There are three key reasons why success for the West hasn’t followed. Together, these reasons point towards an urgent need to shift strategy to avoid a stalemate.
If their deaths fighting for Islamic State in Iraq are confirmed, Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar would be far from the first foreign fighters to be killed in the history of combat.
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Foreign fighters have always posed a dual challenge: how to stop them going and what to do if they return. History offers lessons on managing these problems, including that it’s hard to stop them leaving.
Iraqi troops training with the US Army June 2015.
US Army/Reuters
On the face of it, Iraq and the US Federal Reserve share little. One is a country plagued by division, war and mayhem since the US invasion of 2003. It is a brutal world where there are no friends, few…
Australia’s reaction to revelations that its citizens were fighting for IS follows a pattern of intellectual and state fear-mongering.
AAP/Lukas Coch
If governments are to maintain public support for their military ventures, war narratives must be kept simple and consistent. The underlying message must not change: the West is always the innocent victim of terrorism, never its perpetrator.
Women hold pictures of their family members following the massacre.
EPA/Ahmed Jalil
The Camp Speicher massacre was one of Islamic State’s earliest and worst mass killings – but it was nearly buried under a tide of misinterpretation and denial.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has flagged that Australia would like to see its substantial military contribution to the war against Islamic State more effectively used.
Destruction from an early battle between IS and Iraqi forces in July 2014.
EPA/STR
By exploiting weaknesses and divisions, the extremist group has been able to establish a brutal regime in just 12 months.
What possesses a Queensland teenager like Oliver Bridgeman to go to fight in Syria? Online propaganda is not an adequate explanation on its own.
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Simplistic views of terrorist recruitment focus on online messages to Western youth. Foreign fighters are coming from many other countries, lured by many means, and we need more sophisticated responses.
Islamic State is not just in the Middle East – it exists in the West’s suburbs and computers.
EPA/Aamaq Media
Record numbers of arrests of young Britons on suspicion of terrorism offences shows the need for a new and effective approach to online jihad.
President Barack Obama and his inner circle follow the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which made headlines worldwide but is seemingly unimportant four years on.
EPA/Pete Souza/White House handout
Memories of the killing of Osama bin Laden are fading, but the legacies of al-Qaeda and the war on terror’s many ‘own goals’ haunt us in the form of multiplying threats and lost civil liberties.
The Iraqi army has not been on point.
EPA/Khider Abbas
With the war in Iraq and Syria going nowhere, the US has tried to spin a botched attempt to capture an IS leader as a success.
Religion can be a force for peace, the goal of these Australian religious leaders, or conflict – the believer and not the religion itself bears the responsibility.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
There are religious and non-religious extremists and we should not confuse violent believers with religion itself, which has a long history of peacemaking.
When Australians hear about Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s dire warnings and counter-terrorism raids, they could lose historical perspective on the threat posed by Islamic State.
AAP/Mal Fairclough
Dire government warnings and counter-terrorism raids in our suburbs paint a picture of the worst threat Western nations have ever faced. A little historical perspective is in order.
When not employing the description ‘death cult’, Prime Minister Tony Abbott prefers to use the name Da'esh because the group ‘hates being referred to by this term’.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The terrorist group now calls itself Islamic State, but the many names by which it is known reflect both its own evolution and the deliberate choices others make in how they refer to it.