{"id":25720,"date":"2018-12-15T23:23:35","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T23:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25720"},"modified":"2018-12-15T23:23:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T23:23:35","slug":"war-on-militants-wont-end-unless-west-tackles-root-causes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25720","title":{"rendered":"War on militants \u2018won\u2019t end unless West tackles root causes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nWASHINGTON: Western powers fighting militant groups around the globe are condemned to a never-ending battle if they only tackle the symptoms and not the underlying causes of militant insurgency, experts say.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBeyond the tactical victories on the ground, the current strategy is failing,\u201d said Katherine Zimmerman, who wrote a recent report for the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cEvery soldier and intelligence analyst that has worked on this problem understands what is happening,\u201d Zimmerman told AFP.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThey understand that what they are doing is a temporary solution. It\u2019s ending the immediate threat but not stabilizing or moving us forward. The problem comes down to policy and politics,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt\u2019s easy to say, \u2018We\u2019re going to kill the person responsible for making the bomb.\u2019 It is much more difficult to say that our partner government has disenfranchised this group and it\u2019s one of the reasons why this person joins the terrorist group. And now he is the bomb maker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nDriven from lands it once held sway over in Syria and Iraq, Daesh has returned to its origins as an underground militant outfit because the conditions that spawned it \u2014 a deep discontent among most Iraqis and Syrians \u2014 have persisted, experts say.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe West is on the road to winning all the battles and losing the war,\u201d warned Zimmerman.<\/p>\n

\nIn a report last month on the resurgence of Daesh as a clandestine guerrilla group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that while the US and allied governments have weakened some groups like Daesh, \u201cmany of the underlying causes have not been adequately addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThose root causes include a \u201cfragile state with weak or ineffective governing institutions\u201d in areas affected by militant activity, where the extremists can establish a sanctuary, the CSIS experts said.<\/p>\n

\nThey took maps showing areas where Al-Qaeda and Daesh were active and compared them to maps displaying \u201cgovernment effectiveness,\u201d based on World Bank statistics.<\/p>\n

\nThe result was clear: Most of the countries where the insurgents are active \u2014 Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia \u2014 are also in the bottom 10 percent for government effectiveness.<\/p>\n

\nAt a conference this week in Washington, retired Marine Gen. John Allen \u2014 who once commanded US forces in Afghanistan and now heads the prestigious Brookings Institution \u2014 said the West had to get ahead of the issue and ask, \u201cWhere should we be looking for the next problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe should spend a great deal more time looking at those areas that are in fragile or failing states,\u201d said Allen, who also served as presidential envoy to the international coalition battling Daesh.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe have to recognize the hotspots where the human condition prompts the radicalization of large sectors of the population,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cOften we join the conversation when the process of radicalization has been in place for quite a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAllen noted that the problem is \u201ca development issue, much more than a counter-terrorism issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: Western powers fighting militant groups around the globe are condemned to a never-ending battle if they only tackle the symptoms and not the underlying causes of militant insurgency, experts say. \u201cBeyond the tactical victories on the ground, the current strategy is failing,\u201d said Katherine Zimmerman, who wrote a recent report for the American Enterprise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}