About a week ago I read an article on CNN written by Peter Bergen. The article talked about how the war between ISIS and Obama has been called a stalemate. It then follows by talking about how to defeat ISIS. Of course this whole article is subjective, but it still has many points within it that have much potential to defeat ISIS if done all together. To me the article was very interesting and I agreed with many different points that Bergen was talking about. Because of how good the points within the article were I want to summarize the article so that whoever sees this benefits from it.
He started the article off with a point that I believe will work best against ISIS in any condition. It is to enlist as many people that left ISIS, also called defectors, as possible. This is just as it sounds. It’s as though you have spies on the inside that give you any of the current intelligence about what ISIS is doing next and basically any tactics that they use regularly. This also works from a social perspective giving the defectors the opportunity to tell the rest of the world that ISIS is not true Islam.
The second point was to up the voices of ISIS opposition through media so that it lowers the hype of all of the propaganda that ISIS throws out into media. The voices of oppositions will also show the true story to the people of the outside world.
The third is to continue and to multiply the work of the many people that are convincing the people that want to join ISIS that it’s the wrong thing to do.
The next point Bergen talked about was similar to the third point but rather in person instead of online. This would be done within communities all over the world pushing and convincing the ones reaching to join ISIS that it will not serve the purpose they are looking towards fulfilling.
The fifth point is to help and push Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other media/social media sites to take down and to find ways to prevent any ISIS extremist propaganda from getting to the rest of the world. As I have said in other posts, prevention instead of problem solving.
Next point he said was important was to continue the military campaign on ISIS so that if their is no physical ISIS their can be no threat. The only thing I disagree with in this point is that the techniques of military action are not only failing but also harming many innocent civilians that have nothing to do with ISIS.
The seventh is to help the Turkish people continue to stop ISIS from entering Turkey. So far they have done very well and ISIS has been stopped from coming into Turkey.
The eighth point was to lower the punishment for those who get caught after backing out of ISIS after getting into it. The reason for this, which I strongly agree with, is that when someone starts to get into the ISIS stuff and are thinking of joining suddenly realize that it is a bad idea but get caught a second too soon get long prison sentences. This then psychologically intimidates people to go all out after starting to research because they think once they start it’s all in or get caught and go to jail for a very long time.
The second to last point is simply to inform Muslim parents about the seductive messages ISIS is projecting to the modern days Muslim Youth of the world.
The last point is to drive home the message that ISIS is not true Islam and that they are not supporting Muslims around the world, rather as I have said in many earlier posts ISIS breaks many rules of Islam and majority of the victims of ISIS are fellow Muslims.
If anyone would still like to read the whole article the CNN link to it is below.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/28/opinions/bergen-how-to-defeat-isis/index.html
Syrian Conflict 