A Timid World: Confronting the Dogmas of ISIS and Religious Radicalism Around Us!

“The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand. We don’t forget. We take care of those who are grieving and when that’s finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice because hell is where they will reside.” Vice President Joe Biden.

Introduction:

The much-orchestrated invincibility and financial muscle of the Islamic State Militants in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), if at all, are not insurmountable. They are overhyped. The world defeated Hitler and decimated Nazism. The problem is: those who are in a position to take action against ISIS are finding it difficult to absorb the trauma and overcome the feelings of hopelessness, defeat, and near capitulation accumulated from witnessing the gruesome beheading of freelance journalists - innocent journalists undeservedly wasted like a sacrificial lamb for an unfathomable cause. It took President Obama, yes, President Barack Obama who brought down Osama bin Laden, decimated al Awlaki, rescued the Horn of Africa from the grip of rampaging pirates (no mean achievements), three attempts to hit the right note on what to make of ISIS. So it was more of a relief, when Mr. President, earlier today, September 05, 2014, declared in no uncertain terms that “we are going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL, the same way that we have gone after Al Qaeda.” How soon, and at what scale or magnitude are still being defined. Whatever the goals are, NATO and the international coalition must act swiftly and decisively, mindful of the fact that ISIS is an enemy of civilization - a bunch of barbarians, basking in bloodbaths to mask their vulnerability. And like the Nigerian Boko Haram, ISIS has no attributes of statehood that would require reconstruction after its annihilation. It is not Iraq, and it is not Afghanistan. Therefore, the attacks must be massive and all-encompassing, with extinction as the main goal. As long as the objectives are to decimate the group and rid the occupied territories of every remnant of Islamic fundamentalism, the exit strategy will be less arduous to execute.

The Concept of Faith.

Great Britain is the number one training ground for Islamic fundamentalists. On the eve of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, there was a video clip, if I remember correctly, broadcast by CNN or CNN International, involving about four or five members of an Islamic religious group in London, England that was more of a shock than educational. In the interview, one of the participants, clean-shaven, and arguably the youngest of the group, stated unequivocally, and with a sense of bravado, that America deserves what it gets - stating further that those who carried out the bombing acted in good faith. The interview was conducted inside a restaurant - their restaurant, more of a bakery.

For a British citizen or a Green Card holder for that matter, to be so adamant, so vociferous, and so prideful of his unrighteous endorsement - pervert and abhorrent as the endorsement may be to ordinary folks - of a crime that took the lives of thousands of innocent men and women, and to do so on camera, reflects the temple of the hate-filled and worthlessness of human-life kinds-of-teaching that permeates places of worship in the United Kingdom. In addition, it manifests the readiness of most UK-based immigrants of the Islamic faith to sacrifice their lives and the lives of others in the name of religion.

These radicalized adherents of the faith as well as their revered teachers live in their own “invented world” inside of Great Britain - perverting religious freedom, preaching hatred and destruction of America and everything Western, with unbridled arrogance and insensitivity.

About a year ago a British soldier, Lee Rigby, was viciously stabbed to death, almost beheaded in broad daylight by two members of this group in Woolwich, South East London. To be so brutish and unrepentantly heartless to take their disillusionment and hatred of governmental institutions and civil society straight to the streets of London, and in broad daylight, explains the extreme nature of the indoctrination and brainwashing they imbibed inside places of worship. It further explains the level of detachment between them (all the underwear and shoe bombers) and the civil society on the one hand, and the hatred they harbor against government and law enforcement agencies on the other.

The comatose state of the political system the world is witnessing in Iraq, Libya, and Syria today is an export of that "invented world" incubated and nurtured to full bloom inside of Great Britain – with followers now spanning the length and breadth of the globe. So, the earlier the whole world comes together with a concerted resolve to decapitate ISIS and everything that it represents, the better and safer for everyone.

To cut off the head of another healthy human being who did not commit any crime has no legitimacy in the Qur'an. It doesn't add value to a cause.

To invade a boarding school at night, tied up the hands and legs of innocent students behind their backs, and slits their throats, leaving them to bleed to death as Boko Haram did at a boarding school in Benue State, Nigeria is not an achievement that any Muslim would want to be proud of or be part of. As we write, more than 200 Chibok School Girls are under captivity somewhere in North Eastern Nigeria, held without their consent, and for cause or causes unfathomable to discerning minds. 

Also, I do not think that millions of peace-loving Muslims all over the world who watched the videos of the gruesome execution of Steven Sotloff and James Foley as well as videos of battered and bullets ridden bodies of fellow Middle-Eastern Muslims, Shiites, and Christians, victims of firing squad style of execution, would want to be seen or be celebrated as brethren or sympathizers of ISIS.

