Not A Terror Group: The West Acknowledges Its Enemy

Not A Terror Group: The West Acknowledges Its Enemy

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

The-Islamic-StateThe Islamic State is no longer a terrorist group – so said the French Minister of Defense, Jean-Yves Le Drian, at the Pentagon on Monday – but has morphed into a “terrorist army”, which means it has to be fought on multiple fronts.

What was considered a terror group has become a body which acts as a classical army, as they have demonstrated, but can still operate in urban areas and carry out terroristic operations. This poses considerable difficulties for the West in countering the constant attacks on it by ISIS.

In a nationally televised speech last September explaining his plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, U.S. President Barack Obama has insisted in referring to ISIS as a terror organization. However, as the countries of Europe and the U.S. are only now coming to realize, ISIS hardly fits that description, and although it uses terrorism as a tactic, it is not really a terrorist organization at all. Terrorist networks, such as al Qaeda, generally have only dozens or hundreds of members, attack civilians, do not hold territory, and cannot directly confront military forces. ISIS, on the other hand, already has tens of thousands fighters, holds territory in both Iraq and Syria, maintains extensive military capabilities, controls lines of communication, commands infrastructure, funds itself, and engages in sophisticated military operations. If ISIS is anything, it is by now a pseudo-state led by a conventional army. And that is why the counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies that greatly diminished the threat from al Qaeda will not work against ISIS.

In defense of the coalition strategy against ISIS from critics who have claimed airstrikes are insufficient to prevent the group from spreading through Syria and Iraq, Le Drian said: “The repetition of strikes in Iraq allowed us to stabilize — not to win, but to stabilize — the situation,”. “The coalition intervened at a time when we thought ISIS was about to seize Baghdad.”

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Le Drian was in Washington to meet with his counterpart, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The two nations have strengthened their ties in recent years and are now sharing their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilites in dealing with common threats.