ISIS...Islamic State Victims

I tend towards the optimistic view for previously state reasons warbler

But to reiterate

Aq has failed. Who would have predicted that it would be 7 years since last major attack in the uk? Much the same time frame across the whole of the west too. It simply hasn't engaged as many Muslims as expected. And regardless of the hype and sneaking admiration some have for it's supposedly loose structure, killing the head had a severe effect

Also recent events surrounding Israel,have made it very clear that the bulk of the Arab world is decidedly cool towards hamas, to say the least. The guardian readers poster boys are seen for what they are.

And the Muslim brotherhood were kicked out in Egypt. Undemocraticaly of course but whilst the state there has quite a grip there is more than a sense that they are not missed.

Of course it's difficult to be certain and rumsfelds brilliant summary (known unknowns etc) springs to mind but I wouldn't be at all surprised if isis has peaked
 
By the way, you should see the documentary on Rumsfeld that was out earlier this year. Whatever you think of him he is extremely sharp and dryly entertaining. I guarantee that you will find yourself nodding along to much of heat he says
 
clivex said:
But to reiterate

Aq has failed.
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This depend largely on what you think their target was, clivddx.

Your interpretation appears to be that AQ has failed because it no longer (apparently) has the capacity to launch attacks. If this is your yardstick of success/failure, then I can see why you view it that way.

I think your interpretation is too narrow, myself. I refer you again to my "awakening" and (in my view) its part in AQ's strategic aim. If this yardstick is used, then I think it's fairly clear that they have been broadly successful.

They may not have had direct influence over there emergence of ISIL, AQIM, Al Shabbab, AQAP or Boko Haram - but their indirect influence is surely clear to all?
AQ showed that it could be done, and that it didn't take a great deal of brains to cause untold havoc - only the will to be a martyr.

I also think you're greatly under-estimating things. You keep referring to AQ hiding-out in caves, and then wholly trivialise the gains made by ISIL to try and bolster your case.

It doesn't work.

I've little doubt that IS can be defeated in the long-run. But it isn't going to be pleasant whilst the world goes about neutering them.
 
But as has already been stated, Islamic groups were just as active before 9/11. Not least in Algeria but Somalia too I'm fairly sure.

Aqs primary aim was to drive any western presence out of Saudi Arabia. Failed.

It also wanted to extend a caliphate to include Spain. Failed! Ibiza is not Islamabad . Not quite

It also tried to buy nuclear arms and was ripped off for a few million by some Eastern Europeans who sold them a few pipes and a box of matches (in truth I'm not exaggerating that much)

I would agree that the supposed awakening has sprouted up around various flashpoints and their evil ideology has been exported but I sense this would have happened anyway.


Icebreaker. I've looked. I would anticipate it will be on Netflix soon. Just the type of film they run
 
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Weaponised evangelicism goes back much further Clive. Indeed, 800 years ago we were running round on crusades trying to do exactly the same to the Islamic world

I think you can get a bit hung up on labels. Although my initial post about Newton Heath and Ardwick FC was meant to be sarcastic, patronising, and simplified, the more I thought about it, the more I could see that perhaps it was more relevant than I'd initially realised in so much as both of Manchester's football clubs today represent an evolution of their origins.

If you want to claim that Newton Heath and Ardwick have been defeated you can, but you'd be hard pressed to claim that football in Manchester has, indeed, they've built up international followings and draw their players in accordingly, and there is a tribal element to this as well if you want to get of sociogical on me

I think you're likely to be correct however that we have perhaps seen 'peak ISIS' (for now) but it would be a brave person who said that the threat goes away. It'll only be a matter of time before the next one flares up, and in many respects this looks like the new global objective so far as one actually exists. The simulataneous conflageration of regionalised conflicts that's requiring the defenders to spread themselves

At the moment it's been confined to what you might call vulnerable countries where power vacuums combine with a receptive population. Not surprisingly this will prove to be the most fertile ground. Libya looks ripe to be the next one, at the moment its a civil war with the continuity Gadaffi elements based on Tripoli holding their own in that area, whereas Benghazi seemingly continues to change hands. Ultimately the tribal militias are slugging this one out, but if the normal pattern is followed, then the militants will prevail. You don't need to be a genius either to see that the Taleban will be back in control of Afghanistan within 12 months of our withdrawal. Whether that extends to Kabul and the whole country remains to be seen, but I doubt the Afghan government will be able to rule as envisaged, and especially with the dead hand of the ISI pulling strings

The reason the UK remains relatively untouched isn't hard to see. None of the conditions described really prevail here

We don't have a receptive demographic, we don't have a power vacuum (even if we have vacuous government) we have monitoring technologies, we have a loyal police/ army, we have a conscious civilian population, we have something that broadly passes as an education system (though I wouldn't like to really stand on that one!) we also have pro-active intervention programmes (which I recall you belittling because the Daily Mail did so about 6 years ago when they ran through a series of local authority job titles questioning their legitimacy - as I had to explain it to you), in fact (and somewhat perversely) the biggest obstacle to rolling these strategies out, has actually been democracy. Programmes have been cancelled at local level on numerous occasions by councillors scared about adopting them for fear of how their 200 vote majority might be jeopardised
 
Edit - lost my post in cyber space!

