(In collaboration with Termometro Politico)
On Tuesday, the Syrian Kurdish fighters announced that they were able to resume the hill of Tall Shair, in Kobane.This news came after the start of air strikes from coalition forces anti-Isis, led by the United States, which in the meantime were meeting in Washington to consider if providing support a ground operation to Syrian and Kurd combatants.
So far, the American government is strongly opposed to putting “boots on the ground”, which would mark the beginning of another war in Iraq.On the other hand, Turkey has committed its troops along the border with Syria without allowing Kurdish fighters of the country to join forces with those of the Syrian fees to save Kobane.
This has raised a lot of criticism against the President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been accused of putting the Kurdish threat to the Isis.Currently, however, negotiations are ongoing with the United States to provide them with the use of Turkish air bases to achieve the raid in Syria from there.
Beyond the military strategies, the central concern seems to consist of a deeper problem: that is, the inability to cope with a phenomenon of Isis, regarded as the “rebellious son” of two companies at the same time, the Western and the Eastern. In fact, the Islamic State moves at the same time the jihad against the unbelievers to the West, while to the East against the Shiites, and especially against any expression of moderate Islam.
It also fights the Western world with its own resources, specifically through social media, while at the same advantage of the fragmentation and power vacuums in the Middle East, torn by civil wars, vacuum of power and political-religious cleavages.
The Isis, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was formed in 2003 as a response to the war in Iraq.Developed following the political vacuum that was created after the repatriation of American troops from Iraqi territory and the pro-Shiite policy during the government of Nuori al-Maliki, the Isis gets underway at the outbreak of civil war in Syria (2011).
In that time the group collides with another terrorist cell, Jabhat to Nusra, operating in Syria and officially recognized by al-Qaeda. The jihadists of al-Baghdadi are then “excommunicated” by al-Qaeda because of their all-encompassing project and their brutal methods: the Isis aims to affirm a fundamentalist, anti-moderate and exclusively-Sunni Islamic vision.
The jihad launched by ISIS produces, therefore, a real civil war inside the Islamic world, with the aim of pragmatic redefinition of the borders of the Middle East on the basis of the affirmation of the caliphate.
Meanwhile, Isis uses his own use and consumption of the West, not disdaining the use of social media to achieve different objectives.In the first place, to recruit fighters in European countries, especially the Anglo-Saxon world, through the dissemination of images that extol jihad.
Similarly, the Caliph’s guerrillas use the Internet to spread terror: on the one hand through the dissemination of videos showing the beheading of Western hostages in the hands of a usual “executioner” which, presumably, is a British citizen;on the other, through the transmission of video propaganda conducted by British journalist John Cantley, Isis’ hostage from 2012. Let consider, also, the announcements made on Twitter about the planning of future invasions of cities in Syria and Iraq.
These announcements become prophecies that materialize: the population, for fear, run away giving chance to Isis troops for its incursions.
Beyond the issue of military strategies to be adopted, it is uncertain how the coalition of States will oppose the Isis that “infects” at the same time the two societies, whose faults and weaknesses have led to its perverse birth.
Francesca Azzarà
Master’s degree in International Relations (LUISS “Guido Carli”)