ABU DHABI // The GCC and the world must evolve their strategies to address the rising threat posed by terrorist organisations, said the president of an Abu Dhabi-based think tank.
Dr Ahmed Al Hamli, from Trends Research and Advisory, said armed groups such as ISIL were changing the character of modern war by making it more complex as national security mechanisms and criminal justice systems could not contain them.
“In the GCC we are experiencing conflicts involving [terrorist groups] whose actions appear motivated by extremist ideologies,” he said at the second Future Security of the GCC conference in the capital on Monday.
“The problem we are addressing today is very real, they are threatening regional and global security and it appears at times we fail to have effective understandings of how armed [terrorist groups] are changing the character of modern war.”
An increase in terrorist attacks has caused major turbulence and instability around the world, with three major cities, Paris, Beirut and Baghdad, struck in the past week alone.
“If ISIL is now able to project violence well beyond its territorial base, the international system needs to find ways to respond,” Dr Al Hamli said. “The extent of modern conflict involving [terrorist groups] is large.”
He said since the end of the Second World War, the world had experienced more than 250 conflicts, mainly driven by such groups. “They are able to threaten international peace and security in the use of violence, through either conventional or unconventional means of warfare,” he said. “The difficulty we face is that national security mechanisms or criminal justice systems cannot be used to contain them as they either rival states in the projection of armed force, or the state is unable to control its own territory or these [groups] within that territory.”
The Middle East has been plagued by conflicts in the past few years, particularly in Libya, Syria, Egypt and, more recently, Yemen, which have created millions of refugees and internally displaced people. “These [terrorist groups] have imposed challenges but current events are different now,” said Dr Richard Burchill, director of research and engagement at Trends Research and Advisory. “The international system has declared that the use of violence to achieve political goals in the absence of self-defence is unacceptable. These groups pose challenges and threats to a more secure and peaceful world.”
Experts said technological changes in communication and transport also posed serious threats.
“They are interlinked,” said Dr David Betz, reader in warfare at King’s College in London.
“What happens with this is when you take a system and you add more connections and actors over more distance, you increase the intrinsic complexity of a network with more nodes. The effect is we live in a world where what happens in one place can have very immediate effects elsewhere ... spatially very distant, at a rapid rate and this introduces greater unpredictability to the system, which is strategically problematic.”
An integrated civil and military approach will be needed to tackle these groups, from the Houthis to ISIL and Al Qaeda. “In conventional war, the object is to seize territory ... to destroy the enemy’s forces,” said Theo Farrell, professor of war in the modern world and head of war studies at King’s College. “But in counter-insurgency, it’s to win over the hearts and minds of people, so it’s very different. In this case, 20 per cent of the campaign is military and 80 per cent non-military.”
The roots of terrorism will also have to be found. “We need to understand the constant rise of asymmetric wars,” said Abdelqader Fahmi, specialist in political science and international relations at Trends Research and Advisory, from Jordan. “Political events are not created by fate but by politicians’ will. We need to question the funding of these terrorist groups and their ability to move in the battlefield and mobilise their forces.”
cmalek@thenational.ae
