RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by U.S.-led air strikes, has driven ISIS out of its self-declared “caliphate” capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa. With its back against the wall and its jihadists surrendering or fleeing in droves, ISIS’s control of territory in Syria has been reduced to a strip of the Euphrates valley and surrounding desert. The United States Central Command held back from declaring complete victory, but said that “more than 90 percent of Raqqa is in S.D.F. control.” Land mines and improvised explosive devices remain, which need to be cleared before civilians can safely return. Nevertheless, developments were considered positive enough that Brett McGurk, President Trump’s special envoy for the global coalition against ISIS, reportedly left Washington for a visit to Raqqa.

ISIS had taken over Raqqa at the beginning of 2014. Not until June of this year did the U.S.-backed campaign to take Raqqa back get under way. Just two months ago, there were still about 2,000 ISIS fighters remaining in Raqqa, determined to fight to the death for their capital. By last weekend, a few hundred ISIS militants, mostly foreign born, were left behind to continue fighting, holed up in a stadium and a hospital which were captured on Tuesday.

The loss of its capital is a huge symbolic blow to ISIS, which has been suffering a string of major defeats since President Trump took office. Just as nothing succeeds like success in attracting new recruits to ISIS’s cause, its loss of its base of operations from which it had planned and directed attacks around the world spells failure. As Jenan Moussa, a reporter Arabic Al Aan TV, tweeted: “Game over for ISIS in #Raqqa. They lost capital of their caliphate. Same guys, not long time ago, bragged about conquering Rome.”

Some human rights and anti-war activists have complained that the defeat of ISIS in Raqqa has come at too heavy a price in civilian lives and devastation, which they blame on air strikes by the U.S.-led military coalition. A report issued by Amnesty International last August stated that the coalition forces’ “reliance to a large extent on weapons which have a wide impact radius and which cannot be accurately pinpointed at specific targets to neutralize IS [ISIS} targets in civilian neighborhoods, has exacted a significant toll on civilians.” Some activists blamed the Trump administration’s change in tactics, delegating more decision-making on where and when to conduct air strikes to lower level field commanders.

The number of civilian deaths attributable to coalition air strikes has been estimated to be approximately 1000. That said, much of the problem facing the anti-ISIS coalition is the same that Israel confronted in fighting Hamas militants in Gaza. ISIS concentrated many of its fighters in densely populated areas of Raqqa, using civilians as human shields and hiding among women and children who had nowhere else to go. ISIS used civilian residents’ homes, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighborhoods as locations from which to conduct their military operations. As Amnesty International itself acknowledged, ISIS “laid mines and booby traps to render exit routes impassable, set up checkpoints around the city to prevent passage, and shot at those trying to sneak out.”

Despite these obstacles, coalition forces endeavored to safely evacuate civilians from Raqqa and out of harm’s way when possible. The coalition allowed a deal to go forward several days ago, under local tribal elders and Raqqa Civil Council auspices, to evacuate civilians by bus from Raqqa along with some non-foreign members of ISIS.

“The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing.” — The Paris Statement, signed by ten respected European scholars.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière’s proposal to introduce Muslim public holidays shows that when it comes to Islam, Europe’s official “post-Christian” secularism is simply missing in action.

A few days ago, some of Europe’s most important intellectuals — including British philosopher Roger Scruton, former Polish Education Minister Ryszard Legutko, German scholar Robert Spaemann and Professor Rémi Brague from the Sorbonne in France — issued “The Paris Statement”. In their ambitious statement, they rejected the “false Christendom of universal human rights” and the “utopian, pseudo-religious crusade for a borderless world”. Instead, they called for a Europe based on “Christian roots”, drawing inspiration from the “Classical tradition” and rejecting multiculturalism:

“The patrons of the false Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear — as do we. They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt their secular, multicultural outlook”.

In 2007, reflecting on the cultural crisis of the continent, Pope Benedict said that Europe is now “doubting its very identity”. In 2017, Europe took a further step: creating a post-Christian pro-Islam identity. Europe’s official buildings and exhibitions have indeed been erasing Christianity and welcoming Islam.

One kind of official museum recently opened by the European Parliament, the “House of the European History”, costing 56 million euros. The idea was to create a historical narrative of the postwar period around the pro-EU message of unification. The building is a beautiful example of Art Deco in Brussels. As the Dutch scholar Arnold Huijgen wrote, however, the house is culturally “empty”:

“The French Revolution seems to be the birthplace of Europe; there is little room for anything that may have preceded it. The Napoleonic Code and the philosophy of Karl Marx receive a prominent place, while slavery and colonialism are highlighted as the darker sides of European culture (…) But the most remarkable thing about the House is that.as far as its account is concerned, it is as if religion does not exist. In fact, it never existed and never impacted the history of the continent (…) No longer is European secularism fighting the Christian religion; it simply ignores every religious aspect in life altogether”.

