Even in retreat, ISIL’s operatives are capable of striking far beyond their “state” in Syria and Iraq. The battle to liberate Iraq’s second city Mosul from the group continues, but even in the middle of that conflict, ISIL militants were planning to bomb a UAE-Saudi Arabia football match in Jeddah. Saudi authorities thankfully uncovered the plot to target a World Cup game this month and arrested four men, but the incident highlights the continuing threat from the group and its poisonous ideology.
It also highlights the mutating methods of ISIL. Since its emergence in Iraq, ISIL has sought to build a state, to hold territory and to establish a facade of authority and government in that territory. As it has faced resistance and lost territory, that idea has changed.
Mosul will be retaken and in time Raqqa as well, leaving the group with no “state” to boast of. But the threat will not end there. ISIL will most probably go underground, returning to the country of its recruits or seeking to carry out attacks in other places. The threat will not end when the group’s so-called state is overthrown.
All the more reason for the focus to be on the group’s ideology. The combination of myth, misguided religion and fictitious politics has proved a powerful combination for recruiting disenfranchised young men and women from across the world. Almost no country in the Middle East nor the West has been spared, meaning the appeal of this ideology is significant.
The response must be equally innovative. Not merely a negation of its ideology and attempts to use religious justification, but also an assertion of an alternative. Promoting a vision of cooperation between communities and countries to offset its sectarian agenda; highlighting the success stories of integration and rolemodels, so that those who may be tempted by ISIL’s net see there is a genuine, and successful, alternative.
All of this will be a long-term struggle. For now, the battle against ISIL is being waged house-to-house in Mosul. But the next iteration will be to fight it for the hearts and minds of those on the fringes.
