A new approach to tackling Daesh

Daesh. This one word strikes terror in the heart of millions around the world. Within the space of an incredibly short span of time, this terrorist group has come to personify everything that is repugnant in human values, despite speaking in the name of religion.

So, how do we stop this cancer from spreading? The worlds of politicians, academics, the military and media have been rife with ideas on this issue. Military action, spreading the true message of Islam as a religion of peace, social media campaigns — the list is endless.

However, is Daesh merely the latest example of religious fundamentalism? Is the issue only one of a twisted message of religion, or is it part of a wider phenomenon? If so, what are the issues we are missing, and how do we meet the challenges posed not just by Daesh, but other similar movements elsewhere on the planet?

These are the issues discussed in “Irregular War: Isis and the Threat from the Margins” by Paul Rogers. A professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford, Rogers has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for more than 30 years. In this book, he puts forward the hypothesis that the scourge of Daesh cannot be studied in isolation, but needs to be understood in the context of the increasing number of movements that are springing up across the world, most of which are due to wider socioeconomic causes.

But what constitutes the margins? Is it merely fringe movements, consisting of small groups of people who have lost out as the rest prospered, or is it something deeper? Rogers contends that while Daesh is certainly a major security problem, the real drivers of global insecurity are quite different. These, as discussed in the book, are widening socioeconomic divisions, which lead to marginalisation of a majority of people across the world, and environmental constraints caused by climate change. “Isis [the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Daesh], in short, should be seen as a warning of what could be to come, not a fundamental trend in its own right,” Rogers writes.

Thus Rogers draws a parallel between the rise of Daesh and violent paramilitary movements over the past three decades — the Basque separatist organisation ETA in Spain, the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, Shining Path in Peru and even the Naxalites in India. “Anti-elite action will be a core feature of the next 30 years — not so much a clash of civilisations, but an age of insurgencies,” Rogers writes.

To put things in perspective, consider the following data — the richest one-fifth of the world’s population increased their share of global wealth from 70 per cent in 1960 to 85 per cent in 1991. In the same period, the poorest one-fifth’s share dropped from 2.3 per cent to 1.7 per cent. As the world became decolonised since the end of the Second World War, the newly independent nations increasingly found themselves at a disadvantage in global trade. Despite increasing access to education, the youth in these countries find their economic prospects scarcely matching their expectation, which in turn leads to increased resentment, and thus they become easy prey for violent ideologues who seek to feed their frustrations.

In addition to the socioeconomic paradigm, the issue of climate change has also been a major driver of marginalisation. As a result of shifting weather patterns, not least caused by the unfettered industrial expansion by the rich nations, there is now an increased prospect of a large number of lower income countries facing decreased food production and the lack the resources to import is leading to social and political difficulties as well as bitterness and resentment.

If this hypothesis were to be true, then the entire paradigm and approach to tackling Daesh will need to change. However, for much of the global elite, it still remains business as usual, living in denial of the problems that might arise “from a dangerous combination of a deeply unequal economy and an increasingly constrained world, factors that disproportionately damage the lives of the marginalised majority”, Rogers writes. As a result, the response of this “military-industrial complex” has been to treat Daesh, and other similar paramilitary movements, merely as law and order issues, thus seeking to tackle force with more force, leading to the fracas that the War of Terror has become.

Along with this, the enormous firepower that the coalition forces used led to very high civilian casualties, further alienating the local populace who saw them as an occupying force, and thus easy prey for Daesh recruiters. So, the more brutal the force applied, the more the innocent people suffer, and the more they feel bitter, fanning insurgent tendencies.

Looking at Daesh proper, Rogers identifies the US decision to disband the Iraqi Army soon after Saddam Hussain was toppled as a key factor in the rise of the terror group. This one act sent “tens of thousands of conscripts and professional soldiers into unemployment and the margins of what remained of Iraqi society”. This resulted in the terror group having ready recruits eager to join the insurgency, who became the core of its fighting troops. It was even found that some of them were sent to Afghanistan, thus prolonging the war in the country.

Similarly, the sacking of large numbers of public officials who had been members of Saddam’s Baath Party also created fertile recruitment ground for Daesh as it took over territory and used these people to run the administration. A pattern thus emerged whereby Daesh’s own fighters would take over territory, but then move on, leaving control to the Baathists and clan militias, thus enabling the group to control an enormous amount of territory within such a short time.

It is this series of events that led Daesh to control land similar to the size of Britain with a population of around 6 million by July 2014. While much of this was desert and scrubland, it also included extensive farmland adjacent to the River Euphrates, part of the “Fertile Crescent” where agriculture began. “It is the combination of a motivated and ruthless leadership and a powerful paramilitary force, located together in a relatively secure and substantially functioning economy, that makes Isis [Daesh] such an unusual creation,” Rogers writes.

In conclusion, Rogers calls for a radical rethinking of the “control” paradigm among the world’s leading powers. Otherwise, “whether Isis [Daesh] thrives, survives or just declines, the conditions remain for other movements to arise anywhere across North Africa, the Middle East or South Asia,” he writes.

Rogers provides us with a new, almost Marxian path to approaching the problems of terrorism, that of socioeconomic development. Tackling terror with force merely treats the symptoms, but the ailment will not be cured unless the true cause of resentment — inequality — is addressed. But is anyone listening?