Showing posts with label isis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label isis. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 March 2018
Saturday, 5 December 2015
I Vow To Thee My Country - That You Got It Badly Wrong
There's no doubting that the situation in Syria is immensely complicated. Two ex-members of the military who are Conservative MPs voted against their Party and opposed a bombing campaign of Syria. An ex-member of the military who is a Labour MP opposed his Party line and voted in favour of bombing. Perhaps the most telling individual vote was that of the Chair of the Parliamentary select committee on Foreign Affairs, Conservative MP John Baron, voted against bombing (as he did in the vote on bombing Libya).
You'd hope your delegated political representatives would have some handle on the intricacies. But in the recent day long Parliamentary debate and vote, the level of political and strategic analysis was in short supply, replaced by moral and emotional pleas on one side or the other. Or the debate was partly hijacked by the Prime Minister's rather inflammatory assertion that to vote against the proposed campaign equated you to a terrorist sympathiser and consequent demands by outraged MPs for him to apologise for such a statement.
But I'm going to try and pick the emotions and moral outrage out of the debate and offer some crystal clear rebuttals to the arguments made in favour of bombing Syria. Of course readers may not agree with either these arguments or the position to oppose bombing and that's fine. But I hope to show that that the points offered during that debate are not enough to clinch any argument.
The main argument was that bombing Syria increases the security on Britain's streets. Actually it does the very opposite. Those in Syria are not the threat to us here at home. Rather it is from UK citizens already living here. You may say that such homegrown terror is co-ordinated from Syria. But it doesn't have to be. Recently a fourteen year old boy from Blackburn was jailed for mentoring a would-be terrorist in Australia. The nature of global communications means you don't actually need a command and control centre to co-ordinate your terror campaign. Of the Paris terrorists, no more than two had returned from Syria. To fight for ISIS's cause does not entail seeing service or training in Iraq or Syria. There will not be ISIS fighters coming back from Syria at this point in time to perpetrate a terrorist act on British soil. If any potential UK terrorists have seen service there, they are already back in the UK (and you have to ask questions of our intelligence service as to how they have been able to sneak back in).
So the terror threat remains ever-present. Why therefore do I say that the vote for bombing makes the UK less secure? Look at the way Islamic terror operates. They cannot sustain a campaign against any single country. So there have been individual attacks in Canada, Australia, France, Lebanon, Turkey. And of course the Russian airliner shot down in Egypt, a very rapid response to Russian bombs falling on ISIS areas. In the case of the Western targets, each time their participation in the air war against Islamic State is cited as the reason. Terrorists want to send a message and with only one chance to do so (such is the nature of suicide missions) they have to stage what they see as a spectacular. By voting to bomb Syria, the UK has just placed itself in line for a similar response from ISIS and it supporters. Britain will need to be taught a lesson is the logic. Or the logic or reprisal. Terror acts in the UK have always been a possibility, but with this vote I believe it has now become an inevitability. Not just me either, for only today UK intelligence services report that the vote has increased the likelihood we would become a target. Have they only just realised that? Or did they they know this all the time but fail to inform the Prime Minister? Or maybe he just ignored that advice.
Ah but we are already fighting the Islamic State by bombing Iraq were some of the arguments advanced during the debate. For the sake of a few hundred yards across a border that ISIS has abolished what is the difference? Well seems to me you can't have it both ways, if you want to deny the legitimacy of ISIS and re-establish the territorial legitimacy of both Iraq and Syria, then you have to continue to recognise the integrity of those borders.
The next argument was that France has asked for us to step up to the plate and assist them in the light of the atrocities in Paris. Added to that is that the UN basically gave a green light to go to war on ISIS. The argument is advanced that we in Britain must not only support our friends and allies, but we cannot allow others to do the job of protecting us while we stand to the side doing nothing. And yet that is exactly what we and the whole of the West has been doing by allowing the Kurds to bear the entire burden of facing ISIS on the ground. Since ISIS' dramatic expansion of territory, we have apparently been perfectly happy to have others provide our protection and security, so that argument just does not hold water. Now there are perfectly strong reasons why Western troops should not be committed to Syria and Iraq, since that will just escalate everything in the region and provide a rallying call to the ISIS cause. But don't then posit that we take care of our own security.
Jumping in to the cause of our allies is hugely problematical as well. Since the collapse of Communism, NATO s no longer facing a united bloc of foes. I would argue that it has ceased to be of use, rather it increases the likelihood of war and conflict rather than head it off. An attack on one NATO country is deemed an attack on them all. If Francoise Hollande had called for NATO to attack ISIS for bombing Paris, we would have been duty bound. I find it significant that he didn't quite go that far, because he knew what it implied. You can argue that although Russia has been stripped of its former allies of the Eastern Bloc, it still remains a threat to the West as Putin continues to provoke by his actions. Yet NATO proved incapable of preventing Putin's actions in Ukraine, partly prompted by Ukraine's stated desire to turn away from Russia in favour of the EU and NATO. But the key to the NATO argument is the behaviour of NATO member Turkey. Turkey is following its own agenda in the region. It shot down a Russian fighter. Whether it was correct in law or not, if Turkey had declared itself under attack from Russia, again we would all have been duty bound to jump in and escalate hostilities well beyond the local militias and terrorist groups. Again you may argue that it was only the threat of NATO doing just this that prevented Russia from reacting more strongly to the downing of its fighter. And that may be true, but with Turkey being a loose canon, who is to say that it won't do something else that this time provokes irresistible response from Putin? Turkey also has been aiding ISIS fighters by providing sanctuary across its border and is almost certainly involved in ISIS's trade in oil and other assets that funds their State and continued military activities. Not a very united front or consistency of action on display from NATO here.
David Cameron asserted that there are some 70,000 anti-Assad rebels who could be used to fight ISIS on the ground. This is an utterly absurd notion and frankly a most worrying one if our Prime Minister has the level of understanding to believe this is gospel. Take a look of a map of the various forces in Syria
courtesy of BBC
The rebel forces are nowhere near ISIS strongholds except in a couple of areas near Damascus. Plus they are solely concerned with fighting Assad's forces. They are not going to give up that primary aim to turn they efforts against ISIS, unless you first remove Assad and that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. Also of those 70,000 troops, how many are Jihadists and Islamists? Do you really think the fighters of the Al-Nusra Front are people we want to be dealing with? They are extremists too. I'm curious whether there is any thinking about rewarding the Kurds with an independent Kurdistan as they have been calling and in some cases battling for for years prior to this particular conflict? How would that be received in Turkey I wonder? Turkey regards its Kurds as more of a threat to the state than ISIS
Which leads on to the wider question, of just what is the long-term vision for the area? We have been fed a few clues, that it wouldn't include Assad, that the Islamic State would be dismantled. And what territorial borders would be established? As with so many of the states created out of former Ottoman colonies, the borders created for the likes of Syria and Iraq are somewhat arbitrary and don't reflect the various tribal and ethnic divisions of the populations there. Also there are scant traditions of democracy in the region, so again, how does one go about establishing such a thing from so low a base? Hasn't worked in Libya, is clinging on by its fingertips in Afghanistan... Destroying the Caliphate, which seems to be the one thing all the allies have agreed on, will not remove the threat of islamic terrorism. Instead it will spread it like a virus. As said earlier, they do not need a command and control centre in a specified territorial space. After the insurgency in Iraq was supposedly put down, the insurgents just slipped away and returned to blend in with their fellow citizens until ISIS collected them altogether into a new menacing force. The same is likely to happen again. Also IS is just as much an idea, an aspiration as it is a territorial reality. If I can resort to a crassly inappropriate phrase, it is a genie free from its bottle never to be recaptured. A Caliphate functioning under Sharia law will remain an aspiration for many Muslims and next time it could be in Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. ISIS are currently making great strides in Afghanistan. In Libya. The place does not matter. It will not fade away if this one in Syria and Iraq is destroyed.
