The Paris attacks are further proof that the West is losing the fight against terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS). Al Qaeda’s branches and partners have increased the territory they control in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and North Africa, and ISIS continues to expand its membership and its territorial holdings globally despite US-led airstrikes. A major AEI report, “A global strategy for combating al Qaeda and the Islamic State,” proposes a better way forward than the current failing strategies.
Success demands a new strategy: a coordinated series of regional counterinsurgency campaigns. Airstrikes and attrition alone will never defeat al Qaeda and ISIS. We need a population-centric and phased approach that combines diplomatic, political, security, and informational tools at a national and subnational level. These campaigns must be nested in a global framework and tailored for each specific fight according to a variety of factors, including the nature and strength of the enemy, the attitudes of the local population, and the capacity of the host government in the particular area of concern.
The United States’ first option cannot be large-scale invasions in places where al Qaeda and its affiliates operate. That approach would allow the enemy to impose high costs on the US and its allies in return for only partial successes in individual theaters. The best military course of action to pursue against the extremists is a counterinsurgency. This strategy depends heavily on supporting efforts from our partners and allies, which will in most cases make the deployment of large numbers of American military forces into combat both unnecessary and inadvisable.
The US will need to develop strong local partnerships with governments across the Muslim-majority world to put the region on the path toward stability. The US must train and equip its partners and allies for counterinsurgency, not just counterterrorism, and fight alongside them to establish strong, stable, legitimate forms of governance that can prevent al Qaeda and ISIS from reemerging after they are defeated. As the United States undertakes this strategy, our leaders also need to clearly recognize the positions of key players in the Muslim-majority world. Russia, for instance, is deploying forces pursuant to its interests, which include driving the US from the Middle East and reversing the outcome of the Cold War.
The center of gravity for both al Qaeda and ISIS is ideology. The extremists’ ideology feeds on success and withers on failure. If the US and its partners can deny and reverse ISIS’s and al Qaeda’s battlefield victories in places such as Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, the US will not only decisively undermine the enemies’ arguments and appeal but also set the conditions for advancing legitimate, responsive, and capable governments throughout the region.
Victory against al Qaeda and ISIS will mean reducing them back to the original terrorist group that they were in the late 1980s: small and incapable of carrying out mass-casualty terrorist attacks. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the jihadist or Islamist movements close to the groups must be defeated decisively, the territory and people that they currently control must be freed, and its ideology must be so discredited that few Muslims will feel attracted to its arguments.
If the US continues its current ineffective strategy, the global security situation will continue to deteriorate and al Qaeda or ISIS will soon be able to carry out a mass-casualty attack against the United States and our allies. It is not a question of if, but rather of when.
While this will be a lengthy fight and significant risks and costs are associated with this new strategy, it is the only way to defeat the extremists.
To learn more, read “A global strategy for combating al Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
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