Mad Dogs



David Aaronovitch makes a powerful case in The Times for bringing about a step-change in the war against the Islamic State (IS).

The question is whether the Muslim countries in the region can put aside their differences for long enough to eliminate the 'mad dogs' of IS whose strongholds include Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Apparently IS set up giant TV screens in Raqqa so that their supporters could 'enjoy' the burning to death of the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasabeh, as it the cruel killing of another human being, a fellow Muslim, were some kind of spectator sport.

If you ask me, the Arab world has reached a moment of truth.

We have to step up our war on Islamic State

By David Aaronovitch - The Times

The latest atrocity takes us back half a millennium. The west should accept the need to escalate the use of force

You don’t expect to be shocked by a speech on education statistics but the week before last I heard one that staggered me. A representative of the Iraqi ministry for higher education told a conference that I attended about Iraq’s 27 universities and its thousands of schools. Nine of these universities and many of the schools are now in areas “under the control of Isis”, he said.

Across a swathe of Syria and Iraq, hundreds of thousands of young people are being educated and growing up under the shadow of the black flag. If you have the stomach for the pictures you can see some of them in the squares of Raqqa or Mosul looking on as people are crucified, beheaded, have their arms and legs amputated or are stoned to death. In another incident a man was thrown from the top of a building for committing homosexual acts. The fall was not quite enough to kill him. So some of the crowd who had gathered to watch hurled stones at him to finish the job.

Impressionable children and young men are being brutalised not only to be spectators at public atrocities, but also to believe that what they are witnessing is virtuous. Islamic State (Isis) are saying to the youth of the occupied lands: this slow and painful death we are inflicting upon this terrified fellow human being? It’s good! You are allowed to enjoy it! Why don’t you join in? Isis took over the Iraqi city of Mosul, the second biggest in the country, last June. It has been running things for seven months and there is no sign of its being pushed out any time soon. Al-Qaeda ran nothing more than a training camp here and created mayhem. Think what can be — what is being — incubated in a whole city or a region. And its effect is being felt far beyond Syria and Iraq.

Atrocities are soon assimilated — even beheadings. We seem somehow to have got used to the idea of this body of barbarians building their pyramids of skulls. They have almost become part of our lives. Until they invent something even more appalling than the last act of completely calculated cruelty, as they did in the case of poor Muath al-Kasasbeh, the Jordanian pilot who was burnt alive in a cage by his Isis captors, who also filmed his dying moments.

That really did take us back half a millennium. So much so that even the mildest among us responded. I mean nothing against the Liberal Democrat MP (and would-be party leader) Tim Farron when I slightly satirise his reaction to the atrocity carried out on Lieutenant Kasasbeh. “Isis’s latest murder is another inhuman & cowardly crime,” he tweeted, “their barbarism strengthens our resolve and unites civilised people against their warped ideology.”

Well, whoop-de-doo. It’s good that we are united and that our resolve is strengthened even more than it has been up to now. Although the question must arise, what are we — united as we are — resolved to actually do? Tweet more stuff?

We could do worse. There were apparently intelligent human beings in the west — some artists, some “dissident” writers — who thought it a good moment to point out that what Isis did to the Jordanian pilot was only what he might have done to others from his jet. Because aren’t car accidents and, oh, I don’t know, death camps somehow the same?

Not that those favouring pragmatic (or, rather, desperate) engagement with Isis came out of it much better. The pleas to Isis not to kill the pilot took the form of reminding them what a good Muslim he was, implying of course that non-good Muslims might be killable.

Do we want to suggest a hierarchy of murderable hostages? The pressure in Jordan for a deal grew (just as it did in Japan) and the Jordanians agreed to let the would-be suicide bomber Sajid al-Rishawi go.

What kind of fantasy was this all based on? Almost no saying is as misused as “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. It is a hope, not an analysis. If you want the closest historical psychological fit for the deranged boys and girls of Isis it is the SS.

We aren’t going to negotiate Islamic State and its supporters out of existence or into moderation. The longer they exist, the worse things will get; the sooner they are extirpated the better. Or to put it concretely, places such as Mosul and Raqqa must be retaken.

Here revulsion is a poor guide to strategy. The execution by Jordan — almost on a whim — of al-Rishawi and another may have salved a desire for vengeance but will have done nothing to strip away support for Isis. Nor would the implementation of the wishes of the Grand Imam of al-Azhar in Egypt, Ahmed el-Tayeb, who called for the crucifixion of Isis members. This just creates an equivalence in violence that apologists will seize upon.

So what about military force? The 1,100 airstrikes (83 per cent of them American) against Isis targets in the past year have inhibited their advance and increased the cost to them of their actions. But it has failed to dislodge them or make them sue for peace.

The prime minister of autonomous Kurdistan was talking about a timescale for liberating Mosul last week. He noted that 15 million people were living in Isis-controlled areas, that Isis was a formidable enemy and that airstrikes alone could not do the job. “The question is,” he asked, “is the policy one of containment, or to dislodge and destroy them? In order to totally eradicate them, further action must be taken.”

In his opinion local forces would need significant assistance from the special forces of other countries — particularly the west — and substantial logistical help (there was a contretemps recently between the UAE and the US on the question of the availability of rescue aircraft). It would mean an escalation in the deployment of special forces — with the US, UK and Australia able to call upon some of the best in the world. It would require, in other words, an international effort as large as that which originally went into Afghanistan in 2001.

Such a strategy requires the Americans, the British, the French, the other allies and Arab states contributing limited ground forces — in addition to air power — to assist local anti-Isis fighters, especially on Iraq’s borders. It would mean agreeing that we were actually now at war with Isis and acting accordingly. The alternative is happening right now in Mosul.

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