Just Who is the Owner of ISIS?
Reflecting on “the Known unknowns and the fight
against violent extremism” Peter Fabricius finishes in the
following manner.
Using the Arab term for
ISIS, he said analysts had described a spectrum of influence of the
organisation on individuals – ‘Daesh-inspired, Daesh-enabled and
Daesh-directed,’ covering the range from exhortation and encouragement and
inspiration on one side to direction and instruction on the other. Across that
spectrum, it was hard to be sure that South Africa was not vulnerable. Ultimately,
the question whether or not participation in the fight against ISIS inoculates
a country from attack is an academic one.
At
the point where violent extremism is overrunning large swathes of Iraq and
Syria, leaving mounds of headless bodies in its wake, whether to fight and
destroy it is not a preventive option but an existential necessity – and a
global responsibility. Prevention, then, becomes a luxury for those not in
Daesh’s crosshairs.
Some
people are undoubtedly beyond the reach of sociology, morality and reason. They
are killers in search of a cause. That might be called an ‘unknown known,’
something we instinctively sense but don’t care to admit.
And what about Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’? One might
say that one of the great unknown unknowns when he was speaking in 2002 was the
future emergence of ISIS, as a jihadist group even more violent and extremist
than al-Qaeda. What about: did the United States itself create ISIS, to
undermine and control certain Middle East states, especially those opposing
Israel? That view is apparently widely held, even high up, in the Arab world,
especially Iraq.
Although the US presumably did not deliberately create ISIS,
only Rumsfeld himself, and a very few others, could tell us for sure whether
that is in fact a known known. Otherwise it will have to be placed, like
Rumsfeld’s own belief that Saddam Hussein was supplying terrorists with nuclear
weapons, in a new category, the ‘known unknowables’ – fantasies we claim to
believe because they serve our purposes.
Just Who is the Owner of ISIS?
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
February 18, 2016
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