It is interesting to look for the reasons for such qualifiers:
- If it has been "unexpected", it is to be assumed that since its "defeat" in 2019, despite the permanence of some armed groups in the territory of the caliphate, the Islamic State was considered to have been defeated, at less militarily, totally . In that case, the intelligence services logically did not expect such an action.
- Which, unexpectedly, its appearance on the Iraqi chessboard, set off all the alarms when considering the possibility that the Islamic State was not defeated as definitively as it was believed and that, with such an action, under its initiative, has begun to be reborn . An alarm that some minimize, not without reason, in that it will be very difficult for the Islamic State to re-establish the (initial) caliphate in the territories of Syria/Iraq.
Thus, from the purely military, militarist view, promulgated by the US after 9/11 , everything fits, however, the situation is more complex in attention to the following essential elements:
- The fight against jihadist terrorism encompasses not only the confrontation on a military front (against its armed militia wing where it is established), but it must also include the fight on the front of ideas, the ideological , as well as that on the structural front, the one in which jihadism finds vulnerabilities to exploit to its advantage.
- The jihadist conviction that that defeat, since their ideas were not fought, is a test from Allah from which they will come out stronger. Reason why, according to their leaders, there is no need to give up, and this is what they manifest in their propaganda and threats, in their jihad. A jihad that, with no intention of going backwards, will continue, according to his conception, throughout time, generation after generation, until reaching the global caliphate.
- The idea, typical of the Islamic State terrorists, of establishing a caliphate from an initial territory, that established in the territory of Syria/Iraq, territory from which it would later expand throughout the world . An idea that was not and is not only a physical approach, but must be framed within the general idea of an expansive religious "colonization" (an idea that Al Qaeda also defends, although in a different way).
- The terrorist activity (both militia and terrorist in the strict sense), after the aforementioned defeat, which has continued in other parts of the world where he has established new wilayas (franchises); see Afghanistan, Libya, the Sahel, and other African countries..., in conflict with Al Qaeda for global jihadist leadership.
- The existence of recent calls to action by his supporters in the West with the aim of showing that they are still alive today. Among them, the one who announces that he is going to use child soldiers to commit attacks in Spain.
- The growth of the idea of revenge incorporated into their jihad , not only because of the aforementioned defeat, but because of the death "in martyrdom" of its leaders (already three:Osama ben Ladem, Abubaker al-Baghdadi and Abu Ibrahim al-Hachemi al-Quraishi, the latter on February 3, who were accuses of cowardice) by US special operations forces, as well as others by French forces in the Sahel. In this field, it is not disputed that direct action against the jihadist leaders is not important in the fight against their terrorism, but rather that, for it to be effective, other complementary measures are needed, measures that not only have to be military, operational, of security, but active in the ideological field (those that some North American soldiers missed in their action against the caliphate) and, also, in the structural field, if necessary.
- In other words, in view of the foregoing, the Islamic State did not die with its failure against the North American and allied forces, and it did not die, because it does not see itself, nor will it see itself as such, as defeated...
So it is not surprising that the Islamic State attack on Hasaka prison , seeking to release, through massive escapes, its imprisoned combatants (many of them young), with which to reinforce its structures, has surprised the Western world, despite not having achieved such an objective due to the joint North American response (by land and air) and Kurdish, due to its size, initiative, planning and execution capacity; attack that should have been detected, before being carried out, within a continuous preventive strategy, by Western intelligence services.
So what to do now?
In the first place, become aware, apart from all «ostrichism» (one who conceives that everything ended with the defeat of the caliphate and that here, far from its presence, nothing happens ) that Islamic State is still alive and with real capacity to do harm; knowing, therefore, that we are in a time of terrorism without a caliphate, but that, without losing the idea of its construction in the future, it is certainly a more dangerous terrorism since the "defeated" jihadists, without having harmed their beliefs On the contrary, exacerbated by the idea of revenge, they have been expanding to other parts of the world already affected by jihadism, which is why their control should not be neglected. A terrorism that has been moving its action, in increasing evolution, to other places where its violence lives:the Sahel and the eastern African zone, even reaching the north of Mozambique. Thus we have to find an Islamic State that acts under two different forms in combination, but with the same objective (that of, in its day, establishing the caliphate):attacks, suicides or not, against part of returned ex-combatants or "lone wolves". », and actions of armed militias in those places that allow their settlement.
And, secondly, take into account that all response strategies have to be updated , national and international through action on the three aforementioned fronts (military/operational, ideological and structural). All fronts, operational, ideological and structural, the first two dedicated to security and the last to development, which, for its effective action:
- They must be applied specifically for each terrorist group and in each territory affected by their violence, although they can be considered as a whole, regionally, under a general strategic vision (of security with development).
- They have to be coordinated among themselves given that they are constantly related to each other, since in one they act against what the terrorists think, in the other against their activities in accordance with such thinking and, in the third, against the weaknesses /vulnerabilities that are generally exploited by jihadist groups to anchor themselves in the field and then expand.
- In order to make the aforementioned coordination effective, they must inevitably rely on the political action of each of the affected countries (counting on foreign advice where appropriate) as a director, that of the information and intelligence services and of the security forces as enforcement arms (in coordination/cooperation with the support they receive), and of society, isolated or jointly integrated into various institutions, as social support for the fight against terrorism.
- They must become active from the first glimpse of the jihadist presence (reason for the importance of a preventive strategy for this purpose), an activity that must not be left for when terrorism has already settled; or abandon one of the fronts to the detriment of the others due to false urgencies, and this, because jihadism would take advantage without hesitation of any weakness in each of these fronts.
- And, in any case, they must have the necessary staff resources, economic and material means For their develpment; especially for the ideological front, the most neglected of all.
Fronts, which, although we didactically separate them for their exposure and treatment, are inextricably linked by having to attend to the jihadist strategy as a whole:“a mixture of ruthless military operations and an incendiary campaign on social networks, peppered with photos and videos of brutal executions…”; strategy, thus raised since the beginning of jihadism, which always takes advantage of any vulnerability/structural failure of the country in which it operates; that is, a strategy that presents the three fronts on which we must act. Fronts, then, that must be complementary in everything, completing each other, with an application at the same time, but bearing in mind that action on the operational/military front is the most immediate in the face of the constant pressure of jihadist violence, while that on the structural and ideological front they are of slower results; likewise, in this line of complementarity, it must be taken into account that inoperability on one of the fronts can lead to the collapse of everything that has been done , especially with the abandonment of the military front (a recent example can be found in the withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan).
Action, on each front, which must also be vigilant about the armed conflicts that are developing, or have the possibility of opening, given that their presence will be used by the jihadists to gain power in the areas where they develop, in turn influencing those already affected by their violence.
Thus, from such premises, the path to the solution must embrace the proposed approaches (action on the military front, the ideological front and the structural front) in a continuous, balanced manner , in unity of action:act therefore, at the same time on the violent threat, on the one hand with effective security means (military, police, intelligence services...), but with new approaches that prevent its growth, recovering and maintaining the initiative and, on the other, against the underlying causes that provoke such a threat, trying to reduce them until they disappear as vulnerabilities/weaknesses exploited by the violent, and all this without forgetting the permanent ideological struggle.
Thus, it is possible to avoid talking about "unexpected" jihadist actions, and even think, under their pressure, of "alarms" born of ignorance.