environment for them while at the same time rescuing those from within the caliphate who want out. This haven includes good governance (something Obama and NATO forgot about during the uprisings in Libya et al and when they pulled out of precipitately pulled out of Bagdad).  Both of these elements require the employment of an organized and strong military offensive in the initial stages.  Dropping bombs in the meantime at least stops or slows the advance but until there is an organised army ready to go head to head with |ISIS that is all it will do.  Stopping people from crossing over is only possible when you control the access points and are ready to employ deadly force to sterilize the crossing points.  First thing to do is establish a safe haven so refugees don't have to leave their home territory for very foreign climates. 

That requires force again but then it requires good governance (a place where we are able to advise but it has to be an acceptable government to those who are displaced).  That means it has to be a middle eastern form of government administered by the Syrians themselves.  How you achieve that I don't know but the first step is to initiate plans to stop and eliminate the threat.  Namely destroy every element of ISIS you can find.  Forget name calling or branding and call it like it is: they are the enemy who have declared war on us. 

Does that make sense or am I being too simplistic?

 

[PPCLI Guy]

First off, ISIL is not a descendant of the assassins - in fact they would have been mortal enemies.  The Assassins were a branch of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam.  ISIL is rabidly Sunni.

As to the rest of it, governance is indeed the key, in both Iraq and Syria.  Indeed Gen Allen (President’s Special Envoy for the Global
Coalition to Counter Daesh) publicly speaks of five lines of effort:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2015/06/01-2015-us-islamic-world-forum/2015-0601-brookings-doha-forum-final.pdf

* A military component to deny safe haven and provide security assistance
* Disrupting flow of foreign fighters,
* Disrupting access to financial resources,
* Providing humanitarian relief and stabilization support
* Counter-messaging – or defeating Daesh as an idea.

With respect to stabilization, he has this to say:

As more territory is taken back from Daesh, we must also ensure we’re poised to empower the Iraqi government to act in relief of liberated populations.  We are working closely with the Iraqis, with the support of our Coalition partners, and in particular the Arab states, to help Iraq develop stabilization and recovery plans.

 

[opcougar]

I'll like to see an excerpt of that from the memo that you might be privy to...please

There is a key difference between ISIS and some of the other groups mentioned in this thread though.  LTTE, IRA, ETA, Abu Sayyaf, FARC, pick your freedom fighter movement are merely organizations fighting for some form of national liberation.  They may use terrorist attacks to further their agenda but ultimately they are fighting a war of national liberation.

ISIS, on the other hand, is a doomsday cult.  Yes they are Muslim fundamentalists but what differentiates them from other groups is they believe that the world needs to end and that all non-believers needs to be killed in order to be reborn as believers in Allah and Islam. They are closer to a group like Aum Shinrikyo or the Branch Davidians. 

So while all groups mentioned, LTTE, IRA, ETA, etc... use violence as a means to advance their cause, these groups ultimately have limited strategic objectives.  They are rational organizations and are run by rational people.  ISIS is not a rational organization, it wants to destroy the world.  They are, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of mindless zombies.  The only thing that will stop these people is "two to the chest, one to the head".

I say we meet them at Dabiq, so we can begin the countdown.  The countdown until their entire doomsday organization is destroyed, one by one. 

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I'll like to see an excerpt of that from the memo that you might be privy to...please

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

 

[opcougar]

So the New Yorker published comments by a US commander in the Middle East and that makes it kosher? I was expecting something from a site ISIS owns

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Do you have something to offer that is more credible?

 

[The Bread Guy]

So the New Yorker published comments by a US commander in the Middle East and that makes it kosher? I was expecting something from a site ISIS owns

Will a mere academic studying what ISIS says/does do?