So:
1) Bombing Syria makes us less secure here in the UK not more
2) This is not about an abnegation of the responsibility to protect ourselves and relying on others
3) Formal military alliances make it more likely to draw us into full war rather than less
4) There are no 70,000 Syrians on the ground who can take on ISIS
5) There is no plan of what to do if and when ISIS falls
6) The Caliphate as an idea is here to stay and will remain a recruiting tool to the flag beyond the destruction of the Islamic State itself
You'd hope your delegated political representatives would have some handle on the intricacies. But in the recent day long Parliamentary debate and vote, the level of political and strategic analysis was in short supply, replaced by moral and emotional pleas on one side or the other. Or the debate was partly hijacked by the Prime Minister's rather inflammatory assertion that to vote against the proposed campaign equated you to a terrorist sympathiser and consequent demands by outraged MPs for him to apologise for such a statement.
But I'm going to try and pick the emotions and moral outrage out of the debate and offer some crystal clear rebuttals to the arguments made in favour of bombing Syria. Of course readers may not agree with either these arguments or the position to oppose bombing and that's fine. But I hope to show that that the points offered during that debate are not enough to clinch any argument.
The main argument was that bombing Syria increases the security on Britain's streets. Actually it does the very opposite. Those in Syria are not the threat to us here at home. Rather it is from UK citizens already living here. You may say that such homegrown terror is co-ordinated from Syria. But it doesn't have to be. Recently a fourteen year old boy from Blackburn was jailed for mentoring a would-be terrorist in Australia. The nature of global communications means you don't actually need a command and control centre to co-ordinate your terror campaign. Of the Paris terrorists, no more than two had returned from Syria. To fight for ISIS's cause does not entail seeing service or training in Iraq or Syria. There will not be ISIS fighters coming back from Syria at this point in time to perpetrate a terrorist act on British soil. If any potential UK terrorists have seen service there, they are already back in the UK (and you have to ask questions of our intelligence service as to how they have been able to sneak back in).
So the terror threat remains ever-present. Why therefore do I say that the vote for bombing makes the UK less secure? Look at the way Islamic terror operates. They cannot sustain a campaign against any single country. So there have been individual attacks in Canada, Australia, France, Lebanon, Turkey. And of course the Russian airliner shot down in Egypt, a very rapid response to Russian bombs falling on ISIS areas. In the case of the Western targets, each time their participation in the air war against Islamic State is cited as the reason. Terrorists want to send a message and with only one chance to do so (such is the nature of suicide missions) they have to stage what they see as a spectacular. By voting to bomb Syria, the UK has just placed itself in line for a similar response from ISIS and it supporters. Britain will need to be taught a lesson is the logic. Or the logic or reprisal. Terror acts in the UK have always been a possibility, but with this vote I believe it has now become an inevitability. Not just me either, for only today UK intelligence services report that the vote has increased the likelihood we would become a target. Have they only just realised that? Or did they they know this all the time but fail to inform the Prime Minister? Or maybe he just ignored that advice.
Ah but we are already fighting the Islamic State by bombing Iraq were some of the arguments advanced during the debate. For the sake of a few hundred yards across a border that ISIS has abolished what is the difference? Well seems to me you can't have it both ways, if you want to deny the legitimacy of ISIS and re-establish the territorial legitimacy of both Iraq and Syria, then you have to continue to recognise the integrity of those borders.
The next argument was that France has asked for us to step up to the plate and assist them in the light of the atrocities in Paris. Added to that is that the UN basically gave a green light to go to war on ISIS. The argument is advanced that we in Britain must not only support our friends and allies, but we cannot allow others to do the job of protecting us while we stand to the side doing nothing. And yet that is exactly what we and the whole of the West has been doing by allowing the Kurds to bear the entire burden of facing ISIS on the ground. Since ISIS' dramatic expansion of territory, we have apparently been perfectly happy to have others provide our protection and security, so that argument just does not hold water. Now there are perfectly strong reasons why Western troops should not be committed to Syria and Iraq, since that will just escalate everything in the region and provide a rallying call to the ISIS cause. But don't then posit that we take care of our own security.
Jumping in to the cause of our allies is hugely problematical as well. Since the collapse of Communism, NATO s no longer facing a united bloc of foes. I would argue that it has ceased to be of use, rather it increases the likelihood of war and conflict rather than head it off. An attack on one NATO country is deemed an attack on them all. If Francoise Hollande had called for NATO to attack ISIS for bombing Paris, we would have been duty bound. I find it significant that he didn't quite go that far, because he knew what it implied. You can argue that although Russia has been stripped of its former allies of the Eastern Bloc, it still remains a threat to the West as Putin continues to provoke by his actions. Yet NATO proved incapable of preventing Putin's actions in Ukraine, partly prompted by Ukraine's stated desire to turn away from Russia in favour of the EU and NATO. But the key to the NATO argument is the behaviour of NATO member Turkey. Turkey is following its own agenda in the region. It shot down a Russian fighter. Whether it was correct in law or not, if Turkey had declared itself under attack from Russia, again we would all have been duty bound to jump in and escalate hostilities well beyond the local militias and terrorist groups. Again you may argue that it was only the threat of NATO doing just this that prevented Russia from reacting more strongly to the downing of its fighter. And that may be true, but with Turkey being a loose canon, who is to say that it won't do something else that this time provokes irresistible response from Putin? Turkey also has been aiding ISIS fighters by providing sanctuary across its border and is almost certainly involved in ISIS's trade in oil and other assets that funds their State and continued military activities. Not a very united front or consistency of action on display from NATO here.
David Cameron asserted that there are some 70,000 anti-Assad rebels who could be used to fight ISIS on the ground. This is an utterly absurd notion and frankly a most worrying one if our Prime Minister has the level of understanding to believe this is gospel. Take a look of a map of the various forces in Syria
courtesy of BBCThe rebel forces are nowhere near ISIS strongholds except in a couple of areas near Damascus. Plus they are solely concerned with fighting Assad's forces. They are not going to give up that primary aim to turn they efforts against ISIS, unless you first remove Assad and that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. Also of those 70,000 troops, how many are Jihadists and Islamists? Do you really think the fighters of the Al-Nusra Front are people we want to be dealing with? They are extremists too. I'm curious whether there is any thinking about rewarding the Kurds with an independent Kurdistan as they have been calling and in some cases battling for for years prior to this particular conflict? How would that be received in Turkey I wonder? Turkey regards its Kurds as more of a threat to the state than ISIS
Which leads on to the wider question, of just what is the long-term vision for the area? We have been fed a few clues, that it wouldn't include Assad, that the Islamic State would be dismantled. And what territorial borders would be established? As with so many of the states created out of former Ottoman colonies, the borders created for the likes of Syria and Iraq are somewhat arbitrary and don't reflect the various tribal and ethnic divisions of the populations there. Also there are scant traditions of democracy in the region, so again, how does one go about establishing such a thing from so low a base? Hasn't worked in Libya, is clinging on by its fingertips in Afghanistan... Destroying the Caliphate, which seems to be the one thing all the allies have agreed on, will not remove the threat of islamic terrorism. Instead it will spread it like a virus. As said earlier, they do not need a command and control centre in a specified territorial space. After the insurgency in Iraq was supposedly put down, the insurgents just slipped away and returned to blend in with their fellow citizens until ISIS collected them altogether into a new menacing force. The same is likely to happen again. Also IS is just as much an idea, an aspiration as it is a territorial reality. If I can resort to a crassly inappropriate phrase, it is a genie free from its bottle never to be recaptured. A Caliphate functioning under Sharia law will remain an aspiration for many Muslims and next time it could be in Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. ISIS are currently making great strides in Afghanistan. In Libya. The place does not matter. It will not fade away if this one in Syria and Iraq is destroyed.