What I was saying is that by removing Assad last year, ISIS and the other factions would have gained Syria with some mediation from the West, and fought amongst themselves for years on end over who would control Syria.
In that sense they would have ended up containing themselves to some degree in Syria.

The lack of a breakthrough against Assad since last year has caused the severity of the level of violence in Iraq now.

No doubt ISIS and Assad will arrange a mutual ceasefire while Iraq burns in flames and causes an even greater problem for the West than Syria last year!
 
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And.......?

I think you'll also find that in the real world people rarely organise to overthrow any government without having one eye on the succession. I'd be very confident that the militant islamic division were calculating at a very early stage that they could replace Assad, and doubt very much they'd have settled for a power sharing arrangement with some western imposed stooge
 
You're completely missing my thesis Marble

If stopping the advance of radicalised Islam was an objective of the west, then that is incompatiable with the overthrow of Assad, as it was Gadaffi, Hussein, and Mubarak. All of these despots had a lot more to lose through the spread of radical islam being on the first line, than the west did. These despots were your natural allies in this battle. Indeed, one of them joined it, abandoned his WMD and started working clandestinely to do some the wests dirtier work for them!!! and was rewarded in a drain pipe

Luckily for Egypt their army is still strong and loyal enough to intervene when democracy goes wrong

On the other side of the equation however you have blind optimists like Clive who'd have you believe that all they have do is give them free elections and something that might crudely pass as democracy and everyone lives happily ever after. Well this hasn't worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, or Algeria, indeed, it even provided the oxygen in Algeria! OK he keeps pointing at Tunisia (as if its enlightened beacon - which it isn't) but if anyone brought him that balance sheet and asked him to take a business view on it, I very much doubt he'd be telling them to continue running the loss making line that they are doing

Ironically, the one 'group' I think which could be more receptive to democracy (not that I think any of them are!) are the corrupt sheikdoms which don't quite suffer from the same level of material deprivation as the slums in some of the other countries. Perversely, another candidate might actually be Iran
 
Interesting thesis/picture you've painted there, Warbler.

For me you may be generalising, (or your approach is overly generic in relation to Syria.)

I don't pretend to have the type of in-depth knowledge you or others have of the middle east, but for me..a lot rested on the decision to overthrow Assad last year.

I'm only really arguing the toss-up on that precise decision, (or lack of it), and the possible consequences in Iraq now, I can't really start translating my view to the entire middle east, though I appreciate your efforts in doing that in your own way.
 
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It's no coincidence Marb that the first person to attack and try and depose the Islamic revolution in Iran, was Saddam Hussein. He knew the threat it posed to him if it gained traction. Despite making significant early gains, the Iraqi advance stalled and a stalemate set in, before Iran started to reverse the gains. After about 7-8 years they agreed a peace deal, and Saddam realising that he couldn't destory the threat over the border, concentrated instead on wiping out radical islam within his own borders and eliminating the threat that way. He'd built up a large army and pretty effective and brutal secret police force

Saddam was rather successful at it, and there was next to no organised or effective radical islamic group in Iraq other than the one John Major helped create in the north under the protection of his no fly zones. When 9/11 happened he should have been in the clear. None of the bombers had any Iraqi connections, there was no a dinar of funding traced to Iraq, and he was pretty much in the vanguard of eliminating Islamists. However, America had a prejudiced retard in the White House who concluded that Saddam was behind it all (a family feud going back to 1996 imho)

Bush duly went after the wrong target and cost more lives in the process than Saddam had got through. He succeeded in breathing new life into radical islam in both Iraq and the riparian region. There was a classic quote from Bush where he says

"There might not have been, but there sure as hell is now"

Without any sense of irony, Bush was commenting on the AQ presence in Iraq before and after the American invasion, and what using the presence of AQ there now as justification. It's about as perverse as David Cameron claiming one of Britain's great achievements was the "abolition of the slave trade" when trying to rebuke Putin he'd called him an insignificant little island
 
Warbler said:
Ironically, the one 'group' I think which could be more receptive to democracy (not that I think any of them are!) are the corrupt sheikdoms which don't quite suffer from the same level of material deprivation as the slums in some of the other countries. Perversely, another candidate might actually be Iran
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Please don't laugh at me, but, ...........
I consider Iran to be a democracy as it is.
It has a publicly elected parliament (with parliamentary seats reserved for Christian and Jewish representatives). Ethnic minorities -- Kurds, Turkmen etc -- live peacefully and without fear of persecution (their safety and protection is guaranteed by law). Christians and Jews are allowed to openly practice their religions without interference (there are dozens of synagogues in Tehran alone). Women make up the majority of university students, and they are prominent in employment and public life.
Iran, in comparison to many other middle-east states, is an oasis of eqalitarianism imho.
 
