Repeating old strategies isn’t path to victory against ISIS
If bombs alone could erase the Islamic State group, it would never have existed. Because the bombs targeting the idea behind Islamic State have been falling for 14 years, as those of us who have witnessed their shredding impact in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond can attest.
Yet the ideology they were intended to vaporize endures.
Look to Kandahar, home base of the only Canadian war most of us can remember. Afghanistan’s crucial southern city, birthplace of the Taliban and home base for the spilling of so much Canadian blood and treasure, is reeling this week after a massive Taliban assault on the very airport our soldiers called home.
At least 39 civilians, including children, died in 27 hours of crossfire before Afghan security forces — the ones trained by Canada and its NATO allies — managed to kill a Taliban assault squad numbering 14 gunmen.
Bear that in mind as we wait for Canada’s new government to flesh out the details of what many frame as an either/or military proposition on Islamic State — the promised withdrawal of Canadian fighter jets from the conflict means we will instead train local fighters for the front lines.
Some of us have seen this movie before. It didn’t end well. And it wasn’t Stephen Harper’s fault.
It happened in the final years of the Jean Chrétien era, when his Liberal government dispatched Canadian trainers to set up shop in the Jordanian desert, eventually becoming one of the largest contingents in a 16-nation effort to train Iraqi security forces.
Many of us who visited and filed stories from the 182-hectare training hub a decade ago had our doubts. Last year, after we witnessed shocking scenes of thousands of Iraqi police and soldiers shedding their guns and uniforms and surrendering the Iraqi city of Mosul to Islamic State, I went in search of Canada’s trainers. The ones I found told me they were saddened, but not surprised.
Gary Collins, who spent all of 2005 in the desert on loan from his staff sergeant position with the OPP in Peterborough, Ont., said he still keeps in touch with his fellow trainers. He called it a “brotherhood of disillusionment.”
“We spent a uniquely challenging year in the desert. We tried our best under the circumstances, but did we accomplish anything? I would say not,” said Collins, now retired.
“Many of the Iraqi trainees were there just to get paid — it was about $300 for eight weeks — just to keep their family fed. They dumped their guns and uniform as soon as they got back,” said Collins.
“In another instance, 12 of the cadets went back and as soon as they crossed the border into Iraq they were pulled off a bus and had their heads cut off.
“And today it is looking just as bad or worse, with Iraq falling back into a civil war situation, divided between Shiite and Sunni. I have a much better understanding of it now. And it makes me appreciate so much more how lucky we are in Canada.”
Canada’s loyal opposition, thus far, appears glued to the stale 2002 premise that anything less than bombing Islamic State equals cowardice.
Yet, as we learn more about the ambitions of Islamic State — and, in case you missed it, the Guardian earlier this week told us a great deal more about the group, acquiring, translating and publishing its 24page “master plan” for consolidating power — the opposition, and not just the government, needs to take in every word.
The Guardian disclosures lay bare the sheer bureaucratic heft of what Islamic State leaders envision, replete with civil service, self-sustaining regional government, foreign relations and Soviet levels of economic control. Reality on the ground, by all accounts, doesn’t match up with what Islamic State dreams about on paper. But its detailed aspirations as a viable, plantable, clonable jihadi entity with global ambitions is essential reading.
Unlike the Taliban, or even Al Qaeda, Islamic State mines the militant margins with the offer of immediate gratification for converts — an actual “caliphate,” right here and now. Neither the ideas of 2002, nor even the counterterror doctrine of 2006, is going to stop it, as Foreign Affairs magazine’s Audrey Kurth Cronin argued in one of the year’s best essays on the subject.
Canada as a whole, and not just the new Trudeau government, deserves huge credit for the courageous and heartening scenes this week from Pearson airport. In our collective welcome for the first wave of incoming Syrian refugees, we planted our flag uniquely deep in the heart of the “grey zone,” claiming it in the name of coexistence.
The grey zone — a term that emerged last February in the Islamic State propaganda magazine, Dabiq — denotes that huge and overwhelming swath of Muslims in the West who aren’t interested in what Islamic State is selling. In its quest for a world with two camps — caliphate versus crusaders — Islamic State needs to squeeze co-existence out of the equation.
Author Laila Lalami said it best in the New York Times Magazine last month, describing how the attacks in Paris were designed precisely to provoke the hate-stoking political rhetoric that followed, placing every Muslim in the West under suspicion and further diminishing the grey zone. “Every time the gray zone recedes, ISIS gains ground,” wrote Lalami.
Canada’s stand on refugees, I would argue, is winning back some serious grey.
But don’t let self-congratulation absolve the need to ask the hard questions about our evolving role in the pointy end of the campaign against Islamic State.
If we take away bombs and flip the switch to military training, what adjustments are we making to ensure better results? What about alternatives? What depth of thought has Canada put into pushing hard for a no-fly zone over Syria to protect the millions of civilians trapped between the barrel bombs of Bashar Assad and the deprivations of Islamic State?