AS WAR threatens to engulf a region stretching from Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, Europe and their allies must come up with a coordinated strategy for intervening. In any possible scenario, Europe will have a special role to play, writes World Review Expert Charles Millon.
However blatantly obvious the facts are, the West still prefers to avert its eyes. This is the case in Libya, which has become the new stronghold of Daesh (also known as Islamic State or IS) and if need be could serve as its fallback position. It is also true in Iraq and Syria, where it is certain to be discovered with much surprise that IS is now so firmly entrenched that only another massive intervention by Western ground forces would dislodge it.
Western military commanders are apparently already discussing the possibility of war in Libya, a country beset by chaos as the result of an earlier, disastrous intervention. Nevertheless, the West must recognize that Daesh’s cancerous ideology will continue to spread, sowing conflict around the world. Besides Libya, the Sinai desert, Nigeria, the Sahel region, Afghanistan and even Europe have become battlegrounds in a war that takes no prisoners.
Daesh’s radicalism and hatred of the West – or of anything outside itself – are so great that it is difficult to imagine how any negotiated peace agreement would be possible. Would Daesh even want such an agreement? Who would accept living side by side with a state, or several states, practicing a form of Sharia law that subjugates women and all non-Muslims, and which aims to destroy our very humanity?
The West cannot do so alone – it needs allies. The battle has reached global proportions and must include Russia, Iran and certain countries of the Arabian Peninsula. African states, while they may have the will to join, have neither the financial nor technical resources to effectively fight this type of antiterrorist war.
There is no doubt that a major conference under the aegis of the United Nations should have taken place long ago. It might have looked something like the Yalta conference of 1945. Its purpose, however, would not have been to divvy up the world for domination, but to designate intervention zones for various countries’ forces to liberate and stabilize.
Such an undertaking would last at least 10 years, if not 20. But it is necessary, imposed upon the West by an ever-shifting, multifaceted enemy who rejects basic human values. It would require global cooperation toward a specific goal, similar to what has emerged on the issue of environmental protection.
The region in question is vast and situated at the geographical center of the world. From Pakistan to the Central African Republic, through Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Somalia and Nigeria, it is a huge arc that covers almost all majority Muslim countries.
If this area were cut up like the pieces of a puzzle, France could play an important role in western Africa. Following its interventions in Mali and in the Central African Republic (which were conducted for different reasons) France could theoretically continue its thrust, starting with Nigeria.
However, the area is simply too large and the colonial empires are long gone. Two factors undermine the possibility of any effective action in this region: Britain’s indifference toward Nigeria, its former colony, and Europe’s weak support of France’s military policy. That policy has succeeded in stabilizing strategic areas and cutting off the rapid spread of jihad in the Sahara and Sahel regions.
France does have a unique ally in the region: Chad. This country possesses the only operational army in its part of the continent. Other stable nations, such as Burkina Faso, Benin or Senegal, are either too poorly armed or too internally weak to make a difference.
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Publication Date:
Wed, 2016-04-27 05:00
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