.... Many new religious movements employ a set of practices for enhancing commitment. These include sharing property and/or signing it over to the group upon admission; limiting interactions with the outside world; employing special terms for the outside world; ignoring outside news sources; speaking a special jargon; unusual sexual practices such as requiring free love, polygamy, or celibacy; communal ownership of property; uncompensated labor and communal work efforts; daily meetings; mortification procedures such as confession, mutual surveillance, and denunciation; institutionalization of awe for the group and its leaders through the attribution of magical powers; the legitimization of group demands through appeals to ultimate values (such as religion); and the use of special forms of address.

Most terrorist groups employ at least some of these mechanisms. Violent cults develop a story about imminent danger to an “in-group,” foster group identity, dehumanize the group’s purported enemies, and encourage the creation of a “killer self” capable of murdering large numbers of innocent people.

ISIS members engage in a number of these practices. Many Western recruits burn their passports as a rite of passage. ISIS flaunts its sexual enslavement of “polytheists” as a sign of its strict conformance with Shariah, and of the coming end times. The strict dress code is enforced in part by public shaming of women who don’t comply. Like other apocalyptic groups in history, ISIS’s stated goal is to purify the world and create a new era, in which a more perfect version of Islam is accepted worldwide. This is a typical millenarian project, which always involves transforming the world into something more pure, either politically (as with the communists’ “New Man”) or religiously.

Dr. Robert J. Lifton is a psychiatrist who has studied “totalistic” groups since the 1950s, and he continues to write about them. “Increasingly widespread among ordinary people is the feeling of things going so wrong that only extreme measures can restore virtues and righteousness to society.” None of us is entirely free of such inner struggles; there is much that is confusing about contemporary life, in which many people are no longer tethered to traditional societies. But apocalyptic groups act on these feelings, “destroying a world in order to save it,” in Lifton’s words. Lifton was referring to another violent millenarian cult, Aum Shinrikyo, which in the 1990s had attempted to acquire nuclear weapons and had succeeded in poisoning some five thousand people on the Tokyo subway, twelve of whom died. But his words apply as well to ISIS. “Having studied some of the most destructive events of this era, I found much of what Aum did familiar, echoing the totalistic belief systems and end-of the-world aspirations I had encountered in other versions of the fundamentalist self. I came to see these, in turn, as uneasy reactions to the openness and potential confusions of the ‘protean’ self that history has bequeathed us.”

ISIS is similarly apocalyptic in its views, as similarly unpredictable. It emerged out of an especially barbaric strain of Al Qaeda, which was initiated by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, rather than Osama bin Laden. One of the reasons for both Zarqawi’s and ISIS’s anti-Shi’ite savagery is their apparent belief in end-times prophecies. It is impossible to know whether Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders truly believe that the end times are near, or are using these prophecies instrumentally and cynically to attract a broader array of recruits. Either way, appealing to apocalyptic expectation is an important part of ISIS’s modus operandi. And goading the West into a final battle in Syria is a critical component of the scenario.

Otherwise, as others have said ....

Do you have something to offer that is more credible?

 

[Tuan]

First off, ISIL is not a descendant of the assassins - in fact they would have been mortal enemies.  The Assassins were a branch of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam.  ISIL is rabidly Sunni.

As to the rest of it, governance is indeed the key, in both Iraq and Syria.  Indeed Gen Allen (President’s Special Envoy for the Global
Coalition to Counter Daesh) publicly speaks of five lines of effort:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2015/06/01-2015-us-islamic-world-forum/2015-0601-brookings-doha-forum-final.pdf

* A military component to deny safe haven and provide security assistance
* Disrupting flow of foreign fighters,
* Disrupting access to financial resources,
* Providing humanitarian relief and stabilization support
* Counter-messaging – or defeating Daesh as an idea.

With respect to stabilization, he has this to say:

As I said here many times, you can eliminate some extremists, some leaders and some groups by military might as for short term goals but you will never destroy an intergenerational idea, such as Qutbism/Salafism/Wahhabism or Jihadism because an ideology has to be countered with another ideology, not by bombs and guns as it would exacerbate the situation. To counter an ideology by another you need to apply soft power!

http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/07spring/eikmeier.pdf

 

[PPCLI Guy]

To counter an ideology by another you need to apply soft power!

