North Africa is going through another political revolution, and that will take time to sort out. It won't be settled until the extremists are purged.
I disagree that AQ was ineffective, it was AQ that led the West into a global war that expands well beyond Afghanistan. Their brand may have grown stale, but like IBM and Microsoft that will exist for a long time, despite the dynamic upstarts who create their own form of creative destruction. ISIS/ISIL certainly gets a lot of cool points in the extremist and want to be extremist world due to their effectiveness. It seems people are tripping over each other to join the fight there. It provides an identity and an outlet for angry young men, but clearly it is bigger than that.
What concerns me most is ISIS/ISIL's potential base in Libya are their ambitions to attack the West, and with a foothold in North Africa they have easy access to Italy. Italy can't control the illegal immigration from North Africa (anymore than we control illegals flowing into our country), so the rat lines are well established. I have little doubt they have human networks in Italy and France they can use to help facilitate future attacks.
http://www.christiantoday.com/articl...ader/41646.htm
ISIS threatens Vatican, urges Muslims to 'kill every crusader'
Many will dismiss this as rhetoric, but AQ and ISIS generally are quite open when it comes to sharing their strategy. We ignore it to our own peril. Know yourself and know your enemy sort of thing. I suspect attacks will begin in Western Europe soon (within the next 2 years, but likely within the next year). They may be small, but they'll have considerable symbolic value for ISIS/ISIL and the West. A value that will be magnified by the media. Doing COIN in response will not address our security concerns anymore than it has for the past 10 years. Kilcullen is right that is time to rethink this whole thing."At this point of the crusade against the Islamic State, it is very important that attacks take place in every country that has entered into the alliance against the Islamic State, especially the US, [the] UK, France, Australia and Germany," it reads.
Bookmarks