Islamic State, the Balance of Power, and the Imbalance of Refugees

 

Journalist, Jurgen Todenhofer, age 75, claims to have managed to be embedded within Islamic State in his newly released book “Inside IS – Ten Days in the Islamic State” and warns that the terror group, self-proclaimed as the new Caliphate and ruler of lands larger than the United Kingdom with borders across central Iraq and southern Syria is planning the most horrific religious cleansing in world history. The one thing which must be made clear is planning or even believing is a far cry from actually doing. As a child I dreamt about many unattainable goals including being the next King of Siam after watching Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in the King and I (imagine my upset when I realized that Siam was no longer a country and had become Thailand). The attack Mr. Todenhofer writes about, as disclosed in an excerpt released from his book, entails “the terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS.” This would be accomplished by Islamic State acquiring numerous nuclear weapons in order to unleash a “nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history.”

 

Speaking to his trepidations before spending time within the Islamic State Mr. Todenhofer relates that, “Of course I’d seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left.” Further comments told of how he had held intense negotiations with “the leadership of the Caliphate, via Skype, over several months, hammering out the security details.” Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John of beheading fame) oversaw Mr. Todenhofer on his visit and likely acted as translator and facilitator as well. The most unnerving part of the article told that this self-proclaimed war correspondent’s claims that the Islamic State “are supported by an almost ecstatic enthusiasm the like of which I’ve never encountered before in a war zone. Every day hundreds of willing fighters from all over the world come.” He went further stating, “They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life. I don’t see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic.”

 

If Mr. Todenhofer’s assessment that “Only Arabs can stop IS” is accurate then the world is in much worse shape than I had realized or even in my worst nightmares ever imagined. My bet is that Mr. Todenhofer is quite probably not a veteran of any armed services and has drastically underestimated the power and force a well-trained Marine or Army infantry company can apply on a battlefield and the horrific amounts of force they can project when backed by modern artillery, air support using helicopter gunships, A-10 Warthogs (I am likely dating myself but these are some ferocious and intimidating close air support and an infantryman’s most welcome sight against armor, even the stolen armor that IS currently uses) and other support features too numerous to name. Another contributing force multiplier is intelligence and battlefield awareness. Being able to see the entire battlefield using drones, satellites or even overflight with high altitude spy planes and knowing where the enemy is and in what numbers and with what resources is invaluable. Taking nothing away from Mr. Todenhofer assessments, a modern military attacking in force would dismantle the bulk of the Islamic State forces within six weeks if it even took that long and once that had been accomplished, the rest would disintegrate right along with their presentation of invulnerability.

 

What is more worrisome is the idea which appears to have infected much of the Islamic world that they have been chosen by Allah to rule over the world and to make all follow Islam or be subjugated as a second class human being or face the wrath of the Islamic sword, the beheading thing which Islamic State has shown such a great propensity to utilize as a weapon of fear. Equally depressing is the predisposition in the Western world that such an idea as world conquest had passed permanently into history and is no longer viewed as a viable goal. Where that is quite a valid assessment of the Western mindset, that is nowhere near universal truth and there are still many sources of thoughts for world conquest. We have seen numerous such thoughts ever since World War II starting with the Soviet Communists and followed by the Chinese Communists and also from Saddam Hussein, the Saudi Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Iranian Mullahs, Hezballah and now Islamic State and I am certain there are others. The one weakness the West suffers is their inability to view the world through the eyes of other peoples, places, religions, political ideologies, nationalities or any filter other than their own. Much of the Western world would have difficulty even seeing things through other Western national viewpoints. It is just such a weakness which makes the West vulnerable as they rule out any ability to see the potential ramifications of many of the threats they currently or may in the future face. We saw just such weakness with understanding what Hitler was planning and that he also believed he was destined to have his Reich rule the world and would have succeeded if not for some very fortuitous developments.

 

More precisely it will be necessary for Western powers, potentially partnering with such rivals as Russia and China, to develop the means and implementation of a monitoring of nuclear materials and especially those which can be utilized or have already been used to produce nuclear weapons, both atomic and thermonuclear weapons. There must be a network of detectors, be they space based or ground based, that will alert all parties involved whenever any such materials or weapons are moved from any point to another locations for any number of reasons. First and foremost it would reveal any potential intention to use such weapons either as a threat, or even worse, a first strike weapon. Such a system if deployed universally as a part of an international treaty similar or as an attachment to the NPT (Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty) where all nuclear armed states would be subjected to such monitoring equipment and those nations wishing to avail themselves of the protection of advanced warning of the movement of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials. Such would minimize the ability for rogue entities such as the Islamic State to achieve nuclear terrorism as they would be incapable of acquiring such weapons without their movement being detected. Further, any nations not a signatory to such a treaty would become suspect and with sufficient peer pressure be coerced into signing this treaty. It should be noted that this treaty would not be used as a method for spying and revealing the numbers or types of nuclear weapons any particular nation may possess and would only relate when such materials were moved without first informing the other signatories of such intents. Such would also be useful in tracking nuclear waste from power plants and the safety of any nuclear power fuel shipments thus making sure that such shipments were making their way as per their intended path for delivery.

