Paris attacks: The West’s fatal misunderstanding of Islamic State

Paris attacks: The West’s fatal misunderstanding of Islamic State
By Rasha Elass November 15, 2015


The horrendous attacks on Paris have an eerie resemblance to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in that they seem to have caught everyone off guard.

Until perhaps Friday, the main perception among Western intelligence agencies and Washington policymakers has been that Islamic State poses “no immediate threat” to the United States or the West.

“Unlike Al Qaeda, ISIS is more interested in establishing a Caliphate and not so interested in attacking the West,” a retired CIA officer explained during a closed meeting at one of Washington’s think tanks. He was echoing a common sentiment, and insisted that “Al Qaeda remains the main threat.” Even U.S. President Barack Obama recently said with confidence that Islamic State was being “contained.”

But we cannot forget that Islamic State came to the world stage barely over a year ago, when it took Mosul and subsequently one third of Iraq as well as one third of Syria in a matter of weeks. Some of the terror group’s major advances on the ground took mere hours, advances that Obama later said will take years to roll back.

I remember covering the war at that time from Damascus, Syria, and later from Beirut, where I kept in constant communication via the Internet with the Syrian rebels and civilians who had suddenly found themselves under Islamic State rule in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al Zor. During those first few days, many went underground, not sure what to do about their new, brutal occupier, who proceeded to slaughter more than 700 men from the Arab Sunni Muslim tribe of Shueitat because the tribe did not pledge allegiance to Islamic State. The militant group commanded all men of fighting age in Deir Al Zor to report to Islamic State checkpoints, surrender weapons, and either pledge allegiance to Islamic State or leave the territory immediately.

“We never thought the West would allow a group like ISIS to expand, but now I know that we have been played. We have been extremely stupid,” one anti-Islamic State rebel told me on condition of anonymity to protect his family. He sounded embittered by what he called a shocking and swift victory for the group, and he spoke to me from his car, which he said he had parked just outside an Internet cafe to piggy-back on the Wi-Fi signal without anyone hearing our conversation. He said Islamic State had setup checkpoints everywhere.

“The only thing that makes sense to us is that the world wants to dump all its trash here,” he said, referring to the Islamic State jihadists, whom he said were mainly non-Syrian, but other Arab nationals, Chechens, and Westerners. “And then the West will come and bomb them all. This must be the strategy because nothing else makes any sense.”

Conspiracy theories aside, there is some truth to the idea that some countries, as naive and misguided as they have been, privately sighed relief to see their own Islamist nationals travel to Islamist territory to meet their fate.

“It’s better than having them stay in our country,” one Western diplomat told me on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “Statistically, a newly arrived jihadist to ISIS territory is killed within weeks, so good riddance.” He added that all the West had to worry about were the “lone-wolf attacks” inspired by Islamic State.

Unfortunately, the Paris attacks have disproved this theory, and it is time to shed other falsely comforting illusions as well.

Namely, let us not forget that some of the United States’ staunchest allies have been, and remain, responsible for facilitating the arrival of money, materiel, and jihadists into Islamic State territory, not to mention providing the ideological guidance for the terror group. They have been doing so in the hopes of toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Jihadists have crossed the borders of Jordan and Turkey into Syria, seemingly at will. Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have not stopped their private citizens from sending money to various Islamist brigades, including Islamic State. They also give airtime to the muftis who provide ideological guidance to Islamic State, religious scholars who condone sectarian killing, gruesome beheadings, and sexual slavery on theological grounds.

It has been too convenient a falsity also for the West to believe that Syria’s war is Syria’s problem, or at least someone else’s problem, when so many world players are already involved in the war there, either directly or by proxy.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had strong words at the ongoing Vienna talks on Syria, attended by foreign ministers of some 20 nations. Standing next to his Russian counterpart, Kerry called the Paris attacks “the most vile, horrendous, outrageous, unacceptable acts on the planet.” But he added that they “encouraged us today to do even harder work to make progress and to help resolve the crises that we face.”

Peace and order in Syria are a long way off — Syrians are not even represented in Vienna — but if world players resolve to ensure that the Paris attacks become the nail in Islamic State’s coffin, then at least the Phoenix is already rising from the ashes.

This column appears courtesy of the Project for Study of the 21st Century.

You know I feel very sorry for what happened in Paris, but I feel even worse for what is happening in Syria. Men, women and children are dying each day. It sickens me (and correct me if I'm wrong) that their might be ways in which this country's people can stop suffering the atrocities they face each day, and that there are nations that can help them. Ah! The problem is though that every other nation that could help, has their own agenda and is simply looking out for their best interests, instead of being united as one main front.

I think what's also sad is the West's CONTINUING refusal to understand the scope of the problem. In the name of "tolerance" and "acceptance" and "equality" and "multiculturalism", people are being led like lambs to the slaughter. My Facebook feed alone is full of screeds about the "refugees" (I've seen reports that, in contradiction to the helpless women and children the media is reporting on, the majority of them are migrants from other countries, and they are mostly able-bodied young men), and saying NOTHING about Islam. Whenever I dare say that part of the issue has to do with Muslims I am excoriated as a bigot, or, more laughably, a "racist", even though I'm not sure how a religion that is practiced the world over by black, white, brown and yellow peoples can be considered a race.