The Brussels bureaucracy even deleted the Catholic roots of its official flag, the twelve stars symbolizing the ideal of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe. It was drawn by the French Catholic designer Arséne Heitz, who apparently took his inspiration from the Christian iconography of Virgin Mary. But the European Union’s official explanation of the flag makes no mention of these Christian roots.

The European Monetary and Economic Department of the European Commission then ordered Slovakia to redesign its commemorative coins by eliminating the Christian Saints Cyril and Methonius. There is no mention of Christianity in the 75,000 words of the aborted draft of the European Constitution.

A video circulating on pro-ISIS message boards purports to show the expansion of ISIS into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though the Islamic State has not yet pushed on their official media channels the call to join fighters in the African country.

The DRC is only about 10 percent Muslim, with about 80 percent of residents following some form of Christianity.

The two-minute video shows several men dressed in camouflage and wielding weapons in a nondescript rainforest area, as a few young boys mingle around. The video quality is rough compared to highly produced films from ISIS’ official and affiliated media arms, but also resembles some rough-cut video statements delivered by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

With a logo including ISIS’ insignia and a rifle, the group calls itself “The City of Monotheism and Monotheists,” or MTM.

The jihadist delivering the statement is the only one in the group who does not look Congolese; he speaks Arabic and declares that those in the lands of “kuffar,” or disbelievers, should migrate to the DRC for jihad. “I swear to God that this is Dar al Islam of the Islamic State in Central Africa,” he said, swearing again that the group is “in the jihad.”

None of the fighters who appear to be Congolese speak in the video; the official language in the DRC is French, with other local dialects spoken as well.

The declaration of an ISIS chapter is a first for this part of Africa; the closest affiliations are Boko Haram to the northwest and, to the west, some Al-Shabaab members in Somalia who pledged allegiance to ISIS over al-Qaeda (the latter still being the terror group’s official patron). ISIS doesn’t always recognize groups of adherents as provinces, though caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has urged followers to expand their reach as ever-increasing amounts of ISIS’ original turf have been reclaimed by local forces in Iraq and Syria.

In an audio message last November, al-Baghdadi addressed ISIS adherents in far-flung regions, including Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Indonesia, Philippines, Sinai, Bangladesh, West Africa and North Africa, as the “base of the caliphate,” and warned that “kuffar will try to split you.”

Four U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush while on a routine counterterrorism patrol with local forces in Niger at the beginning of the month. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS operate in the region.

In a Pentagon briefing last week, Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. noted it’s “easier to actually stop resources than it is people” going from Syria, where ISIS’ caliphate is crumbling, to Africa, and “I think we’re having significant success doing that; probably not perfect, because perfection is probably not an attainable goal.”

The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world. Their population exists in a contiguous territory spanning across present-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Historically, the Kurds have been an oppressed people. Iran, Iraq, Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, and what’s left of ISIS in Syria and Iraq are all deeply and viscerally opposed to the idea of a Kurdish state. An independent Kurdistan would remove large swathes of territory from each of those countries.

For the most part, the Kurds—particularly those living in northern Iraq—are stridently pro-American. The fear among the other regional powers is that if Kurdish Iraq were to become an independent state, other Kurdish populations would demand independence, and would seek to be folded into that Kurdish state.

Further, the Iraqi Kurds,with their fearsome Peshmerga forces, as well as the Kurds in Syria and southern Turkey, are all well-trained and heavily armed. In fact, the recent fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has compelled the armed Kurdish factions to sally forth and take territories, such as the Iraqi city of Kirkuk (which the Peshmerga recently liberated from ISIS). Of course, the Iraqi government wants Kirkuk back, and are warring with the Kurds in order to regain control of that strategic city.

The tragedy in all of this is, aside from the Israelis, the Kurds have been America’s most steadfast ally in the region. Throughout history, the Kurds—notoriously and gruesomely—have been oppressed by the region’s powers. They were the constant targets of Saddam’s tyranny in Iraq; they waged a brutal war for their freedom in Turkey; in Syria they are the targets of ISIS and other Syrian “rebels” as well.

During Desert Storm, they answered former President George H.W. Bush’s calls to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Then, the elder Bush undercut their uprising by signing an armistice with Iraq, and abandoning the Kurds to their fate. They were slaughtered. And yet the Kurds never once blamed Bush for abandoning them.

During President Bill Clinton’s administration, the United States led a multinational force to maintain a no-fly zone that prevented Hussein from committing any further acts of genocide against the Iraqi Kurdish population. As a result, the Kurds established something like a quasi-independent state.

When George W. Bush in 2003 led the United States into a quixotic campaign to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein, the Kurds joined the cause even though they understood the grave risks. After Saddam was out of power and the U.S.-led occupation struggled to prevent Iraq from splitting into three states——one for the Sunnis, one for the Shiites, and the other for the Kurds—it was the Kurds who respected Iraq’s national integrity.

What did they get for their troubles?

An Iranian-dominated government in Baghdad that took out its frustration on the Kurds!