Demotix/Konstantinos Tsakalidis. All rights reserved.After the terror attacks in Paris, which killed at least 129 people, President Hollande vowed to destroy ISIS. This was followed by a night of intensive air raids on the city of Raqqa, the capital of the so-called Islamic state, where activists reported that abandoned ISIS bases and buildings were targeted.
France’s response is a typical example of western knee-jerk ineffectiveness to the challenge of ISIS, which was driven by the desire to show strength and to assuage domestic fears. There seems to be little understanding that the rise of ISIS is directly linked to the accumulation of grievances in the Arab world, in which the west has played a significant role.
One only needs to note that the current strength of ISIS is estimated by some experts to be around 40,000 - 50,000 fighters, which is even greater than the 30,000 estimate made by the CIA when the airstrikes began, even though the “international coalition” has claimed it killed thousands of fighters. This indicates that either the intelligence was inaccurate or that ISIS' recruitment has been increasing exponentially. Even though ISIS has been subjected to international airstrikes, they have been able to capture more towns in both Iraq and Syria, such as Ramadi and Palmyra. Although they lost Tikrit and more recently Sinjar, their hold on their territory is firm, and growing. The west is completely ignoring the nature of Syrian and Iraqi polities and that the rise of ISIS cannot be remedied with military force.
