World Media on Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
Compiled by New Age Islam Edit Desk
18 November, 2014
ISIS Is Creating Chaos, but They’re a Product of Organized Chaos
What If The Islamic State Wins?
ISIL’s Biggest Mistake: the Disastrous Aleppo Moment for Syrian Rebels Is Repeating Itself for ISIL, This Time in Kobani
Is Central Asia Afraid Of ISIS?
ISIS and Islamophobia
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ISIS Is Creating Chaos, but They’re a Product of Organized Chaos
By Brandon Todd
November 13, 2014
The ISIS War is turning into a hellish one. But, truth be told, all war is hell; it is also inevitable. Bertolt Brecht once said “War is like love, it always finds a way.”
ISIS is waging war against the West, Israel and America in a battle of territorial acquisitions and ideologies.
ISIS regimes are fighting all through Iraq and Syria, slaughtering, and executing Syrian and Iraqi officers in mass numbers. The Islamic state, and its many soldiers, is expanding throughout the Middle East and North Africa, taking pertinent territories throughout Iraq such as the Anbar province. They are pushing toward Baghdad. Also, the ISIS army is taking over Kobani on the Turkish border as well as annexing territory in Syria, while terrorizing the Middle East and North Africa as a whole.
ISIS is creating chaos, but they’re a product of organized chaos. Obama has enabled radical Islam and in many ways he helped create ISIS. The President has enabled, empowered and emboldened ISIS to the point that they’ve gained significant political and military power, and they are moving through the Middle East and North Africa like the devil as the old saying goes.
Al Qaeda rebels were attempting to do a coup in Syria and topple Bashar Al Assad when the Syrian Civil War started back in 2011. Assad gassed his own people with chemical weapons and President Obama issued a “red-line.” In doing so, he had to take action.
The action he took, and it seems all the media outlets are ignoring this fact, is he provided the radical, Al Qaeda affiliated, rebel sects in Syria, through CIA, with great amounts of money and American-grade weaponry. American allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey also supplied Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels in Syria with financing and weaponry.
As a result of Obama’s reckless action of arming and funding the Al Qaeda rebels during the Syrian Civil War, and the recessive inaction of allowing Turkey and Saudi Arabia to do the same. Al Qaeda “rebels” evolved and morphed into ISIS.
Islam has various radical concepts within the structures of the faith. There are a few Islamic traditions and agendas in the Quran such as Jihad that are meant to be followed by all Muslims.
Muslims are obligated to Allah to destroy and hate all infidels and disbelievers (Jews, Christians, and Non-Muslims). They are all obligated by their faith to purse Jihad, follow Sharia and to try and establish a Global Islamic Caliphate/empire.
Even moderate Muslims support the radical agenda of Islam. Islam itself is radical by nature. To say otherwise is outright denial out of fear, or denial out of sympathy. The Islamic State (ISIS) is very much Islamic. But the fact that they have become so powerful is merely due to the fact that ISIS has been both, directly and indirectly, US armed and US funded.
The airstrike campaign that President Obama has initiated against ISIS is costing billions and it hasn’t proven to be a strategic success on any level. Rather, Obama’s incompetence as far as military strategy, foreign policy, and relations with the Middle East has cost America dearly. He has made America look weak, and he has made ISIS seem strong. He has endangered America’s Superpower status, while empowering and enabling our enemies.
As we all know, Obama like to keeps things “fair” and on “level playing fields.” He must think this ISIS War, like all other major issues this country is facing, is a political game. But, War is never a game. Even a community organizer should know that.
American novelist Henry Miller once wrote “How different the new order would be if we consult the veteran instead of the politician.” President Obama has set our nation on a path of another war. Yet this is a holy war; a 21st Century Crusade.
Now that we have entered into this holy war it is highly likely that American soldiers will be put into the war theatres of Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS. Once that occurs, there is no going back.
I hope the President knows what he is doing, in regard to ISIS, and I pray he makes the rights choices to protect America and our interests. In many ways, the fate of this new world order lies in his hands.
Benjamin Franklin was absolutely right when he said “There never is a good war or a bad peace.” Truth is there never will be. Yet it seems in this ISIS war, peace is not an option.
Todd is a former resident of Gastonia now living in Florida.
Source: http://www.gastongazette.com/opinion/columns/my-turn-isis-is-a-product-of-organized-chaos-1.400967
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What If The Islamic State Wins?