 

In the meantime it would be worth noting the potential for the Islamic State to make good on their threats to use nuclear weapons or at the very least dirty bombs to lay waste to as many lives as they would have the capability must not be underestimated. The potential for the Islamic State to acquire the necessary weapons and managing to smuggle them into place must not be dismissed as impossible without detection as has been proven with every terror attack since the world received the massive and tragic wake-up call on 9/11 and the felling of the World Trade Center towers and striking the Pentagon and only by the brave actions of the passengers was a fourth far more serious calamity avoided as they sacrificed themselves rather than be used as a terror weapon. How many attacks, not just the main assaults such as London, Madrid, Mumbai or others but even the small “lone wolf” terror acts such as the much overlooked Trolley Square attacks in Utah reported in our article >a href=http://wp.me/pIou8-Z target=blank>Terror Attack at Trolley Square Mall, Utah. We could needlessly list other such attacks as well as the better known but it is already obvious that when it comes to preventing terror attacks the authorities have not been a full hundred percent successful. I would not dare to venture that they have not very probably done an herculean job of catching and preventing far more terror attacks than we will ever know about as such success is best guarded by keeping the unknowing, unknowing. Such efforts become all the more difficult when it becomes known how they attain their information thus we are not told when a terror attack was thwarted, or at least hopefully not every time as I am hopeful that there have been far more prevented than the paltry numbers we have been privileged to.

 

The real problem facing the Western world as its primary challenge and the rest of the world is simply due to the suffering and loss of life the current resurgence of Jihadi terror and militant actions of which the Islamic State and is the latest broad-frontal-threat the world is facing. The most tragic deaths and largest numbers slain by the Islamic State have been those of other Muslims and the minority who live in the immediate areas which have come under the Islamic States’ terror war victories. Mosul lost the entirety of their Christian population as they either fled or died within days of that city of over one and a half million people where the Christian population fled if fortunate and were otherwise converted or murdered or both while from surrounding areas of Mosul the Yazidis and Shabaks are kidnapped, converted, murdered or forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs while their cultural and holy sites faced destruction. Even were Islamic State to be utterly defeated and their will broke and forces killed or scattered, the ideas of Islamic supremacy and reforming the Caliphate to regain the glories of the seventh through fifteenth centuries would continue and be utilized by the next al-Baghdadi or Osama bin Laden in gathering a following and by winning a few high profile battles claiming to be the real deliverer to bring Islam back to the dominance it once knew would be in the making and potentially the next great threat. We need remember that al-Qaeda was presumably destroyed, the Taliban routed yet both have made comebacks though they are currently outshone by Islamic State and before al-Qaeda there was Hezballah, Hamas, the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the progenitor of Hamas, al-Qaeda, PLO and others, and before any of these were the Ottoman Empire and the original Caliphate which burst out from the Arabian Peninsula and spread as far as western France at one end of Europe and eventually to the outskirts of Venice in the east leaving Europe all but overrun.

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and threaten Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

 

The same driving force behind that expansion of Islam is being reawakened today and the only thing that lies between a similar expansion today is the military power of the West, in particular the United States, though one would be hard pressed to prove that at this juncture. As far as what will it take for the United States to use its forces to put an end to the Islamic designs on world conflict, which is not something which can be brought to an end by sheer force of arms; force of arms can only push it back into remission. The world has been experiencing one extremely long hudna, what is by strict definition a ceasefire of ten years length during which the Islamic forces regroup, train and achieve military superiority and as soon as the forces of Islam believe they have sufficient means to defeat their enemy they may break the ceasefire and attack without warning of any kind. Needless to point out that the other side is not afforded such advantageous terms and must abide by the ceasefire even after the ten years has passed as they have been told that this was a treaty in that when the power opposing Islam claimed they were signing a treaty the Islamic leaders are obliged to inform them that they call it a hudna. The opposition replies, treaty, hudna, what’s the difference and the Islamic leaders reply, think as you will or some such non-comment. Such deceit is called Taqiyya as defined in the graphic below. This prolonged hudna was entered into by the Ottoman Empire after their defeat during World War I. There have been treaties, or so treated by the signatories, with Islamic forces since then with the treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan respectively being the most obvious. The fragility of these treaties became all the more evident during the one year in which the Muslim Brotherhood through President Morsi ruled Egypt and there were almost daily calls for them to end the peace with Israel and to reopen warfare and finally and once more trounce Israel in a race back across the Suez Canal, assuming the results mirrored their previous encounters. President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood advisors did not perceive any advantage and the peace held solely due to the uncertainty of doubt of their ability to defeat Israel, nothing more.

