Ron Smith: Iraq deployment - second thoughts

In a blog I wrote mid-February (‘Fighting Islamist Extremism’), I argued that it was right for us to commit a small New Zealand training force to the war against ISIS.  There was continuing atrocity going on in ISIS-occupied Iraq and, as good international citizens (members of the Security Council, no less) we had an obligation to contribute to an international effort to resist what was, effectively, genocide.  I also spoke of a continuing obligation to traditional allies, although, even then, I expressed doubts about the commitment of some of the leading players.
 
Be that as it may, the fact is that the situation in the region has changed radically in the last six weeks.  To begin with, Iran has now intervened in the fighting in Iraq (around Tikrit), in support of Iraqi regular and irregular (militia) forces.  This throws up a number of questions, particularly since there have been reports of substantial atrocity by the Iraqi/Iranian forces.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Yemen and Islam’s internecine war

Yemeni President Hadi: rebels are ‘stooges of Iran’ – BBC

By regional standards, Saudi Arabia and its allies moved like lightning to intervene in Yemen. Countries outside the Arab League have also pledged to throw in their lot if needed, including Turkey and Pakistan. Compare this burst of energy with the sluggish (or non-existent in some cases) regional response to ISIS. And yet the Islamic State is surely a much greater regional threat than a bunch of renegades grabbing power in one of the world’s poorest, least influential and most shambolic nation-states, hardly worthy of the epithet, occupying the bottom end of the Arabian Peninsula. So why the flurry of activity? What threat do the Houthi pose that ISIS doesn’t?

Ron Smith: Terrorists and Drones

It should have come as no surprise to us that a New Zealander has been killed in a drone attack in Yemen.  I wrote earlier about the citizens of New Zealand, Australia and other western countries joining Islamic fundamentalists in global jihad and possibly getting killed. 

More importantly, I wrote about such individuals coming back, trained and further motivated, to kill persons here, as in the case of the murder of Lee Rigby in London (‘Terrorism, propaganda and war’, June 2013).  We could take comfort from the fact that the individual concerned in this case will not return to carry on jihad.  We might also be gratified that our intelligence services knew where he was and what he was doing and would (hopefully) have alerted the relevant authorities had he returned.