In the mid-1990s, as bombs exploded in Paris and senior extremists began arriving in the UK, the only people who predicted that this was the beginning of successive cycles of Islamic militant violence were the militants themselves. Twenty years on, the violence is intensifying rather than fading away.

What can be done about the new threat posed by Islamic State? The answer is, of course, almost as complicated as the phenomenon of contemporary Islamic militancy itself. There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are dozens of different measures that could each potentially have a minor impact, and collectively a major one. Many, such as diplomacy, the resolution of conflicts across the region, and humanitarian aid to Syrians inside and outside the country, have been discussed at great length in recent days. So, too, have the advantages and disadvantages of various types of military action. And though it is right and proper that the details of David Cameron’s plan to launch British airpower against Isis in Syria are obsessively picked over, other ideas have received less, or indeed no, attention in the debate. Here are eight of them.

1 Kill the caliph

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a video posted in July last year. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (above), who declared himself “caliph” in Mosul after its capture by Isis last June, is a priority target for western and other regional forces. He has been reported as injured several times, and may well have been badly hurt in one or other of the strikes against him. A bombing campaign does not necessarily help this effort. It has been drones – and the occasional special forces raid – that gutted the high command of al-Qaida, rather than massive use of airpower.

Some argue that Baghdadi could be replaced. This is true, in a sense, and though the workings of Isis leadership is extremely opaque, it is just about possible that another candidate could be found who could end up as caliph in the same way his predecessor did. But the death of Baghdadi would cause immense damage to the organisation anyway. It would remove a key focus of loyalty. It could well lead to a succession battle and the fragmentation of the group.

At the very least, it would seriously slow their momentum. Of course, followers might see such trials simply as further evidence that the Isis project is a divinely inspired one. But potential recruits might think twice about the more ambitious claims of the group to effective infallibility.

One problem, of course, is that assassinations have unpredictable consequences. You never know what is going to fill the vacuum a corpse can create. Osama bin Laden’s death was once widely hailed as a nail in the coffin of al-Qaida, and thus the threat from Islamic militancy to the west. Not any longer.

2 Cut down territory, rather than cutting off cash

Much of the current focus – of policymakers and bombing runs over Syria – is on impeding the ability of Isis to earn money through the sale of oil. Though this generates welcome cash for the organisation – up to a million dollars at day at an earlier stage of the conflict, by some estimates – it is far from their main source of revenue. Nor is the trafficking of antiquities or the ransom of hostages, though both can generate substantial sums. Donations from wealthy Gulf supporters died away long ago, western officials say.



The biggest earner for Isis, as for most countries outside the Gulf, is tax. This is tax of the “I’ll make you an offer you cannot refuse” variety, but it is tax nonetheless. Imposed on businesses and smuggling, it raises vast sums. Bombing this is much harder – indeed, well-nigh impossible. This needs to be recognised, and expectations in this area reduced, if an effective broader strategy is to evolve.

What is clear is that the new caliphate depends on continued expansion for its existence. Expansion needs money, but also brings money. However, a virtuous cycle, from the point of view of Isis, could easily become a vicious one. Advance could rapidly become retreat, then, quite quickly perhaps, rout.

3 Counter the propaganda



Isis fighters marching in Raqqa, Syria. Photograph: AP

Isis propaganda is going to keep coming and there is no way we can shut it out. The clips are slick – and made to be watched on a phone by a group of friends on a street corner, or in a cafe, or in a teenager’s bedroom. They are three or four minutes long, full of explicit action, require no thought whatsoever, are sophisticated in their production values and crude in every other way. The differences with other clips cluttering the average western adolescent male’s phone memory – music videos, porn, greatest goals – is clear. But so too are the similarities.

What is less well understood is why their message should appeal. This is often missed by those talking about “counter-propaganda”. Saying that you are likely to get killed in Syria rather than live an Islamic ideal, as recent social media messaging from the US and others have pointed out, may be objectively true, but is about as likely to resonate with a 17-year-old as a health warning on a packet of cigarettes. The Isis propaganda’s millenarian message may not appeal to many westerners – but their promise of adventure, comradeship and status does. Why? In part because of the lives these teenagers lead. But also because of the clever appeal to half-understood ideas about the Muslim faith and also, crucially, about Muslim history.