Your point about a teacher in your school looking to indoctrinate a select bunch of kids is an important one Marble. This is far from an isolated incident, and your not the only person I've heard this and similar situations from. A good Muslim friend of mine has told me stories of his experience of a cleric actively trying to recruit him and many others a few years ago.

These teachings in select mosques and schools in the 'more ripe' communities are the reason why we see so many western born Muslims directly joining the ISIS fight both at home and in the Middle East. I'd also add that this isn't just a UK issue and these recruitment activities are going on all around Europe.

Your example is 15 years ago. Just how many Muslims could that one evil man have had a deep impact on in their formative years if he hadn't been caught or stopped? More disturbingly, just how many more like him have been getting away with what he was doing more privately for many years?

This is such a serious problem that anyone teaching these extreme views should not be subject to normal laws and there should be the power to arrest and lock away the key irrespective of whether they are nationals or not. In fact I'm surprised Clive argues against this being a problem, and elsewhere the point was even trivialised with a juvenile grammar attack to kill it.

Aren't those that argue against or ignore this simply burying their head in the sand to a problem that is on their own doorstep?
 
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Maruco said:
elsewhere the point was even trivialised with a juvenile grammar attack to kill it.
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For any member who reads this and recognises it as referring to me, I would like to mention that I said way back in post #126 :
"One must ask oneself how all these youth in Britain are becoming radicalised. The answer in part is due to the agitprop they're being fed by extremist imams/preachers in some mosques".
 
I'm surprised you didn't support my post instead then Icebreaker, and if that's your view it makes your response a very strange one.

My view is that this issue represents the single biggest threat to national security and if decisive measures aren't taken soon we'll be worrying less about whats happening in the Middle East and more about a much more personal threat.
 
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icebreaker said:
Iran, in comparison to many other middle-east states, is an oasis of eqalitarianism imho.
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It's undoubtedly authoritarian - but so what
There's undoubtedly been an increasein pro democracy demonstrations - which equally have undoubtedly been fanned by the CIA

I don't think Iran is the worst offender in the region and it's certainly more democratic than the corrupt shiekdoms. IT was less democratic under the Shah, but then he was only put in place by the CIA in the 1950's when Iran first flirted with democracy and lurched towards the Soviet model (aka Allende early in 1970's)

It's why I think Iran might be one of the more receptive, but there's also a big risk involved as the orthodoxy is still religious and that always worries me regardless of denomination. Any system based on an irrational and unfounded truism is a concern in my book
 
Maruco said:
I'm surprised you didn't support my post instead then Icebreaker, and if that's your view it makes your response a very strange one.

My view is that this issue represents the single biggest threat to national security and if decisive measures aren't taken soon we'll be worrying less about whats happening in the Middle East and more about a much more personal threat.
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I'll try and get back to this in the fullness of time, as once upon a time I was put on some kind of 'death list' for refusing to recommend some grant awards to an organisation that so far as I could see were transparent in what they were doing under the auspices of sport and youth diversion programmes

I would say though that one of the biggest contributing problems is the British political class and our own structure at a local level which ensures that councillors are often elected on three figure mandates and have to react to waver thin majorities

Both political parties are culpable for providing the background for this kind thing though

The conservatives are frankly naive and clueless given that they're drawn from a class that has no experience of these kinds of things. You might recall the 'big society' (humanely suffocated it seems now have its many launches, relaunches, and ultimate still birth) but a lot of us with direct experience of this kind of initiative howled with laughter and knew it was destined for the rocks. Cameron thought he was empowering middle classes to save their village post office and the like, he had little comprehension (and nor did his equally guilty senior civil servants who are drawn from the same backgrounds) as to how this would pan out in urban areas

The Labour party for their part need the votes of ethnic minorities so they bring pressure to bear (especially at a local level) on council officers to sign off recommendations for funding approvals to communities who'll otherwise vote as a bloc

I did laugh though when Cameron was voted in as Prime Minister (well i didn't, I sort of cried as well) but one of the first overseas trips he undertook was to Pakistan where he told them they had to shut down their madrassas. In the first case he couldn't even control his own, and he was bringing forward legislation for free schools that were going to open the floodgates but couldn't see it coming.
 
marble said:
Edit - lost my post in cyber space!

