Military Operations Do Not Produce a Solution to Terrorism

Military Operations Do Not Produce a Solution to Terrorism

Military Operations Do Not Produce a Solution to Terrorism

If we look back at history we will see that the facts do not always match fiction. Operation Eagle Claw is one example of this. The operation staged by the U.S. military in April 1980 to free the 52 U.S. citizens being held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran ended in a debacle due to a sudden sandstorm. An accident during refuelling en route to the USS Nimitz, the centre of the operation, led to the destruction of a C-130 Hercules plane and a U.S. helicopter. The U.S. Army lost eight soldiers, two military planes and one transporter, and had to withdraw from the region without carrying out the operation.

Another instance took place in Somalia. An operation in 1994 under the command of Gen. William F. Garrison ended in a fiasco and the deaths of 24 Pakistani and 19 U.S. troops in fighting in Mogadishu. The U.N. peacekeeping force and U.S. troops withdrew from the region on March 3rd, 1995, in the wake of increasing losses.

The U.S. military history is full of such failed rescue operations, even if they are not always as notorious as these two. One such incident took place in mid-December, 2014, in the village of Dafaar in the Yemeni province of Abva. A rescue operation by U.S. special forces ended in two hostages, the 33-year-old American photojournalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie, being shot to death by militants. A local al-Qaeda commander, various militants, a woman and a 10-year-old child also lost their lives.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel confirmed that this had happened during a hostage rescue operation. Somers and Korkie had been held hostage in Yemen for more than a year.

The U.S. had been conducting operations with drones in Yemen since 2002. Yet many of these operations ended in failure, with the deaths of many civilians. In 2014, 13 civilians died and 20 people were injured in

So what should be done now as these countries are unable to stop the continuing terrorist activities in their lands and external military interventions are leading to the deaths of innocent people?

To reiterate, first and foremost, an intellectual struggle must be waged against terror organisations that use violence in the name of Islam. The distortions in the thinking of members of these organisations need to be explicitly stated. All leaders of opinion and politicians must emphatically state that in the Qur’an, it is explicitly stated that Muslims must invite people to the moral values of Islam simply with gentle words, not using force and compulsion. These people can be summoned to the true path only by telling them of the freedom of belief found in Islamic moral values.

All Muslims, Shiite or Sunni, must be told that violence is no way to seek their rights and that it is a flagrant violation of Islamic moral values. People need to be told that Islamic moral values cannot be espoused through acts of terror, that such acts will simply add to the numbers of the enemies of Islam and that they will invariably inflict even worse harm on Muslims.

Classes aimed at undermining the intellectual infrastructure of terror organisations need to be provided for students in schools; books and articles must be studied, and conferences and academic seminars must be held. That is the only way terrorism can be eradicated from the world. This method can dry up the swamp in which terror breeds.

Today there are radical organisations and their extensions operating in a wide range of territory from Central Asia to the Caucasus, from Africa to the Balkans, and from inside Europe to the U.S.

The only reason why radicalism is able to gather supporters from such different cultures and geographies is the education, instruction and propaganda techniques they implement on people who are mostly ignorant of religion and who approach matters emotionally, rather than with their intellect. The internet and social media are the global communication tools most commonly used by radical organisations for education and propaganda. Therefore, it is obvious that a different means against radicalism, other than the use of force and weapons, needs to be developed.

Yet the West’s most popular strategic institutions, think tanks and political advisors have failed to come up with any alternative to constantly producing new military strategies. To be more accurate, the idea that there might be an alternative to mass slaughter has never even occurred to them. They have always ignored the factors of belief and ideology in the emergence of sociological phenomena such as radicalism.

The only way of putting an end to the terror, violence and killings that stem from a distorted conception of Islam based on superstitious references, distorted interpretations and false hadiths and commandments that are totally at odds with the Qur’an is to inform the entire Islamic world of the true Islam based on the Qur’an, in the finest manner possible, and to correct those false beliefs and understandings in the light and under the guidance of the Qur’an.

All Muslims must totally reject an angry, unbending argumentative attitude which goes against the very nature of the Qur’an and in its place adopt a friendly, gentle, affectionate, calm and compassionate one. Muslims must set an example to the world and be admired for their maturity, compassion, moderation, modesty and peacefulness. Muslims must live Islam in the best possible way and introduce to the world the Islamic morality, not only in these things, but also by their achievements in the fields of science, culture, art, aesthetics and social order and others.

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