18/08/2014
Four days ago, the
BBC was telling us how the capture of the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, by Islamic State (IS) insurgents was of "huge strategic significance" in terms of water and power resources.
We were left in no doubt by the BBC of the implications of this capture, relying on Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Institution's Doha Centre in Qatar, to tell us that: "These extremists are not just mad".
"There's a method in their madness", Shaikh says. "They've managed to amass cash and natural resources, both oil and water, the two most important things. And of course, they're going to use those as a way of continuing to grow and strengthen".
As of Sunday evening, however, we see an example from the
same BBC of how these "Islamic State insurgents" are going to use this water resource "as a way of continuing to grow and strengthen" (not).
Kurdish forces, we were informed, are in "near complete control" of Iraq's largest dam after ousting Islamic State militants. Ground forces supported by US air strikes launched the operation to take Mosul Dam on Sunday morning.
Kurdish sources said they were still trying to clear mines and booby traps from the area round the dam, a process which could take several hours.
Earlier, we saw reports from
NINA that the US had launched 14 air strikes on ISIS positions around the Mosul dam, with the confirmed destruction of ten armoured vehicles, including seven Humvees.
The previous day, there had been nine air strikes near the city of Erbil and Mosul Dam and the action to recover the dam had started
at dawn. The first air strike killed 11 members of the Islamic State (IS) and wounded eight. We also saw an air strike in the Jamahir neighborhood,
northeast of Baquba, with IS members also killed and injured.
This was not the only activity, as the Iraqi Air Force
directed 17 air strikes on IS concentrations in Yousfiyah, Jalawla, Hawija and Saqlawiyah areas, resulting in "significant losses in lives and equipment".
The main event, though, has been the Mosulk dam and the retaking of such a high profile target has to be regarded as a serious blow for the insurgents. This clears the way for the next target, the city of Mosul which government forces are poised to retake.
The success comes after a flood of media reports over the weekend talking up the ISIS threat, and the emerging "caliphate", including a lamentable piece from the
Observer, which manages to illustrate that, when it comes to the ignorance of the politicians and the church over the events in the Middle East, there is very little to choose.
In the article, the Church of England describes David Cameron's Middle East policy as incoherent, ill-thought-out and determined by "the loudest media voice at any particular time".
The bishop of Leeds, Nicholas Baines, with the support of the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, complain that UK's foreign policy is so muddled and reactive that it is "difficult to discern the strategic intentions" of the government's approach to the region.
Cameron is taken to task for failing to develop an effective plan to tackle the spread of violent Islamist extremism from Iraq to Nigeria, where the militant group Boko Haram has terrorised the north of the country. "We do not seem to have a coherent or comprehensive approach to Islamic extremism as it is developing across the globe," the bishop writes.
Thereby the priests are making the same mistake as the politicians, lumping together what are disparate issues under the flag of "Islamic extremism" when they really are separate and need to be treated separately. The idea that there is a common thread driving Islamist extremism "from Iraq to Nigeria" is in fact rather fanciful.
That there are disturbances all over the world is indisputable, but this has always been the case. Before the break-up of the Soviet empire many of these conflagrations were lumped in as "proxy wars" inspired by the Communists. But before that, they were called wars of independence and before that they were colonial wars.
For what are most often tribal disputes, though, Islam can hardly be a unifying force. There is, for instance, the huge schism which divides Sunni and Shi'a, in a religion which does not have leaders of the stature of the Pope. It does not even have an established hierarchy: every Imam is master in his own house.
It defies logic, therefore, to argue that there is same vision of Islam as between the Nahdatual Ulama of Indonesia, the Hazaras of Iran, the Pashtuns of Waziristan, the Kanuris of Boko Haram, the Malikite Sunnis of Mali, the Barwaris of Kurdistan and the Kutama of North Africa. Some would as soon murder each other as rise up under the flag of a a single caliphate.
To suggest that there is a unity of vision would be to argue for a degree of cohesion which even the Christian religions have not been able to achieve. In fact, as has been pointed out by many commentators, the biggest killer of Moslems over the ages has been other Moslems.
But, as the fightback in Iraq continues, we see a campaign entirely distinct from events in Syria. The priests and Mr Cameron may stick to their idea of an: "extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and extending into Syria", but they are talking nonsense - as they so often do.
Cameron, the
Observer suggests - based on its reading of the
Telegraph article - is inching towards supporting Britain's involvement in a military response to the threat from the Islamic State. To that effect, he says that the current crisis is not a problem "that should be defined by a war ten years ago".
But, if we are to learn any lessons, they should come from that war. The insurgency that followed the coalition invasion in 2003 was only resolved after Iraqi forces finally took responsibility for their own national security â with a little help from the Americans.
Once again, the same dynamic is at play, which must be encouraged and reinforced. Bleating about "caliphates" doesn't cut it any more than does trying to link disparate events under the Islamic banner. Our politicians need to deal with the problems as they arise, largely as individual problems, and stop playing games.
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