The Fight in Syria and at Home

In the midterm and in the long term, it won’t work without assimilation.

One cannot defeat an enemy army with bombs alone. The use of ground troops is always required to wrest a territory from a weakened enemy and hold it.

With that comes the question of whether ground troops are to be sent into Syria and northern Iraq to finally defeat the terrorist militia the Islamic State, or, rather, annihilate it. The question to pose is how to figure it out for good. This would not be done by sending special forces as Russia (and the U.S.) have announced. It would have to be an intervention by a Western coalition, with Russians, Americans, English, French and Germans. And the Turks.

The approximately 30,000-man Islamic State group could very well be destroyed with a coordinated campaign. It would quite certainly be exceptionally brutal (like the Russian campaign in Chechnya), but then the territory would have to be held, as well. In Afghanistan, the Western intervention after 9/11 nearly beat al-Qaida and the Taliban, but the Afghan army was not in any condition to maintain control. For Bashar Assad’s army in Syria and the Iraqi army, the situation is exactly the same, not to mention the brutality of the Syrian regime.

The prospects of defeating the Islamic State group on its own territory for good are thus relatively slim. Only the prospect of somewhat containing the Islamic State group to the smallest region possible is likely to be achievable. Apart from that, Western intervention would have to take place not only in Syria or Iraq, but also in Libya where the local branch of the Islamic State commands a large stretch of coast.

This would, however, more likely encourage more terrorism in Europe and elsewhere than reduce it. What is there to do about that?

In the short term, it is simply not possible to get around an increase in police and secret service personnel. The discussion in France is about preventatively placing people returning home from jihad in Syria under house arrest with ankle bracelets. With regard to prevention, we will need to go to much greater lengths, in any case. The closing of problematic mosques and the deportation of preachers of hate (or prosecution, if they are Austrian citizens) are possibilities.

Those are the relatively decisive short-term options. In the midterm and in the long term, it won’t work without assimilation, supported by, but also called for by, European society. Civil and secular Europe, based on ideas of democracy, enlightenment and the emancipation of women, has no separate, parallel society.

There are no special zones for mentalities in which people like the Dutch football player with the Salafi beard don’t shake hands with women, in which religion is all important, in which young men without wives and a future believe that becoming “martyrs” is a career move. This means offering help, but also constant pressure to assimilate. This will be an unending challenge, but there are really no alternatives.