By Gerard M. Gallucci
I recently gave a talk at Drake University on peacekeeping and US foreign policy. During the Q&A, I was asked what I thought would happen with the Islamic State (IS). I thought a bit and replied that I guess they will win and we – the West – will have to find a way to deal with them. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, retired US Army Major General Robert Scales suggested the same thing: “If the American people won’t accept further escalation [in Iraq], they will have to accept the caliphate.” It remains unlikely that the American people – perhaps excluding another 9/11-like terrorist attack – will accept the major escalation of introducing ground troops.
According to Scales, the US air war has contributed to stopping the IS advance on Baghdad. But the IS has not lost territory and the Iraqi army had not gained much. He called this a “culminating” position that allows IS to strengthen its military and political hold on the Sunni parts of the region while readying for the next phase. President Obama’s decision last week to send another 1500 military advisors to Iraq is meant to train up those Iraqi troops that may be able to fight sufficiently well to take the war to the IS. Scales suggests that may be too little and too late.
Meanwhile, the US has made clear that its efforts against the IS and other jihadists in Syria is not aimed at deposing Assad. Recently, Assad’s forces seem to have begun taking direct action against IS. (This may be because between his attacks on the “moderate” rebels plus advances against them by IS and Al Qaeda forces, there is nothing much left for him to attack.) A cynic might say that Obama’s approach to “degrading” the IS and making Iraq safe for democracy appears to be an implicit alliance with Assad (and his Iranian allies) and winning enough space in Iraq to avoid its fall on his watch.
But the IS has distinct advantages that suggest it might be hard to displace or keep from making further advances. It has a high octane motivating world-view and an explicit framework for organizing life in its territory: fundamentalist Islam. It effectively uses modern weapons, oil, social media and brutality to wield power and seize territory. A US general involved in the war effort recently noted that while the US inflicts roughly 800 casualties a month on the IS, the movement gains at least 1000 new recruits in the same period. These recruits are highly driven and many are apparently ready to commit suicide to further the group’s aims. The US air war cannot be used against populated areas where the IS can take shelter. The US may be able to kill leaders but experience suggests that there is no shortage of others ready to step into their shoes. (IS includes Baathist officers who apparently do know how to fight.) The IS brand is meanwhile spreading as groups in Nigeria and Egypt pledge their allegiance.
Washington has suggested that the war to degrade the IS will be a long one. There is no reason to expect that the advantages of a protracted struggle will not mostly accrue to the IS. Sunnis will resist fighting Sunnis, Shias will be increasingly dependent on outside support and the secular, moderate middle that US policy depends upon will evaporate.
It might seem too late for the West to back away from confronting the IS without paying a cost. As the war against it deepens, the group may seek to take reprisal attacks of its own in the form of terrorist actions beyond its territory. The IS may not be interested in negotiating an outcome even if Washington and its allies come to see the necessity of a settlement. So perhaps it might work best to seek to de-escalate within the context of calling a pause to explore some grand international effort to come to terms with the new borders that may have to be drawn in the region. Allied military actions would focus on holding the ground against further IS advances while not taking the offensive. Washington might take the lead in calling for an international conference including the various regional and extra-regional actors – including Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – to establish baselines and eventually directly engage the IS themselves as well as other warring parties. Or perhaps, the outside actors might empower the UN to begin the process. It would mean, however unpleasant the prospect, accepting that all parties holding territory must be allowed to remain in place. This would require effective recognition of partition and new boundaries and acceptance that “democratic” outcomes may remain impractical at this time.
Or it may be that a gradual freezing-in-place – whether by design or default – offers the best achievable outcome. (UN Envoy de Mistura has suggested such an approach beginning with a ceasefire in Aleppo.) But essential to any effort would be eschewing any notion of a military solution. If IS cannot be defeated militarily, and if “degrading” it remains a distant and uncertain outcome, then everyone may have to accept that the IS will remain a factor and that the effort to build a Sunni state on the basis of sharia must be allowed to play itself out. It seems ever more unlikely that the West can prevent this outcome through armed intervention in what is essentially a war within Islam to determine which century the people of the region decide to live in.
Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat and UN peacekeeper. He worked as part of US efforts to resolve the conflicts in Angola, South Africa and Sudan and as Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008 and as Chief of Staff for the UN mission in East Timor from November 2008 until June 2010. He was Diplomat-in-Residence at Drake University for the 2013-14 school year and now works as an independent consultant.
Source: http://www.transconflict.com/2014/11/what-if-islamic-state-wins-131/
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ISIL’s Biggest Mistake: the Disastrous Aleppo Moment for Syrian Rebels Is Repeating Itself for ISIL, This Time in Kobani
By Mahir Zeynalov
November 16, 2014
War is not only about violence and bloodshed. It is also a risky chess game: one wrong move and "Boom!"
