We must fight the ideas as well as the militants

What the Arabic language media is saying about extremist groups in the Arab world, featuring Al Khaleej, Al Hayat and Al Bayan.

ISIL militants in Mosul represent a challenge that will only be solved by addressing ideas as well as fighters. AP

The war on ISIL is continuing to cause instability in the Middle East and the Arab world, with new branches of the terrorist organisation emerging as terror seems to be going towards internationalisation.

Faisal Aydoon wrote in the Sharjah-based daily Al Khaleej that ISIL is gradually losing this war.

“Its biggest defeat is the fading effect of its strategy, based on terror and intimidation, it has used to blackmail individuals and communities, poisoning lives and controlling minds,” he said.

“The collective conscience received an initial shock with photos of killings, slaughters and the burning of children. Then the myth of terror and fear collapsed, turning into readiness for confrontation and growing anger and determination to defeat savagery.

“The defeat of ISIL militarily is a certainty. Its factions are bleeding, air strikes are shattering their command structures, their fighters, training sites and arms warehouses. Soldiers and volunteers are destroying their nests and chasing their remnants.

“Foresight of defeat has blinded extremist factions, revealing their despair, embodied in crimes such as the massacre of students in Peshawar, the slaughter of villagers in Cameroon and the killing of the defenceless Jordanian pilot who was burnt alive. Such are signs of despair and psychological defeat,” he explained.

However he warned there will be no willing surrender by these groups, which are plagued with crime and death “because capitulation would not exempt them from punishment,” he noted.

George Semaan, writing in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, said the spread of ISIL is complicating the war against terrorism because eliminating factions aligned with the group means settling and solving intractable crises.

“Military action is no longer the only effective solution against a radical group that has declared itself a state and is spreading its branches beyond geographical boundaries and introducing relations between states that is alien to the norms governing the various components of society,” he wrote.

“Linking comprehensive and decisive wars on terrorist movements with political settlements is bound to prolong these wars and the lives of these movements.”

He said these crises range from old and deeply rooted to new – or renewed. Vanquishing groups like ISIL will not happen before solving all these crises.

Meanwhile, the editorial of the Dubai-based daily Al Bayan called on a joint Arab security solution to the upheavals in Libya and Somalia being caused by a mix of cross-border terrorism and internal violence.

“The time has come to defeat them and highlight the real spirit of Islam based on tolerance and justice,” it stated.

Because all the countries in the region are targets, the creation of a joint Arab security system to confront terrorist activities in any part of the region is warranted.

“Fighting terrorism is not a mere military war, but a war of media and intellect above all.”

The war against terrorism requires a shift from the current fruitless kind of battles that fail to achieve reasonable military results, the editorial asserted.

ISIL and its factions must be fought in environments that embrace and nurture extremism. This is only achievable through intellectual and cultural actions to combat the face of Takfiri ideology, it concluded.

Translated by Carla Mirza