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The Attacks in Paris Reveal the Strategic limitations of ISIS
By OLIVIER ROY
NOVEMBER 16, 2015
FLORENCE, Italy — As President François Hollande of France has declared, the country is at war with the Islamic State. France considers the Islamist group, also known as ISIS, to be its greatest enemy today. It fights it on the front lines alongside the Americans in the Middle East, and as the sole Western nation in the Sahel. It has committed to this battle, first started in Mali in 2013, a share of its armed forces much greater than has the United States.

On Friday night, France paid the price for this. Messages expressing solidarity have since poured in from all over the Western world. Yet France stands oddly alone: Until now, no other state has treated ISIS as the greatest strategic threat to the world today.

The main actors in the Middle East deem other enemies to be more important. Bashar al-Assad’s main adversary is the Syrian opposition — now also the main target of Russia, which supports him. Mr. Assad would indeed benefit from there being nothing between him and ISIS: That would allow him to cast himself as the last bastion against Islamist terrorism, and to reclaim in the eyes of the West the legitimacy he lost by so violently repressing his own people.

The Turkish government is very clear: Its main enemy is Kurdish separatism. And a victory of Syrian Kurds over ISIS might allow the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., to gain a sanctuary, and resume its armed struggle against Turkey.


The Kurds, be they Syrian or Iraqi, seek not to crush ISIS so much as to defend their newfound borders. They hope the Arab world will become more divided than ever. They want to seize Sinjar because it is in a Kurdish area. But they won’t attack Mosul, because that would be playing into Baghdad’s hands.

For the Kurds of Iraq, the main danger is seeing a strong central government emerge in Baghdad, for it could challenge the de facto independence of Iraqi Kurdistan today. ISIS stands in the way of the creation of any such power.

The Shiites of Iraq, no matter what pressure they face from America, do not seem ready to die to reclaim Falluja. They will defend sectarian borders, and will never let Baghdad fall. But they are in no hurry to bring the Sunni minority back into Iraq’s political mainstream; if they did, they would have to share power with it.

For the Saudis, the main enemy isn’t ISIS, which represents a form of Sunni radicalism they have always supported. So they do nothing against it, their main enemy being Iran.


Police patrol the Place de la République in Paris.
PIERRE TERDJMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Iranians, for their part, want to contain ISIS but not necessarily to destroy it: Its very existence prevents the return of the kind of Arab Sunni coalition that gave them such trouble during their war with Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Then there is Israel, which can only be pleased to see Hezbollah fighting Arabs, Syria collapsing, Iran mired in an uncertain war and everyone forgetting the Palestinian cause.

In short, no regional player is willing to send out its forces, bayonets at the ready, to reclaim land from ISIS. Then again, unlike after 9/11, neither are the Americans. The United States’ strategy today relies on waging a war from afar, based on aerial strikes; Washington does not have the political will to send ground troops. Containment will have to do, and so, too, will killing terrorists by way of bombs and drones.

But war is not won without infantry.


France is perhaps alone in wanting and trying to annihilate ISIS. Only it doesn’t have the means to wage such a war on two fronts, in both the Sahel and the Middle East.

Yet if France lacks the means to live up to its ambitions, fortunately for its sake, so does ISIS. Much as with Al Qaeda earlier, the successes of ISIS increasingly amount to its grabbing headlines and the attention of social media. The ISIS system has already hit its limits.

It had two prongs: lightning-quick territorial expansion, and shock and awe. ISIS is hardly an Islamic “state,” if only because, unlike the Taliban, it claims no specific territory or boundaries. It is more like a caliphate, forever in conquest mode — occupying new lands, rallying Muslims from around the world — like the Muslim expansionist movement during Islam’s first century. This feature has attracted thousands of volunteers, drawn by the idea of fighting for global Islam rather than for a piece of the Middle East.

But ISIS’ reach is bounded; there are no more areas in which it can extend by claiming to be a defender of Sunni Arab populations. To the north, there are Kurds; to the east, Iraqi Shiites; to the west, Alawites, now protected by the Russians. And all are resisting it. To the south, neither the Lebanese, who worry about the influx of Syrian refugees, nor the Jordanians, who are still reeling from the horrid execution of one of their pilots, nor the Palestinians have succumbed to any fascination for ISIS. Stalled in the Middle East, ISIS is rushing headlong into globalized terrorism.

The attack against Hezbollah in Beirut, the attack against the Russians in Sharm el Sheikh and the attacks in Paris had the same goal: terror. But just as the execution of the Jordanian pilot sparked patriotism among even the heterogeneous population of Jordan, the attacks in Paris will turn the battle against ISIS into a national cause. ISIS will hit the same wall as Al Qaeda: Globalized terrorism is no more effective, strategically, than conducting aerial bombings without forces on the ground. Much like Al Qaeda, ISIS has no support among the Muslim people living in Europe. It recruits only at the margins.

