In April, carnage came to a university campus in Kenya. In July, bombs poured blood on to the streets of Jos in Nigeria. In November, there had already been mass murder in Beirut, even before it arrived in Paris. The disparate diners, drinkers and dancers of the 10th and 11th arrondissements were deemed to be targets simply because they were all pursuing happiness in their own way. Violent jihadism can threaten any society on earth that stands against its vision of a humourless, lifeless homogeneity, where unbending obedience is continually enforced by the sword.
The whole world has an interest in seeing off this ideology, which creates a particular shared interest, too, in seeing Islamic State collapse. By holding substantial territory in Iraq and Syria, Isis not only inspires ideologues, from Libya to the Sinai who swear allegiance to its “state”. It also provides a training ground where wide-eyed youngsters can go to become battle-hardened soldiers; it is a real place – as opposed to an internet chatroom – where logistics and bomb-making can be learned as practical skills. The “destruction” of Isis, of which President Hollande spoke today, is thus a legitimate and urgent objective. The doubt concerns whether Paris – or for that matter Washington or London – has the means to accomplish this aim without creating anew the conditions in which Isis was incubated. Given the catalogue of failed western interventions during this young century – from Afghanistan to Iraq and on to Libya – it is hard to have any confidence here.
A US-led alliance is, of course, already waging aerial war against Isis in both Syria and Iraq. Even before Paris, there was intense debate in the UK about whether Britain should extend its pre-existing involvement from the Iraqi side, where the notionally sovereign government is supportive, to the Syrian side, where titular authority remains with the hostile President Assad. Nobody believes that bombing can reconquer lost territory alone, but where it supports local forces it can get results, as it did when it combined with the Kurdish footsoldiers who recently recaptured Sinjar in Iraq.
But such accomplishments need to be weighed against the costs. Aerial bombardment on any scale always involves putting at risk innocent, civilian life. That is always morally troubling, or at least it always should be. There are strategic downsides, too. The name of the west is poison in much of the Middle East, and so unleashing airpower, and perhaps creating widows and orphans, may drive more locals into the enemy’s arms. There can also be dangerous consequences for western societies at home, where there is a risk that already alienated Muslim youth will be susceptible to the message that a war against Isis is in fact a war against them. Britain’s 7/7 terrorists were grown at home, and now the Belgian citizen Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud has been named as the likely mastermind of the Paris plot.
Backlash becomes more likely where western action is seen to lack proportion and control. The frightening parallel after Paris is not so much with the pro-active invasion of Iraq, but with the more widely supported – but ultimately similarly unsuccessful – campaign in Afghanistan. The Bush administration’s reaction to 9/11 played on the rational case for self-defence but also a vengeful, if understandable, urge to hit back. “From the NYPD” was sprayed on to the bombs hurled down on Afghan villages, and in a mood of rage the objectives became confused. The coalition was at moments building a new state, at others liberating women, and at others again lurching bizarrely away from counterterrorism towards a war on drugs. Throughout, it poured fuel on to a long-standing civil war it scarcely understood.
When President Hollande made a show of unleashing a blitz on Raqqa within hours of the Paris attacks, it is easy to imagine the Iraqi/Syrian mission going the Afghan way. As in Afghanistan there is confusion about western objectives in a complex conflict – is the aim simply to push back Isis, or does it have to be halting the wider Syrian war in which Isis has thrived? Is this imaginable while President Assad remains on the stage, or is the removal of this man – who has killed more Syrians than anyone else, and driven so many to embrace Isis – a red line? Until there is clarity both about the aims, and a credible plan to achieve them, the west should be wary. The wrong military action can make things worse than failing to act at all.
Yet there are strategic and moral costs to inaction too. Every possible means to tighten the existing oil and trade embargoes on Isis must be deployed. Bankrupting this abhorrent force may not be sufficient to guarantee its destruction, but it is a necessary start. In the aftermath of Paris, there is rare unanimity that Isis stands in a class apart from other adversaries. This might create an opening for UN-sanctioned action. The difficulties are legion, not least because of divergent attitudes to President Assad in Moscow and the west. But a UN-backed process – particularly one that puts local forces in the military lead – would be more likely to defeat Isis without recreating the familiar problems of recent western intervention.
In Isis, the world faces a common enemy. It will not be beaten without common resolve.