I have no issues with that - in fact that is the thrust of the fifth line of operation.  I will, however, not accept that your Sri Lankan model is in anyway applicable, given its reliance on overt and unrepentant hard power methods.

You keep asking me to look at the lipstick.  I insist on looking at the pig.

 

[Tuan]

I have no issues with that - in fact that is the thrust of the fifth line of operation.  I will, however, not accept that your Sri Lankan model is in anyway applicable, given its reliance on overt and unrepentant hard power methods.

You cannot base your entire argument vis-à-vis Sri Lankan conflict from the last few months of the operation that was directed by a dictator. I suggest you study the entire 30 year long war and post here your bibliography as I did, and then continue your discussion.

 

[Edward Campbell]

As I said here many times, you can eliminate some extremists, some leaders and some groups by military might as for short term goals but you will never destroy an intergenerational idea, such as Qutbism/Salafism/Wahhabism or Jihadism because an ideology has to be countered with another ideology, not by bombs and guns as it would exacerbate the situation. To counter an ideology by another you need to apply soft power!

http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/07spring/eikmeier.pdf

You, and Col Eikmeier, are talking about changing Islam ... which might (I suggest would) be a very good thing, perhaps, some would suggest, it is even an essential thing if Islam, writ large, is to avoid a catastrophic conflict with both the US led West and China. There is a way to change religions ... we, in the West, did it 500ish years ago, it's called:

                             

                                  By the way, I highly recommend the book: it's
                                  informative, insightful, and beautifully written

Of course, the reformation took a while and external "help" (from the Muslims) was both unwelcome and unhelpful and, from a Muslim perspective, unwise.

I cannot see why, either:

    1. An Islamic reformation is unlikely; or

    2. Any Western (or Chinese) "help" with the Islamic Reformation of, say, the late 20th through 23th centuries (I suspect it may have already begun) would be welcome, helpful or wise.

Our reformation did, and I expect the islamic Reformation will need to endure a long, bloody "civil war" ~ the Thirty Years' war, in our case.

There was some "soft power" ~ rather a lot, actually ~ involved in the European/Christian Reformation but it was all from within the European/Christian community, which is why it worked ... sort of. The Muslims tried to intervene, to exploit Europe's divisions (Selim I had his way with Egypt in some small part because Europe was divided, Suleiman the Magnificent exploited more and deeper divisions to conquer the Balkans and Mehmed III exploited even deeper divisions to defeat the Habsburgs, but his successors had, mostly, to deal with internal corruption, the Mughals and, later still, in the case of Suleiman II, a reuniting Europe that had surrendered about as much as it intended) but, in the end Muslim "help" was, I repeat, unhelpful and unwise. There is no reason to believe that Western "help" during an islamic Reformation will or can be otherwise, regardless of what sorts of power are applied.

In my mind the Islamic Reformation is more complex that the earlier Christian one because it involves not just sects but also Big Ideas about man and society, about revered medieval traditions vs the 21st and 22nd and so on centuries, and about the very role of religion (belief/faith) in life. It's heady stuff and, I believe, the Muslims need to sort it all out ... by themselves, in their own way and in their own ummah.

Our power, soft or hard, is neither wanted nor needed.

(Israel can look after itself.)

Edit: format (paragraphing) and spelling

 

[Tuan]

^^ I will definitely go and get it from my library and read it and then comment on it, Sir!

 

[opcougar]

I wasn't trying to be paedantic, and am sure most people round the world know that Murica will say anything to justify whatever. WMDs rings a bell, and where is Bin Laden's body????

Will a mere academic studying what ISIS says/does do?Otherwise, as others have said ....