So:
1) Bombing Syria makes us less secure here in the UK not more
2) This is not about an abnegation of the responsibility to protect ourselves and relying on others
3) Formal military alliances make it more likely to draw us into full war rather than less
4) There are no 70,000 Syrians on the ground who can take on ISIS
5) There is no plan of what to do if and when ISIS falls
6) The Caliphate as an idea is here to stay and will remain a recruiting tool to the flag beyond the destruction of the Islamic State itself
Friday, 27 November 2015
Arose By Any Other Name - novel extract
Blog: 17th May 2006
/ 27th Rabia Awal 1427
Another- the last-
fitting for my nuptial dress. Has me more than a little nervous. Only natural
of course. My fingers are trembling and I can’t do up a single clasp. The seamstress
clicks her tongue in sharp disapproval and says such conduct would be
unbecoming on the big day itself. The girdle feels tight, even though I have
barely eaten this last week, despite cautioning from those around me to
maintain my strength. I have even surrendered up my beloved gelatis. But today
I feel I can treat myself to a bombe glacée. A last trifling indulgence, before
the most profound change occurs in my life. And if I spread a couple of inches
under its calorific assault, then I’ll
just have to suck in my stomach, which with the likely state of my breathing
tomorrow, shouldn’t be too hard a
task. I force myself to think pure thoughts by envisioning my betrothed before
me, as the seamstress gingerly packs up my raiment. And in conjuring such happy
thoughts, a smile breaks out to envelop the worry lines around my pensive brow.
Now my lips quiver only with joy. Such a remedy never fails. Tomorrow we shall
be conjoined for ever. I leave the premises to search out my ice cream, once I
have safely stored the vestments. Now it is just a question of killing time.
*
With all the
trepidation, it’s been a very long
and sleepless night. As the light faded, my thoughts flared around me,
projected into the formless shadows moving on the wall. Car headlights seared
their way through my shutters and churned and roiled my ceiling, making me
dizzy and disoriented. Shutting my eyes did nothing, as they managed to prise
through the membranes of my eyelids. How thin and insubstantial all of my body
feels at this time. My flesh a flimsy curtain, partitioning the unknown
chambers ahead.
I rose from bed and
am now carving this for the want of something to do. Of course they left me no
means of communicating with the outside world. But they did leave me a knife
for self-protection and when I had blunted that, I used the flints sheared off
from the stone walls of the room itself. Had other brides and grooms to be,
been put up here before me? Then the building will tell its tale as well as my
own.
My overriding
thought right now, would to please be permitted some sleep, so I am not too
befuddled for tomorr- or later today as it now is. I’m going back to bed, doubtless to
joust some more with my ceiling-borne demons overhead. Whence death seemingly
always comes, in our insignificant part of the world. Where the sky is forever
falling in.
*
A pealing siren
outside woke me, even though it was far away in the distance. A presentiment of
ill-fortune? But again I just marinade my mind with thoughts of my beloved
opening his arms in welcome and all such anxieties melt away and me with it
back into my furtive dreams. Wherein my Mother soon intercedes. Bustling and
barging the angelic bystanders as she cuts a direct path to me. Standing now
right in my face, eclipsing even the joy of my light, for she would not approve
of such an espousal. This is not exactly an elopement, yet still she cannot
know till after the event. I have recorded her a message to explain the matter.
But her forceful image has demanded an explanation of me before she is even in
the know. A lingering last vestige of guilt.
Mother, the sole
message is I love you. Even as I seemingly repudiate you by this act. I am not
propelling myself away from you. This you must understand. How I love you more
than anything else on this earth and I am beaming this message to you, with
greater force than all the generative force soon to adorn my belly, that will
pull us apart merely on this plane. In my absence, you will receive only
greater honour. Till we are ultimately reconciled in Paradise. My Mother and I
hug, seemingly unconditionally as she did when I was a baby. And finally I fall
into a dreamless sleep.
18th May 2006 /
28th Rabia Awal 1427
I imagine hearing
another siren, but as I groggily come round, I realise it is my beeping alarm
clock. An adhan summoning me to my calling. My salvation. I shut it off. I’ll be present at my union soon enough.
Lying here, I try and evoke an image of the light of my life in the future, but
nothing comes. It’s as if my thoughts
are like birds, flying in confusion and without navigation during an eclipse,
as my rapidly beating heart has blotted out the sun. So I do what I’ve been steeled to do and I use it to
my advantage. I am to enter the core of this black sun, and ball it up in my
hand. Driving the fingers till they seal my palm. Thereby readmitting the light
to embrace me once again. Ha, already the quickened pulse recedes. Resumes its
orderly place in the background. But do not be fooled. That faint tick, tick,
ticking, is the sound of my seething heart, walled up behind the thorns and
briars of my sin. How they dam up my heart from God. Now is the time to purge
them like an infernal machine, back whence they came. Return my pure being back
to the bosom of God. For He cannot be contained. My heart is fit to irrupt, its
furious palpitations cannot be accommodated a moment longer.
I swing my legs out
of bed. My bare feet meet the cold stone of the flags. All the more felicitous
then, since a grave will be yet colder. I wash myself from a bowl of water,
letting the precious liquid trickle back down to its source. Our adversaries
would deny us even this most basic of elements. As I bathe them, I devote each
one of the two hundred bones in my body to you my Love. And by my actions, I
imagine we will share them in turn with five times that amount of suitors,
dispersed like passing out wedges of wedding cake. Spearing into their
trespassing hearts, as we entwine and are yoked together into death. Then there
is the added confetti of nails and ball bearings, only this time it will be the
bride showering the congregation. Even my virginal veil of modesty shall be
aflame and sail through the air combusting all it brushes against. My flying
blood will baste their foreheads with the indelible sign of their guilt. The
liquid in the bowl is still once again.
I hope my laving is
suitably thorough, but I am without any mirror for inspection. One isn’t to wake on the morn of one’s self-appointed expiration and
glimpse dread in the eyes. No photos to kiss either, no earthly tugs at all to
corrode the will. To blunt my whetted mind. Instead I picture weaving my own
carpet. I who have nothing, can still donate this wedding gift. As they deny us
the wool because we have no land to breed sheep and we have no looms to spin it
within our flimsy, cramped houses, so then will I fashion mine from blood and
bone. I aim to weave the largest rug that is humanly possible from my frame, to
drape the entire tarmac between two bus stops. And my signature, will be my
essence mingled in with theirs. They who are so precious about collecting and
burying every last drop of their blood spilt, will not be able to determine if
it is mine or theirs. Blotting me up with their paper as they do with their
own. How they will waste such resources in taking precise, forensic care of my
remains, it will almost be like they are forced to yield me the same worth as their
own burnt offerings. But for all this, I will yield them no insights. Other
than reinforcing that which they choose to remain wilfully blind to.
I’m ready. This time I rig myself with
barely a faltering in my fingers. The clasps all snap home. The girdle still
feels tight, but now hangs heavy, arrayed with the wedding gifts lavished last
night by my escort. What a most generous gift he has seen fit to bestow upon
me. The needles to unstitch with. The pattern in my mind. At last, for the
first time in our despoiled land, my belly feels fecund.
19th May 2006
20th May 2006
21st May 2006
Gone
The requested
resource
/
is no longer
available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all
references to this resource.
*
Got your attention now?
Posted by Rough
Beast. 12/08/06
I will disclose at
once, that the above is a fictionalised account. I composed it, based on
several interviews I’ve carried out with
jailed Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel. Now, I’ll admit that in itself has been a tad
frustrating, since by definition the ones in prisons are FAILED suicide
bombers. Would-be suicide bombers. The defeated and the fatigible. Those
betrayed by fate. By their own inexperience. By the will of God. Or their own
humanity, their own inner struggle, however deeply overlaid and suppressed.
For the bottom line
sees the human spirit remarkably tenacious at preserving itself. The body is
stockpiled with a whole battery of reflexes to resist its own cessation and
death. Its default setting is for life. So mental illness aside, how can this
possibly be overridden? It requires an abstergent, in order to yield a blank
screen upon which any message can be projected. Including graduation from a
human being, into a human bomb. The knack, is to change the bomber’s desires from embracing life, into a
hankering after death.
