Given the horror of the recent Paris terrorist attack, I’ve been having people contacting me left and right to make sure I’m OK, even though I live over 600 kilometers (almost 400 miles) away, near Bordeaux. We were having dinner with friends when one of them glanced at a message on her phone and said “18 people have been killed in Paris.”
Fast forward two days and French President Hollande has declared ISIS responsible, calling the attacks an act of war, and said “France will be pitiless” in going after ISIS. Of course, it’s not entirely surprising that ISIS (if they were really responsible) would retaliate because while the rest of the world has been having a pleasant chat over tea about how to handle the situation, Hollande, in an uncharacteristic display of spine, has had France leading the military actions against ISIS while the rest of the Western world has been offering mostly token support.
In other words, France is now declaring war on a terrorist organization, though it might be best described as an escalation of what’s already happening (and the attacks certainly call into question Obama’s unfortunate assertion the day before the attacks that ISIS had been “contained”). But I’m already hearing the question “how do we go to war against a tactic?”, as if attacking ISIS is pointless.
We’re not talking about going to war against a tactic, we’re talking about going to war against ISIS and that might just pan out in the short run. In the long run it’s impossible to say what this means. To understand how going after ISIS might work, despite cries that “we’re fighting an ideology”, we have to step back and understand what makes terrorism effective.
What’s a Terrorist?
If we want to understand terrorism, we first have to define it. Terrorism is merely the use or threat of violence against non-combatants to bring about political or social change. That’s absolutely critical to understanding terrorism and if someone doesn’t understand that definition, they don’t understand terrorism (of course, this doesn’t mean you have to agree with that definition). The definition is important enough that it should be repeated, endlessly, until pundits get it right:
Terrorism is merely the use or threat of violence against non-combatants to bring about political or social change.
To be fair, many experts in the field quibble with the fine details. Are police “non-combatants”? Is threatening financial stability “violence”? Or more importantly, can a state engage in terrorism? If Iran, for example, funds a small terrorist group that is already attacking Israel, is that terrorism or an act of war? To me, terrorism is committed by non-state actors and while Iran’s financing of terrorism is an act of war, given that many states find a “war by proxy” to be safer, Iran’s actions aren’t directly declared as “acts of war” like ISIS’ actions.
So with a working definition of terrorism, we have to consider that their goal is social or political change. There have been many terrorists or terrorist groups, such a Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Ted Kaczynski, Aum Shinrikyo, and others, ad nauseum, which have made plenty of news, but had no success in bringing about the change they sought. Others, such as the myriad IRA groups, or Al Qaeda, have been extremely effective in creating change. Why has the IRA had such effect while Ted Kaczynski had none? One key difference in many terrorist groups is the degree of public support or sympathy for the terrorist’s aims, even if they object to their methods. So while the Irish generally did not approve of the IRA’s use of violence, they often mistrusted the British government enough that they weren’t necessarily inclined to hand their neighbors over to them. Or look at Sendero Luminoso, the communist “shining path” terrorist group in Peru. Part of the reason they were so effective for so long is that the military dictatorship was unpopular with the Peruvian people.
Can We Defeat ISIS?
I’ve said this before, repeatedly: the ultimate goal of many Middle Eastern terrorist groups is simple: they want the Western world (particularly, the US, the UK and France) to leave the Middle East alone. For all of their talk about a caliphate, eradicating Israel, reclaiming Lebanon for Syria, the liberation of Palestine, and so on, all of them can trace grievances back to Western countries invading and controlling Middle Eastern countries for their own benefit. As a result, just as with terrorist organizations like the IRA and Sendero Luminoso, even if the local populace hasn’t agreed with the terrorism (and they overwhelmingly haven’t), they nonetheless have enough sympathy for the motivations that they’re less likely to turn their sons and daughters and friends over to the authorities. This can be hard for the western mind to accept, while living peacefully abroad: we simply don’t see the violence on a daily basis.
Things, however, are a bit different with ISIS. When even the Taliban condemns ISIS and Al Qaeda condemns ISIS, it’s clear that we have an unusual beast on our hands. Though the Western media wouldn’t have you believe it, Muslims have long condemned the terrorism done in their name, just as Christians distance themselves from the Christian terrorist Eric Rudolph.
Regarding ISIS, there have been more than two dozen international Islamic conferences condemning ISIS, even though US and European media seems particularly uninterested in the Muslim viewpoint on Islamic terror (how many did you hear about?).
And that’s why a war against ISIS can succeed. It’s not an abstract war against an ideology; it’s a concrete war against a particular group which is so abhorrent, even those who may have sympathy for their goals have turned against them. There are even (conflicting) reports that ISIS fighters are beginning to desert due to the extremism of the group. The West can succeed at mostly eliminating ISIS as a group, but it will be at great cost. More importantly, the long-term costs have to be considered.
You have to remember that most of the world, even the Arab world, supported, or at least didn’t object, when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11. It was clearly understood what the US was doing and why. However, much of the world, including most of the Middle East, objected to the US invasion of Iraq, because it was perceived as nothing more than old-style Western nation building in the Middle East: a dictator the US supported had gone rogue and had to be removed.
Thus, if a concerted Western effort to take out ISIS becomes seen as nation building or as Western meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, this will only serve to continue the existing narrative and fuel more terrorism.
If France succeeds in their goal of removing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, even if he’s a brutal dictator, the anti-ISIS effort could backfire. If the US gets heavily involved and is seen as using this to prop up friendly Middle Eastern nation-states, the anti-ISIS effort could backfire. If the UK gets involved and is also seen as doing more than just stopping ISIS, the anti-ISIS effort could backfire.
Right now, for a brief period, the ISIS atrocities are so great that the Western world can move against ISIS with the support of much of the Middle East. However, as soon as the West is seen as overstepping that role, we’ll be putting out a fire and leaving a trail of matches behind us.