The question now is how to translate into action the outrage sparked by Friday’s attacks in Paris. A massive ground operation by Western forces, like the one conducted in Afghanistan in 2001, seems out of the question, if only because an international intervention would get mired in endless local conflicts. A coordinated offensive by local powers seems unlikely, given the differences among their goals and ulterior motives: It would require striking a political agreement among regional actors, starting with Saudi Arabia and Iran.

So the road ahead is long, unless ISIS suddenly collapses under the vanity of its own expansionist aspirations or tensions between its foreign recruits and local Arab populations. In any event, ISIS is its own worst enemy.

Olivier Roy is a professor at the European University Institute in Florence and the author of “Globalized Islam.”
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Fantastic article in the Times, translated from French. Goes over why the ME hasn't jointly killed ISIS

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/...-isis.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=
 
dalamon said:
Fantastic article in the Times, translated from French. Goes over why the ME hasn't jointly killed ISIS

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/...-isis.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=
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Then NATO and BRICS need to step up and force their hand. Make them so much skin in the game that they can't survive without acting. Not just pressure on one but on them all, including Israel and Palestine.

You could do this by the promises of what they would get for unified action v. the penalties for not taking unified action.

Total pipe dream and will never happen though.
 
addictionary said:
...Read the books and make up your own mind.

If there is humanity left in you, then you will find the truth no matter what religion you practice or find it in your seeking of knowledge as an Atheist.
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I'm not sure how true this is. I remember several conversations I had a long time ago with Muslim colleagues of my husband's about the concept of free will. I'd don't think I have enough brain power to recall exactly what was said, but it boiled down to the idea that their concept of free will was radically different than mine. I was brought up with the belief that it is good to question things, but their background and belief system seemed to totally preclude any questioning of what they consider to be God's word or God's will.
 
Sirkickyass said:
*Obvious punchline*

When Syria becomes a place where a citizen can successfully petition to wear a pasta strainer on their head for "religious reasons," then ISIL/ISIS is effectively dead.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...etti-monster-massachusetts-religion/75862946/

Ideas are powerful. Funny ideas are attractive. You win ideological wars with ideas. There's a reason the targets are more cultural targets than government or military oriented.
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The "hearts and minds" approach seems like the right approach but how do you achieve this? That's the million dollar question. I mean, the changes we're talking about are generational in nature.

I'd also like to know if we have any Iranian folk on the board and if so, if they are of age, could they maybe give us a point in the right direction in knowing what happened in Iran from the early 1970's to now. It seems as though that country went backwards in thought.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96k_8ywt22g

I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them...

I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products," he said.

The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon...

We need to organize work specifically concentrated on the prevention of terrorist attacks and tackling terrorism on a global scale. We offered to cooperate [with the US] in anti-IS efforts. Unfortunately, our American partners refused. They just sent a written note and it says: ‘we reject your offer’,” Putin said.

But life is always evolving and at a very fast pace, often teaching us lessons. And I think that now the realization that an effective fight [against terror] can only be staged together is coming to everybody...
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dalamon said:
Fantastic article in the Times, translated from French. Goes over why the ME hasn't jointly killed ISIS

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/...-isis.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=
Click to expand...


Sorry to speak unrelated to the topic but the article says Kurdistan Workers Party to open PKK which is true as a translation but in context they are not a political party or a leftist workers' party. They are a militia group. And they even do not allow their political wing in the Turkish parliament to democratically solve the Kurdish issue of Turkey because they know that this will leave PKK as an unnecessary cause and as militias that have spent their lives in fighting and know nothing else they will be left to void. They are a pretty good propaganda organisation in the Western society so I needed to step in and inform you guys.
 
moevillini said:
I'm not sure how true this is. I remember several conversations I had a long time ago with Muslim colleagues of my husband's about the concept of free will. I'd don't think I have enough brain power to recall exactly what was said, but it boiled down to the idea that their concept of free will was radically different than mine. I was brought up with the belief that it is good to question things, but their background and belief system seemed to totally preclude any questioning of what they consider to be God's word or God's will.
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Again, I'm sorry that I cannot back it up with a story or something. Yes most Muslims especially the conservatives are like that. They do not question or debate. I just can assure you that I am not alone and there are Muslims in the world that feel the solidarity and union of humans as a whole is not something that Islam forbids or stands in the way of. We are the same. We should respect each other's religion or culture and everything will be fine. Freedom's description is simple. Don't crap on other people's freedom's and you are free to do anything you like.
 
addictionary said:
Sorry to speak unrelated to the topic but the article says Kurdistan Workers Party to open PKK which is true as a translation but in context they are not a political party or a leftist workers' party. They are a militia group. And they even do not allow their political wing in the Turkish parliament to democratically solve the Kurdish issue of Turkey because they know that this will leave PKK as an unnecessary cause and as militias that have spent their lives in fighting and know nothing else they will be left to void. They are a pretty good propaganda organisation in the Western society so I needed to step in and inform you guys.
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double
 
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