Isis slaughters whole villages if they either fight back or don’t immediately convert to their favored sect. The Taliban attack a school and kill dozens of children. All this seems to be routine with these organizations.
Do they just not care if they engender hatred along with the fear among those they have conquered? Do they think that they can rule people just with fear? Has none of them ever read any history?
I don’t get it. Am I too sanguine in my thinking that, while they may get short-term victories, in the long run you can’t turn everyone into a fanatic and so the vast majority of the people they rule will hate them and turn on them at the first opportunity?
Please give me your perspective on this strategy (if that’s what it is).
“Hearts and minds” kind of thing is a policy suited for either democratic or mildly authoritarian regimes. Not for strictly authoritarian ones. For such regimes, softening the stance in order to win the “hearts and minds” is detrimental and weakening the regime.
Terrorists win by 1) attracting other crazies and 2) getting passivity from everyone else. The passivity may be from fear, exhaustion, lack of resources, whatever. To some extent, they’re even happy when there’s a military backlash, because military invasions help create more crazies.
So they’re not waging a US-style hearts and minds campaign. They’re not hoping for strong diplomatic ties and free trade agreements. It is still a “hearts and minds” campaign though, because that’s the only way they can win. They’re not going to win through military or economic strength because they don’t have either one.
Every movement, regardless of ideology, wants to recruit. “Hearts and Minds” is how somebody follows a cause. Make no mistake. ISIS does not desire war in the long term. They want peace, and this is the important part, they want peace as they define “peace”. " Their idea of a perfect world differs a great deal from yours or mine, but they do believe in it with their hearts and minds.
Yes, but what do they win? Temporary victories, or long-term power?
So it sounds like you don’t think they will win in the long term, since they are not trying to win over the people only to cow them, and they can’t win militarily or economically. What do you see as likely to happen in the next two years or so?
Long term we’re all dead. Look at North Korea - the regime there definitely does not rely on “hearts and minds” support. Pure hard authoritarianism. Complete with arbitrary executions, mass starvation, etc. Has been around more than half a century and still going. Is that long term enough?
True, but extremists like ISIS only wish they had that authoritarian power. They very much need “hearts and minds”. Imagine for a second you had their agenda. How do convince someone to be a suicide bomber without “heart and mind”?
“When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds follow”.
Islam spread by the sword for centuries, as far as Spain in Europe. And they weren’t kicked out of Europe because they were unpopular - the Carolingian kings kicked them out by conquest.
The extremists want the vocal ones on their side, the passive ones silent, and the resisters either dead or cowed.
North Korea relies heavily on hearts and minds, they have a massive propaganda apparatus and get freaked out over global media access by citizens.
Saddam husseins Iraq or the Burmese military junta are better examples of dictators who don’t care about hearts and minds and who rely on fear and passiveness.
Ah, then I guess you and I have a different concept of “hearts and minds”. Mine does not involve heavy propaganda combined with complete disconnect from outside sources.
Sure. Freshly harvested hearts go into this pile, minds into that one.
You know that old joke, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.” They just have to look like the least bad of several alternatives. Whether because the outside is decadent, or due to outright propaganda lies about what goes on in other places.
Yes, they care. The problem is the KINDS of hearts and minds they are trying to win. Those belong to disaffected folk who are dying to lash out at the greater world for making life so shitty for them.
The end result is what matters. Things like are the people allied with the government, do they snitch on insurgents and do they emotionally and philosophically identify with the government and the government’s goals.
Every country uses selective facts (which are a form of propaganda and disconnect from outside media) to achieve this.
Well, giving their fighters plenty of women to own and rape seems to keep them quite loyal. They even issued a pamphlet for the handling of women slaves.
Barbarity not seen on this scale since the Middle Ages. Commanders using using them to sedate their troops goes back before Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great.
This is really what I wanted to say before the edit time out slapped me down.
Commanders using slaves as prizes for their troops goes back before Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great.
ISIS is a bizarre anachronism. Commanders always gave slaves and other captured valuables to the most ruthless and loyal troops. Prizes worth fighting and dying for.
It’s conceivable for terrorists like ISIS to win long-term power. With ISIS in particular, all they need is for the rest of the world to shrug and do nothing and they’ll quite happily keep extorting and bullying the territories they already control. ISIS didn’t come from nowhere and at a certain level, they’re not so different from Mob bosses with protection rackets.
The Khmer Rouge is probably the best example of what I’d expect to see if ISIS was allowed to fester uninterrupted. When they were done killing off the intellectuals, their ruined economy starved half of the remaining people to death, and they never tired of rooting out those disloyal to the cause. The difference is that ISIS seems very outward-focused, unlike the Khmer Rouge. North Korea and Iran also don’t seem all that different to me.
In terms of what I actually expect to see for the next two years… is it really going to be all that different from the last ten years? (Or, for that matter, the last 50?) The problem is that we have a substantial part of the world with ongoing negative economic growth. They are partly propped up at the government level by oil revenues, but they have no national identity and little free marketplace. Loyalties go to the nearest tribe/warlord, and there’s no real way to build up long-term success or life security. We like to think of this problem in terms of national boundaries, but it’s really a problem of demographics. People who are disenfranchised like this don’t see a way forward under the current system. At a certain point of frustration, anything looks better than the status quo.
Remember that they believe 1) that they have god on their side and 2) that their path is the right and only path.
They can win long-term only if they strictly adhere to their beliefs. If winning “hearts and mind” means deviating even a little bit from what they believe is the will of god, then defeat is assured, while if they stay perfectly faithful to it, god will guarantee their success. That’s the only thing that truly matters, and the only way to victory.