ISIS, or "Daesh" has been in existence since then, in various forms and capacities, but only jumped to the scene as a horrifically violent organization with territorial ambitions when a Syrian uprising turned into a deadly platform for regional rivalries. What existed as a "state" at a virtual, cerebral level had, in fact, morphed into a "state" of actual landmass, oil fields and martial law.
It is easy -- perhaps, convenient -- to forget all of this. Connecting the proverbial dots can be costly for some, for it will unravel a trajectory of violence that is rooted in foreign intervention. For many western commentators and politicians it is much easier -- let alone safer -- to discuss ISIS within impractical contexts, for example, Islam, than to take moral responsibility.
I pity those researchers who spent years examining the thesis of ISIS as a religious theology or ISIS and the apocalypse. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. What good did that bring about, anyway?
American military and political interventions have always been accompanied by attempting to also intervene in school curricula of invaded countries. The war on Afghanistan was also joined with a war on its "madrasas" and unruly "ulemas." None of this helped. If anything, it backfired, for it compounded the feeling of threat and sense of victimization among tens of millions of Muslims all around the world.
ISIS (Daesh) is but a name that can be rebranded without notice into something entirely different. Their tactics, too, can change, based on time and circumstances. Their followers can mete out violence using a suicide belt, a car laden with explosives, a knife even, or a truck moving at high speed.
What truly matters is that ISIS (Daesh) has grown into a phenomenon, an idea that is not even confined to a single group and requires no official membership, transfer of funds or weapons.
This is no ordinary fact, but in a more sensible approach should represent the crux of the fight against ISIS (Daesh).
When a French-Tunisian truck driver rammed into a crowd of celebrating people in the streets of Nice, the French police moved quickly to find connections between him and Daesh, or any other militant group. No clues were immediately revealed; yet, strangely, President Franà §ois Hollande was quick to declare his intentions to respond militarily.
Such inanity and short-sightedness. What good did France's military adventurism achieve in recent years? Libya has turned into an oasis of chaos -- where Daesh now control entire towns. Iraq and Syria remain places for unmitigated violence.
What about Mali? Maybe the French had better luck there.
Writing for Al Jazeera, Pape Samba Kane described the terrible reality that Mali has become following the French intervention in January 2003. Their so-called "Operation Serval" turned into "Operation Barkhane" and neither did Mali became a peaceful place nor did French forces leave the country.
The French, according to Kane are now Occupiers, not liberators, and according to all rationale data -- like the ones highlighted above -- we all know what foreign occupation does.
"The question that Malians have to ask themselves is," Kane wrote: "Do they prefer having to fight against jihadists for a long time, or having their sovereignty challenged and their territory occupied or partitioned by an ancient colonialist state in order to satisfy a group allied with the colonial power?"
Yet the French, like the Americans, the British and others, continue to evade this obvious reality at their own peril. By refusing to accept the fact that Daesh is only a component of a much larger and disturbing course of violence that is rooted in foreign intervention, is to allow violence everywhere to perpetuate.
Defeating Daesh requires that we also confront and defeat the thinking that led to its inception: to defeat the logic of the George W. Bushes, Tony Blairs and John Howards of this world.
No matter how violent Daesh members or supporters are, it is ultimately a group of angry, alienated, radicalized young men seeking to alter their desperate situation by carrying out despicable acts of vengeance, even if it means ending their lives in the process.
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