Interview after
interview, I was presented with similar, reedily intoned versions of how this
was brought about. One strand had them sat drooling at the feet of some
hierophant in a madrassa, as he categorically untangles the frayed threads of
life, while they scratch their carpet-fluff beards and nod accordance. I’ll tell you something, if I was
promised myriad virgins in the Afterlife, I’d probably enlist myself. Blissfully
blow myself to Kingdom Come. Presumably, it’s one virgin to tend each bit of the
body atomised by high-explosive. Of course, rather than nubile women, why
couldn’t it equally be the
ghosts of the 72 camels slain for Fatima’s wedding? That’s the drawback with numerical
symbolism. It’s open to double
counting.
Alternatively, they
drilled before a paramilitary hawk, sharpening the recruit’s claws on his steel gauntlet. The
logic he advances, is that the mission should be beyond fear, for no other
soldier has such certainty of whether he will return alive or dead from his
next action. Whereas the suicide bomber knows to the precise minute. What a
boon.
By whichever
method, these fellows are striking a deal with their egos. They don’t shut them off, rather they believe they
are swapping a pretty squalid life not for death, but for another, improved
life up in the clouds. A literal leap of faith. Trouble is, when their heads
are blown upwards off their body towards Heaven, sure as hell it hurtles back
down to earth under the prosaic ministrations of gravity. Does each bomber
actually possess the finer shades of understanding, exactly what the Holy Text
suggests is in store for them? Ultimately, they remain just teenagers on the
most extreme and ugly of promises. And as to the secularist bombers, they too
are left in no uncertain terms that they will become pin-up poster boys on the
walls of Gaza and Baghdad. This is the poor man’s version of celebrity. A pension from
Iran or Syria will see that their family is well provided for, a sort of
posthumous dower. Or a divorce settlement.
When one of the
plump-bellied commanders or hierophants squeezes into a belt, rather than a
whey-faced waif; when one of those educated-in-the-universities-of-their-foes
strategists puts his own body on the line, then I’ll afford them credence that they’re not just exploiting and
manipulating these bomb mules. Winding up the key of taut and tutored
desperation in their backs and setting them off towards mayhem. See, the thing
with successful missions as the Japanese kamikazes demonstrated, is that you
cull your elite talent. No such thing as a suicide veteran. You need a constant
stream of fresh volunteers. But unlike Iraq, where Jihadists are crossing over
the borders all the time, Palestine is sealed off. So the quality of the bomber
pool declines. They started sending children and simpletons. I saw them in the
prisons too, though I didn’t abuse them any
further by requesting to interview them. Even those with the slightest sympathy
for the strength of will of the suicide bomber, ought to be repulsed by this
abasement. Bad strategic decision.
So I return to
these prompters, these whisperers from offstage. The puppet master, pedlars of
death. What these men do so successfully, is to take the everyday currency of
death in their blighted land and raise it to the ultimate value. The reward
they offer, confirmed as instantly as a scratch-card, is the status of martyr.
They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of
soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life
circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of
lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at
the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely
sapped.
These manipulators,
these programmers, are marketing geniuses. For being able to turn death around
like that and make it an attractive option. An aspirational choice. They ought
to be employed in Soho and Madison Avenue, having their work plastered across
giant hoardings and on TV. Then they’d
be earning enough money to send back to revive their homeland economy. But
these mavens of destruction would presumably baulk at the job title of ‘Creative Director’.
extract taken from the kindle novel "Not In My Name" available from Amazon
Saturday, 31 January 2015
What makes a Jihadist? - Sunday sample
London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has never hidden his ambitions to be Britain's Prime Minister some day, this week shared his analysis of the psyche of homegrown Jihadis. Claiming the evidence of psychological profiling, he pronounces Jihadists to be losers rejected by women and "obsessed with pornography". While the psychosexual makeup is a contributory element of the overall mindset, it's worth pointing out that many Western Muslims regard our societies as over-sexualised, with what they deem as pornography being far to prevalent within society.
In my novel "Not In My Name", I give what i hope, is a rather more detailed and sophisticated analysis of the journey to radicalism undertaken by Jihadis. It's not enough to just put it down to "brainwashing", you need to understand what processes are employed in order to tackle it. Here is a sample from my novel.
"The bottom line sees the human spirit remarkably tenacious at preserving itself. The body is stockpiled with a whole battery of reflexes to resist its own cessation and death. Its default setting is for life. So mental illness aside, the only way for this to be overridden, is by brainwashing. An abstergent, yielding a blank screen upon which any message can be projected. Including graduation from a human being, into a human bomb. The knack, is to change the bomber’s desires from embracing life, into a hankering after death.
Interview after interview, I was presented with similar, reedily intoned versions of how this was brought about. One strand had them sat drooling at the feet of some hierophant in a madrassa, as he categorically untangles the frayed threads of life, while they scratch their carpet-fluff beards and nod accordance. I’ll tell you something, if I was promised myriad virgins in the Afterlife, I’d probably enlist myself. Blissfully blow myself to Kingdom Come. Presumably, it’s one virgin to tend each bit of the body atomised by high-explosive. Of course, rather than nubile women, why couldn’t it equally be the ghosts of the 72 camels slain for Fatima’s wedding? That’s the drawback with numerical symbolism. It’s open to double counting.
Alternatively, they paraded before a paramilitary hawk, sharpening the recruit’s claws on his steel gauntlet. The logic he advances, is that the mission should be beyond fear, for no other soldier has such certainty of whether he will return alive or dead from his next action. Whereas the suicide bomber knows to the precise minute. What a boon.
By whichever method, these fellows are striking a deal with their egos. They don’t shut them off, rather they believe they are swapping a pretty squalid life not for death, but for another, improved life up in the clouds. A literal leap of faith. Trouble is, when their heads are blown upwards off their body towards Heaven, sure as hell it hurtles back down to earth under the prosaic ministrations of gravity. Does each bomber actually possess the finer shades of understanding, exactly what the Holy Text suggests is in store for them? Ultimately, they remain just teenagers on the most extreme and ugly of promises. And as to the secularist bombers, they too are left in no uncertain terms that they will become pin-up poster boys on the walls of Gaza and Baghdad. This is the poor man’s version of celebrity. A pension from Iran or Syria will see that their family is well provided for, a sort of posthumous dower. Or a divorce settlement.
When one of the plump-bellied commanders or hierophants squeezes into a belt, rather than a whey-faced waif; when one of those educated-in-the-universities-of-their-foes strategists puts his own body on the line, then I’ll afford them credence that they’re not just exploiting and manipulating these bomb mules. Winding up the key of taut and tutored desperation in their backs and setting them off towards mayhem. See, the thing with successful missions as the Japanese kamikazes demonstrated, is that you cull your elite talent. No such thing as a suicide veteran. You need a constant stream of fresh volunteers. But unlike Iraq, where Jihadists are crossing over the borders all the time, Palestine is sealed off. So the quality of the bomber pool declines. They started sending children and simpletons. I saw them in the prisons too, though I didn’t abuse them any further by requesting to interview them. Even those with the slightest sympathy for the strength of will of the suicide bomber, ought to be repulsed by this abasement. Bad strategic decision.
So I return to these prompters, these whisperers from offstage. The puppet master, pedlars of death. What these men do so successfully, is to take the everyday currency of death in their blighted land and raise it to the ultimate value. The reward they offer, confirmed as instantly as a scratch-card, is the status of martyr. They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely sapped.
These manipulators, these programmers, are marketing geniuses. For being able to turn death around like that and make it an attractive option. An aspirational choice. They ought to be employed in Soho and Madison Avenue, having their work plastered across giant hoardings and on TV. Then they’d be earning enough money to send back to revive their homeland economy. But these mavens of destruction would presumably baulk at the job title of ‘Creative Director’."
Monday, 12 January 2015
Playing Detective - A Couple Of Unanswered Questions From The Paris Slayings
I'm no different from anyone who doesn't work for the police or intelligence services, although I have published a work of fiction about terrorist actions. And my amateur spidey sleuth senses are twitching over a couple of aspects of last week's terrorist outrages in Paris.
Firstly, at least one of the terrorists may have seen action in Syria, but Kalashnikovs and Rocket-Propelled grenade launchers are not just something you can smuggle back in your suitcase like hotel towels.
