Game changer?
Thursday’s suicide attack on a mosque in south-west Saudi Arabia – claimed by Da’ish – sent a clear signal that the international community needs to do much more to contain the threat from this caliphate. It is expanding in both Iraq and Syria – despite the allied bombing campaign – and has now turned its attention to the Kingdom. Significantly, this was a clear strategic departure from recent attacks in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The target this time was not the minority Shi’a, but the special emergency force, which counts among the Kingdom’s main line of defence. This, therefore, marks the shift from rhetoric to action in IS’s designs about war on the al Saud.
Till last year, the militant threat seemed on the retreat in the Levant. The Syrian Arab Army had got a handle on the insurgency, aided in different ways by Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, and the enemy was losing ground. Suddenly, then, there were reports of renewed funding and arming from some Gulf states. A year later, the proxy is straining at the leash, raising a number of urgent questions.
Now a number of international heavyweights view IS as the principal terrorist threat. The Americans have been bombing them for a good part of the year. And the GCC states, too, understand the existential nature of this fight. Yet there is no sign of a cohesive military and political strategy, short of which it will not be possible to contain Da’ish. The recent US-Iran thaw increases the chances of a wider coalition, as does Turkey’s recent push, so long as IS is everybody’s main enemy. It should not be forgotten that over the last year IS has killed, burned, mutilated, raped, tortured and sold hundreds of thousands of innocent people. And, so far, the combined failure to stop this menace does not seem weighing too heavily on the world’s leaders. The sooner everybody unites to deal with IS, the better.