“Vast new intelligence haul fuels next phase of fight against Islamic State:” Los Angeles Times.
The headline introduces a story that this column has predicted for many years now. The caliphate in Syria and Iraq is slowly being defeated, a cause for celebration no doubt.
However, the legacy of the Islamic State or the levant will be the 19,000 known Mujahedeen (Warriors of God) currently on the INTERPOL watch list. New documents discovered in Syria and Iraq are adding tens of thousands to the list of ISIS/ISIL trained terrorists.
A young person travels to the Islamic State, is trained and indoctrinated; he/she returns home and their service to Allah is celebrated by family and friends. The trained and fully indoctrinated Mujahedeen light weapons infantry spread throughout the world and are in a holding pattern, waiting for the call to Jihad. Estimates of the strength of the radical Army of Allah are all over the place, but a low number will be some 50,000.
These people are admired and respected by the population; they are the new vanguard of a movement that the United States has been fighting since 1802. Every ISIS/ISIL trained Warrior of Allah will indoctrinate others, radicalize others; exactly how many is anyone’s guess, but the math is not good for the non-Muslim world or even the not-properly-pious Muslim world. The real problem with the way we are fighting the wars in Iraq and Syria is that we are doing it in a very restrained way. The Russians came into Syria and took the fight to the enemy and things started to happen. The Caliphate began losing ground, the Russians attacked Raqqa, the capital city of the Levant with a vengeance, and it was the beginning of the end of ISIS/ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Every day for the past four years young men and women have been radicalized in Iraq and Sy
ria and sent worldwide, but the history of the ISIS/ISIL/DAESH movement goes back to its founding as Jama-at-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999. A hard-core cadre of radical imams pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and started to control portions of over a dozen nations.
The United States never set a firm policy to defeat these folks; indeed, we can’t even agree on what to name them, ISIS or ISIL or Daesh or the Caliphate. Regardless of what we call them the damage is done; even in defeat they win. As the history of the Caliphate is taught in Mosques and Madrasas around the world, it will be the story of a few valiant warriors of Allah with help of God fighting bravely against the combined forces of the unbelievers, the unholy, the infidels of the entire world.
Dohokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers, are not mass murders of the innocent; in most of the Muslim world they are the heroic warriors of Allah who held off and stood firm against 6,000 attacking infidels. The 6,000 number is the number of law enforcement and National Guard forces who were looking for them after the bombing. The unfortunate truth is that the fight with these folks restarted in earnest in 1967 with the defeat of the combined Arab Armies in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The training and equipping of tens of thousands of radicals in Syria and Iraq in the last few years will ensure that your grandchildren’s children will fight these folks.
The unmitigated crap being put out in the news is that Afghanistan is our longest war; just not true. We are the home by Christmas, solve the major crime in a one-hour TV program, instant meal or fast food folks, who do not wish to be told this war is a cultural war, a religious war and it will take generations to fight. We need to reassess the way we fight and take a page out of the Russians book in Syria.
Nothing succeeds like success and the Radical Islamists are perceived as winning and winning big in the Muslim world.
Longest ongoing military action is accurate. The US has had military actions for decades. WW2 was the last official war. Sixteen years is a long time.
The US and coalition member countries sent troops into Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and beginning very soon the current administration is going to be adding 4,000 troops adding to the 8,500 who remained from the previous administration. That is less than the 30,000 stationed there at the end of the Bush Administration and a about 12% of the 100,000 there in mid-2012 before the troop withdrawal that started in 2012-2013.
From everything I have read, Russia has a close relationship with the Assad government based on Syria entering into a long-term lease with Russia for the land and facilities in Tartus. That is Russia’s Mediterranean Naval base so they can’t be blocked into the Black Sea and rely on their cold weather ports. Russia has also provided Syria aircraft and munitions, allowing Syria’s Air Force to bomb its own people since there are multiple groups seeking Assad’s overthrow.
What is Russia doing in Syria that the US needs to mimic in Afghanistan? If it’s providing more aid, aircraft and air support, who’s paying for it? As of 15 September 2017 the US was looking at an estimated $300 billion in aid to rebuild Texas and Florida.
Mr. Couchman,
Thank you for the comment.
Is al-Assad the main focus, or is it defeating ISIL/ISIS and international Islamic terrorism? Al-Assad is a bad actor but he does not fund or support ISIS/ISIL; in fact, they are trying to defeat him to control a sovereign nation. As long as Russians and al- Assad are killing the terrorists, like Stalin did the NAZIS in WWII, I say let him do it.
What the Russians did was destroy the infrastructure that supplied and funded the ISIS/ISIL troops in Syria and Iraq. The lack of money and logistics is what is defeating ISIL/ISIS; the Russians pounded the infrastructure and cut off the supplies and funds to the terrorists in both Syria and Iraq, helping our forces.
If the Russians wish to spend billions and countess lives to defeat ISIS/ISIL I am all for it. Syria is a Russian satellite has been and will be. Also the Christians in Syria were better off under al-Assad; Syria is tribal politics, al- Assad’s Tribe, the Alwiyas, is fighting other tribes for power. Not any good guys in this Civil War.
I say let’s keep our eyes on the mission, defeating Islamic Terrorists. I also differ with you on the longest war — we have been fighting Islamic terrorism since 1802. And we are still at war with the North Koreans, a war that started in 1950; no treaty has ever been signed to end the war.
Thanks again, very good comment, well written.
Bob, this column was full of information I have never had the opportunity to learn, and I thank you for the history lesson. What I did know was what you stated in your final paragraph, that the war is religious, cultural and long-term. If I read correctly between the lines, you’re saying that traditional warfare is not going to win this cultural/religious standoff, and that we need to look beyond guns and bombs and soldiers to find a viable solution. If I’m correct about that, we all need to work together to encourage a new approach from Washington and the Pentagon.
Mrs. Mandaville,
Thank you for the comment.
It would be wonderful if the ISIS/ISIL folks did not behead folks, bury them alive, drown them, or burn folks alive. It would be nice if thousands of women were not raped and made sex slaves for the Warriors of Allah, or if gay folks were not tossed off high buildings for the crime against Allah of being gay. It would be nice if radical Islam did not follow the literal version of the Koran and attempt to live with sixth century social values.
History over the last 215 years has taught us diplomacy seldom works. Two future Presidents of the United States, Jefferson and Adams, tried to reason with radical Islam in the 1790’s, ending in U. S. Marines settling the problem in 1802, going “to the Shores of Tripoli”.
Do we sit back and watch minority men and women being raped and murdered by religious fanatics? Diplomacy is always the best solution, but for it to work two rational peoples need to work together.