So how did the terrorists get their hands on such hardware?
1) The radical Islamic terror networks have excellent quartermasters who can secure this kind of ordnance
2) The terrorist bought them from the criminal underworld.
Either way, the two converge in the sense that even the quartermasters have to source the guns from somewhere, so at some point someone is trading them illegal weapons
Have Europe's borders become so porous that guns flow as freely as people? Where are the security checks on baggage (if smuggled by individuals) or freight (if sent commercially)? At some point in the transport cycle this hardware is likely to have originated from outside the EU, from the former Soviet Union, or Syria and Iraq perhaps. But the moment it comes into the EU it has to be discovered by the authorities or we remain totally vulnerable.
The French underworld has always been heavily tooled up, with machine guns to the fore. So it is quite conceivable that the guns were purchased locally. In which case it behoves the criminal classes to rediscover some notions of loyalty to the state they operate within, by keeping their sixth sense open as to the possible use of desired purchases and refuse to deal with terrorists. After all, it could be their wives and children hit in the crossfire. It's true that some terrorists have backgrounds within the criminal underworld, but if they drop out of circulation to go fight in Syria and then reappear trying to hook up with their old contacts again, it ought to sound alarm bells to the crims.
Secondly, Jihadists who declare war on their home state, cherish and welcome death. They don't hand themselves up for arrest of their own volition. And yet seemingly this is exactly what the third member of the Kouachi cell did in Reims. Could he possibly be entirely innocent, but his name came up in the frame because some identification material of his was found in one of the cars stolen by the brothers during their spree? Could he have handed himself in just to clear himself as an entirely innocent party? If that is the case - and we've heard absolutely nothing since his arrest - then the third gunman from the Charlie Hebdo massacre is still at large as well. Some more information on the status of this other accomplice (or not) would be welcome to clear up the fog.
I am also slightly confused by the role of Hayat Boumeddiene, the common law wife of the third gunman Amedy Coulibaly. Coulibaly's video sees him declaring his allegiance to ISIS, yet ISIS purportedly don't allow women to fight in their cause because of their lesser role in society to men (I'll refrain delving into the psychosexual exploration of that anxiety). Boumeddiene is said to have been a planner for her husband and exchanged 500 phone calls with the wives of the Kouachi brothers. Were these all just bolstering of their spirits, a reaffirmation of their commitment to the missions of their husbands? Or was this the means of planning communication that meant their husbands could remain off the grid? Boumeddiene is also over the internet pictured aiming a crossbow. If she is in Syria as seems likely, is she being feted as a war hero's widow? Or is she being allowed to apply her nefarious talents to ISIS' operations in the field?
Firstly, at least one of the terrorists may have seen action in Syria, but Kalashnikovs and Rocket-Propelled grenade launchers are not just something you can smuggle back in your suitcase like hotel towels.
So how did the terrorists get their hands on such hardware?
1) The radical Islamic terror networks have excellent quartermasters who can secure this kind of ordnance
2) The terrorist bought them from the criminal underworld.
Either way, the two converge in the sense that even the quartermasters have to source the guns from somewhere, so at some point someone is trading them illegal weapons
Have Europe's borders become so porous that guns flow as freely as people? Where are the security checks on baggage (if smuggled by individuals) or freight (if sent commercially)? At some point in the transport cycle this hardware is likely to have originated from outside the EU, from the former Soviet Union, or Syria and Iraq perhaps. But the moment it comes into the EU it has to be discovered by the authorities or we remain totally vulnerable.
The French underworld has always been heavily tooled up, with machine guns to the fore. So it is quite conceivable that the guns were purchased locally. In which case it behoves the criminal classes to rediscover some notions of loyalty to the state they operate within, by keeping their sixth sense open as to the possible use of desired purchases and refuse to deal with terrorists. After all, it could be their wives and children hit in the crossfire. It's true that some terrorists have backgrounds within the criminal underworld, but if they drop out of circulation to go fight in Syria and then reappear trying to hook up with their old contacts again, it ought to sound alarm bells to the crims.
Secondly, Jihadists who declare war on their home state, cherish and welcome death. They don't hand themselves up for arrest of their own volition. And yet seemingly this is exactly what the third member of the Kouachi cell did in Reims. Could he possibly be entirely innocent, but his name came up in the frame because some identification material of his was found in one of the cars stolen by the brothers during their spree? Could he have handed himself in just to clear himself as an entirely innocent party? If that is the case - and we've heard absolutely nothing since his arrest - then the third gunman from the Charlie Hebdo massacre is still at large as well. Some more information on the status of this other accomplice (or not) would be welcome to clear up the fog.
I am also slightly confused by the role of Hayat Boumeddiene, the common law wife of the third gunman Amedy Coulibaly. Coulibaly's video sees him declaring his allegiance to ISIS, yet ISIS purportedly don't allow women to fight in their cause because of their lesser role in society to men (I'll refrain delving into the psychosexual exploration of that anxiety). Boumeddiene is said to have been a planner for her husband and exchanged 500 phone calls with the wives of the Kouachi brothers. Were these all just bolstering of their spirits, a reaffirmation of their commitment to the missions of their husbands? Or was this the means of planning communication that meant their husbands could remain off the grid? Boumeddiene is also over the internet pictured aiming a crossbow. If she is in Syria as seems likely, is she being feted as a war hero's widow? Or is she being allowed to apply her nefarious talents to ISIS' operations in the field?
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
The Charlie Hebdo Slayings In Paris
The first thing I want to say is that until the French authorities have definitively established the perpetrators of this atrocity, it doesn't do to leap to conclusions in pinning blame. Remember how in the aftermath of the Madrid rail bombings, the Spanish government blamed the Basque Separatists, so that when it turned out to be Islamic terrorists, they were made to seem completely out of touch and unable to protect their population and promptly got booted out of power at the election that followed soon after. That's how terrorism works, it engenders a sense in the population that they are vulnerable and unprotected by the powers that are charged with just that responsibility.
I am not taking it for granted that Islamic terrorists carried out this attack. But if one was a betting man, they would be the favourites, but the fact that we have a multi-billion global betting industry shows that the favourite doesn't always come in. However, this is such a specialised target (I'd never heard of the magazine before), a bit like going in and shooting up the offices of "Private Eye", whoever is responsible it represents an attack of the right to free expression. Satire is a means of poking fun and subverting whatever it is targeting and while that may cause offence, it is not illegal, it doesn't point a gun at anyone and it doesn't pull a trigger on anything except to fire words or images into the pool of human thought and cogitation.
Yet when people wring their hands about such an injustice, or that the right of free expression is inalienable, or even use the word 'atrocity', they are frankly failing to deal with the issues. Gunmen who would shoot up a magazine office full off journalists have a very different concept of justice than all the handwringers. They seek to make free expression a wholly alienable right, through the force of the bullet. Of course it is an atrocity in our eyes, but in theirs it is an act to politically advance their cause. These assassins are not troubled by the act of murder of unarmed civilians. Chances are they see themselves at war with that which they are opposing. Words like 'atrocity' actually manage to tamp down further useful discussion, because it admits that this act is so incomprehensible, so off the scale of understanding, that there is nothing more that can be added. Wrong.
There is nothing wrong with demonstrations of solidarity. I've heard suggestions of playing the Marseilleise outside Buckingham Palace, through to republishing the Hebdo front page cartoon in every magazine and newspaper front page tomorrow. I get these symbolic acts of standing together. I get the need for them too, representing both a collective grief and a show of strength. But what people need to do and I've said this consistently in books and blog posts, is not throw up our hands in disgusted stymied defeat at these acts being beyond the pale, but to come to understand how the terrorist thinks, acts and conceives. If we persist in dismissing something as unjust by our standards, then we will never come to comprehend his view of the just and the unjust. If we continue to vaguely wave a banner promoting free speech, then we fail to appreciate the nature of its threat to the terrorist, how and why he targets the agencies he does. If we blithely ascribe an outrage as an atrocity, then we miss how this is just business to their minds, their modus operandi. What lies behind, what are their aims, what generates their support, what are the economic, psychologically, social and cultural roots behind people becoming terrorists?
