Introduction

Intermittently, after the Paris terrorist attacks, now comes the incident of California mass shooting– apparently a terrorist-driven crime, killing 14 and injuring 21 ,whose linkage is being established with IS and its supporters –draws the global attention.”The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers and of a potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” James Comey,the FBI director said.

Background and substance

The ongoing global war against Daesh/ISIS/ISIL is not an easy fight. Combating terrorism or containing the Daesh forces transregionally requires a comprehensive work strategy which may address our both short term and long term goals against this devious war against terrorist groups and their ideologues. Notably,the pitch grounds of these terrorist organisations are both the western and Islamic lands. Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, appears especially depressed. He said, “This is long term. My children’s generation and my grandchildren’s generation will still be fighting this fight.”The war against Islamic State is as much an ideological conflict as it is a ground war. The United States can kill Islamic State fighters all day long, but unless it destroys Islamic State’s apocalyptic ideology it won’t achieve victory.

The emerging regional and transregional challenges

Despite 14 years of the war on terrorism, there are more terrorists than ever before. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. told Congress that the trend lines were worse “than at any other point in history,” although we probably should discount that statement a bit given that Clapper doesn’t have the most spectacular record when it comes to telling the truth to Congress when he’s under oath.

Everyone now recognizes that Daesh is the main enemy, be it Russians, French, Iranians, the Gulf countries, Egypt, Jordan and the Turks. However, there is a secondary calendar that comes prevent the agreement to be implemented. There is consensus on the diagnosis of the disease but there are none on the development of a cure for this disease. For the Turks, the Kurdish issue is central. They favor the fact to contain the Kurds, to avoid a risk of secession; it is in their eyes a more important issue that victory over Daesh.

The Saudis, for their part, fear of the rising power of Iran in the region, considered expansionist and they fear that the agreement on the nuclear program gives it the means to be more ambitious in terms regional. The Iranians, themselves, want to continue to control Iraq, to exert influence on Syria and especially access to Lebanon because Hezbollah is the only export success of their revolution. They do not plead for the reintegration of Sunnis into the Iraqi political game.Now this is what Daech weaken. The Russians, for their part, want to maintain Bashar Assad, while the French want to defeat Daech but get rid of Assad.

The French position towards Bashar al-Assad is not a moral position (refuse to deal with someone who has blood on his hands) but a position realpolitik. They think like Americans that Syrian President rather the recruiting sergeant of Daesh and that as long as he is in power, Daesh continue to be considered an appeal against it by a part of the Syrian people. We must therefore accelerate diplomatic consultations to put those differences aside. If all countries concerned fail to agree on the fact that the Islamic state is the main enemy that deserves that we forget at least for other points of disagreement, a victory was possible.

Presumably, the Islamic State committed a major mistake by attacking both Russia, France, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and Mali, and threatening every other country because it has strengthened the will to destroy. If the purpose of Daesh was to establish a caliphate on horseback between Syria and Iran, perhaps could he find the term modus vivendi with other countries. He would have remained a manageable threat to the Gulf States, given their military superiority. Western states, even rolled back by the barbarity of Daesh, would have to resign themselves to what this organization actually manages a territory.

US géopolitologues began to argue that, in the past, the Western democracies had dealt with the regimes of Stalin and Mao who had a lot more deaths on my conscience

After all, the Americans were well accommodated of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks … But by tackling head on several countries, the Islamic State became an unacceptable threat. The calculation of Daesh was that the countries in question had too many differences to form a coalition? That the galvanizing effect by candidates for jihad was such that the new advantage in mobilizing exceed the losses associated with the intensification of strikes? This bet is likely to be lost. For now, the States concerned do not fall into the traps.

The drivers of terrorism

Terrorism, by no means is synchronous with Islam. It will be not unfair or unjust to say that real cause of this barbaric behaviour of terrorism largely seat in the policies of imperialism, intervention and repression.

In terms of fundamentals, both war and peace are consequences of certain ideas and aims, which, when sufficiently accepted as true or good by the people of a given society, give rise to corresponding norms and policies that, in turn, either lead to war or enable peace.

Understanding these causes is essential to fighting successfully for a future of less war and more peace, and seeing each cause in contrast to its opposite can foster greater understanding.

when we look closely at the context in which suicide attacks take place, there are always particular grievances or perceived grievances in play that also explain the decision to use the tactic. when thinking about the possible relationship of religion to suicide terrorism, it is useful to distinguish between the group and individual suicide bombers. As Robert Pape, who has comprehensively studied patterns in suicide terrorism, points out, individual attackers may be motivated by religion, but groups have strategic military goals.

