The atrocities in Paris last Friday have outraged the western world more than any act of Islamic terrorism on the European continent in the last decade.
They have also generated a spirit of solidarity: witness the united singing of the Marseillaise by opposing fans at the England-France match at Wembley on Tuesday evening. David Cameron believes that in that spirit of solidarity Britain should be doing more in the fight against Isis, the brutal Sunni terrorist force that controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks that left 129 dead and hundreds injured. In particular, the Prime Minister wants Britain to join the air attacks on Isis targets in Syria. Is he right?
David Cameron has long felt thwarted in his desire to join the United States, France and other members of the US-led coalition in using air power against Isis in Syria. The RAF does engage with Isis targets in Iraq but has been prevented from crossing the border into Syria ever since the House of Commons, in 2013, threw out his policy of using air power in Syria. Back then, the Prime Minister wanted to use the RAF to fight against the Assad regime in Syria, which had used chemical weapons against his own people, rather than against Isis, Assad’s nominal enemy. But, chastened by his defeat, the Prime Minister has accepted that he could not authorise air strikes against Isis in Syria without Parliament’s consent.
Mr Cameron’s case for extending air strikes to Syria is a simple one. Isis, he argues, does not recognise the Iraq/Syria border, so why should its opponents? Indeed Isis (sometimes referred to as Isil) has declared itself a caliphate governing much of eastern Syria and western Iraq, with its headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa and with ambitions to expand much further in the region. The Prime Minister told the Commons on Tuesday: ‘Isil is not just present in Iraq. It operates across the border in Syria, a border that is meaningless to it because as far as Isil is concerned this is all one space… It is from Raqqa that some of the main threats against this country are planned and orchestrated. Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake. After the horror must come our resolve and determination to rid the world of this evil.’
Until very recently, however, his chances of persuading the House of Commons to authorise Syrian strikes seemed slim. In a damning report this autumn the influential Commons select committee on foreign affairs poured cold water on the idea, arguing that in the absence of a coherent strategy, taking in political and diplomatic issues as well as military ones, air strikes in Syria were, in effect, futile. American coalition air strikes had not materially prevented Isis from consolidating its position and continuing to make advances. Furthermore, producing a coherent political strategy has been made peculiarly difficult by the fact that we continue to oppose both Isis and its enemy, the Assad regime. The west’s wish to support ‘moderate’ Sunnis in the Syrian civil war, opposed to both Assad and Isis, was fanciful since they did not exist in sufficient force to take on both.
These problems were further complicated by the entry of Russia into the equation. Russia, a long-term supporter of the Assad regime in Damascus, joined the fray in September by launching air strikes of its own on the regime’s behalf against both Isis and the so-called ‘moderate’ Sunni opposition. This seemed to make it even less likely that Mr Cameron would get parliamentary backing for air strikes against Syria. Some cynics (especially in Washington) seemed to think: ‘OK, let the Russians get on with it.’
But two things have changed in the last few weeks. First, a Russian passenger jet carrying holiday-makers home from Egypt exploded over the Sinai desert killing 224 people. This week the Russian authorities confirmed what British intelligence suspected much earlier, that the jet was brought down by a bomb planted on board and for which Isis has claimed responsibility. And then there was Friday’s attack in Paris.
The two atrocities have brought Russia and France, hitherto on opposite sides regarding the Syrian civil war, into alliance. On Tuesday the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered his generals to cooperate in a military alliance with French forces and there have been calls for a united coalition against Isis
For this to happen there will have to be compromises on all sides. President Putin has already been persuaded to stop his air attacks on moderate Sunni opponents of Assad and to concentrate his fire on Isis. Western powers, including the British government, have begun to hint that they will have to accept that President Assad should remain in power, at least while Isis is being fought.
It is because of the emergence of this broader coalition including the Russians that Mr Cameron seems to believe that the time has come when he can ask MPs to give him the authority to deploy the RAF in Syria. But his task will still not be easy
Some MPs will continue to object to any course of action that involves acquiescence with the Assad regime that continues to use barrel bombs against its own civilians. But that is not the only problem. No one believes that Isis can defeated from the air alone. Ground troops, supported from the air, are essential to any campaign to rid the region of Isis. Kurdish forces in the north of both Syria and Iraq continue to have successes against Isis but they are a long way from winning the war. And in western Iraq, the regular Iraqi army, supposedly trained by the west to provide security for their country, simply turned and fled in the face of Isis fighters.
So the question is: who will provide the ground troops? President Obama has made abundantly clear that the United States will not do so. He said on Monday, referring obliquely to American experience in Iraq, that he ruled out the large-scale deployment of US troops ‘not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi … but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before.’ Nor is Mr Cameron suggesting sending in the British army.
So sceptics about the air war argue that even if a grand coalition against Isis were to be formed by the west, Russia and Assad’s other ally, Iran, if its actions were confined to air attacks it would be insufficient. Some have argued that a solution can be found only by involving the United Nations, with UN troops from a range of countries in the region maintaining security over the area currently governed by Isis. But few imagine that the UN would provide the means of ousting Isis in the first place.
There is also a fundamental objection to ramping up the attacks on Isis. It is that this is what Isis most wants. Isis thrives, the argument goes, by being attacked because attacks by outsiders rally the Sunni faithful to its black flag. On this view, the Isis attacks on the Russian jet and on Paris were not simply retaliation for Russian and French air strikes on Isis targets but were intended to provoke an intensification of the response from Russia and France.
In specifically British terms, those opposed to escalating our military offensive against Isis argue that this will simply provoke terrorist attacks in Britain to match what happened in Paris. They point out that such attacks would be carried out not just by foreign jihadis finding their way into this country (one of those involved in the Paris attack had posed as a refugee from Syria and arrived in Europe through Greece), but by British-born jihadis. Several hundred British Muslims are known to have travelled to Syria to fight for Isis, many of them returning with their jihadi zeal undiminished. And a poll last year showed that a strikingly large minority of British Muslims have varying degrees of sympathy for Isis.
So David Cameron still has his work cut out to persuade MPs to back air strikes in Syria. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, seems certain to oppose and carry at least some of his MPs with him. The LibDems remain opposed, as do a substantial number of backbench Tories. But the Prime Minister has insisted it is the supreme challenge of his generation to defeat Islamic terrorism.
Is he right to want Britain to do more to fight Isis? How extensive should our military involvement be? And should we be ready to face an increased terrorist threat in our own cities as a result?