Time to get on the front foot people. And as the first act, that would be definitively determining who was responsible for this attack. It's no longer acceptable to ask 'how can this happen?' or 'how can there be people who act like this?' without also seeking the answer.
I am not taking it for granted that Islamic terrorists carried out this attack. But if one was a betting man, they would be the favourites, but the fact that we have a multi-billion global betting industry shows that the favourite doesn't always come in. However, this is such a specialised target (I'd never heard of the magazine before), a bit like going in and shooting up the offices of "Private Eye", whoever is responsible it represents an attack of the right to free expression. Satire is a means of poking fun and subverting whatever it is targeting and while that may cause offence, it is not illegal, it doesn't point a gun at anyone and it doesn't pull a trigger on anything except to fire words or images into the pool of human thought and cogitation.
Yet when people wring their hands about such an injustice, or that the right of free expression is inalienable, or even use the word 'atrocity', they are frankly failing to deal with the issues. Gunmen who would shoot up a magazine office full off journalists have a very different concept of justice than all the handwringers. They seek to make free expression a wholly alienable right, through the force of the bullet. Of course it is an atrocity in our eyes, but in theirs it is an act to politically advance their cause. These assassins are not troubled by the act of murder of unarmed civilians. Chances are they see themselves at war with that which they are opposing. Words like 'atrocity' actually manage to tamp down further useful discussion, because it admits that this act is so incomprehensible, so off the scale of understanding, that there is nothing more that can be added. Wrong.
There is nothing wrong with demonstrations of solidarity. I've heard suggestions of playing the Marseilleise outside Buckingham Palace, through to republishing the Hebdo front page cartoon in every magazine and newspaper front page tomorrow. I get these symbolic acts of standing together. I get the need for them too, representing both a collective grief and a show of strength. But what people need to do and I've said this consistently in books and blog posts, is not throw up our hands in disgusted stymied defeat at these acts being beyond the pale, but to come to understand how the terrorist thinks, acts and conceives. If we persist in dismissing something as unjust by our standards, then we will never come to comprehend his view of the just and the unjust. If we continue to vaguely wave a banner promoting free speech, then we fail to appreciate the nature of its threat to the terrorist, how and why he targets the agencies he does. If we blithely ascribe an outrage as an atrocity, then we miss how this is just business to their minds, their modus operandi. What lies behind, what are their aims, what generates their support, what are the economic, psychologically, social and cultural roots behind people becoming terrorists?
Time to get on the front foot people. And as the first act, that would be definitively determining who was responsible for this attack. It's no longer acceptable to ask 'how can this happen?' or 'how can there be people who act like this?' without also seeking the answer.
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
New Cover Reveal
In 2011 I published my novel "Not In My Name" about the genesis of a homegrown Islamic terrorist, in response to the bombing of railways in Madrid and London and the spate of suicide bombings in Israel that prompted the erection of the security wall.
Everything that I wrote in that book, about online recruitment, suicide bombers, beheading videos, martyrdom and the nature of a death cult, is more true today with the emergence of ISIS/ ISIL than even back then.
Recently I've blogged on the factors shared with the rise of recruitment to ISIS to the homegrown suicide bombers who attacked the London Underground, here, here and here. I despair of the pronouncements made by the authorities as they flail around trying to get to grips with the phenomena of 5 Britons a week travelling to join up with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They seem to me to be utterly clueless with this manifestation of militant Islamic terrorism, but the point is it's not that new. My book lays out the journey from Yorkshire to Syria or Iraq.
I'll be honest, my book hasn't done terribly well up until now. I think part of the reason is not that people aren't interested in this subject, but that I did them a disservice with a terrible original cover that looked like the book was a cartoonish treatment of a serious subject. The fault was mine not the designer, since they were working from my brief. So I'm glad to announce that I have republished the book to Kindle with a brand new cover this time designed by Appleseed Images. It will be interesting to see if the cover makes any difference to sales.
Here's the new cover:
Everything that I wrote in that book, about online recruitment, suicide bombers, beheading videos, martyrdom and the nature of a death cult, is more true today with the emergence of ISIS/ ISIL than even back then.
Recently I've blogged on the factors shared with the rise of recruitment to ISIS to the homegrown suicide bombers who attacked the London Underground, here, here and here. I despair of the pronouncements made by the authorities as they flail around trying to get to grips with the phenomena of 5 Britons a week travelling to join up with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They seem to me to be utterly clueless with this manifestation of militant Islamic terrorism, but the point is it's not that new. My book lays out the journey from Yorkshire to Syria or Iraq.
I'll be honest, my book hasn't done terribly well up until now. I think part of the reason is not that people aren't interested in this subject, but that I did them a disservice with a terrible original cover that looked like the book was a cartoonish treatment of a serious subject. The fault was mine not the designer, since they were working from my brief. So I'm glad to announce that I have republished the book to Kindle with a brand new cover this time designed by Appleseed Images. It will be interesting to see if the cover makes any difference to sales.
Here's the new cover:
Friday, 5 September 2014
Will We In The West Never Learn? - ISIS a triumph of manipulation
Two beheading videos and the threat of a third with a British victim this time have changed the whole political landscape. Politicians are now talking about military intervention in Iraq and the war-weary public ground down by body bags from Afghanistan and Iraq before it are not shouting them down quite as vociferously as they would even six months ago. Well those were some video productions then if they have provoked such a response. ISIS have played the propaganda war perfectly.
Because they want Western troops to engage them in battle. They know that nothing will recruit numbers to their cause, more than infidel soldiers in the cities with holy Muslim shrines, or aerial bombing killing innocent civilians. It happened in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein being booted out of power. I called it a "Grand Tour", the opportunity for Muslim sons to kill a GI in every holy city. ISIS initially represented a perverted version of the International Brigades, going to fight the tyrant dictator Assad as against Franco in Spain. But reports are now beginning to filter back about how disillusioned some British recruits to ISIS have become, because they are not nobly fighting against Assad. Instead they are engaged against other Jihadi sects, or off fighting in Iraq and a party to atrocities they didn't necessarily sign up to. Western Jihadis are second class citizens in ISIS, since they are seen to lack the military skills having not fought in previous campaigns stretching back to Bosnia, Chechnya and of course Afghanistan. While culturally they are not well versed in notions of a Caliphate and certain Medieval practises such as forced conversion and beheading.
And this is the point. The Caliphate left alone to its devices would in all likelihood collapse under its own violent excesses. (It reminds me of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia which cut its own throat by continuous purges for in the name of purity). But if the West dedicate itself to destroying the Caliphate, that can only inject new life and support to its cause. The West may eventually be able to bring it down, but at what cost and what future fertile ground for continued extreme islamic opposition to all things Western? You might cavil that we cannot simply let the Caliphate exist while it carries out mass executions in cold blood of any sects who won't convert to their religious ideology. But that is happening right now without much in the way of the West being able to prevent it. And it only further makes the case that ISIS continuing to function this way will push all its opponents with Syria and Iraq to unite against them, just in the name of self-preservation. I understand the case that the West could never trust the Caliphate not to try and expand its borders from where it stands now, but there is nothing to stop the West acceding to the de facto Caliphate borders as they are and protecting from further incursion with suitable defensive forces. Give the Caliphate time to destroy itself.
I am not a politician, I have no military background nor do I work in Intelligence. I am just a writer, doing a bit of research from open sourced information and then taking a pause to actually think about how this thing might play out. I wrote a work of fiction back in 2011 about suicide bombers and the recruitment to a death cult and ISIS is the next development out of this. It is very clear to my mind that if the West went to war with the Caliphate, it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would play into the hands of ISIS strategists and rather than allow the Caliphate to fall under its own stresses, would ensure people rallied to its cause and therefore a much longer campaign to defeat it.
