Islamic State Hysteria – Should we be bombing Syria?

Hysteria surrounding the threat from the Islamic State in the UK has reached fever pitch this week after they supposedly planted a bomb on a Russian plane flying over Sinai province in Egypt killing all 224 passengers on board. At the same time defence secretary Michael Fallon has pronounced it morally indefensible for the UK not to join its allies in bombing Syria and the US have officially announced 20 special operations forces on the ground in Syria. You will notice a great deal of italics in those last few sentences demarking my cynicism here! Whilst I agree with the logic that bombing Iraq and not Syria is ridiculous given the ‘Caliphate’ spans both territories I still disagree with Fallon. I find it staggering and extremely suspect how quick the UK government has been to assume an Islamic State bomb downed the Sinai plane particularly before there was any evidence to support such claims. Media sensationalism is playing straight into the hands of the opportunistic Islamic State whether they are responsible or not. Hysteria is what they want. Terror is a synonym for fear – fear is what they want. It legitimises and encourages their war. This hysteria is extremely reminiscent of the post 9/11 era: it feels as though new boundaries are being drawn and extra-ordinary action is slowly being trickled into public acceptance. Would I be surprised if we saw a boots-on-the-ground debate in the House of Commons before Christmas? Not at all.

And where does gender come into this?

As usual according to mainstream narratives it doesn’t. Appeals to the need to bomb for the sake of ‘women and children’ remain abundant in arguments for air strikes. Particularly given the atrocities committed against women and girls by the Islamic State documented in that pivotal New York Times article. What the media doesn’t focus on is how previous intervention by the Middle East in the West has actually made things worse for Muslim women because of the backlash of extremism and jihadism which promotes a hideously patriarchal version of Islam. Women serve as cultural signifiers, their oppression is the ultimate rejection of western ideals. Furthermore, as mentioned before on this blog the media seems keen to ignore the progress being made by the Kurdish Peshmerga which is made up of predominantly women and remains the only force making real progress in pushing back Islamic State. Islamic State fighters believe that should they be killed by a woman they will go to hell so they are genuinely afraid of these women in contrast to the western bombs which only emblazon their ideological vengeance and recruit more willing martyrs. This is a difficult concept for the West to come to terms with because it subverts several narratives underpinning our entire identity. The ‘brown women victims in need of saviour from barbaric brown men by noble white men’ narrative underpins the very premise of the War on Terror ideology and the Peshmerga completely turns this on its head. When they have been reported on they have been glamorised and sensationalised rather than taken seriously and understood both politically and historically.

The highly militarised, hyper-masculine environment in which these events are perceived is also crucial to understanding why bombs and boots our presented as our only options. Foreign policy and defence remain masculine domains epitomised by men like Michael Fallow where stoicism, rationalism and aggression are heavily relied upon in decision making and the agenda is set by history instead of innovation or insight. Equally, it is overly-simplistic argument to say if there were more women in foreign policy positions more diplomatic or internationalist options may be put on the table in the fights against Islamic State. Hell, Hillary Clinton would be in there all guns blazing given her past! However, fighting fire with fire (fire being militarised, hyper-masculine warfare) only seems to have made things worse in the past and whilst I don’t claim to know any of the answers sticking to the same out-dated and ignorant strategy of simply throwing bombs at the problem seems mad to me. The male, pale and stale defence departments worldwide need new ideas to fight this new threat.