Ethics matter
On Wednesday, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York hosted a talk by Jean-Pierre Filiu, Professor of Middle East Studies, Sciences Po.
Filiu related that he chose this topic months before the Paris Attacks; he knew the ISIS threat was unprecedented.
Thirty years ago, Filiu met the first jihadis while doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan. He was introduced to the disturbing Arab “volunteers” who had already begun to sneak in. He heard about Bin Laden and Zawahiri but never met them. He concluded that they lived on a different planet and wished to annihilate our way of life. Nobody took his warnings seriously.
The jihadists founded Al Qaeda (AQ) in the last month of the Soviet occupation. Al Qaeda means “the base,” which refers to a territorial base and a transnational network.
In 2001, the US and its allies responded appropriately by hitting AQ in its base in Kandahar. It is important to strike such threats at the source, the territorial base, before going after the global network. The decision to rely on local forces in the Northern Alliance was prudent. This action prevented a second wave of planned attacks.
Then the US launched the Global War on Terror and invaded Iraq. France warned against this and was correct, as it opened the Middle East to AQ. It also provided the instability that led to the London and Madrid attacks. French jihadis who had fought in Iraq were the masterminds of last year’s attacks.
ISIS was formed as a continuation of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), established by former Jordanian criminal Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Unlike Bin Laden (a son of a tycoon) and Zawahiri (a doctor), he was not bourgeois. He used his expertise in crime. He was the first to behead a hostage, Nicholas Berg, in 2004.
Bin Laden thought this tactic too gory. But it made Al-Zarqawi a star. The US focused on targeting him, so other jihadis followed him. He was killed in 2006. His successors were killed in 2010 and were succeeded by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who had been detained in Camp Bucca in 2004, but was released for good conduct. Al-Baghdadi was able to maintain order in the camp by making other inmates listen to him; this would have made Filiu suspicious.
When Al-Baghdadi took over, AQI was losing ground because of the surge of US troops. AQI was later able to regain ground with the help of former Baathists alienated by the sectarianism of the Maliki government. AQI also gained ground in Syria thanks to Assad, who preferred to be up against jihadis rather than peaceful protesters for propaganda reasons. The more dictators you have in the Arab world, the more jihadis you will have. Ethics in international relations is not a luxury, but could be a real solution to many problems.
The US lost moral leverage after it did not act on its red line regarding chemical weapons in Syria. ISIS recruitment exploded. ISIS argued that the US and its allies were letting Syrians be gassed and presented its mission as humanitarian. ISIS learned from AQ not to depend on an external force, like the Taliban. ISIS runs its own totalitarian regime in a region more symbolic for Muslims than Khorasan.
The Levant is key to Muslim “end times” narratives. ISIS now incorporates much of this apocalyptic material into its propaganda; they talk about places mentioned in prophecies. In their narrative, the final battle will be in Jerusalem. The Israeli strategy of hoping ISIS and Hezbollah will just fight each other is shortsighted. ISIS is now recruiting inside Israel.
European security services have difficulty countering the operational speed of terror networks. One of Filiu’s friends created three Facebook profiles and was targeted for recruitment with three different appeals. Twenty-five to thirty percent of French jihadis are converts. Female jihadis must be treated as criminals, not victims. Females have taken the initiative in some recent attacks.
There are around 5,000 jihadis
in Syria. We could be short-sighted like Russia and view them as containable. Moscow hopes ISIS will continue to entice Russian jihadis to leave Russia. This is crazy.
Filiu sees a correlation between the beginning of Russia’s intervention in Syria and the Paris attacks. Russia’s intervention further ignited jihadi dynamics. The Russian Orthodox Church’s support for intervention makes ISIS propaganda about fighting Crusaders more relevant.
But ISIS is easy to defeat. They think we’ll attack them on the ground in Raqqa like we did with AQ in Kandahar. We could accomplish this in a matter of weeks, but we will need ground forces that are not NATO or Russia, so as not to play into ISIS propaganda about fighting Crusaders. Syrian opposition fighters who have survived five years of hell don’t need training. Obama has dismissively described the Syrian opposition as a bunch of former farmers, doctors and pharmacists. The Amercian Revolution was fought by similar people; Lafayette did not train and equip them first. The Syrian opposition wants to be free, first from Assad and then from ISIS. They aren’t angels, but they aren’t devils either. They are revolutionaries and patriots who want to end this tragedy. We must work with them.
An audience member asked if jihadism stems from a strict interpretation of the Quran, and if Sunnis regard the Shia as infidels, leading to 14 centuries of strife between the communities. Filiu explained that jihad’s root letters, J-H-D, appear approximately 30 times in the Quran. The context in which J-H-D is mentioned is roughly split between peaceful and militaristic. The Quran is a holy book and won’t be helpful for explaining what is going on. We shouldn’t give jihadis the victory of pretending they are heirs to a sophisticated civilization. They’re an outgrowth of modernity. Sunnis and Shia have been at war for merely a century of the past fourteen. The current conflict is between two theocracies, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Global jihad is brand new; jihad has been connected to territorial expansion or defense in the past. Some jihadis are moving to Libya because they think we will strike them in Syria. Libya has no Islamic significance, but ISIS is embedding itself in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte.
This is an unprecedented threat that must be dealt with at its source. The fighting must be done by Sunni Arabs, not Shia or Kurds. Locals in Raqqa feel occupied by the foreign fighters. A decent cohort of local Sunnis who aren’t being bombed by the Russians should be able to defeat them quickly.
Another audience member asked whether a lack of integration among French Muslims has increased recruitment. Filiu noted that integration has already happened but some “indigenous French” don’t consider the descendants of immigrants French. But 25% of the French have a foreign grandparent, so who is truly an “indigenous French” person? Fortunately, the aftermath of the Paris attacks led to unprecedented demonstrations of solidarity with immigrants. Ninety percent of tips to security services regarding jihadis come from the Muslim community and 60% of jihadis are turned in by their families. Jihadis want us to think the Muslim community is a breeding ground for terror. The next terror wave will likely be the work of converts.
Filiu noted that any group with oil can market it and any group with cash can buy weapons; ISIS has done this by trucking some of its oil to Turkey and by selling the rest to Assad by pipeline. They also smuggle antiquities. But the majority of their cash comes from extorting the population under their control. We must liberate these people. Obama wants nothing to happen in the Middle East during his tenure, but you can’t keep on with business as usual in the face of mass horrors and not expect spillover. There is no such thing as a lone wolf; Obama is in denial that there are ISIS cells on US soil. The house is burning and you can’t address the issues by putting out the fire on just one floor. We need to have serious talks with Putin, not just let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist. He is a mass murderer. He has killed over 1,000 civilians in past weeks, further fueling jihadi sentiment. Ethics matter; unethical leadership comes with a price.
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