THE GUARDIAN VIEW ON THE USE OF SPECIAL FORCES AND AIR POWER AGAINST ISIS

Rescuing western hostages held by Isis is a tall order, while air power is making less difference to the military balance on the ground than expected

http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2014/oct/05/ guardian-view-special-forces- air-power-isis

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Editorial

5 October 2014 

Operation Shader British Tornado Warplane, Iraq ISIS IS ISil attacksA Tornado GR4 of the Royal Air Force. ‘­Modern war planes move very fast and fly very high, most of the time. They miss things, waste their bombs.’ Photograph: Richard Calver/RCP

As the war with the Islamic State movement develops, its difficulties, and its horrors, are becoming more manifest. The murder of Alan Henning, the fourth western hostage to die, will not be the last such outrage. Islamic State (Isis) killed an obviously innocent man in spite of appeals from Muslim leaders in the region and in Britain, serving notice that it recognizes no moral authority outside its own harsh sphere, and that it will take the lives of the remaining western citizens who have fallen into its hands when and how it pleases.

It is natural to consider, as David Cameron is thought to be doing, the use of special forces to extricate them, but this is not just a matter of sending in the helicopters to swoop dramatically over a border. Special forces like the SAS consist of particularly well-trained and skilled soldiers but they are not magicians. All kinds of conditions must be in place before they can be used with any confidence of success, notably perfect or near-perfect intelligence. People are conditioned to believe that special forces can achieve miracles by countless films and television dramas, but Bruce Willis is not in charge here. Special forces are expensive, small in numbers, and not to be lightly risked in battle.

It is probably true to say that, historically, most special operations have gone wrong, some with heavy casualties, and some without casualties but with no useful result. This is especially the case with operations to free prisoners, as with the unsuccessful American raid in Syria earlier this year. With Isis there is the additional consideration that, in the event of failure, any captured special force members would almost certainly be done to death before the jihadist cameras within days.

Just as the raiding option is fraught with problems, so, on the battlegrounds, western air power, the use of which is the justification Isis offers for these killings, has made even less difference so far than pessimists had suggested. Isis has adapted swiftly to the new situation. Vehicles and equipment are scattered, fighters disperse as soon as western jets appear in the sky. These multi-million dollar warplanes have often been reduced, it seems, to blasting single pick-up trucks and the like with ordnance worth 10 or 20 times the value of the targets. The Isis advance on the Kurdish town of Kobani, near the Turkish border, for example, proceeds inexorably, and it may well be that only the intervention of Turkish troops, now legally possible after a recent parliamentary vote but by no means certain, can save the place.

It stands to reason that the fire poured down on Isis must be doing some damage, but the ability of determined forces to stand up to air attack is well attested over the years. Modern war planes move very fast and fly very high, most of the time. They miss things, waste their bombs. Those under attack dig in, they move at night, they go to close quarters with the enemy to deter attacks in which the other side would have to risk killing its own people. They move next to civilian communities, because they know the attackers want to avoid civilian deaths. The limited effectiveness of air strikes makes the political side of the anti-Isis campaign even more important than we already knew it to be.

The better news is that Isis is losing the propaganda battle in the Muslim diaspora even more rapidly than before. In Britain, the death of Mr Henning may mark a turning point. It was not that there was sympathy for Isis before, nor that the earlier hostage deaths were not deplored. But his killing was so completely indefensible that it could lead to a kind of Muslim mobilization in Britain against Isis, and an end to over-emphasis by some Muslims on how western countries set off the chain of troubles which led to its emergence.

There is some truth in that but it is not a truth which is of much use to us now. Any change in atmosphere which makes it less likely that a 16-year-old boy, messing around in his bedroom with jihadist videos and texts, romanticizing a vicious war and imagining himself a black-clad hero, will translate his fantasies into reality or, if he tries to, will find himself blocked by an alerted family and community, is to be welcomed.