 

Taqiyya defined in plain and simple easy to understand terms

 

 

There is yet another front where the religious war of Islam against everybody else is being played out and that is the infiltration and undermining of European governance and the slow Islamization of large neighborhoods in many of the European capitals and major cities where the Muslim areas are run under some form of Sharia and the police of the city or nation dare not tread. Even fire and ambulance service is often problematic at best with the fire department being either unable to respond to fires started during rioting or needing armed escort to extinguish the fires. Even under normal conditions there are doubts as to the safety of firefighters should they response to an alarm in one of these areas. Even people riding busses, trolleys or subways which pass through these neighborhoods often find themselves molested or otherwise terrorized. Women are particularly vulnerable to harassment and sexual intimidations and molestations or worse depending on the time of day or night. The current refugee situation and the floods of refugees from the east originating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and other areas of the Middle East plus the inundation of the beaches along the Mediterranean from origins such as Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Egypt, Cameroon, Morocco and other North African nations threaten to overrun Europe. These Muslim refugees very easily could produce a long term problem far more dangerous than the financial burden these refugees, many unskilled, not fluent in any European languages and traumatized by the situations which sent them fleeing seeking a better chance at life. If not already radicalized, the next generation or the one after could be easy targets for radicalization being sold the ideas that the Europeans are racist and have stolen their future and taken from their communities all the wealth and left them without hope or any possible way out other than to take back that which has been denied them. Once any riots start they will begin a cycle where the charges become self-fulfilling as security forces attempt to restore order which will simply be met with cries demanding that the police be withdrawn as they are simply reinforcing the message and oppressing the Muslims, especially the out of work youths and young adults. As many will have attended madrassa instead of public schools, they will have an excellent memorization of the Quran and will be capable of siting the Hadiths as well as the Five Pillars of Islam (see below chart).

 

 

 

With an idea coming to the fore and gaining adherents partially due to the flow of information proving to many that the world has a very slanted wealth curve and except for a small percentage, that wealth curve has been unfavorable to the Islamic world. Further, it has also been proven that grievance mongering and terrorism pay and pay very well. Further, as a leader of terror and being the mouthpiece extolling the masses about their having been cheated out of their share of the wealth which was gained often at the cost of the natural resources of the Muslim world, one never need actually do anything about the inequality beyond assuring their own place at the receiving end of the cash flow. Further, should one choose their targets selectively, they can rail against the inequality without any real fear of retribution; something which would come violently and swiftly should they attack the Western world instead of pointing the finger at those wealthy oil sheiks or the corrupt leaders who have stolen from the poor far more than the average Westerner despite the Western citizens having vastly more wealth. Additionally, there is money to be made trafficking humans to the “promised lands where the streets are paved with gold.” These refugees are not offered a home in any of the wealthy Arab states who have far greater wealth and space to absorb them but that might cost the leaders a trip to Monte Carlo and that would be a travesty greater than the plight of their brothers and sisters. The Europeans should demand that at the very least two-thirds of these refugees be accepted and cared for by their wealthy cousins in the oil rich regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Instead the leaders of the Islamic and Arab worlds are viewing this situation as their best hope for conquering Europe without firing a shot or having to spend any of their own monies. All they need do is point the refugees northwestward and then wait for the demographic change which will overtake Europe within three or four generations. Then the Islamic world will look more like the map below.

 

 

 

The choice facing European leaders at this juncture is whether they will leave a legacy that will bring an end to Christian Europe and all the advances of the Enlightenment or to find an alternative to permanently settling the refugees now streaming into Europe by any and all means at their disposal. What alternative you ask? One might be to set up camps at the entry points and through the European Union use funds to pay for the camps with the understanding that the refugees housed in these camps will be returned to their homelands as soon as conditions there improve. This means for some that end would be immediate as there is no war zone in Pakistan, Afghanistan or much of North Africa outside of Libya and in the Middle East the same applies except for Iraq and Syria. Another step the Europeans might want to look at is assisting in ending the Syrian civil war and end the bloodshed while also combating the Islamic State otherwise the fighting is not going to end. None of these options are pretty nor are any of them desirable. What the Europeans are facing is an unenviable choice of which evil is the least damaging and which side should face the damage. Asking for Europe to absorb the hundreds of thousands if not millions of refugees which could be aimed at them is asking for Europe to commit suicide. It is not financially responsible for the Europeans to attempt to care for, house, feed, educate and provide health care for any of these refugees which neither are not exactly their problem nor is the problem one caused by Europe for the most part. Europe has sufficient problems with their own poor and wretched underclasses which have stretched the majority of European national budgets near the breaking point. Adding even more on top would be more than most European nations could absorb, let alone pay for. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the eastern European nations are facing slow growth or no growth economic indicators and are at risk of defaulting if they have not already done so. The only nations currently having healthy, relatively healthy, economic outlooks are Britain, France and Germany, not necessarily in that order. Even the best of these three could easily be subsumed economically and dragged into the same quagmire facing Greece as an example. None of the European nations can absorb over a million unemployed and destitute refugees and expecting them to do so is next to lunacy, which is exactly why that is exactly what is going to happen. The real problem is what will become of such a situation where refugees take funds beyond their contribution to repay in the next half millennia the Europeans will themselves seek a solution in traditional European fashion and that will not be a pretty sight. Such may lead to the next great conflagrations as it spills over into the Middle East and perhaps beyond. This will not end well no matter how it initially shakes out and gets past the lockout and closed borders currently facing the refugees.

 

Beyond the Cusp