 

[McG]

:Tin-Foil-Hat:

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

^^ I will definitely go and get it from my library and read it and then comment on it, Sir!

It is not a bad book to be familiar with , Tuan, but I also suggest you look up, in a similar vein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now".

 

[jollyjacktar]

You, and Col Eikmeier, are talking about changing Islam ... which might (I suggest would) be a very good thing, perhaps, some would suggest, it is even an essential thing if Islam, writ large, is to avoid a catastrophic conflict with both the US led West and China. There is a way to change religions ... we, in the West, did it 500ish years ago, it's called:

                             

                                  By the way, I highly recommend the book: it's
                                  informative, insightful, and beautifully written

Of course, the reformation took a while and external "help" (from the Muslims) was both unwelcome and unhelpful and, from a Muslim perspective, unwise.

I cannot see why, either:

    1. An Islamic reformation is unlikely; or

    2. Any Western (or Chinese) "help" with the Islamic Reformation of, say, the late 20th through 23th centuries (I suspect it may have already begun) would be welcome, helpful or wise.

Our reformation did, and I expect the islamic Reformation will need to endure a long, bloody "civil war" ~ the Thirty Years' war, in our case.

There was some "soft power" ~ rather a lot, actually ~ involved in the European/Christian Reformation but it was all from within the European/Christian community, which is why it worked ... sort of. The Muslims tried to intervene, to exploit Europe's divisions (Selim I had his way with Egypt in some small part because Europe was divided, Suleiman the Magnificent exploited more and deeper divisions to conquer the Balkans and Mehmed III exploited even deeper divisions to defeat the Habsburgs, but his successors had, mostly, to deal with internal corruption, the Mughals and, later still, in the case of Suleiman II, a reuniting Europe that had surrendered about as much as it intended) but, in the end Muslim "help" was, I repeat, unhelpful and unwise. There is no reason to believe that Western "help" during an islamic Reformation will or can be otherwise, regardless of what sorts of power are applied.

In my mind the Islamic Reformation is more complex that the earlier Christian one because it involves not just sects but also Big Ideas about man and society, about revered medieval traditions vs the 21st and 22nd and so on centuries, and about the very role of religion (belief/faith) in life. It's heady stuff and, I believe, the Muslims need to sort it all out ... by themselves, in their own way and in their own ummah.

Our power, soft or hard, is neither wanted nor needed.

(Israel can look after itself.)

Edit: format (paragraphing) and spelling

But as with anyone who needs to make major changes in their lives, nothing will change or stick unless or until they're ready to make the  change.

My stopping smoking comes to mind as an example.  Didn't happen successfully until I wanted to quit for real. 

Are the followers of Islam ready, willing or able to accept a re-jig of what my wife tells me is the verbatim dictation from Allah?  I can't see how that would fly.

 

[daftandbarmy]

As I said here many times, you can eliminate some extremists, some leaders and some groups by military might as for short term goals but you will never destroy an intergenerational idea, such as Qutbism/Salafism/Wahhabism or Jihadism because an ideology has to be countered with another ideology, not by bombs and guns as it would exacerbate the situation. To counter an ideology by another you need to apply soft power!

http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/07spring/eikmeier.pdf

The allies did a pretty good job at using hard power to destroy Nazism in Europe, and the equivalent in Japan, 1939-45.

AFAIK the only thing soft about that conflict were the two boiled eggs my old man was issued in his 5 years of service as a gunner in 3 Div.

 

[SupersonicMax]

The allies did a pretty good job at using hard power to destroy Nazism in Europe, and the equivalent in Japan, 1939-45.

AFAIK the only thing soft about that conflict were the two boiled eggs my old man was issued in his 5 years of service as a gunner in 3 Div.

But how we employ power changed greatly since...  Strategic attacks on civilian (essentially terrorizing them so that pressure is put on the Governments to capitulate) doesn't fly anymore.  That and we're fightig an ideology, not nations with regimes using an ideology.