It is all very well for politicians to parade before the cameras, offering their sympathies to the families of those killed and injured during last month’s attack in Tunisia. But, as the first bodies of the murdered British tourists were repatriated to RAF Brize Norton last Wednesday, they should also have remembered that they, too, had a hand in creating the conditions that led to Britain suffering its worst attack since the July 7 bombings in London 10 years ago. From British Prime Minister David Cameron to Theresa May, all the high-ranking Tory ministers who have expressed their revulsion over the Sousse killings were also senior members of the previous government when it launched its ill-considered military operation to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
And, irrespective of whether or not that decision was justified, having succeeded in toppling him, they then failed completely to honour the moral obligation they had to stabilise the country after decades of dictatorship. Furthermore, it is as a direct result of that failure that Libya’s vast desert expanses have now become a lawless vacuum occupied by roaming bands of Islamist militias, many directly linked to Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). The truth of the Tunisian authorities’ claim that Saif Al Deen Rezgui, the 24-year-old responsible for last Friday’s shootings, was trained at a Daesh camp across the border in Libya has yet to be firmly established. But what is beyond any doubt is that the lawless mess Britain and other members of the anti-Gaddafi military coalition — such as the US, France and Italy — have made of Libya has had a deeply destabilising effect on the whole of North Africa. The government’s immediate priority may be to prevent thousands of migrants being shipped illegally from countries like Libya to southern Europe. The far greater concern, however, should be to prevent militants based in Libya, exporting their perverse ideology throughout the rest of the Maghreb, threatening British interests as well as British lives. Moreover, the Government’s inability to come up with a coherent and effective strategy to counter the Daesh menace in North Africa is replicated in its approach to tackling Daesh’s heartland in Iraq and Syria.
As we report today, coalition efforts to destroy Daesh are being seriously undermined by the growing frustration among our Arab allies at the failure of the western powers — Britain included — to devise an effective strategy for defeating Daesh. As one senior Gulf official commented: “There is simply no strategic approach. There is a lack of coordination in selecting targets, and there is no overall plan.”
‘An existential threat’
The biting criticism of the effort by Britain and other western countries against Daesh certainly seems to be at odds with Cameron’s promise last week to offer a “full-spectrum” response in dealing with what he described as “an existential threat” to the West. But, as the New York Times wryly observed, there was little “in concrete policy terms” to suggest any dramatic change in direction by the government in the war against Daesh, nor any suggestion that Britain may increase its military involvement. There has, of course, been much criticism in America, from senior politicians as well as military officers, over the government’s plans to make further cuts to the defence budget. But when it comes to managing its own campaign against Daesh, Washington is also, according to its Arab allies, falling well short of the mark, with senior officials accusing the Obama administration of “refusing to take this conflict seriously”.
The most common gripe I hear from our Arab allies is that you cannot hope to defeat a fast-moving and resourceful enemy like Daesh through air strikes alone. If it is to be vanquished, then ground forces will be required. To this end, the West has been attempting to train various militias, both in Iraq and Syria, into an effective fighting force capable of defeating Daesh.
On this front, there has been some modest progress, particularly with regard to Syrian opposition forces operating from northern Jordan. But if Daesh is really to be put under pressure, then, as Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former head of the British army, suggested last week, the US, Britain and other western nations need to give serious consideration to deploying special forces and other ground assets that can guide and support locally-trained troops. They also need to ensure that effective allies, such as Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, have the equipment they need to defeat Daesh. To date, Britain has donated a handful of heavy machine guns, a contribution one senior officer described to me as “woefully inadequate”. Certainly, if Cameron and other western leaders are really serious about preventing a repeat of the appalling scenes last week at Sousse, then they need to come up with a far more convincing strategy — one that guarantees Daesh is destroyed.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2015
