Dear warmongers:

You are sleepwalking towards a war in the Middle East that could set the whole world ablaze. Do not pretend you don’t know this.

Your generals know it. Your intelligence agencies know it. Financial markets know it. Every citizen with a memory longer than a news cycle can feel it in their bones.

• READ MORE: Iran warns retaliation to US attack will not be limited
• Other Richard David Hames reports
• Other Iran reports

This is an open letter from a species that wishes to survive. I will be blunt.

1. Halt all preparations for a war of choice against Iran or any other state in the region. Freeze strike planning. Pull back offensive deployments. If you really have evidence of an imminent threat, present it to independent, technically competent, international scrutiny. If you will not do that, the world is entitled to assume this is a manufactured crisis.

2. Put in place binding, monitored arrangements to stop accidents turning into cataclysms: naval and air incident protocols, hotlines that actually work, rules of engagement that favour restraint, not bravado. If you cannot even agree to that, you are not avoiding war — you are courting it.

3. Stop playing God with other people’s governments. Regime‑change schemes — whether by bombing, sanctions that strangle civilians, or covert destabilisation — have left a trail of wrecked societies across the Middle East and beyond. You know the record. You just refuse to learn from it.

4. If you possess nuclear weapons, stop using them as toys for your vanity. Commit — publicly, in law — to never being the first to use them. Make it clear that any nuclear use by anyone, anywhere, will be treated as an unforgivable crime. If you cannot do even that, your talk of “values” is a sick joke.

5. Choke off the money pipeline that keeps this war machine humming: end the revolving door between government and arms manufacturers, subject major arms sales to real global oversight, and stop treating conflict as a business model. As long as war pays, someone will always be lobbying for it.

6. Admit that your own house is not in order. Societies riven by inequality, corruption and polarisation are more prone to lash out abroad. Fix the rot at home instead of reaching for foreign enemies to distract your populations.

7. Above all, drop the delusion that domination is leadership. Real leadership today is the courage to restrain your own power when using it would shatter the fragile systems that keep all of us alive.

You are not emperors. You are temporary stewards of a civilisation perched on the edge of multiple tipping points, and you’re not any good at that either.

If you drag us into yet another avoidable war, with nuclear forces in the background, you are gambling with everything that breathes.

So here it is, without poetry or excuse:

Step back from your stupidity. Submit your claims to scrutiny. Rein in your war machines. Protect those who speak truth. Treat nuclear weapons as the abomination they are. Stop feeding the economy of perpetual conflict.

If you cannot do that, then you only have the right to call yourselves fools.

Richard David Hames is an Australian philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and futurist, and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

This week the Five Eyes alliance — an intelligence alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States — announced its investigation into a China-backed threat targeting US infrastructure.

Using stealth techniques, the attacker — referred to as “Volt Typhoon” — exploited existing resources in compromised networks in a technique called “living off the land”.

Microsoft made a concurrent announcement, stating the attackers’ targeting of Guam was telling of China’s plans to potentially disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the US and Asia region in the future.

• READ MORE: Deterring China isn’t all about submarines. Australia’s ‘cyber offence’ might be its most potent weapon

This comes hot on the heels of news in April of a North Korean supply chain attack on Asia-Pacific telecommunications provider 3CX. In this case, hackers gained access to an employee’s computer using a compromised desktop app for Windows and a compromised signed software installation package.

The Volt Typhoon announcement has led to a rare admission by the US National Security Agency that Australia and other Five Eyes partners are engaged in a targeted search and detection scheme to uncover China’s clandestine cyber operations.

Such public admissions from the Five Eyes alliance are few and far between. Behind the curtain, however, this network is persistently engaged in trying to take down foreign adversaries. And it’s no easy feat.

Let’s take a look at the events leading up to Volt Typhoon — and more broadly at how this secretive transnational alliance operates.

Uncovering Volt Typhoon
Volt Typhoon is an “advanced persistent threat group” that has been active since at least mid-2021. It’s believed to be sponsored by the Chinese government and is targeting critical infrastructure organisations in the US.

The group has focused much of its efforts on Guam. Located in the Western Pacific, this US island territory is home to a significant and growing US military presence, including the air force, a contingent of the marines, and the US navy’s nuclear-capable submarines.

It’s likely the Volt Typhoon attackers intended to gain access to networks connected to US critical infrastructure to disrupt communications, command and control systems, and maintain a persistent presence on the networks.

Volt Typhoon is the name Microsoft and the Five Eyes intelligence agencies have given a Chinese state sponsored hacking group, which they say installed a mysterious code in Guam’s telecommunications systems. https://t.co/xEwith7ZmM

— RN Breakfast (@RNBreakfast) May 25, 2023

The latter tactic would allow China to influence operations during a potential conflict in the South China Sea.

Australia wasn’t directly impacted by Volt Typhoon, according to official statements. Nevertheless, it would be a primary target for similar operations in the event of conflict.

As for how Volt Typhoon was caught, this hasn’t been disclosed. But Microsoft documents highlight previous observations of the threat actor attempting to dump credentials and stolen data from the victim organisation. It’s likely this led to the discovery of compromised networks and devices.

Living-off-the-land
The hackers initially gained access to networks through internet-facing Fortinet FortiGuard devices, such as routers. Once inside, they employed a technique called “living-off-the-land”.