Breakdown of ISIS fighters by country of origin
"Not In My Name" UK US - The journey to recruitment for radical Islam
Because they want Western troops to engage them in battle. They know that nothing will recruit numbers to their cause, more than infidel soldiers in the cities with holy Muslim shrines, or aerial bombing killing innocent civilians. It happened in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein being booted out of power. I called it a "Grand Tour", the opportunity for Muslim sons to kill a GI in every holy city. ISIS initially represented a perverted version of the International Brigades, going to fight the tyrant dictator Assad as against Franco in Spain. But reports are now beginning to filter back about how disillusioned some British recruits to ISIS have become, because they are not nobly fighting against Assad. Instead they are engaged against other Jihadi sects, or off fighting in Iraq and a party to atrocities they didn't necessarily sign up to. Western Jihadis are second class citizens in ISIS, since they are seen to lack the military skills having not fought in previous campaigns stretching back to Bosnia, Chechnya and of course Afghanistan. While culturally they are not well versed in notions of a Caliphate and certain Medieval practises such as forced conversion and beheading.
And this is the point. The Caliphate left alone to its devices would in all likelihood collapse under its own violent excesses. (It reminds me of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia which cut its own throat by continuous purges for in the name of purity). But if the West dedicate itself to destroying the Caliphate, that can only inject new life and support to its cause. The West may eventually be able to bring it down, but at what cost and what future fertile ground for continued extreme islamic opposition to all things Western? You might cavil that we cannot simply let the Caliphate exist while it carries out mass executions in cold blood of any sects who won't convert to their religious ideology. But that is happening right now without much in the way of the West being able to prevent it. And it only further makes the case that ISIS continuing to function this way will push all its opponents with Syria and Iraq to unite against them, just in the name of self-preservation. I understand the case that the West could never trust the Caliphate not to try and expand its borders from where it stands now, but there is nothing to stop the West acceding to the de facto Caliphate borders as they are and protecting from further incursion with suitable defensive forces. Give the Caliphate time to destroy itself.
I am not a politician, I have no military background nor do I work in Intelligence. I am just a writer, doing a bit of research from open sourced information and then taking a pause to actually think about how this thing might play out. I wrote a work of fiction back in 2011 about suicide bombers and the recruitment to a death cult and ISIS is the next development out of this. It is very clear to my mind that if the West went to war with the Caliphate, it would be an unmitigated disaster. It would play into the hands of ISIS strategists and rather than allow the Caliphate to fall under its own stresses, would ensure people rallied to its cause and therefore a much longer campaign to defeat it.
Breakdown of ISIS fighters by country of origin
"Not In My Name" UK US - The journey to recruitment for radical Islam
"graduation from a human being, into a human bomb. The knack, is to change the bomber’s desires from embracing life, into a hankering after death.
Interview after interview, I was presented with similar, reedily intoned versions of how this was brought about. One strand had them sat drooling at the feet of some hierophant in a madrassa, as he categorically untangles the frayed threads of life, while they scratch their carpet-fluff beards and nod accordance. I’ll tell you something, if I was promised myriad virgins in the Afterlife, I’d probably enlist myself. Blissfully blow myself to Kingdom Come. Presumably, it’s one virgin to tend each bit of the body atomised by high-explosive. Of course, rather than nubile women, why couldn’t it equally be the ghosts of the 72 camels slain for Fatima’s wedding? That’s the drawback with numerical symbolism. It’s open to double counting.
Alternatively, they paraded before a paramilitary hawk, sharpening the recruit’s claws on his steel gauntlet. The logic he advances, is that the mission should be beyond fear, for no other soldier has such certainty of whether he will return alive or dead from his next action. Whereas the suicide bomber knows to the precise minute. What a boon.
By whichever method, these fellows are striking a deal with their egos. They don’t shut them off, rather they believe they are swapping a pretty squalid life not for death, but for another, improved life up in the clouds. A literal leap of faith. Trouble is, when their heads are blown upwards off their body towards Heaven, sure as hell it hurtles back down to earth under the prosaic ministrations of gravity. Does each bomber actually possess the finer shades of understanding, exactly what the Holy Text suggests is in store for them? Ultimately, they remain just teenagers on the most extreme and ugly of promises. And as to the secularist bombers, they too are left in no uncertain terms that they will become pin-up poster boys on the walls of Gaza and Baghdad. This is the poor man’s version of celebrity. A pension from Iran or Syria will see that their family is well provided for, a sort of posthumous dower. Or a divorce settlement."
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
Why UK Citizens Join The Fight In Syria
Yesterday two young men from Birmingham were convicted of fighting in Syria and returning to Britain and planning terrorist acts with the training they'd received. Also the identity of two 16 year old girls who had left Britain to join the war in Syria was also revealed. These girls had achieved great success in their school exams, so we are not talking about the vulnerable minds of people who cannot think for themselves here, just as the evidence to membership of religious cults shows adherents to be well educated and in search of something more in life which is why they join up.
So currently we have much hand-wringing about how elements of our youth become radicalised and want to fight in Syria. We enjoin their spiritual leaders in british Mosques to help stem the flow. We appeal to their parents to be vigilant for signs of radicalisation in their children. Yet none of these agencies really can penetrate the mindset that motivates these kids and they really are kids at age 16, to enlist in a foreign war. "Know thine enemy" is a crucial facet of success in war and most people don't have the first clue with what they are up against here. Hand wringing turns to open handed shrug.
The Birmingham men were only caught because one left a message for his mother and she took the emotionally wracked decision to report him to the authorities, as the government are calling on people to do. But without that letter, would she have had any idea that's where her son had gone after he set up an elaborate screen to suggest he was visiting Turkey? The mothers of two of the British boys featured on an ISIS recruitment video revealed last week said they had no idea their sons had joined up to fight. Parents don't know. The authorities don't know, how can this be?
It is well second nature for these recruits to lead double lives. In my book "Not In My Name" I offered a fictional journey for a youth from middle class Yorkshire to suicide bomber. I explored the myriad of identities expected and forced such a person and which he could inhabit while all the time having other motivations really in play.
The pressures are as follows:
Family/generational
Gender/sex
Racial/religious
Cultural and social
The word "jihad" means (spiritual) struggle, usually denoting an inner questing, but which in certain interpretations has come to stand for an external struggle against enemies of Islam. With such different identities foisted on these young men and women, they are already engaged in inner struggle from an early age. An external identity and cause conveyed by the likes of radical Jihad can unify these disparate strands and provide a unity of vision and self. The British authorities can wring their hands as much as Imams and parents, but they make no move to dissect these social pressures and conflicts that start the journey for recruits to Jihad. Our society is fundamentally alienating to people with such values so that they have no ties to Britain which enables them to both leave to fight abroad and maybe to return and wage war here with a terrorist act. It behooves us to examine our own values and how that may alienate certain people to such an extent they have no stake or value in our country. You don't have to agree with such alienation, but you sure as hell better understand how it arises. It's nothing new, the 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta described his own alienation in the West very clearly. It's in any recruitment or suicide video from a Western youth.
Again my book looked at all this and did not cast judgement. It had a range of voices, from the Muslim protagonist himself, his patsy (the novel represents an online grooming, but not for sex but for terrorism, to provide a witness once the suicide bomber has perished unleashing the dogs of the media to track down every last detail and link on this veritable innocent who had an online relationship with him), an intelligence whistle blower, and the whole blogosphere where the real politics is being fought out in a vicious battle for recruitment to causes and a battle for hearts and minds. The book's analysis is intricate and complex, but does penetrate the mindset of people who would blow up their fellow countrymen by strapping explosive to their bodies.
"They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely sapped." (from "Not In My Name"
Amazon UK
Amazon US
So currently we have much hand-wringing about how elements of our youth become radicalised and want to fight in Syria. We enjoin their spiritual leaders in british Mosques to help stem the flow. We appeal to their parents to be vigilant for signs of radicalisation in their children. Yet none of these agencies really can penetrate the mindset that motivates these kids and they really are kids at age 16, to enlist in a foreign war. "Know thine enemy" is a crucial facet of success in war and most people don't have the first clue with what they are up against here. Hand wringing turns to open handed shrug.