If one British militant bought himself Islam for Dummies before heading off to Syria, many others have preferred mythologised biographies of great generals of Islam from earlier ages. This is key. There has been a belated recognition of the importance of religious knowledge as armour against radicalisation, but other areas have been ignored.

The idea of recreating a caliphate – the fundamental project of Isis – is that it will restore to Muslims the power and glory and wealth lost over centuries of supposed conflict with the west. Yet relations between “Christianity” and the Muslim world were, as they still are, enormously complex. If there has been violence and war, there has been rich cultural and commercial interchange. There have been alliances as well as enmity. However, little of this context is taught in schools anywhere in Europe. As the mother of one 19-year-old Belgian killed earlier this year said last week: “It’s easy to write on a blank page.”

4 More cash and people for the spooks, but not necessarily more powers

The failings of the European counter-terrorism establishment have been rudely exposed in recent weeks. Greater powers of surveillance are not necessarily the answer. The primary problem that led to the Paris attacks was not an inability to identify who might be a threat – all the key members of the Paris plot were known to security services – but a failure to keep tabs on potential attackers as they moved about Europe, as well as to and from Syria. European internal borders may have come down, but the walls between insular security services never did. This has to change.

Security services also need more resources. The key Belgian counter-terrorism service has a staff of 600, it was revealed last week. Keeping 24-hour surveillance on a single individual takes 30 to 40 people. The result has been an intense focus on a very small number of people and savage prioritisation, often largely arbitrary, to decide who was under the lens. Services across Europe will now get more people and more kit, as well as more powers. But recruitment takes time. The French intelligence services have still yet to fill new posts that were funded after the Paris attacks in January.

A key factor has also been a failure to stop people travelling to Syria when they are clearly a threat. One mother in Brussels recounted how, although she had alerted the local police “counter-radicalisation” cell in Molenbeek, her 18-year-old still left the country. As an adult, he could not be stopped from leaving Belgium.

Radicalisation is a process, not an event. Massive investment in understanding what is happening to European teenagers has had little impact in the public arena, where many still think the problem is extremist clerics brainwashing people on the internet, but it is paying off elsewhere. Oxford University research released last week has shown that radicalisation by anonymous recruiters and strangers is extremely rare, with the overwhelming majority of cases involving friends or family. New America, a nonpartisan thinktank in the US, found that more than a quarter of western fighters in Syria have a familial connection to extremists. Another recent study, at Pennsylvania State University, which examined the interactions of 120 supposed “lone wolf” terrorists from all ideological and faith backgrounds, found that in an astonishing 64% of cases, family and friends were aware of the individual’s intentions because the offender verbally told them.

This has meant better attempts to “deradicalise”, or prevent people turning to extremism. There has been one successful Danish experiment using techniques learned from gang exit strategies. It has been controversial, but often effective. This is not surprising. One 18-year-old in Molenbeek last week described Isis as “the biggest, most violent street gang in the world”.

5 Strengthen local governments

This is simple in concept, if rarely in execution. It has two parts: narrow and broad. The narrow strategy focuses on building the counter-terrorist, or indeed counter-insurgency, capabilities of countries engaged in fighting Islamic extremists on their territory – or strengthening local coalitions of de facto allies in what is, after all, a global campaign.



This indirect strategy has serious limitations – the government in Syria has killed at least 200,000 of its own people, far more than Isis has done – and has failed spectacularly on previous occasions. It also brings harsh choices about the kind of government that is going to receive aid. If the Assad regime is beyond the pale, many others are predatory, repressive, undemocratic or simply incompetent. From Bangladesh to Nigeria, it is hard not to feel underwhelmed by the quality of the leaders and, particularly, counter-terrorist actors who would become recipients of aid.

The broader strategy recognises that governance is key. Spread a map covering the swath of land from western Africa to the Pacific Rim and it is fairly clear that the places where Islamic militancy thrives are places where government is weak and/or predatory, repressive etc, or simply non-existent. Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Sinai, Syria and Iraq, Yemen, parts of Pakistan, bits of Bangladesh. If a short-term strategy focuses on fighting now, then anything long-term has to address this fundamental truth.