You must make smart decisions and forge the right alliances. You must correctly assess the power of your army as well as the power of your adversary. You must have A, B, C and D plans. It is a game played by adults hell-bent on obliterating one another.
The rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL) is the direct result of an unprecedented discipline among the ranks of the militant group, not its power or prudence. The combined effort of radical militants from 80 different countries and the synergy among ISIL fighters helped them quickly overrun much of northern and eastern Syria along with large swaths of Iraq.
One victory after another convinced many radicalized Islamists around the world that fighting with ISIL might have a "happy ending." To maintain its major source of power -- recruitment -- the Islamic State has spent too much on a PR campaign. Kobani is part of this campaign. But it will also be their graveyard. Why? Let us go back to 1943.
The Soviet Union was invaded. The Nazis routed the Soviets in Stalingrad (now Volgagrad), the biggest city in the northern Caspian region. It was the year when the Soviet Union picked up the momentum to push back the Germans, starting from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). When the Nazis lost cities one after another both in Russia and the Balkans, Stalingrad remained in the hands of Germans. Adolf Hitler was advised to either send additional reinforcements to the city or pull the army back to fight elsewhere. Hitler rejected both proposals. More than 100,000 German soldiers were trapped in the city when the Soviet army surrounded the town, kicking off an effective air campaign and ground operation. "The resistance of German soldiers in Stalingrad is key for German soldiers fighting elsewhere," Hitler said. He knew all the German troops in Stalingrad would be eradicated, but it was important for the Russians to be kept busy dealing with Stalingrad while the German army continued its battles in Africa, Western Europe and the Balkans.
Borrowing a page from Hitler's playbook, Bashar al-Assad played with the same strategy. He spread the war to all of Syria, except the coastal areas that are an Alawite stronghold, predicting that the rebels would not combine forces to attack Damascus if they were fighting in every corner of the country. The strategy was brilliant and worked very well.
In 2012, Syrian rebels staged massive assaults on Damascus and Aleppo. Misreading their own power and the muscle of the Syrian regime, the rebels thought they would strike the final blow in the raging war and that the invasion of Damascus would be a crowning achievement --the capstone of the war. Unable even to preserve small towns, the rebels (God knows why) thought they could quickly invade Aleppo and Damascus. Major military operations against the outer districts of Aleppo by Syrian rebels prompted ruthless air bombardment by Syrian aircraft, significantly devastating Syria's major business hub. The rebel attack on Aleppo, little to do with bringing down the Assad regime, was a windfall for Syria's embattled President Assad. He knew the rebels would be stuck there and it would turn the war in his favor. It turned out to be that way.
The rebels expended so much energy in the suburbs of Aleppo and Damascus. The result was ghost districts and a failed revolution. Allies of the Syrian opposition also failed to draft a better strategy. Turkish then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for instance, was a ferocious supporter of the Aleppo campaign. He said on many occasions that Aleppo and Damascus were on the verge of collapse. He was, as almost always, wrong. The US also reportedly believed that the Syrian regime would fall in six months in 2012.
Max Fisher looked at history in his eloquent The Atlantic piece, suggesting that the momentum rebels had gained in 2012 could be averted. He listed three examples from history, showing that such advances might fail in the end. He was right.
ISIL is making the same mistake (thankfully) the rebels did: focusing too much on unnecessary battles. ISIL understands that Kobani is not a strategic town for their cause, and it may well remain in the hands of the Kurds. Even the US acknowledged that Kobani represents no strategic value in their fight against ISIL. The town has received extensive media coverage because journalists can watch the town from a hill on the Turkish border.
The fall of Kobani would be an achievement for ISIL before the eyes of the entire world, attracting thousands of foreign fighters to support the violent cause of the radicals. Instead of dropping its bid for the Kurdish town, ISIL still keeps pushing hard for Kobani. Obsessed with the PR campaign, the insistence on capturing Kobani will become one of its biggest mistakes. The disastrous Aleppo moment for Syrian rebels is repeating itself for ISIL, this time in Kobani.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/blog/mahir-zeynalov/isils-biggest-mistake_364534.html
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Is Central Asia afraid of ISIS?
By Daniil Kislov
11 November 2014
The self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ has been seizing more and more territory in the Middle East, and now has its eyes on Central Asia.
