Winning 'Hearts and Minds' Won't Eliminate ISIS

Mitchell Blatt, Sumantra Maitra

Security, Middle East

The liberation of Mosul is not something to be proud of just yet.

Predictably, there have been incidents of alleged abuses in the aftermath of Iraqi forces defeating ISIS in Mosul. Victorious troops were recorded throwing ISIS fighters from rooftops and shooting at unarmed ISIS fighters in targeted-killing sprees. After retaking the last strongholds of the city that had been the de facto capital of ISIS’s Iraqi territory for the past three years, Iraqis were understandably happy and caught up in excesses. “In the final weeks of the battle for west Mosul, the pervasive attitude that I have observed among armed forces has been of momentum, the desire to get the battle wrapped up as quickly as possible, and a collapse of adherences to the laws of war,” Belkis Wille, Iraqi researcher for Human Rights Watch, was quoted telling the BBC.

The veracity of footage of alleged extrajudicial executions is unconfirmed. Both Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition have promised to examine the footage and take actions. Human Rights Watch also complained that Iraqi forces are moving women and children with ties to ISIS to camps for rehabilitation.

This is a paradox of Western counterinsurgency operations, and has been a topic of discussion and debate in the West. For the last twenty years, the standard process of Western counterinsurgency has been a hearts-and-minds strategy based in human rights. If anything has been proven, it is the failure of that approach.

Recently, a female Arab journalist managed to speak to families of ISIS members, including those who fled to Syria from as far as China and Indonesia. The replies were startling. First of all, not a single family member showed any sign of remorse. Some male family members didn’t even look the journalist in the eye. One relative said that ISIS tricked them into joining. Another espoused the conspiracy theory that it was all a grand Western plan to gather Muslims from around the world in the Middle East where they could be exterminated—by other Muslims.