Paris attack eclipsed Syria, Iraq IS defeats

Terror groups cannot be extirpated unless the world’s leaders tackle jihadi pheno-menon in all its forms.

The Islamic State (IS) attacks on Paris that killed 129 people have forced the sharply divided world leaders to agree on a plan to halt the war in Syria. The Paris events have compelled consensus on countering the IS, al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadi factions because Paris is an iconic Western city - not West Asia’s Beirut, Ankara, or Sinai, also victims of recent IS terrorist attacks.

Lebanese complain that the death of 45 in Beirut on the night before the Paris attacks does not count as much as fatalities in Paris. In twin IS suicide bombings, 102 Turks were killed in Ankara  and 224 died in an IS sabotaged Russian air liner that crashed in Sinai.

Kenyans argue the slaying of 147 students at a university in April did not receive similar attention. Indians contend that if the world had taken the jihadi terrorist threat seriously after the killing of 164 in the 2008 Mumbai attack by Pakistan’s Laskhkar-e-Taiba, the Paris carnage may not have happened. Pakistan was not tackled because it, like Saudi Arabia, the chief patron of jihadis, is a Western ally.

How long the Paris panic-driven global consensus survives will depend on just how determined Western leaders are to exert pressure on Saudi Arabia and its regional allies to cease support for IS, Nusra, affiliates and allies. The well planned and efficiently executed Paris operation demonstrated that IS, under pressure on the ground, has prepared well  for “shock and awe” in European capitals and elsewhere by planting terrorist cells on foreign soil.

The Paris attack overshadowed IS defeats on Syrian and Iraqi battlefields which should have, without added incentives, encouraged the US, Russia, and Iran — countries seeking to end the war — to coordinate their strategies and cooperate with local forces in offensives against IS, Nusra and other terrorist factions.

The latest high profile IS defeat — which coincided with the Paris events — was at the Iraqi town of Sinjar. The Kurdish offensive to retake the town lasted just 30 hours. Following the US aerial bombing, the Daesh fighters fled the scene, revealing that they were neither invincible nor as dedicated as they want detractors and enemies to believe. This should encourage IS opponents to take on IS fighters, particularly if opposing forces have US or Russian air cover.

The Kurdish triumph is a moral victory over a cruel and cunning cult as well as a propaganda boost for forces that have failed to counter and contain the IS. The defeat at Sinjar is also a major loss for the terror group. Kurds have taken control of strategic highway 47 which connects the Daesh capital of Raqqa in Syria with Mosul in northern Iraq as well as villages in the neighbourhood of Sinjar, secondary roads and desert tracks with the aim of interdicting the flow of goods and fighters between Raqqa and Mosul.

Across the border in Syria, the regular army backed by Iranian advisers and Russian air strikes, has retaken towns and villages south of Aleppo and a strategic airbase east of the city, once Syria's largest and chief commercial hub.

Gains on the ground

The terrible events in Paris combined with these gains on the ground, at long last, compelled Western powers and Arab allies meeting at Vienna on November 14 to agree with Syria, Russia, Iran and Leba-non’s Hizbollah that the IS and Nusra are “terrorist” groups and to act on this assumption. The leaders called for a ceasefire in Syria and for patrons of various insurgent groups to ensure they abide by the ceasefire.

The meeting demanded that representatives of the government and opposition to meet no later than January 1, 2016, to negotiate a transition agreement and in six months establish a credible, inclusive, non-sectarian government, write a new constitution and hold elections within 18 months.

The next day, US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held talks on the sidelines of the  G20 summit in Turkey with the aim of developing a common approach to the IS in both Syria and Iraq. This encounter broke the ice in the US-Russian relations, frozen since Moscow intervened in the Ukrainian crisis in early 2014.

The summit agreed to a crackdown on terrorist financing, tighter border controls and greater intelligence sharing and pledged support for the Vienna plan. In the wake of the Paris attack, some leaders may be prepared to take action before the cult strikes a second Western city with the aim of scoring a new propaganda victory at a time its forces are losing ground on the field of battle.

But IS, Nusra and similar groups cannot be contained and extirpated unless the world's leaders are, finally, serious about tackling the jihadi phenomenon in all its forms and dealing with the causes for its rise. These are poverty, lack of education, unemployment, and alienation which make Muslim youths in West Asian and European societies vulnerable to proselytising preachers and politicians imbued with the puritan version of Islam propagated by ultra-orthodox “Salafi” Saudi Arabia.