OLD WAYS TO DEFEAT THE IS WILL NOT WORK NOW

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/old-ways-to-defeat-the-is-will-not-work-now.html

Saturday, 28 November 2015 | Hiranmay Karlekar | 

Destroying the IS in Syria and Iraq will require military action on the ground and from air; the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany will have to play major roles. This will require an agreement on means and goals 

The November 13 terror attacks in Paris have been followed by unprecedented counter-terrorism measures in France and a continuing level 4 (the highest possible) alert in Brussels level 3 for the rest of Belgium at the time of writing. Involving the closure of the subway system, shops and much else, Belgium’s response has been the result of what the country’s Prime Minister, Mr Charles Michel, described as a “serious and imminent” terror threat. “We fear an attack similar to the one in Paris”, he told a news conference on November 22, adding, “A number of individuals could launch an attack on several locations in Brussels simultaneously.”

Mr Michel’s statement came in the midst of a massive security sweep, involving the deployment of heavily-armed soldiers and the launching of 19 raids in Brussels and three in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi, leading to 16 arrests, and the sealing off of at least two areas of central Brussels including the Grand Place, the medieval square which is a major tourist attraction. Salah Abdeslam, suspected to be a gunman in the November 13 attacks, however, remained at large. 

This and the arrest of Abraimi Lazez, 39, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, who has been charged with helping Abdeslam after his return to Belgium following the November 13 attacks, must have heightened apprehensions about terrorists being at large. But a deeper cause must have been the emergence of several well-connected and effective terror networks in Belgium, with Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (commonly called Molenbeek), a heavily immigrant-dominated working class district in Brussels, becoming notorious as a prolific spawning ground of terrorists. Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon’s recent remark, that the government had no control over Molenbeek, eloquently summed up the situation there.

Abelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the Novmber 13 attacks, who was killed along with two others in a gunfight following a pre-dawn raid in St Denis, a Paris suburb, on November 18, grew up in Molenbeek. Bilal Hadfi, 20, who detonated his explosive vest outside the football stadium, State de France, on November 13, was also from there, as were two brothers — Salah Abdeslam (at large at the time of writing) and Ibrahim Abdeslam, who detonated a suicide bomb at a cafe during the Paris outrage. Also from Molenbeek were two of Abbaaoud’s associates killed in gunfight with Belgian police at Verviers, about 75 miles from Brussels, on January 15, 2015, which yielded a cache of arms and explosives.

Gun laws are relatively lax in Belgium compared to France. Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages in January at a kosher supermarket in Paris and shot a police officer in the days after a terrorist attack, killed 12 persons in the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, procured his weapons from Molenbeek; so did Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman who fired at a Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, killing four.

While Belgium continues with its combination of high alert and severe crackdown, France persists with its enhanced, countrywide counter-terrorism campaign under the state of emergency proclaimed after the November 13 attacks and extended by three months. Widening the powers of a 1955 emergency law, the proclamation allows the dissolution of fundamentalist groups running mosques and other places of worship; the blocking of websites and social media glorifying and inciting terrorism; search and arrests without warrants and the use, in certain cases, of electronic tagging of those put under house arrest.

Armed with powers under it, the police have been searching premises without warrants, forcing open doors, interrogating people rigorously, taking people down to police stations, and placing many under house arrest. A report under the heading, ‘Paris Attacks Spur Emergency Edict and Intense Policing in France’, by Adam Nossiter in The New York Times of November 23, quotes the French Interior Ministry as stating on the very same day that there had already been 1,072 police searches and 139 interrogations, with 117 people being placed in custody.

As in Belgium’s case, France’s drastic measures reflect an awareness of the existence of a large and effective terror network in the country with external links. Without it, Salah Abdeslam could not have been at large for such a long time. Also, Ayoub El Khazzani, 26, who attempted mass carnage in the Amsterdam-Paris super fast Thalys train on August 21, held a Moroccan passport, a Spanish residency card, and was reportedly brainwashed in a mosque, Taqwa, in Algericas. Spanish authorities had identified him to their French counterparts as a potential terrorist threat when he left for France in February, 2014. They, however, did not stop him.

The tough measures also reflect the belief that the recent attacks in Paris and a Beirut residential area (November 11), and the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt, indicate a shift in the Islamic State’s practice of exhorting followers to attack its enemies in their respective countries without significant guidance and help from the headquarters. Its overseas operations planning cell is now offering strategic guidance, training and funding for actions aimed at inflicting the maximum possible civilian casualties, while leaving decisions on the time, place and manner of the attacks largely to trusted operatives on the ground. Besides, these also indicate that the IS has started to intensify and expand its strikes abroad to an extent that makes it a global and not merely a regional threat.

Countering the new tactic would require wiping out the IS’s strike forces in various countries as well its Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The first would require not only close cooperation among intelligence agencies of all countries worldwide, but action on intelligence received. Despite the warning from Spanish authorities and the fact that the French police knew that he had travelled to Syria where a large number of young people from Europe have joined the Islamic State, Khazzani remained at large. It was only the courage of two American servicemen and their civilian friend, a British consultant and a couple of others that prevented him from carrying on mass murder on the Amsterdam-Paris train which he had boarded in Brussels.

Destroying the IS in Syria and Iraq will require military action on the ground and from air; the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany will have to play major roles. This will require an agreement on means and goals among the countries concerned. The process must be accelerated, as must efforts to smoothen the flow of intelligence among countries and ensure prompt and effective action on information received.