A BLACK FLAG OF CRIMINALITY IN A QUEST FOR POWER…
(all under the guise of extreme religious purity)

The ISIS plague continues with its rampages throughout the Middle East, and elsewhere, because the world community has failed to understand what ISIS is really all about. It is not just an extreme and twisted version of Islam, but rather, a highly organized and sophisticated international criminal syndicate using a black flag of criminality in a quest for power…all under the camouflage of extreme religious purity…as a means of enticing and recruiting disaffected and misguided youths to itself in the belief that they are joining a righteous jihad cause.

Born out of the chaotic vacuum resulting from the international community’s inertia in response to Syria’s civil war, combined with the unending sectarian Sunni-Shia conflict in neighboring Iraq, the shadowy leadership which created ISIS (probably derived from displaced former Iraqi and Syrian Ba’athist Party elites) seized such conditions in an attempt to establish their own enclave of power in the region. Their use of the same terror tactics of murder, rape, and pillage, as those of the defunct Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and the still entrenched Assad regime in Syria, has been their choice of means to achieve that goal.

Unfortunately, none of the region’s countries with the exception of Turkey, have the military muscle and capacity to apply the necessary force needed to counter ISIS…nor do any of them, including Turkey, have the stomach or will to do so. Thus, ISIS has little or no effective opposition in the field other than American air and drone strikes. While these have some effect they cannot, and won’t, achieve the necessary destruction of ISIS’ field forces and its permanent demise as a threat to the region…and the rest of the world as well…without a properly sized boots-on-the-ground effort.

Force alone, of course, is not what will defeat ISIS and its adherents. What is also needed is a broader coordinated international effort, perhaps through the UN’s General Assembly, formally declaring ISIS an international criminal organization, not a religiously motivated one, and as such, any of its identified sympathizers, adherents, or supporters of any kind in their respective countries, declared accomplices and made subject to whatever applicable criminal penalties and sanctions, which can be brought against these for that association, Such measures should help reduce the numbers of those who might be inclined to join with ISIS.

As for the cyber environment, where ISIS seems to be operating with impunity, multinational efforts should also be made to track down and disrupt its sites and ability to project its influence through that medium. This should include applying whatever hacking and malware expertise may be available to accomplish that. Ultimately, however, boots-on-the-ground will be needed to complete such as effort, so unless the international community is prepared to implement all these measures the ISIS plague will continue.

CENTURION