This piece is not just on how to rein in the instructors and teachers of hatred and Armageddon as the world has come to know them all over Great Britain, Middle-East, and Nigeria, but on how to, in line with what the world did to Hitler and Nazism, permanently decimate ISIS, their affiliates and those they have already recruited and indoctrinated in the act of jihad and martyrdom.

The Concept of Strength:

Thanks to the swift intervention of the United States of America, when Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, under force-occupation, defying Kuwaiti sovereignty, the much-hyped ‘Mother of All War’ promised American forces by President Saddam Hussein, came to an abrupt end in less than a week into the escalation of the "Desert Storm.

What am I saying? ISIS, militarily, is not invincible; it has no standing army with the capacity to withstand sustained and well-coordinated air and ground attacks from international coalition forces. So the coalition should not waver in its resolve to take the fight to the ISIS stronghold.

In spite of the alleged vastness of its occupied territories as well as the alleged vastness of its volunteered fighters; we cannot deny the fact that a greater majority of the volunteered fighters are not your regular trained or seasoned army. Shooting POW from behind is not a show of strength.

The World cannot afford to watch another gruesome video of non-combatant journalists or of Shiites and moderates Muslims hacked to death in isolated locations where there are no friendly forces in sight to initiate rescue operations. That, unfortunately, was the plight of James and Steven. Even Prisoners of War and enemy combatants are protected under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. ISIS has no scruple shooting from behind captured members of the Syrian Armed Forces in their custody. 

ISIS is unlike Afghanistan or Iraq where the burden of building a brand new government in the form of a political system, Army, or statehood after the defeat and evacuation of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein by the US Armed Forces became daunting and protracted. Here, there is no new State to build.

ISIS, like Nigerian Boko Haram, is a product of a demented faculty. They are on a false mission - building an Islamic Caliphate that will not meet the test of time; killing and maiming in the process to strike fears around the world. They are manipulating social media and striking fears in the minds of world leaders, riding on their accessibility to the Internet to bamboozle gullible recruits. Above all, they have no territory vested by laws or a nation-state respected by any UN Article or Charter. Simply put, they have no subjects willingly paying allegiance in observance of real or perceived statehood.

The inability of ISIS to defeat the Syrian Armed Forces and compel Assad to relinquish his throne or kingship, tells on the weakness of ISIS in terms of military command structure, skills, and organization.

That it captured some Iraqi territories is understandable. It is not proof of military strength as most Security Experts and pundits are trumpeting on TV stations. Iraqi Armed Forces are in the formative stage, compounded by a weak President who did not enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of his people and law enforcement agencies.

Beheading unarmed journalists, killing innocent civilians, and executing captured enemy combatants from behind in a most gruesome manner for propaganda and recruitment goals do not meet the definition of military strength or invincibility. Simply put, they don’t have it.

Yes, ISIS has succeeded in seizing and appropriating a sizable volume of captured weapons belonging to Syrian and Iraq as well as vast oil fields. The truth is they cannot acquire more than what they have at the moment. It is not enough to acquire an oil field in the absence of a ready market for the final products. Blocking existing markets or trading partners is a good start. In addition, they don't have the technological or military wherewithal to keep and maintain the seized weapons in a deployable state.

Assad is still standing; in spite of the much-orchestrated invincibility of ISIS. It is that frustration - their inability to conquer Syria and create an Islamic Caliphate - that is propelling the ongoing brutalities. Be that as it may, ISIS cannot withstand ground and air bombardments by the coalition forces. The time is now for that bombardment.

The World fought a brutal Second World War for the sake of humanity. If the rest of the world, specifically, if the United States of America, had intervened in the War earlier than it did, more lives would have been saved and Holocaust would have been averted to some degree.

Slavery, the worst form of man’s inhumanity to man lasted for as long as the Union delayed the declaration of war on the later-formed, Confederate States, which were not ready to jettison the slavery culture or relinquish their hold on freed Blacks. Eventually, the Emancipation Proclamation came, and the “world” of Blacks was made better.

And between 1992 and 1995, the whole world vacillated while the people of the former Yugoslavia endured a brutal and televised campaign of ethnic cleansing perpetrated on each other by tribes and clans that once paid allegiance to the same flag. In the end, thousands of lives were lost and a once beautiful multi-ethnic nation-state tumbled down into obscurity like a pack of cards in the name of religion.

On a similar note, in 1994, the Hutus and Tutsi genocidal conflict was first considered an internal affair, a tribal rivalry within a sovereign State (Rwanda) by the world, until a whole tribe (Tutsi) was almost wiped out from the face of the earth.