Several weeks ago ISIS (also known as ISIL and Islamic State) forces reached Turkey’s borders, destroying all ‘infidels’ in their path, by which they mean both Christians and Muslims belonging to other branches of Islam. Support for ISIS has also extended beyond its region: Afghan and Pakistani members of the Taliban have already begun to swear allegiance to this new radical Islamist movement.
Recently, representatives of ISIS have stated that one of the organisation’s tasks is to destabilise the situation in Muslim countries in Central Asia, as well as in Russia. Meanwhile, repeated reports have surfaced about citizens of former Soviet republics engaged in combat alongside ISIS fighters.
Specialists in politics and international relations, regional specialists, politicians and informed observers were asked what they think about the subject. The following questions were put to them:
- How real are ISIS’s threats to destabilise the situation in Central Asia and Russia?
- How real is the possibility of ISIS recruiting Muslim citizens from Central Asia and Russia?
- If these threats are a reality, are Central Asian countries capable of independently tackling this threat or do they need help? If the latter, then from where – Russia, the US or other countries? What might Russia and the US demand in exchange for their help?
- Given the threat of ISIS, if this movement can be considered a threat, is Russia prepared to cooperate with the US in destroying ISIS to the extent of engaging their armed forces? If not, how are they prepared to help?
Aleksei Malashenko Chairman Of The ‘Religion, Society And Security’ Programme In The Carnegie Moscow Centre, Co-Chair Of The ‘Interethnic Relations In Russia And The CIS’ Programme, And One Of The Leading Russian Specialists On Islam.
I don’t think ISIS will drastically affect the situation in the Central Asian countries, and especially in Russia. They don’t have the guts for it. This movement has already compromised itself by chopping off people’s heads: the media are full of reports of executions. And members of both government and the opposition in the countries of Central Asia are of course distancing themselves from this movement; their position is roughly: ‘we are not the Middle East and it won’t happen here.’ But in terms of influencing the domestic situation or provoking some public reaction or social movement, it is possible.
With regards to ISIS recruiting Muslims, I think this issue is being exaggerated. We have no clue how many fighters from Central Asia and Russia are there at the moment: I don’t think there are many. In any case, there are no ‘Uzbek battalions’ there. We knew that fighters from Russia – from Makhachkala (Dagestan) and Tatarstan – took part in the Syrian war. But the exact number is, again, unknown. We might be talking about dozens, but definitely not thousands.
Russia has already taken a de facto part in the war against ISIS.
Russia has already taken a de facto part in the war against ISIS, by sending billions of dollars’ worth of supplies to the movement’s opponents. There are also Russian advisers in the Middle East. But it is difficult to say how the situation will develop. It’s a long term development. We are a part of the Islamic world and, of course, we will take part in all these processes.
If we are actually talking about the Central Asian countries, then I don’t think that they seriously need to be worried about ISIS. That’s not what we need to think about or fear. They have enough internal problems of their own, which need resolving: the transition of power and cross-border, economic and political issues.’
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Stanislav Belkovsky, Political Scientist And Commentator, Former Director Of Russia’s National Strategy Institute.
All the threats from ISIS are quite real. It’s already clear that the movement can boast of military success. But authoritarian regimes of the kind that exist in Russia and in the countries of Central Asia, are, in fact, fruit that can fall into carefully outstretched hands. It only requires the right conditions.
The recruitment of young people to join the ISIS fighters is also quite real, all the more so in an atmosphere of unemployment in the Central Asian countries and the Muslim republics of the Russian Caucasus.
In an atmosphere of unemployment in Central Asia and the Caucasus, ISIS recruitment of young Muslims is quite real.
The Central Asian countries will not be able to counter ISIS threats by themselves. Their armies are not capable of resisting experienced militants. They don’t have the military capabilities or indeed the national unity necessary for a war, and so they will ask for help from everyone and anyone possible, and in the first place from Russia and the US.
On the other hand, Vladimir Putin wants to sell the services of Russia to the US to help destroy ISIS. But his ‘sale’ is conditional on the removal of international sanctions against Russia and a pledge of non-interference in Russian policies in the post-Soviet space, and also on a change of the US’s position on the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. But the US is not ready to go there. Clearly, they don’t think this exchange is fair.
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Yadgor Norbutaev, Military Specialist, Blogger, International Observer at Fergana.Ru.
First of all, it should be noted that the danger lies less in ISIS as a state or a military force, than in the ideology advocated by its followers. This ideology is spreading like a dangerous virus, and people have not yet fully understood the extent of the threat it presents. In other words, the symptoms of the illness are known but nobody knows how to fight it. They’re trying to cure it with occasional ‘poultices’ (bombing attacks), but evidently without any real faith in a full recovery.
