Paris seems to have knitted the West into a cohesive unit to take on the thugs of the Islamic State. President Francois Hollande, who declared war against the barbarians soon after the Paris attacks, has since hopped from one western capital to another to get everyone on board to neutralise the terrorist threat.
Last week, British Parliament with an overwhelming majority empowered the Cameron Government to launch air strikes against the IS in Syria. Within minutes of the vote, in which a large number of the opposition Labour MPs, free from the party whip, sided with the ruling Conservatives, British fighter jets, Tornadoes, were raining terror on the IS targets. It was an earnest of the western alliance to try and end the threat to peace in Europe emanating from the jihadi outfit.
Two days later, surprisingly, West German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a show of solidarity with the fellow beleaguered EU nation, got the Knesset to sanction non-combat participation in the war against IS. Six German Tornado jets and some 1,200 troops will be in the Syrian theater for reconnaissance to aid the on-going campaign against the IS.
Clearly, the attack on Paris, which killed 130 people and injured several more, has persuaded wider public opinion in Europe to try and end the threat of the Islamic extremists. It is remarkable that for the first time after World War-II, Germans approved military operation, even if for non-combat purposes to help the French in their air-borne operations.
Earlier, a small contingent of German troops was sent to Germany way back in 2001. The Paris killings and the on-going influx of Syrian refugees into Germany would account for the change of public mood. As a leading member of the EU, Germany felt obliged to help France in its hour of need, especially when the danger from terrorism and the crisis resulting from the onslaught of refugees was commonly felt.
In fact, after the dastardly killings in San Bernardino, California, last week, President Barack Obama was under public pressure to actively support the war against the IS. Aerial attacks on presumed IS targets, military experts insist, wouldn’t be enough to eliminate the barbaric extremists. The fact that a Pakistani-American couple had shot dead fourteen of their own office colleagues at a pre- Christmas office party has outraged ordinary Americans. Obama, whose reluctance to put the US troops on the ground is widely known, has conceded the possibility of a terrorist angle in the San Bernardino atrocity.
FBI investigations have left little doubt that the attackers were motivated by the IS through on-line propaganda, further hardening the US public opinion. But in the face of such overwhelming evidence against the IS, and the stepped up European campaign following the Paris attacks, all that Obama can bring himself up to is to rail against the gun culture in the US. Yes, Americans need to be weaned away from deadly firearms; there needs to be a closer monitoring of who buys military-grade assault weapons and why. But the threat from the IS cannot be easily brushed aside. It is notable that after the Paris massacre, the IS had issued a warning of such attacks against the Americans as well. Tragically, the killing of 14 innocent Americans at a Christmas party has fully borne out the genuineness of that threat.
Why is the mightiest nation in the world reluctant to take on the biggest threat to peace posed in recent times by the West Asian thugs, who threaten to turn the entire world, including the Islamic world, upside down in the name of their religion? It is a pity that the internal contradictions and rivalries of the Islamic world have allowed the IS to become the huge danger it has now become to all of them. But if nothing is done to neutralise the purveyors of the new Caliphate in the name of Islam, not only the Muslim world but the entire world might find itself singed.
Already, the Russians and Turks seem to be at loggerheads, though ostensibly both seem to be fighting the IS. President Hollande needs to bridge the wide gulf in objectives that persists among nations engaged in the anti-IS campaign. If Turkey’s bigger priority is to keep the Kurds under control, and fighting the IS comes second, and if the Russians want to save the tyrant Bashar Assad first, and only then they would take on the IS, it is unlikely that the Islamic warriors will be eliminated anytime soon. Hollande should try and get all those engaged in the Syrian theater to agree on the barest minimum anti-IS agenda. That is his biggest challenge.
