Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[Bill Moore]

Just as interesting as Mossad is the team in Norway who watch jihadists, so Thomas Hegghammer's article evaluating ISIS is a good read:http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/07/t...ted-caliphate/

It ends with:

After reading this I reviewed some other papers, and listened to a talk, by Dr. Hegghammer. The general theme of his message is his increasing uncertainty, so at best he is sharing some random thoughts on potential directions that ISIS (or IS) could evolve in. I think it is a bit of pipedream to believe, or hope, it will remain a localized terrorist or jihadi movement. The number of foreign fighters and stated ambitions indicate they have wider aspirations. The question is do they have the capability? His recommendation of not intervening at this time is based on a logic bias of not acting without better information, which is usually good advice, but in this situation I'm not so sure that caution is the best answer. On the other hand, if there was an opportunity to prevent or reduce this situation in the first place it is long past, so holding off on intervention, if required, may be the best answer. In either case (intervention or not), we can only speculate on the possible outcomes. We won't know the result of taking or not taking action until we watch the situation unfold, and then we still risk attribution error (e.g. our intervention or lack there of is what caused X to happen).

Dr. Hegghammer certainly doesn't dismiss the potential of high rates of terrorists returning home and staying active after their adventure in Syria and Iraq ends. There is certainly a history of it after AQ and other jihadists left Afghanistan. JI in Indonesia, ASG in the Philippines, and others throughout Africa and the Middle East. It would be a mistake to confuse the percentage of foreign fighters that remain active combatants when they return home with the risk they pose to their home countries. Even if a paltry 2% remained active, that is enough to form terrorist cells, train new recruits, and conduct sophisticated attacks. In the West, at least in the forseeable future, we don't have to worry about large scale mobilization of Muslims into the Jihad (like we see in Syria and Iraq), we have to worry about London bus bombings, the Madrid train bombing, hijacking and/or blowing up civilian aircraft, individuals conducting small scale acts of terrorism. Any of these events will result in a media frenzy and force a reaction by our governments that is disproportionate to the scale of attack we suffer.

So whether a low or high number seek to conduct attacks outside the current Caliphate (notional), ISIS will not remain focused on just Iraq and Syria, they'll focus on the broader the Middle East, which does threaten our interests, and some will have aspirations to target the West. Did al-Qaeda or Lebanese Hezbollah restrict their attacks to the local area of jihad? Absolutely not, so why would we expect ISIS with their large number of foreign fighters to do the same?

I do think throwing a large number of Western troops into the fray would backfire on us in many ways, but active support of the Iraqi Army to get them back in the fight, and possibly providing fire support and precision targeting is an option worth implementing sooner rather than later. I'm very much undecided at this point, and I'm of the belief we have a choice of bad and less bad options at this point.