This has been a week of progress in the continued battle against ISIL. Kurdish fighters backed by the United States cut the extremist group’s main supply line from Syria to Turkey. Militiamen loyal to the UN-brokered Libyan unity government have pushed into ISIL’s main bastion in the city of Sirte. According to US and European officials, ISIL’s finances have been hit so hard by the bombing of cash stores and the locking out of the militants from international banking platforms that the group has not been able to pay it fighters.
The direction of travel is clear. The militants are losing ground and suffering sustained damage in their key strongholds in Syria and Libya. Because the group is unable to pay its fighters, there are reports that western recruits are abandoning the front lines and returning home. While the news is encouraging, the war against ISIL is far from over.
In this regard, the battle for Libya is critical. Libya is deeply fragmentated across social and religious lines, which ISIL has exploited for its own purposes. After the 2011 overthrow of the Qaddafi regime, Libya sank into a nasty civil war that has resulted in rival governments and warring factions. Fertile ground for the militants to establish a footprint. So much so that after Syria and Iraq, Libya is one of ISIL’s most important bases of operation. This is why news of ISIL defeats in Sirte is so important.
After its defeats on the battlefield, ISIL has left a poisonous ideology in the civilian populations across the region. Combating this twisted ideology is a difficult and laborious process that can often pit populations against each other. Routing out suspected collaborators and finding ISIL sleeper cells is a nasty business. Reversing ISIL’s brainwashing in young people is even more difficult and necessary.
That is why regional initiatives that combat ISIL’s twisted understanding of society and Islam are critical. The UAE has led efforts to combat the militants’ hateful approach with messages of tolerance and the true path of Islam. With the extremists losing ground across the region, these counter-narratives are critical for populations that have been affected. There have been a number of Ramadan television series this year that deal directly with these issues of extremist ideology. Now more than ever, we need to band together as a region and reject ISIL’s hatred so that we defeat them on the battlefield and in the minds of our young people.
