Fight against Islamic State group is fuelling 'all-out arms race'
One of the main events that shaped the world last year was the emergence of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Both countries experienced their bloodiest year in recent history and the jihadists shocked the world with new levels of violence: beheadings, mass killings, reducing girls to sexual slavery. The US-led coalition has had some success in containing the IS group fighters, but it doesn’t seem capable of defeating the jihadists.
Peter Harling, director of the Iraq, Syria and Lebanon project for the International Crisis Group, believes that we shouldn't overestimate the threat posed by the IS group and forget to look at the big picture. "What's happening right now", he says, "is that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, the US, France and so on, are all contributing in different ways to a massive all-out arms race which we will pay the price for over 20 years".
Peter Harling also warns that the IS group's enemies, which the West have aided and armed, have agendas of their own and that Western governments should be less naive. "In the West, our knee-jerk reaction to the Islamic State group is prompting us to support anybody willing to fight them", he argues. "We tend to take the narratives of all these players for granted and then turn a blind eye to their pragmatic strategies".
He concludes by saying that "we are acting fast", partly because we want to see the Islamic State group as "something that can distract from all our failures over the past four years. It’s really something that comes in to save us from our own ambiguities in dealing with the major challenge which the uprisings in the Arab world have posed".
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Peter Harling, director of the Iraq, Syria and Lebanon project for the International Crisis Group, believes that we shouldn't overestimate the threat posed by the IS group and forget to look at the big picture. "What's happening right now", he says, "is that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, the US, France and so on, are all contributing in different ways to a massive all-out arms race which we will pay the price for over 20 years".
Peter Harling also warns that the IS group's enemies, which the West have aided and armed, have agendas of their own and that Western governments should be less naive. "In the West, our knee-jerk reaction to the Islamic State group is prompting us to support anybody willing to fight them", he argues. "We tend to take the narratives of all these players for granted and then turn a blind eye to their pragmatic strategies".
He concludes by saying that "we are acting fast", partly because we want to see the Islamic State group as "something that can distract from all our failures over the past four years. It’s really something that comes in to save us from our own ambiguities in dealing with the major challenge which the uprisings in the Arab world have posed".
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
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