The turns and twists of diplomacy in ME

The moves have been small, but symbolic: an accused Saudi terrorist was picked up in Beirut, then flown to Riyadh after hiding out with Iran’s help for 20 years;Russia agreed to a UN probe to ascertain responsibility for the sarin massacre in Damascus; the Russians went to Riyadh, then the Saudis reciprocated with a trip to Moscow; low-level summits in Oman and Doha; the first Qatari ambassador to Baghdad in 25 years. The trust-building measures are gaining impetus, but they haven’t yet got Russia, Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia or Iran anywhere near the grand bargaining table. The overriding issue is now bigger than Syria, with the very future of Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey’s southern border, the Kurds and minorities across the region now at stake. Now western states are once again actively debating the wisdom of more robust intervention.

The Challenge for the US policy

American foreign policy, according to the State Department’s website, is designed “to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.” Specifically regarding the current chaotic situation in Iraq and Syria with the Islamic State (ISIL), the White House says that the United States seeks to “degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy.” These are certainly worthy goals. In a perfect world the United States would have the power and ability make these concepts a reality. But a perfect world doesn’t exist.

For far too many years now, American foreign policy has largely been made according to our preferences, independent of the realities governing given situations. The results are as predictable as they are painful: we are frequently the author of ‘ineffective policies’ that not only don’t succeed, but harm our own interests. If we don’t want to see the situation in the Middle East deteriorate even further, major changes are required.

Washington is deploying more soldiers to fight Islamic State. On December 1,Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the Pentagon would send a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” of two-hundred U.S. commandos to Iraq.

According to Carter, the soldiers will “conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture ISIL leaders” and “conduct unilateral operations into Syria.”Can two-hundred commandos change the tide of the war? According to Malcolm Nance, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer and counter-terrorism expert, those soldiers could make all the difference.

The new proposed combat strategy

Under Nance’s plan, combinations of American, Iraqi and Syrian commandos begin conducting masked raids at night. “Don’t fight the enemy that’s sitting right in front of your face,” he explains. “Go twenty-thirty miles behind his lines and destroy his entire line of logistics at night.”

“Stop every truck, destroy outposts, knock down communications,” he explains. “Get ISIS to believe that when the night falls, they don’t own their borders anymore. They only own the cities.”Nance says cutting off Islamic State’s logistical infrastructure will force it to conduct more nighttime patrols. When that happens, “air power can finally start dominating . . . you have to break ISIS out of its state-like shell and force them into a mobile battle. The best way to do that is through these raids.”

The U.S. should show robust leadership by first seeking to contain the fighting where it is and stop its spread. We would accomplish this objective by employing the full weight of American diplomatic and political influence to geographically isolate the Islamic State, squeezing them economically and doing all we can to provide humanitarian aid to the civilians suffering under ISIL domination.

Creating an alliance with regional armed forces, the U.S. military would set up ground patrols in strategically significant locations and use air power to enact a version of a “no-go zone” where mobile ISIL forces could be quickly and easily destroyed whenever they attempt to move in large numbers. Once we’ve effectively isolated and boxed in ISIL, we would employ regional diplomatic measures against the Islamic State’s leaders, slowly strangling them.

President Obama is calling for a re-evaluation of the nation’s gun laws

“We know that the killers in San Bernardino used military-style assault weapons — weapons of war — to kill as many people as they could,” the president said in a video released Saturday. “It’s another tragic reminder that here in America it’s way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun.”

The GOP has advocated for reviewing the US visa waiver programme.Republicans, for their part, floated another possible solution to combat terror threats: strengthen the security of the U.S. visa waiver program.

“We have a major weakness in our visa-waiver program — a glaring hole that we have to close,” Rep. Candice Miller, R-Michigan, said in a video released Saturday.

The program allows foreign citizens of 38 partner countries — including Belgium, France and the United Kingdom — to travel to the U.S. without a visa. Each year, up to 20 million people enter the country in this manner.

Exorcising the cult of radicalism

Our choice is simple and stark: stop doing what routinely fails, or change course and employ new political and military tactics that might actually succeed. One must  know what course of action current American civilian and military leaders will choose. There has not been a surge of ‘Islamophobia in Europe’ and hoped the Islamic state. There was no – and there will be no – Western land military intervention.

It remains to establish a broad political and military coalition to defeat Daesh, member countries agreeing to put their differences aside because the terrorist organization is their most urgent threat to face. Knowing that the military instrument to be effective, must be put at the service of a political solution. Why is it so important to call Islamic radicalism by its proper name? Because it’s not just a word game.