ISIS ideology (the virus), like any disease, mainly strikes ‘weak’ governments (organisms): economically underdeveloped, poverty-stricken places where the population is oppressed by their own governments, and so on. Note that it is mainly Muslim countries or countries with large Muslim enclaves that are susceptible to this disease. ISIS cannot threaten Japan, for example, and other countries with controlled immigration of migrant workers, immigrants, refugees etc, are also under less of a threat.
As with any ideology, ISIS’ principles are typically spread independent of the geographical position of the object of conquest.
One more characteristic trait is that it is already clear that ISIS will, in the near future, base its campaign less on its armed forces than on more unconventional methods of warfare, so that national frontiers alone will not be able to stop them. Their emissaries will penetrate Muslim countries like rats carrying plagues across continents.
It follows that Central Asian governments to a larger extent, and some republics of the Russian Federation to a lesser, are tempting ‘honeypots’ to followers of ISIS ideology. And I consider it erroneous to claim that these peoples have long since become ‘atheist.’
ISIS ideology does seem extremely attractive to the ‘forces of evil’ in the world. Remember how members of the Uzbek opposition reached out to the Afghan Taliban and how young bloods from all over the Middle East flocked to fight in Chechnya. In the same way, many dispossessed men from Central Asia will soon be faced with a choice: to go to work in Russia for next to nothing or fight for the Great Idea, and for good money.
Dispossessed men from Central Asia have the choice either to go to work in Russia for next to nothing or fight for the Great Idea.
Since ways of fighting ISIS and its ideology have not yet been found and tested, talk of some sort of ‘aid’ is premature. The Central Asian countries themselves are, in this sense, totally defenceless and reminiscent of a small flock of sheep tethered at the edge of a forest in which a wolf prowls. Once again we need to stress the fact that nobody is likely to be able to defeat ISIS through traditional military means, let alone the extremely weak armies of petty Asian autocrats.
Russia will not be ready to cooperate with the US in the foreseeable future, and America, too, under its current president, is hardly likely to enter into a large-scale military operation, and will probably limit itself to occasional bomb strikes. We also need to take into account bad experiences in the past: arming regional opponents of ISIS might just produce even more bloodthirsty monsters.
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Dr Andrei Grozin, Political Scientist, Head Of The Central Asia Department Of The CIS Institute And Senior Researcher At The Institute Of Oriental Studies Of The Russian Academy Of Sciences.
At the moment we can only guess how serious a threat ISIS represents. There have been many recent publications discussing the fact that the number of immigrants from Central Asia and Russia joining the movement is growing. However, it is important to understand that in the Central Asian region today you can pin anything you like on ISIS. For example, some ISIS flags were recently put up in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), but many people believe that this was an act of provocation on the part of the NSS (the National Security Service of Uzbekistan), because it’s become very difficult to hang any sort of flag there just like that, without the permission of the authorities.
In the Central Asian region today you can pin anything you like on ISIS.
Yes, there are recruits from that region in ISIS. Some of them will remain in the Middle East but some will return, and these returning recruits might destabilise the situation.
Information has also surfaced, that the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan has sworn allegiance to ISIS, but this information also comes from the NSS. It is possible that the special services of the countries concerned have their own informants in this movement, but they do not work effectively in the territories occupied by ISIS. Otherwise, missiles would not have missed their targets. This means that potential intelligence sources have already been exhausted.
Recently Evgeny Satanovsky, the president of Russia’s Middle East Institute, published an article in the journal ‘Voennoye obozrenie’ (‘Military Review’) predicting an ISIS spring offensive in Turkmenistan. It is unknown whether this will happen or not because we do not have a complete knowledge of its plans. All our media reports on this topic can only be called ‘conjectural’ analyses.
However, we can say for certain that young Muslims from the Russian North Caucasus and the Volga region, as well as from Central Asian regions, are involved in ISIS, but only as foot soldiers or junior officers.
The threats as such, I think, are more a question of sabre-rattling, at least in the short term: ISIS has enough to think about without Central Asia. But in the long term, anything is possible.
If we are talking about the ability of the Central Asian countries to counter the threat of ISIS by themselves – they cannot do it. In Russia, many say that Uzbekistan has the most powerful army in the region. But nobody has ever tested its combat effectiveness. Uzbekistan fought against a few dozen militants in 1999-2000, but this is hardly a test of strength. The same can be said of the Tajik military, even though they have experienced civil war. I think that these states do not have the resources to counter such threats. They can deal with light challenges, but they are unlikely to withstand systematic terrorist attacks such as those we see today in the Middle East.