The Birmingham men were only caught because one left a message for his mother and she took the emotionally wracked decision to report him to the authorities, as the government are calling on people to do. But without that letter, would she have had any idea that's where her son had gone after he set up an elaborate screen to suggest he was visiting Turkey? The mothers of two of the British boys featured on an ISIS recruitment video revealed last week said they had no idea their sons had joined up to fight. Parents don't know. The authorities don't know, how can this be?
It is well second nature for these recruits to lead double lives. In my book "Not In My Name" I offered a fictional journey for a youth from middle class Yorkshire to suicide bomber. I explored the myriad of identities expected and forced such a person and which he could inhabit while all the time having other motivations really in play.
The pressures are as follows:
Family/generational
Gender/sex
Racial/religious
Cultural and social
The word "jihad" means (spiritual) struggle, usually denoting an inner questing, but which in certain interpretations has come to stand for an external struggle against enemies of Islam. With such different identities foisted on these young men and women, they are already engaged in inner struggle from an early age. An external identity and cause conveyed by the likes of radical Jihad can unify these disparate strands and provide a unity of vision and self. The British authorities can wring their hands as much as Imams and parents, but they make no move to dissect these social pressures and conflicts that start the journey for recruits to Jihad. Our society is fundamentally alienating to people with such values so that they have no ties to Britain which enables them to both leave to fight abroad and maybe to return and wage war here with a terrorist act. It behooves us to examine our own values and how that may alienate certain people to such an extent they have no stake or value in our country. You don't have to agree with such alienation, but you sure as hell better understand how it arises. It's nothing new, the 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta described his own alienation in the West very clearly. It's in any recruitment or suicide video from a Western youth.
Again my book looked at all this and did not cast judgement. It had a range of voices, from the Muslim protagonist himself, his patsy (the novel represents an online grooming, but not for sex but for terrorism, to provide a witness once the suicide bomber has perished unleashing the dogs of the media to track down every last detail and link on this veritable innocent who had an online relationship with him), an intelligence whistle blower, and the whole blogosphere where the real politics is being fought out in a vicious battle for recruitment to causes and a battle for hearts and minds. The book's analysis is intricate and complex, but does penetrate the mindset of people who would blow up their fellow countrymen by strapping explosive to their bodies.
"They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely sapped." (from "Not In My Name"
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Monday, 23 June 2014
UK Citizens joining ISIS in Iraq and Syria
The TV News tracks down the mother of a Jihadi in Cardiff and broadcast her pained squeal for him to come back home from Syria. But he's not coming. He's not going to heed his mother's appeal, because he'd already cut the umbilical family tie by travelling to fight. And now that he's openly shown himself on a recruitment video, he's unlikely to come home when his face is known to the authorities who will watch him night and day expecting him to wage war and terror at home. I think he expects to die out there in Syria or Iraq. Else to participate in a Caliphate erected across Syria and part of Iraq which is the stated aim of ISIS. A pipe dream in all probability because of the forces of resistance that will come to range against any such prospect. But for now, kalashnikovs and pipe bombs tilt at just such a pipe dream.
So no, he's not coming home. The mother's anguish is because it is such a shock. People may ask why she didn't even have an inkling what he was up to. Mothers know about their children right? Well if the intelligence services of our country don't know, practised professionals, why should his mother be any more in the picture? The Jihadi training doesn't start in camps abroad. It begins by learning the techniques to disguise the conversion to the cause of militant Jihad while you still reside in Britain. To carry off the act of living a normal life, including respecting one's parents, until the moment is ripe to decamp for foreign battlefields. Just like the 7/7 bombers who were described as "Clean Skins" by the authorities in Britain, that is those with no history of terrorist activity. They don't need a history if they are suicide bombers, they just need that one strike and out.
I wrote about the genesis of homegrown terrorists in my novel "Not In My Name". I wrote of the complexities of the political ideals behind the drive to recruitment. Of the twin-track approach of the spiritual and the military professionals. Of the alienation within the home countries that was the launch point for joining the militant Jihadi cause (similar alienation that leads folk to join cults). And how this cult in particular embraced and celebrated and welcomed death as the ultimate aspiration. When writing of those who went to resist Western forces in Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, or the aftermath of post Saddam Iraq, I put it like this:
The mother could not see the crisis of masculinity in her son that contributed to him enlisting to Jihad. A cultural nausea caused by an abhorrence of things in the British way of life that threaten masculinity, that lead to patrols in Whitechapel in London demanding all women cover up their flesh when walking in the area and that alcohol is not to be consumed either. But impromptu street patrols cannot cut it, especially when the authorities clamp down on them as illicit public behaviour. Again I quote from my book:
I wrote these things in a fictional narrative back in 2011 and yet three years later our society still seems shocked and disbelieving that boys from Cardiff and Aberdeen can abandon their studies and go fight in Iraq or Syria. (I wrote of boys and girls from Wakefield, through Madrid to Palestine and Iraq). Nobody seems to be asking the right questions, or suggesting the mechanisms behind such a mindset. But I managed to penetrate it to some extent, (without offering any easy answers), so maybe we all better just catch up and start dealing with the issues involved here.
Available on Amazon Kindle
So no, he's not coming home. The mother's anguish is because it is such a shock. People may ask why she didn't even have an inkling what he was up to. Mothers know about their children right? Well if the intelligence services of our country don't know, practised professionals, why should his mother be any more in the picture? The Jihadi training doesn't start in camps abroad. It begins by learning the techniques to disguise the conversion to the cause of militant Jihad while you still reside in Britain. To carry off the act of living a normal life, including respecting one's parents, until the moment is ripe to decamp for foreign battlefields. Just like the 7/7 bombers who were described as "Clean Skins" by the authorities in Britain, that is those with no history of terrorist activity. They don't need a history if they are suicide bombers, they just need that one strike and out.
I wrote about the genesis of homegrown terrorists in my novel "Not In My Name". I wrote of the complexities of the political ideals behind the drive to recruitment. Of the twin-track approach of the spiritual and the military professionals. Of the alienation within the home countries that was the launch point for joining the militant Jihadi cause (similar alienation that leads folk to join cults). And how this cult in particular embraced and celebrated and welcomed death as the ultimate aspiration. When writing of those who went to resist Western forces in Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, or the aftermath of post Saddam Iraq, I put it like this:
"This is not just defiance, a refusal to acquiesce. It’s more actively seeking the chance to mix it with someone. To prove their mettle and uphold their misguided notion of honour. The one emasculated by the unabated actions of the West. They’re after accosting the 'Crusaders', not necessarily withstanding them (that’s why recruitment of succeeding fighters to jump into the suicidally vacated breach, is so crucial for sustaining it as an ongoing campaign). Bottom line, what’s actually on offer, is an Oriental Grand Tour, whereby the disaffected sons of the rich can get to kill a GI in each of the Cities with a holy shrine. In truth, they have become a death cult. Venerating and worshipping carnage. Bringing in blood sacrifices as proof of election. Thus I say there is no ideological struggle at stake here."
The mother could not see the crisis of masculinity in her son that contributed to him enlisting to Jihad. A cultural nausea caused by an abhorrence of things in the British way of life that threaten masculinity, that lead to patrols in Whitechapel in London demanding all women cover up their flesh when walking in the area and that alcohol is not to be consumed either. But impromptu street patrols cannot cut it, especially when the authorities clamp down on them as illicit public behaviour. Again I quote from my book:
"They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely sapped."
I wrote these things in a fictional narrative back in 2011 and yet three years later our society still seems shocked and disbelieving that boys from Cardiff and Aberdeen can abandon their studies and go fight in Iraq or Syria. (I wrote of boys and girls from Wakefield, through Madrid to Palestine and Iraq). Nobody seems to be asking the right questions, or suggesting the mechanisms behind such a mindset. But I managed to penetrate it to some extent, (without offering any easy answers), so maybe we all better just catch up and start dealing with the issues involved here.
Available on Amazon Kindle
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)