6 Better integration of immigrant communities

Security checks at a vigil for the Paris attacks in Molenbeek, Belgium. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

This is a no-brainer. MI5 talks of a “cognitive opening” that makes an individual vulnerable to a new narrative. Very often, for a young Briton, German or Italian of immigrant background, that is an incident of explicit, or even suspected, discrimination. The job that goes to the candidate with the more easily spelled name. The humiliating contrôle, or stop and search, by the police. The invasion of Iraq, which played into the historical myth of a permanent western conspiracy to divide, humiliate and dominate the Islamic world. The general sense, as expressed by one teenager in Molenbeek to his Moroccan-born parents before his departure to Syria, of “being seen as from over there when I am here and from over here when I am over there”.

The problem is how you do it. Supple British pragmatism (or weak-kneed fudge)? Rigorous French republican model? Neither? Both? A mix? All anyone knows right now is that since Europe invited large numbers of immigrant workers into the continent to help rebuild its shattered cities, infrastructure and economies in the 1950s and 1960s, a clear answer has not been found.

Once it was believed that the problems were always found among “second-generation” immigrants on the basis that the first tried to forget their roots and the third had acquired new ones. This now looks optimistic.

7 Boost employment – but not because there is any link between poverty and violence

The Brussels bar run by the Abdesalam brothers. Photograph: Eric Vidal/Reuters

The Paris attacks seem to have been planned and run from Brussels by a core of men who lived and grew up within a few hundred yards of each other, in solid brick houses on two narrow streets in the heart of the neighbourhood of Molenbeek. Although this is one of the poorer parts of the Belgian capital, there are much worse places in Belgium, and France, and the UK for that matter. The French cités have produced many violent extremists in the past – men such as Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four and wounded seven in Paris in January in a series of attacks culminating in a hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket.

But neither Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the operational commander of the Paris attacks, nor the two Abdelsalam brothers, who played key roles, were poor. The Abdelsalams ran a bar that was closed down for drug trafficking. Abaaoud’s father bought him a shop to run. “They weren’t poor. They had cash. They ate in cafes or pizza bars all the time, not at home,” says a researcher who lives in the neighbourhood and counsels returning Belgian veterans of the fighting in Syria.

Many other Islamic militants from the west have been poor, of course, but many have been wealthy. Most of the al-Qaida high command were also highly educated and one – Bin Laden – extremely rich. More recently, there have been private schoolboys and dropouts, petty criminals and highly qualified doctors. The predominant social and economic origins of militants has evolved over the decades, and varies from country to country in Europe, but most security services agree that there is no one profile.

However, there are some clues as to what might help prevent people in these areas being radicalised. Youth unemployment levels are very high in Molenbeek, possibly about 40%, and a key element noted by one educator there last week was that very few of those who had left for Syria from the neighbourhood, and certainly none of those who returned to cause violence, had financial responsibilities to others. Things might have been different had they felt unable to run from their obligations, whether simply out of a grudging sense of duty or, perhaps, because the act of providing for others through their own labour gave them a role and a stature that protected them against radicalisation.

8 Plan for more attacks – and be able to withstand them

A police operation in Molenbeek. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

The concept of “resilience” has begun to edge its way into the counter-terrorist debate to describe measures taken to lessen the potential impact of an attack on a society, nation and community. Much of this has been technical and involved training, better tactics and considerable amounts of cash spent on equipment.

But resilience, as some of the more perceptive policymakers realised, meant something deeper: the ability of those who are subject to attack to collectively resist the power of the violence to cause irrational fear. That is, after all, what terrorism sets out to do: prompt anxiety that is disproportionate to the actual risk run by an individual in their daily lives in order to change their behaviour. As that anxiety contaminates an entire society, it creates new circumstances that make the terrorists’ goals easier to reach.

So a very important part of beating Isis is accepting that further terrorist operations are inevitable, and so are the deaths of more innocent people, and more horrific scenes in our newspapers and on our various screens. The images of bomb-carrying jets taking off from aircraft carriers on their way to destroy Isis targets in Raqqa or Deir Ezzor may temporarily obscure this dispiriting prospect. However, judging by previous cycles of terrorist violence that have tended to last for 10 to 20 years with a peak about a third of the way through, it will remain for several years to come the background against which planes, civilian or military, will fly – and we will all live.