The world and the international coalition forces must unite, show strength and vanquish ISIS. We cannot afford to experience another Rwanda or another Holocaust. 

Of Compromises and Permanent Interests:

In the international diplomacy circle, there is a universally accepted belief that there are no permanent friends or allies, but permanent interests. There is no period, no circumstances more urgent than now for that principle to come to play given the facts on the ground in Syria and Iraq. When President Obama made the declaration in the past that there won't be American combat boots on the ground in Syria, there was no ISIS then. Also, there was no beheading of American freelance journalists. In other words, the interests of America or those of its allies were not at stake or threatened at that point in time.  Today, it is a different story - cannot, and must not downplay the need for more boots on the ground in Syria.

In light of the unchecked bombing, coupled with the inability of the governments in Syria, Libya, and Iraq to exercise absolute control over the civil society as well as ensure territorial sovereignty, put into question the feasibility of democratic dispensation indiscriminately pursued all over the Middle East by the West. Without any doubt, one can certainly declare that you don’t deal with these people with kid gloves.

Today, Iraq and Libya are worse off than they were under the alleged dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi. Libya, like Syria and Iraq, is a geographical expression. They are not monolithic entities like Egypt or Morocco. Libyan, Syrian, and Iraqi people are more sympathetic to the concerns and safety of their respective ethnic groups or enclaves. Tribal loyalty trumps national pride. 

America and its allies must make a hard decision on how to end the civil war in Syria. According to a popular Nigerian saying, “the devil you know is better than the angel you don’t know.” Given ISIS antecedents, it is reasonable to argue for a political solution to the lingering civil war in Syria, while systematically providing some form of military support to President Assad and the new integrated forces, with a view to overwhelming ISIS from all fronts.

If I may add, President Assad, to a certain degree, is seemingly vindicated in much of his arguments in the past about the civil war in his country - the majority of the insurgents fighting to oust him from power are not the type America and the West would be willing to align with. In other words, they are remnants of radical elements and Islamic fundamentalists from all over the world with one goal only: kill Assad and turn Syria and part of Iraq into a radical Islamic Caliphate.

And if you don't know; these are the Islamic militants who took advantage of the protest in Benghazi on September 12, 2012, to invade the US Consulate and kill four US Diplomats, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Now it is becoming clearer why it has become of an enormous challenge to build a stable government in Iraq and Libya since the demise of their leaders. Therefore, it is a hard choice for America and the West to make: work with Syria to dismantle ISIS, or stay aside and watch ISIS turn the Iraqi desert into a slaughtering field for innocent journalists.

In sum, ISIS is vulnerable. It cannot acquire more than it has presently in terms of finances and weapons of war. A massively enforced military blockade from Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan would make it practically impossible for them to engineer reinforcements in terms of weapons and volunteer fighters.

In a similar vein, military blockade from Cameroon, Niger, and Chad would, no doubt, incapacitates Boko Haram in the Northeastern part of Nigeria, making their defeat easier to execute, if only Nigerian politicians desist from funding the sect and frustrating the efforts of the military.

Conclusion:

Now is the time for the West to show strength, waging an all-out land and air bombardments of ISIS and Boko Haram-held territories. To put it in Nigerian Pidgin English “the pikin wey say 'im mama no go sleep, 'im too no go sleep. That has always been President Obama’s own military doctrine – overwhelming and disorganizing enemies of the United States, taking the fights into their bedrooms by any means necessary. Placing them under sustained harassment and on the defensive would irredeemably diminish their valor and appeals. An insurgent running for cover will not have the time to gyrate with captured military weapons or the time and space to record propaganda messages. The world has been deep down in sleep over ISIS's reign of terror. It is time to wake up and do what is right – match them towards the gate of hell where they rightly belong as Vice President Joe Biden declared yesterday.

NB:

What is so intriguing about Boko Haram and its reign of terror in Nigeria is that Bornu State, its proposed Caliphate,  is landlocked. It has no access to the sea or any known seaport. In addition, the neighboring countries, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger are supposedly hostile territories.

Yet, Boko Haram has an unhindered supply of arms, vehicles, fuel, foodstuffs, and clothing. How is that possible? That is a question for the present administration, under whose watch the insurgency escalates unabated. Not left out of the indictment are the northern political leaders and, specifically, the loquacious elders who, on record, opposed the proscription of Boko Haram by the Federal Government, and at the same time, were known to be consistently and openly sympathetic to the sect. In spite of everything, it is my fervent prayer that what I think of Boko Haram is not true.