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.
