THREAT OF TERROR AND DISRUPTED ECONOMY

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/threat-of-terror-and-disrupted-economy.html

Thursday, 11 September 2014 | Hiranmay Karlekar | 

Control over North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula will give the Islamists a stranglehold on the massive oil resources on which European countries depend

US President Barack Obama said on September 5 at the end of the Nato summit in Wales, “We are going to degrade and ultimately defeat the ISIL [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] in the same way we had gone after Al Qaeda.” He also elaborated the methods: “You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities, you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territories they may control, you take out their leadership.” He then added, “Thus over a period of time, they are not able to conduct the same kind of terrorist attacks as they once could.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear at the summit's beginning that the United States wanted nothing less than the liquidation of ISIL (which rechristened itself IS or Islamic State on June 29). “There is no containment policy for ISIL. They're an ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing [sic], caliphate-desiring quasi state with an irregular army, and leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us.”

On the ground, the US has cobbled together a ‘core coalition’, comprising, besides itself, Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark against the IS. It has not only been bombing IS formations on the ground in Iraq to prevent them from annexing new territory and to dislodge them from what they have occupied, but carried out air strike to support Iran-backed Shia militia which broke the siege of Amreli. This is a most significant development considering that some of these forces, particularly the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, considered the most fearsome of Iraq's Shiite militias, and linked to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, was one of the Americans' most tenacious enemies during the occupation.

The development clearly indicates the US's determination to liquidate the IS; so does President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry's articulation of the resolve to do so, and the strong language used. This is not just because the IS has beheaded two American journalists — one of whom had earlier become an Israeli citizen — and displayed nauseating savagery toward an assortment of groups, besides enforcing a most regressive brand of fundamentalist Islam. Its geo-strategic goal of extending its caliphate's sway the world over, conducting terrorist strikes against the US and growing following among Muslims the world over, particularly of the Western Diaspora, threatens global disruption.

One of the immediate effects of the IS's growth would be to boost the morale of Islamist militants in Jordan, where they are already strong and assertive and in Turkey, where they are quiet but active. It will be the same with their counterparts in Libya, Mali, Somalia, Nigeria, Algeria and Kenya. Already, jihadists from the world over, including the US, Britain and other European countries, are flocking to join the IS. Apart from causing a significant accretion to the IS, their arrival indicates the existence of militant Islamist cells which can be used for terrorist attacks on the host countries. The magnitude of the threat becomes clear on recalling that at least 20 young men from the Somali community in Minneapolis in the US have joined the IS and two have been killed.

Besides, control over North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula will give Islamists a stranglehold on the massive oil resources of the region which will enable them to jeopardise the economies of European countries dependent on these and earn huge amounts of revenue, which will boost their military capabilities, Already, much of the resources of the IS, estimated to be the richest terrorist outfit ever, come from oil smuggling. Also, they will control the critical sea routs stretching from the Europe and the US to East and South-Asia through the Suez Canal.

Understandably, the West is concerned.