What I was saying is that by removing Assad last year, ISIS and the other factions would have gained Syria with some mediation from the West, and fought amongst themselves for years on end over who would control Syria.
In that sense they would have ended up containing themselves to some degree in Syria.

The lack of a breakthrough against Assad since last year has caused the severity of the level of violence in Iraq now.

No doubt ISIS and Assad will arrange a mutual ceasefire while Iraq burns in flames and causes an even greater problem for the West than Syria last year!
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Not sure about a lost post Marb, completely altering one might be fairer description, but in the first case if the Syrian army were defeated (Assad) your assertion that the factions would have fought for years is unlikely to have happened. ISIS would in all probability have over run the country within a month

The violence in Iraq owes more to the complete breakdown of the Iraqi army. To suggest its Syria's fault for daring to inflict some losses on ISIS is to swallow the stupid William Hague line. The Syrian army have stood their ground more effectively, the Iraqi's ran away

I don't think there's a cat in hells chance of Assad doing a deal with ISIS. He'll do a deal with a neighbour before. It's a shame we've made him destroy his chemical weapons!!! they might have come in handy yet

I actually think Iraq will begin to turn round now, as Clive suggests, but it will be because the Americans and French do the steering
 
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whilst typing all this, this evening, it appears the islamists have taken control of Tripoli's airport

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28916417

Now where's William Hague and David Cameron to tell us what a great piece of foreign policy it is they've authored here along with Nicolas Sarkozy. Does anyone remember the self regarding plaudits they heaped on themselves in the immediate aftermath. Indeed, Cameron used to visit Tripoli to tell the Libyans what a bright future awaited them now that they'd thrown off the only stabilising rule the country!!! I'd like to invite him to go back and say the same thing 3 years on :lol:
 
Couple of things

I get tired of hearing its "religion" . Sorry. Do I see buddisht Church of England and Quaker wars? No I don't. It's a "mustn't offend the Muslims" statement. And it is bollocks

Warbler. You go on about class of backgrounds. I don't naturally warm to public schoolboys but I take as I find. Shall we have a dig at the north London liberal snob Marxist background of milliband too?
 
Couple of things

I get tired of hearing its "religion" . Sorry. Do I see buddisht Church of England and Quaker wars? No I don't. It's a "mustn't offend the Muslims" statement. And it is bollocks

Warbler. You go on about class of backgrounds. I don't naturally warm to public schoolboys but I take as I find. Shall we have a dig at the north London liberal snob Marxist background of milliband too?
 
Warbler said:
The violence in Iraq owes more to the complete breakdown of the Iraqi army. To suggest its Syria's fault for daring to inflict some losses on ISIS is to swallow the stupid William Hague line. The Syrian army have stood their ground more effectively, the Iraqi's ran away
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William Hague seemed quite a balanced foreign secretary, certainly compared to his years at Tory opposition leader.
I think he was learning a lot on the job and would have applied himself to his position on Syria with considerable thought as others have.

Yes, I did lose my post, was at one location then by the time I was reading from somewhere else I'd lost the post, or had a sentence left which wouldn't have made sense without the rest that had been lost!

Anyway, you've got the gist of what I was saying.
 
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Grasshopper said:
The problem with the 'moderate' Muslim constituency in the UK, is that whilst they will state that the actions of ISIS/Al Queda/take-your-pick are abhorrent, it is almost always qualified with a "but if the West didn't have X/Y/Z policy.....".

This is their ultimate failing, and the reason why domestic tensions between non-Muslims and Muslims are heading towards breaking-point in the UK.

In my view, the 'Islamic world' has utterly-failed to confront the problem of Sunni militantism. There doesn't even seem to be a desire to do so. And in the absence of any visible or tangible attempt at "house-keeping" by Islamic States, the West has very little option but to attempt to address it itself. The world is now too connected for a 'Do Nothing' option to ever be viable. Yet, when the West make attempts at addressing the situation, the Islamic World defaults to it's now established pattern of "Yes, but....."......which is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide their own apparent disinterest in being part of the solution - let alone leading on it, as they should be doing.

It's time that Islamic States stood-up to be counted. They can't have it both ways. If they refuse to accept terrorism for what it is, and continue to hide behind the notion that Western policy is to blame, it won't be long before there is an almighty religious war between Islamic/non- islamic countries. I give it a couple more major atrocities, before it all kicks-off for real.
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Well written Grasshopper, fully agree
 
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