There is a crisis within Islam, an ideological struggle caused by the rise of Wahhabi-style ‘fundamentalism’ over the past century. If we acknowledge the true nature of this battle, it becomes easier for us to identify our friends and enemies, especially the latter. Our enemies are those who have funded and promulgated -Wahhabi-style Islam through radical madrasahs in the Islamic world. It starts with Saudi Arabia, whose tottering monarchy made a devil’s bargain with local Wahhabi clerics decades ago.

The Saudis seem far more concerned with Shi‘ite Iran than with the Sunni extremists of Daesh. In recent weeks, they and their Gulf allies have turned their attention away from Daesh and focused on the Shi‘ite rebels in Yemen, who represent a far less potent threat to global stability. And yet neither Saudi Arabia nor its radical, proselytizing strand of Islam was mentioned by the Democrats in the Iowa debate. The demon of radicalism comes from 3% of total Muslim community world wide.

The ideology of extremism/radicalism is not the true representative of the Muslim community or Islam ,as rightly pointed out by president Obama.Though after France both Britain and Germany have also announced to become the part of the coalition against Daesh,there requires much to utilize the means of soft-power strategy to win this war against a ‘tactical doctrine’

.Al-Qaeda’s tactical doctrine for insurgency, like its strategic doctrine, is the product of more than a quarter-century of adapting U.S. and British doctrine—mostly from each country’s Marines and Special Forces—to Muslim culture, and a dedication to learning-from-fighting in guerrilla wars across the Islamic world.

Understanding the complexities and articulating the strategies

But then nothing much was—other than a general belief that America should lead the fight against ISIS in consultation with its allies within and outside the region. Which is what the Obama administration has been doing, to some effect, but not enough. The strategy proposed here focuses on ‘de-escalating’ the Syrian war through a strategic pause, allowing for the concentration of force on ISIS, and the ‘reconstruction of the Iraq state’ along more inclusive and effective lines. Where the Arab regimes can play a key role is in influencing their clients on the ground, and winning internal support for the de-escalation strategy. Neither will be accomplished easily or quickly, of course, but both are essential for achieving any sustainable regional order, derailing the ISIS threat, and addressing the almost inconceivable humanitarian crisis.

In Iraq, the United States should prioritize a reversal of ISIS gains through military actions based on consistent ‘political conditionalities’. Military deployments should be kept as limited as possible, with clearly defined missions and an eye toward avoiding the kind of civilian casualties and sectarian atrocities that drive Sunnis and Shia alike toward extremist militias.

In Syria, the United States and its allies with the assistance of Russia, Iran and other Gulf powers should prioritize a strategic pause and ‘regional tourniquet’ designed to cut off the drivers of the civil war, including both external support for Sunni jihadist groups (including al-Nusra as well as ISIS) and Iranian support for Shia militias and the Asad regime. Air power should be used to pressure ISIS and to enforce a defensive posture by the regime and the non-jihadist opposition, while development, governance and humanitarian aid should be channeled toward the rebel-controlled areas.

For this plan to succeed over the longer term, it must be paired with a firm commitment to political reforms across the region. The ‘sectarianism and extremism’ that nurtured ISIS have their roots in the repressive regime survival strategies of states that make up core parts of the current coalition.

It will likely be seen as expedient to turn a blind eye to their abuses in the name of securing cooperation. But this would be a mistake. A counter-terrorist campaign based on ‘repression’ will only have short-term success, and will over the longer-term actually strengthen the extremist trends in the region. A regional war that lacks domestic or ‘international legality’ will only undermine the international norms that need to be built.

Conclusion

As is the case of any agreement between two or more nations, each party must be prepared to fairly contribute something—be it an issue of regional rivalry, supremacy, oversight, vested interests or control—actions that only multiply by orders of magnitude as the number of nations involved increases,this is what the seemingly truth about the strategy of a ‘grand alliance’ against this ISIS. The experience in this war against terror, shows the inference that only military strategy can’t prove to be a ‘prudent strategy’ unless it is combined with collective actions of cooperation, social and political justice, and a durable resolve to stand against the ideology of ‘extremism and radicalism’.There is an absolute need of mutual cooperation in terms of intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism strategies between the Muslim and the western governments.

Pakistan, as in the US case, has been fighting this war for the last fourteen years.And it has faced worst consequences of fighting this war. Islamabad’s resolve to terminate the terrorist networks from its land ,seems absolutely unflinching and poised.

Therefore, a ‘tourniquet or a multifaceted strategy’, a gamut of religious, political, and cultural harmony combining or advocating dynamics of military, diplomacy, development and liberal ideology, have to be positively involved or utilized to the hilt, thereby getting a full support from  ‘transregional or global alliance’ against Daesh.