The biggest mistake our political leaders have made in our fight against Islamic terrorism is to not mentally prepare us for the next attack. Prime Minister Harper and Trudeau, President Bush, Obama and Trump all quickly react to each attack, but none have told us a simple truth—more people are going to die before this fight is over. We must prepare ourselves for this. Our grandparents faced Nazi Germany. Our parents faced the Soviet Union. Our generation must face this challenge. This fight can be won, but we are nowhere near the end of it.
If the threat of militant Islam only required a military response this would have been over a long time ago. The West, led by American forces, have gotten very good at killing Islamic militants. But every time you kill a Zarqawi an al-Baghdadi springs up. That alone speaks to a deeper cause. If the threat was only due to the spread of radical Islamic ideology we could support more moderate forms of Islamic teaching. Perhaps Islam needs its own version of the Christian Reformation as a recent National Post op-ed put it. Then the battleground would take place academically in mosques and madrasas. Perhaps. But every religion has fanatics that say crazy things. It’s telling that only in certain places these seeds find purchase.
Afghanistan was ripped apart by war in the 1980s. Into the lawless vacuum stepped the Taliban. ISIS grew out of a huge swath of land in Iraq and Syria that was lawless and had no functioning government. Both attempted to do what a government should, protect territory and the people within it and provide services. Though their form of government stretched the term—arbitrary executions and demanding adherence to a very strict form of Islam of dubious religious reasoning. But there is a pattern here. Failed states breed anarchy and terrorism.
Complicating this situation is the tension between the 20th century belief that current international borders are sacrosanct and the fact that the international borders in the Middle East often have no historical basis and were arbitrary lines created by European colonial powers in the early 20th century. Countries already under enormous pressure must also grapple with ethnic feuds much older than themselves that stretch across their borders. The Kurds, for example, are a distinct ethnic group found across four borders in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria and want their own country.
Of course many international boundaries are arbitrary in some sense. And sharing a common ethnicity is not the only foundation for a society. After all, our country has different ethnic groups living in harmony. But Canada has a history of trust that underlies its society. We have a deep tradition of civil society that is the strength of our country. Many Middle East countries have been held together by force and oil and have no similar traditions. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are the norm, not the exception. The Gulf city-states are incredibly rich, but while their citizens live comfortably most work is done by foreign labour from India and Pakistan who have little standing in these countries. Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Iraq are or were until recently led by dictators. Jordan and Saudi Arabia are led by monarchs. To be sure you can have stable and prosperous countries led by kings and dictators, but they do not have the same strength as true open democratic societies. Why is Iraq struggling as a democracy? Because Iraqis don’t trust each other. Democracies, like trust, can’t be built overnight.
Stabilizing Iraq, Syria and Libya into functioning societies would weaken the breeding grounds for terrorists. The rest of the Middle East must also slowly evolve to more democratic forms of government. The build up of civil society throughout the region based on the open debate and discussion of ideas would strengthen each country in the long term, but would also create instability in the interim as a new culture fights to replace the old. These goals require long term purposeful engagement in the region.
Canada and our allies can earnestly engage and support democratic ideals in the region while continuing to hunt down Islamic terrorists to give these countries the safe space to change. But the impetus must come from the people of this region. There is still too much blaming of the West for the region’s problems. There is still too much anti-Semitism in the region. This kind of substantive change is possible and necessary, but it will take time. Thus terrorism isn’t just the challenge of my generation it will take a generation to solve.
Medicine Hat News. February 23, 2017.