The Prime Minister has said Britain needs to give a ‘full spectrum response’ to the atrocity in Tunisia last week, when at least thirty-eight holidaymakers, most of them British, were massacred on a beach in Tunisia by a terrorist gunman linked to ISIS, the extreme jihadist group attempting to set up an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and north Africa. The Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, says we should consider bombing ISIS strongholds in Syria as part of this response. Is this the right way to react?
Not a lot is known about Seifeddine Rezgui, the 23-year-old student responsible for the massacre and who himself died in the ensuing shoot-out. He was a drug-taking lover of hip-hop and football who had been radicalised at Kairouan University in Tunisia and is believed to have trained as a jihadist fighter at an ISIS camp in Libya. His murderous attack on innocent holidaymakers sunning themselves by the sea came the same day as an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Kuwait and a man was beheaded by an ISIS jihadist in France.
David Cameron says the battle against Islamic extremism is ‘the struggle of our generation’. In calling for a ‘full spectrum response’ it is not yet clear what exactly he has in mind but it seems to involve both giving greater powers to the police here in Britain and engaging in more intensive military action abroad.
His possible domestic action has already drawn criticism that it might make things better rather than worse. For example, he has suggested blacklisting certain extremist groups and individuals so that they are banned from appearing on the airwaves or speaking on university campuses. It has been argued that such action risks alienating moderate Islamic opinion and the Prime Minister has been warned not repeat what are widely regarded as the mistakes of Tony Blair ten years ago, when he responded to the 7/7 attacks in London by proposing extreme measures such as ninety-day detention without trial.
But it is greater military involvement abroad that is likely to prove the more controversial idea. Several former defence chiefs have been complaining that Britain is not doing all it should to help the US-led military campaign to attack ISIS where it has been making its greatest advances in the last couple of years, namely in Iraq and Syria, countries it wishes to make the core of its proposed caliphate. Britain has assisted in air strikes against ISIS positions in Iraq, responding to the requests of the Iraqi government, but, unlike the United States, it has refrained from extending those attacks into Syrian territory.
This is what may be about to change. On Wednesday, Mr Fallon remarked that it was ‘illogical’ for Britain to respect the Syrian border when ISIS did no such thing and he called on MPs to ‘reflect’ on the matter. He said: ‘It is a new parliament and I think members of parliament will want to think very carefully about how we best deal with ISIS and the illogicality of ISIS not respecting borderlines. They don’t differentiate between Syria and Iraq; they are establishing this evil caliphate across both countries.’
Politically, the issue is a highly sensitive one. That’s because two years ago the Prime Minister suffered his most conspicuous defeat in the House of Commons when an alliance of Tory rebels and the Labour opposition voted down his proposal for the RAF to join our American allies in a bombing campaign in Syria. The circumstances then were very different. Back in 2013 the aim was to attack the forces of the Syrian regime of Bashir al-Assad after evidence emerged that it had been using chemical weapons against its own civilians in the increasingly savage civil war. Now the idea is to extend a bombing campaign into Syria against one of Assad’s chief opponents, ISIS.
The military case for doing so is clear enough. Western air attacks have had some success in arresting the progress of ISIS in Iraq so there is reason to suppose the same would be the case if the campaign were extended. There is also a strong diplomatic case. Many of our allies, and notably the United States, were left aghast at Mr Cameron’s defeat in 2013 and saw it as a sign of Britain retreating from its responsibilities in the world. The Prime Minister is reported to have told the French president, Francois Hollande, after the election that he wanted Britain to resume its role in world affairs and especially in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism. This would be welcomed both in Paris and in Washington.
But it seems clear that Mr Cameron does not wish to risk a second rebuff by the House of Commons so, as he is committed to giving parliament a say in the matter, he wishes to square the Labour opposition before going ahead with the plan. With Labour support he could see off any Tory backbench rebellion.
So should MPs respond positively to Mr Fallon’s suggestion that they need to reflect on the matter again? There will be plenty of people voicing scepticism. It will be argued that bombing campaigns always risk making things worse. Innocent people tend to get hit by them with the danger that moderate Islamic opinion may be turned against the West as a result. Indeed it is even suggested that a bigger bombing campaign by the US and its allies is just what ISIS most wants as a valuable recruiting tool.
It is also argued that history shows bombing campaigns to be inadequate. Once that is realised, the sceptics point out, calls for a more intensive military campaign then inevitably start to be made with military strategists arguing that the jihadists won’t be defeated unless we put in troops to defeat them on the ground.
At the moment no one in government is suggesting we send in the army; indeed the idea is explicitly and vociferously ruled out. But ‘mission creep’ is a very familiar tendency in such situations and it is the reason many will argue that we should not be doing any more militarily than we already are.
That, though, may mean that in ‘the struggle of our generation’ we may fall short. With atrocities such as we saw in Tunisia becoming increasingly frequent, the pressure is likely to grow for us to ‘do something’ more.
What’s your view? Do you agree with the Prime Minister or not that in the aftermath of Tunisia we need to engage a ‘full spectrum response’ to Islamic terrorism? What do you think that should include? In terms of action taken domestically in Britain, what would you like to see done? And do you think we should join our American allies in extending the bombing campaign against ISIS into Syria?
