ISIL: the real strategy..........

The Syria vote in the Commons means an escalation of war in the region; ISIL would be dancing in the streets were it not that dancing is Haram. Their next move will be to provoke a massive influx of ground troops.

 

To understand their perverted strategy, we must exhume 9/11.  Why did a bunch of middle class well-educated Saudis fly fully-loaded airliners into the Twin Towers, killing over 3000 people? A whole catalogue of motives has been promulgated. American support for Israel; the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia; sanctions imposed on Iraq; and a whole raft of others involving somewhat incoherent hatred of the Great Satan.

 

Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam foundation think tank has a convincing take on what motivates jihadism. He maintains that AL Qaeda did not create jihadism; jihadism created Al Qaeda. The jihadist strategy has been to provoke the west into massive retaliation on the fairly sound assumption that the West would eventually become bogged down in interminable and unwinnable conflict.

 

Suddenly, 9/11 comes into focus.

 

The objective was to provoke massive retaliation  that would cost thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars, and eventually such war-weariness that Americans would just want to get the hell out of there. Bin Laden understood too well the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ that followed America’s humiliating defeat and lost its appetite for foreign adventures until the first Gulf war revived its love-affair with ‘boots on the ground’.

 

The strategy succeeded beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams (although he may have got more than he bargained for; it is said that Dubya considered the nuclear option). The outcome was exactly what breeds the ungovernable chaos on which terrorism thrives.

 

AL Qaeda then moves its HQ to Afghanistan, and sure enough, the West took the bait. AQ scarpered after three weeks to Yemen and other remote hell-holes. The allies stayed another 14 years for reasons that have never been properly explained or understood. The allies war-aims thus remain a mystery, but if our leaders had taken time to read ‘The Great Game’ and then understood that war by infidels against Afghans was, and remains,  unwinnable. It will be intriguing to see how ISIS gets on against the Taliban now they have decided to set up a caliphate in Eastern Afghanistan.

 

And so to Libya, where Western intervention in the ejection of Gadhafi left the door wide open for  ISIL in the ensuing chaos. It is now reputed to have 3,000 fighters in Gadhafi’s home town, which is alarmingly close to European entry via Malta.

 

The grand strategy of the jihadis is not to convert the entire world to Islam or even restore Islam to the cultural, financial and military heyday of the Middle Ages, when Damascus, Baghdad, Aleppo and other cities in the Mesopotamia region were the cradles of civilisation.

 

Jihadis wish to restore the caliphate to its status quo ante, to the 9^th Century in which the Quran was to be obeyed literally and all forms of learning were haram (the aim also of Boko Haram which means ‘books forbidden’ i.e. all forms of Western civilisation and learning, with the only education being learning the Quran by heart in madrassas).

 

This means cleansing Islam of all foreign infidels and their institutions, exterminating the ruling families of Saud and others, and toppling all current MENA regimes.

 

It is to be fervently hoped that the West has a sound counter strategy.

 

If not, the world could be facing the fulfilment of the Orwellian prophesy of endless war between West and East – Oceania versus Eurasia.

 

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