Consequently, all they can hope for is help from the US and Russia. The US, however, is unlikely to provide any real help. This war is also not in Russia’s interests, as it will then face a second Afghan war, only with a more serious, better equipped enemy. Russia really doesn’t need this. It might be able to limit itself to air strikes, but definitely not a troop contingent. And as for payment in exchange for the help, Russia will continue to take advantage of the foreign and economic policies in these countries, which are essential to its own survival. As always.
It is also difficult to say to what extent cooperation between Russia and the US in the fight against ISIS may develop. We have supplied and continue to supply equipment to Iraq and Syria, and I think Moscow regards this current level of aid as quite sufficient.
Some sort of closer cooperation is hardly necessary. What does ISIS mean exactly to the US? Firstly, the fight against ISIS is an American PR project for the next election campaign. Secondly, it is an attempt to stop Islamists ‘at long range’ and, primarily, to protect its Middle Eastern allies. Thirdly, it is really a fight against terrorism. And finally, the US wants to maintain its influence in the area, which, if ISIS wins, will crumble.
The fight against ISIS is an American PR project for the next election campaign.
So why would Russia help the US to achieve purely American goals? It would be strange, in this situation, for Vladimir Putin to offer help to the US.
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Geidar Djemal, Political Scientist, Chair Of Russia’s Islamic Committee.
All the ISIS threats are quite real. As for Central Asia, the governments of those countries will find it difficult to defend themselves against any problems from ISIS after inciting their own peoples against their regimes. This is something that ISIS can exploit.
As far as Russia is concerned, I see a certain element of disinformation in reports of destabilisation of the situation there. ISIS has no intention of entering into conflict with Moscow; current tensions between Russia and the US only work to its advantage. At the centre of ISIS are former members of Saddam Hussein’s political intelligence service who received their training in the Soviet KGB, so they understand the logic of the political game and are not going to push Moscow into the welcoming arms of Washington. But Central Asia is another matter – ISIS considers it part of its zone of interest. So the recruitment of young Muslims to ISIS, including those from Central Asia, was, is and will become still more active. After all, ISIS is the symbol of political Islam.
Of course, Central Asia will not be able to cope with such a threat. They have already run to Russia for help, as was clear at the recent meeting of CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) heads of state in Minsk. Since the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) swore allegiance to ISIS, the Uzbek president Islam Karimov has been crazed with fear. He is ready to do anything and accept any conditions in order to remain in power. Today, Karimov is one of the most hated dictators in the world. More than 10m Uzbeks have been forced to leave their homeland and all of them oppose Karimov. So he should be afraid. If ISIS wanted to enter Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, it wouldn’t need a ‘wide front’. It could simply blow up the situation in these countries from the inside.
Russia is unlikely to intervene in a war between the US and ISIS as it would gain no advantage from it. Many factors here indicate that this is not Russia’s war. The US will have to deal with this problem on its own.
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Aleksandr Konovalov, Political Scientist, Expert On Security Issues, President Of Russia’s Strategic Studies Institute.
All of ISIS’ threats are more than serious. It is the main military threat to Russia today. Not NATO, not the US, not anyone else, just ISIS. Clearly their goal is to create a worldwide caliphate over a huge territory that would include both Central Asia and some of the Russian regions. So fighters from these areas are constantly being recruited. For ISIS, state borders don’t exist where the recruitment of new fighters is concerned, and besides, they don’t have any lack of resources for it. For example, they seized several oil wells in Iraq and have been very successful in selling this oil. They are the richest terrorist organisation in the world.
ISIS is the main military threat to Russia today. Not NATO, not the US, not anyone else, just ISIS.
There is no way the countries of Central Asia can counter these Islamists without the support of Russia or the US. But the US is far away, and they are limiting themselves to missile and targeted strikes, without any involvement of troops. But without ground operations, they are not going to win the war with only a few bomb attacks. On the other hand, Russia is closer to Central Asia both geographically and psychologically, since for many decades they lived together in the USSR. Therefore Russia will certainly help, at least to ensure a kind of buffer between itself and ISIS, and so that the war will not spread to Russian territory.
As regards some sort of cooperative effort between the US and Russia against ISIS, then nothing is certain. The US is, in this respect, in dire straits. Russia’s military technology is less developed; what could it put on the table? Some military bases? Possibly. I think that the two countries should cooperate more closely in this area. But unfortunately, I don’t expect such cooperation from them – their relations have deteriorated too far, primarily because of Crimea and Ukraine.