Because only deeply misguided people blame "Islam" and "multiculturalism" and "tolerance". Ironically, most European countries would collapse without massive immigration and refugee influxes. Capitalism inherently cannot run without a growing population, and tends only to clamp its borders when in one of its many unavoidable recessions.

Regardless, ISIS has nothing to do with "Islam". Just like the Thuggees of India - the ISIS of the 19th century British Empire - had nothing to do with Hinduism.

ISIS is a product of centuries of designed divide and conquer. It is counterproductive and immoral to "combat it" using the same practises which created it. Funding Al Queda in Afghanistan and then turning them into our enemies and then bombing them led to them going into Iraq and Pakistan. Funding the sunnis/AlQueda in Iraq and then bombing them led to ISIS in Syria. Funding AlQueda/Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and them bombing them led to Mali/Algeria/Somalia. Now idiots want to fund more terrorists and bomb them in Syria. One can only imagine what Frankenstein monster spawns from that cocktail.

The Western goal is not to "combat ISIS" or "stop terrorism" but to balkanise all these nations, pit groups against one another, and so control resources, with the Saudis and the southern Gulf States as the region's only superpowers. To turn the matter into a "civilization" vs "barbaric religious people" matter is superficial, ignorant and plays directly into the hands of those in power, and so propagates the problem in the first place.

The more one reads these posts the more it makes you scratch your head...WTF??? I mean, for supposedly intelligent guys, do you really believe the stuff you post? There is a common trait on this website to disparage you if you do not conform to this warped thinking. The west is the big bad evil. Everyone here and their grandmothers know how bad the west is. Now, why can't the Arabs figure that out? Why can't they have their advisors spell out in clear, concise and understandable language that the Israelis and the US are undermining the Arabs, and have been undermining them for the last 70 plus years. That is a long time to be fooling over 1 billion folks. Why do they continue to fight if it is clear that the west is pitting one nation against the other?

Chin even went so fat to call the US army a terrorist organization??? And Chin is supposedly a lawyer.

Some says the attacks in the west are all false flags. Others say that it never happened. They post pictures purporting to be staged. They come up with all types of conspiracy theories...some so far fetched and wretched it makes you want to vomit. Some folks need a GPS to traverse from one town to another, but they can spell out all the worldwide conspiracies involving the west, the jews etc. they conjure up stories to qualify the most depraved acts, and excuse the most blatant barbarism because they "know"...all because they regurgitate silly theories and outlandish scenarios to justify the prism that suits their vision of the world.

The irony of it all is: THESE PEOPLE ARE LIVING IN THE WEST. THEY CLAMOUR TO BE A PART OF THIS BIG EVIL THAT THEY CONDEMN. HYPOCRITE? You judge.

Yeah...talk nah....BTW Chair I like that. However does Dinesh get any compensation?

Simpletons are part of this Forum  :-[

“The only thing that makes sense to us is that the world wants to dump all its trash here,” he said, referring to the Islamic State jihadists, whom he said were mainly non-Syrian, but other Arab nationals, Chechens, and Westerners. “And then the West will come and bomb them all. This must be the strategy because nothing else makes any sense.”


Now we KNOW why the west is bombing them....from the mouth of babes.

Yeah talk nah! Dineshism fi real.

The good thing about all these pronouncements is that anyone can say what they want, without proffing, fact-checking or otherwise validating. Yeah Chair...Talk nah! 

Arabs? Iran is Persian not Arabic. Sunni and Shia "Arabs" have completely distinct political aims. Saudi Arabs and Iraqi Arabs likewise have completely contrasting objectives etc etc. There is no single, unified "Arabic" agenda, such pan-arabism and unity was destroyed in the 1950s by the British and Americans through the putting in place of various dictators. What you have is rich Arab monarchs in conjuction with the west and various puppet dictators (not many left) oppressing poor Arabs via various proxy militias.

It's not so simple, and often these groups have no idea where their arms and funds are really coming from. Look at this example:

The sunnis in Syria want political power. They have no voice, so accept American arms so that they may win power through violence. They get these arms from Iraqis with ties to the US government. They become "good rebels" in the eyes of the West. These "good rebels" fight Assad and fight ISIS, also sunni, who is also armed by the west, albeit indirectly via Saudi Arabia. Suddenly, however, the West views these "good rebels" as "bad rebels". The West have to now, as the West now supports Iran and Russia, who bomb both ISIS and the "good rebels". It's a package deal. The West can't have Russian/Iranian support unless they turn their backs on the "good rebels". This, of course, pushes the "good rebels" into joining the more radical ISIS, and forces them into places like Turkey, thereby spreading problems.

So in the space of 8 months, Muslims who have no quarrel with America have gone from befriending and needing America to being betrayed by America to joining even more extreme groups and so becoming vehemently anti-Western.


No serious person disputes this.

Which attacks? 9/11? The official US narrative on 9/11 is that Saudi Arabian terrorists - our chief ally in the region - attacked the United States, an attack which was used, in conjunction with faked WMDs, to invade two countries which had nothing to do with the attacks.

Why fret about conspiracies when the US government's own official narrative is proudly admitting of conspiracy?


This statemet is not a "hypocrisy". If Guyana dropped a nuke on Trinidad and started stealing all its sugar cane, any sane or lucky Trini would immediately move to Guyana for safety, and then denounce its behaviour. Hypocrisy is living in this hypothetical Guyana and not speaking out.