A worth reading article by Ahmed Rashid, famous for his writings on Taliban. He argues that USA should not be taking the lead because it is counter-productive and fruitless. Some excerpts;

“The crisis ISIS has created for the West and the Arab world cannot be effectively addressed until there is a broader understanding of what ISIS wants. The first thing we need to recognize is that ISIS is not waging a war against the West. In view of the staggering growth in the number of ISIS’s international recruits—there are now estimated to be some 18,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries—the growing possibility that some who have joined the group may return home to carry out acts of terrorism must be taken seriously. There is also a risk that others who never went to Syria, like the shooter in the Canadian parliament in October, will be inspired by ISIS to carry out such attacks.”

“In contrast to al-Qaeda, however, ISIS has not made the US and its allies its main target. Where al-Qaeda directed its anger at the “distant enemy,” the United States, ISIS wants to destroy the near enemy, the Arab regimes, first. This is above all a war within Islam: a conflict of Sunni against Shia, but also a war by Sunni extremists against more moderate Muslims—between those who think the Muslim world should be dominated by a single strand of Wahhabism and its extremist offshoot Salafism and those who support a pluralistic vision of Muslim society. The leaders of ISIS seek to eliminate all Muslim and non-Muslim minorities from the Middle East—not only erasing the old borders and states imposed by Western powers, but changing the entire ethnic, tribal, and religious composition of the region. ”

“A corollary to these Salafist ideas is ISIS’s determination to seize territory, carry out conquests, and reshape the Middle East as a single unitary state under a so-called Caliphate. Despite its hatred of Shias, ISIS has until recently largely avoided attacking Syrian government forces, a strategy that has allowed it to capture large amounts of territory already in rebel hands. Unlike Bin Laden and his followers, who worshipped martyrdom as a form of obedience to God, with rewards to be received in heaven, ISIS wants earthly power and possession of territory as well. As I have noted, in this respect ISIS is like the Taliban in Afghanistan, seeking to establish an actual Islamic state that it can govern according to its extremist precepts.

But it is also worth noting what ISIS is not doing. While ISIS leaders have frequently condemned and threatened the US, they have held back from declaring it a major target. The beheadings of Westerners are best understood as acts of revenge against the US bombing campaign, as well as propaganda designed to terrify outsiders and demoralize those fighting against it.

Significantly, they have not condemned Israel at all, nor have they sided with the Palestinians during the recent war in Gaza or carried out any campaign to help the Palestinian cause. This omission may be tactical: ISIS’s leaders may calculate they cannot afford to take on the well-equipped state of Israel for the moment but will do so in the future. Or it may be strategic: as ISIS consolidates a large territory in Iraq and Syria, its leadership may deem it more pragmatic to not make enemies of the world’s Jews so that it can live alongside Israel without incurring the wrath of the Israeli air force.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/02/isis-what-us-doesnt-understand/

Posted By F. Sheikh