Every fascist or totalitarian state has its fate sealed. The more savage it is the quicker it will meet its end, even if after a period of spectacular victories. Generally, this is not a consequence of lack of will, combativeness, trained leadership or even courageous soldiers. Rather, it is because the very fascist, Nazi or communist idea carries the seeds of its own destruction and makes evasion of its defeat or escape from the predicament to which it drove itself impossible. I recently read Ian Kershaw's The End: Hitler's Germany 1944-45, which focusses on the period between the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944 to the German defeat on 8 May 1945. It was nearly ten months before the end of the war that the German military leadership began to realise that its only chance to save itself, or a portion of itself, was to surrender before the Soviet, US, British and French forces swept into German territory. At that point, they could have negotiated. Germany still had some strength left. Its army was exhausted but it could still wound the enemy. It still had more than a million troops in Italy, Denmark, Norway and northern Holland. The assassination plot against Hitler failed and then began the gradual and even more dangerous collapse that ended in the total destruction of Germany. No one in the German leadership of any worth was unaware that Germany had lost the war, apart from Hitler and a handful of disciples whose ideological Nazi fanaticism hampered their ability to assess things rationally. During that ten-month period alone Germany lost more people, equipment and urban structures than it had during all previous years since the beginning of the war. Something of this nature is approaching the so-called caliphate — Islamic State (IS) — which I venture to predict may come to an end this year. The signs are there. After the expansion that led it to extend from northeastern Syria to the doors of Baghdad on the Euphrates, that state has begun to shrunk. In the course of 2015 it lost Kobani, Sinjar, Baiji, Tikrit and, most recently, Al-Ramadi. Eyewitness accounts from Raqqa relate that they have seen the families of IS leaders fleeing to Mosul. Self-proclaimed “leader of the faithful” Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has begun to prepare his followers for the next phase. The logic of his rhetoric follows that of the tyrants who preceded him: the so-called Islamic State that he founded was not the first. It was preceded by another (Zarqawi's state). Hence, if the current IS collapses its roots will remain and give rise to another state in the future. This is destiny, he believes, just as Hitler believed that the Third Reich was a phoenix that would always rise again from the ashes. The process of collapse and fall invariably rests on an idea that is believed so haloed that it is invincible. It may suffer a loss but it will inevitably be born again because it has some aspect of the eternal, or so its authors believe. Or at least this is the belief that they try to instil in the minds of the masses and, sometimes, whole nations so as to convince all that they are fulfilling some kind of historic mission and that any remiss in this regard is a form of treason or — in the IS case — heresy. A chief function of this dogma is to generate a sense of superiority over all other peoples of different ethnicities or faiths whose very “inferiority” renders them worthy only of captivity, enslavement or death. The arrogance inflates with “victories”, but no sooner do the defeats and retreats begin than a manic paranoia sets in. Even as “conspiracies” are being woven all around, a miracle of some sort will occur to dispel them all. All that is required from the fascist forces is to hold out and continue fighting until the last bullet is spent. It is not important how much destruction is wrought or who dies. Moreover, anyone who weakens or begins to realise the fraudulence of the cause only deserves to die. Such were the mechanisms that brought the destruction of Germany and that took Japan to demolition by the atomic bomb. Even if fascism and Nazism have not entirely died, their numbers and influence have been so curtailed as to leave only evil thoughts. Nevertheless, history never repeats itself exactly. What Al-Qaeda brought, what IS is currently wreaking and what was originally engendered by the founding ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood that eventually gave rise to those offshoots, were all the product of a different era and new environment. The age of the third industrial revolution was different from the age of the second industrial revolution. Globalisation created a global realm for action and the dissemination of ideas, and for the exploitation of injustices and pains for the purposes of recruitment and training. Indeed, ideas alone are sufficient to create “lone wolves” who kill, bomb and burn. Out of 1.6 billion Muslims, of whom a very small portion lives outside urban centres or experiences persecution of some sort or another, some hundreds of thousands form the armies that are moving across states and continents and causing the bombings and massacres we see or, at the very least, the obstruction of the movement of people, goods and commerce. The end of IS in Syria and Iraq will not necessarily mean the end of IS. It has most likely begun to create alternative bases or prepare bases to welcome it in the Sahara, in Libya and in the Horn of Africa. At the same time, the major cities of the world in Europe, Asia and even South America, with their populations of millions, may serve as places to lie low, recruit and move to attack again through terrorist acts. Therefore, while a defeat of IS will deliver a blow to the hubris of the terrorist organisation and may even shake its conviction in its eternal victory, the greater battle will be in people's minds. On this score, we in the Arab and Islamic countries that are wrestling with terrorism have to confess that we have not had much success. Our efforts have yet to enable us to clearly establish that dividing line between true Islam, as characterised by tolerance, the right to choose and belief in human diversity, and the Islam of the “Kharijites” that sees only the realm of the faithful and the realm of the heretic. This is a question that demands the attention of governments, intellectuals, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and community organisations, especially those in the West as they have had to adapt to the realities of life in the modern world. Religious reform is a necessity that has been delayed too long and its absence has hampered the translation into practice of those qualities for which Islam had excelled for so many centuries, namely flexibility and the ability to accommodate to different times and eras. Still, as important as the ideological battle is, the political battle remains equally important both at home, in our countries where the circumstances of minorities create an environment conducive to extremism, and abroad, where it is in no one's interest for Islam to succeed Nazism, fascism and communism as the enemy of all other countries of the world. So far, IS has succeeded in the task of uniting countries, international blocs and coalitions against it. However, managing all these alliances requires considerable acumen, patience and mature strategic thinking. Developments in the next few months will be crucial in determining the fate of IS. However, victory will not mean that the war has been won. It will take other battles to reorder conditions in the Arab east and we will encounter more dangerous battles engendered by other forms of IS-style violence. All this will require special forces equipped and trained for the purpose, strategic thinkers with talent for dealing with a threat of a new form, and international coalitions with the appropriate level of awareness and ability to set priorities and engage in a long-term battle. It will also demand a lot of patience! The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