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Alisher Ilkhamov, Historian, Sociologist, Associate Research Fellow at The London School Of Oriental And African Studies (SOAS).
The probability of a repeat in Central Asia of ISIS’ Iraqi-Syrian scenario is, I think, next to zero. The ISIS phenomenon is largely associated with the movement and concentration of global Sunni Jihadist forces within one or another region. These forces move around the world and concentrate in places with a sufficient number of irritants, and also where favourable conditions and an environment for success can also arise. In Iraq and Syria, it is mainly a fight against Shiites, who control the central governments of those countries, where there is a significant Sunni population and where Sunnis feel their rights are being infringed. Neither one nor the other (that is, neither sufficiently powerful irritants nor favourable conditions for military action) are available in Central Asia. The fact that the Taliban and IMU both swore allegiance to ISIS means very little at the moment from an operational standpoint,
The fact that the Taliban and IMU swore allegiance to ISIS means very little at the moment from an operational standpoint.
At the same time there is a threat of internal instability in the region. This is particularly acute in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where the suppression of dissent and the corruption of the authorities have reached unprecedented dimensions and have consequently weakened the legitimacy of these authorities in the eyes of the population. The Islamists have always been able to take advantage of the dissatisfaction of the masses and offer an alternative to the existing autocratic regimes ( we’re talking here mainly about home-grown Islamists, not ISIS missionaries). However, we musn’t disregard the process of internationalisation of the jihadist movement that has been going on. This process is more likely to serve as a backdrop to internal conflict in the countries in this region, than as a deciding factor in determining the course of events. Therefore it is unnecessary to talk about the need for direct military support from external forces. There simply is no such need. It is enough to carry out internal reforms to ensure economic growth and to eliminate (or at least reduce) the rift that has formed between the people and the government. This would defuse the situation, thereby weakening the stimulus for people to join Islamist and jihadist movements. Any external intervention would only exacerbate the situation, bringing a nationalist element into play.
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Arkady Dubnov, Journalist, Specialist In Central Asian Affairs.
The main issues that threaten to destabilise the countries of Central Asia are to be found within the countries themselves: corruption, poverty, unemployment, poor governance, nepotism, environmental degradation… And if ISIS ideologues are able to offer or, if you want, impose the alternative of Islamic happiness in the form of a world Caliphate on the uneducated Muslim population in the region, and also create a collective image of a terrifying enemy in the shape of a Kafir (Infidel) West working together with Russia, then anything can happen. In terms of threats to Russia, they’re mostly in the form of isolated terrorist attacks along the lines of what happened recently in Chechnya.
The Main Threats To Stability In Central Asia Are Internal Ones.
The recruitment of citizens from Central Asia and Russia as ISIS fighters has long been a reality. Hundreds of fighters, members of ethnic groups from Central Asia and the Russian North Caucasus are fighting in the ranks of ISIS, and their number is likely to increase. In August this year two groups of ISIS militants, a total of 120 people, among whom were Arabs and natives of the North Caucasus, were sent, one after the other, across Pakistan and into the Afghan province of Kunduz, which borders Tajikistan. Their attempt to establish Sharia Law was met with fierce resistance from the local Mujahideen, who defeated the foreigners and forced the survivors to flee Kunduz.
Needless to say, the Central Asian countries will need assistance – mainly from Russia. And some of them, if not asking directly, are certainly hinting at it. At the last CIS summit in Minsk, for example, President Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan stated that the military potential of the CIS is essential to the maintenance of regional security. Ashgabat has already faced threats on its Afghan borders, and an intensive programme of border reinforcement is now under way. And it may well be that Tajikistan, which has the longest border with Afghanistan, will also need additional aid.
The US, unlike Russia, is unlikely to want to involve itself directly in providing additional military support to Central Asia. This would provoke a strong reaction from Russia – that’s the way things are, unfortunately, in today’s world – so the governments of Central Asia will try to avoid such a scenario. Russia doesn’t need anything from Central Asia in exchange for its support; even the possible return of a Russian military presence in the region will be payment enough for Moscow.
Russia is prepared to use its armed forces in the fight against ISIS only within its area of national interests as it understands them, i.e. in the post-Soviet space, or, in an extreme case, in the Balkans, if Slavic countries like Serbia ask for help against an Islamist threat. But this is too unlikely for us to talk about seriously. It also seems unlikely at the moment, at any rate while Barack Obama is in the White House, that there will be real Russian-American cooperation in the fight against ISIS – unless of course Moscow, under certain conditions, will give up its veto power in the UN Security Council, which would open up the possibility of military action by an anti-ISIS coalition.
Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/daniil-kislov/is-central-asia-afraid-of-isis
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ISIS and Islamophobia
By İbrahim Kalın
15 November 2014
When Muslims object that blaming Islam for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) leads to Islamophobia, it is rejected as avoiding critical commentary and self-criticism. While it is true that Muslims need to do a lot of critical thinking and put their own house in order, the fact is that ISIS and its likes manipulate global politics and Islamophobic discourses claim more ground and gain new recruits. Their appeal, to the extent to which it exists among the 1.5 billion Muslims of the world, is generated not so much by what they believe in but rather by what they reject.
Here we are confronted with a vicious circle: the ISIS ideologues and their foot soldiers decry the injustices they see as a violation of their rights. They commit terrible acts of barbarism in the name of seeking justice but end up seeking revenge. They use religious language to justify their acts. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of Muslims reject their discourses and justifications.
This leads some in the West to link Islam with extremism and terrorism. They ignore the fact that terrorism is a global phenomenon used by various individuals, groups and states regardless of race, religion or culture. Islamophobes use ISIS to equate Islam with terrorism and present Muslims as suspects. They call on their governments to take strict measures and even wage wars against their Muslim citizens and immigrant communities. In the name of rooting out radicalism, they play right into the hands of groups like ISIS. In essence, one form of extremism feeds another.
This vicious circle of mutual extremisms and phobia creates what I call "Muslim tokenism" where Muslims are called upon to answer questions about ISIS when such questioning is not expected of people of other faiths. More damagingly, Muslim leaders, academics, scholars, professionals and even artists are invited to talk only about "hot Muslim issues," i.e., extremism, radicalism, terrorism, etc. The underlying assumption in such cases is that Muslims cannot speak about other issues such as climate change, arts, alleviating poverty, space missions or fighting against Ebola.
The Islamophobia industry again conveniently ignores the fact that ISIS has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims, destroyed cities in Muslim countries more than attacking Western targets, and created a climate of fear and discrimination against mainstream Muslims around the world.
Tasnim Nazeer, an award-winning freelance journalist, author and poet and a British Muslim, not surprisingly experienced an act of public harassment by an ordinary citizen in Glasgow. "I have never experienced an incident of prejudice for being Muslim until recently when I was walking through the city of Glasgow." she says. "A man approached me using foul language and demanded that I should apologize for the actions of ISIS in the middle of the busy city centre." While Nazeer has been an outspoken critic of ISIS, she is still treated as somehow responsible for ISIS's actions.
Likewise, Muslims in France rightly complain that they are victims of both ISIS and Islamophobia. But their condemnation of ISIS, al-Qaida and similar groups are lost in the noise of ignorance, prejudice and bigotry.
There are lessons to be learned from anti-Semitism. The dark history of anti-Semitism has rightly established a culture and ethics of discernment whereby one is required to distinguish between individual actions and Jewish collective identity. The policies of the State of Israel, for instance, cannot and should not be attributed to Jewish individuals and communities around the world.
The New York Times published a detailed report about the new waves of anti-Semitism in Europe after the last Israeli war on Gaza. The morale of the story is that you cannot blame and thus hate the Jews for the actions of the State of Israel.
The report noted that "…there is also concern about what some see as an insidious "softer" anti-Jewish bias, which they fear is creeping into the European mainstream and undermining the post-war consensus to root out anti-Semitism."
What happens when Muslims ask for the same discernment and expect a clear distinction between the actions of ISIS and the mainstream faith of the vast majority of Muslims? Most of the time, any proper sense of discernment is replaced by stereotyping and generalizations that one would immediately reject when applied to other faiths and communities.
From Anders Behring Breivik's rampage on July 22, 2011, which killed 78 people in Oslo and Utoya, Norway, to the cheaply made hoax movie "Innocence of Muslims" of 2012, which caused world-wide protests and deaths, Islamophobic individuals and groups seek to defame the Muslim faith. These acts are then taken up by extremists to present the entire Western world as Islamophobic.
An important corrective to this would be to acknowledge that ISIS and its likes make Muslims themselves victims of doctrinal distortion and extremism on the one hand, and Islamophobia and collective stereotyping on the other. Instead of blaming each other, Muslims and non-Muslims have a shared interest in breaking this vicious cycle.
Source: http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/ibrahim-kalin/2014/11/15/isis-and-islamophobia
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/world-media-islamic-state-iraq/d/100060