This is when attackers rely on using the resources already contained within the exploited system, rather than bringing in external tools. For example, they will typically use applications such as PowerShell (a Microsoft management programme) and Windows Management Instrumentation to access data and network functions.

By using internal resources, attackers can bypass safeguards that alert organisations to unauthorised access to their networks. Since no malicious software is used, they appear as a legitimate user.

As such, living-off-the-land allows for lateral movement within the network, and provides opportunity for a persistent, long-term attack.

The simultaneous announcements from the Five Eyes partners points to the seriousness of the Volt Typhoon compromise. It will likely serve as a warning to other nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Who are the Five Eyes?
Formed in 1955, the Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence-sharing partnership comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

The alliance was formed after World War II to counter the potential influence of the Soviet Union. It has a specific focus on signals intelligence. This involves intercepting and analysing signals such as radio, satellite and internet communications.

The members share information and access to their respective signals intelligence agencies, and collaborate to collect and analyse vast amounts of global communications data. A Five Eyes operation might also include intelligence provided by non-member nations and the private sector.

Recently, the member countries expressed concern about China’s de facto military control over the South China Sea, its suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, and threatening moves towards Taiwan.

The latest public announcement of China’s cyber operations no doubt serves as a warning that Western nations are paying strict attention to their critical infrastructure — and can respond to China’s digital aggression.

In 2019, Australia was targeted by Chinese state-backed threat actors gaining unauthorised access to Parliament House’s computer network. Indeed, there is evidence that China is engaged in a concerted effort to target Australia’s public and private networks.

The Five Eyes alliance may well be one of the only deterrents we have against long-term, persistent attacks against our critical infrastructure.

Dennis B. Desmond is a lecturer, Cyberintelligence and Cybercrime Investigations, University of the Sunshine Coast. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A year on from the fall of Kabul, Australian reporter Lynne O’Donnell returned to Afghanistan — and now says she’ll never go back.

O’Donnell returned for three days last month, only to be detained, forced to retract articles, and coerced into making a public apology for accusing the Taliban of sex slavery.

During this harrowing time, she was in close contact with Massoud Hossain, a Kabul-born photojournalist.

• READ MORE: Lynne O’Donnell: Taliban detained, abused and threatened me
• Afghanistan, the Taliban and the liberation narrative: Why it is so vital to be telling our own stories — Pacific Journalism Review
• LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNINGS: Lynne O’Donnell and Massoud Hossain describe their ordeal
• See a gallery of Massoud Hossain’s images

The pair have worked together in Afghanistan for years, and both are on a Taliban death list.

Hossain is currently based in New Zealand, where he has been given asylum.

O’Donnell is a Foreign Policy columnist and was Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) between 2009-2017.

Hossaini is a Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist who joined AFP in 2007. In 2021 he won the William Randolph Hearst Award for Excellence in Professional Journalism.

They talk to RNZ broadcaster Kim Hill on their experiences and how they see the future for Afghanistan.

O’Donnell’s introduction to her Foreign Policy report on July 20:

“I returned to Afghanistan this week, almost one year after the withdrawal of the US military cleared the way for the Taliban’s victory. I wanted to see for myself what had become of the country since I flew out of Kabul on August 15, 2021, hours before the Islamists began what many residents now refer to as a ‘reign of terror’…

“I left Afghanistan today after three days of cat-and-mouse with Taliban intelligence agents, who detained, abused, and threatened me and forced me to issue a barely literate retraction of reports they said had broken their laws and offended Afghan culture. If I did not, they said, they’d send me to jail.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

Armed violence has escalated in Puncak Regency in the “land of Papua” – known internationally as West Papua – following President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s order to crack down on the rebels seeking independence, reports the Papuan newspaper Jubi.

Widodo ordered the capture of all members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) while the Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker in Jakarta, Bambang Soesatyo, demanded that the government “talk about human rights later” after totally “exterminating” the TPNPB.

“I demand that the government deploy the security forces at full force to exterminate the armed criminal groups (KKP) in Papua which has taken lives. Just eradicate them. Let’s talk about human rights later,” Soesatyo told CNN Indonesia on Monday.

• READ MORE: Indonesian intelligence chief in Papua killed in crossfire
• Papuan leader Benny Wenda responds to Jokowi’s crackdown order

Soesatyo, who last year proposed that 9mm pistols be made legally available to certified gun owners for “self-defence”, also asked the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) to declare the group a terrorist organisation.

The human rights watchdog Setara Institute deemed the politician’s statement would only trigger a spiral of violence and add to the complexity of the Papua conflict, resulting in more casualties.

“Numerous cases of fatal shootings, which have claimed the lives of people, mostly civilians, has shown that the security approach is not the answer to the problem in Papua,” Setara Institute deputy Bonar Tigor Naipospos said in a statement.

Naipospos criticised Soesatyo’s suggestion to brush human rights aside, saying such rights as stipulated in Article 28i of the Constitution, could not be reduced by anyone, in including in war and emergencies.

Stop branding rebels ‘terrorist’
Secretary of Papua Pegunungan Tengah Student Association (AMPTPI) Ikem Wetipo asked the government to stop calling the TPNPB a “terrorist” group or calling for their “killing”, as in Soesatyo’s comment, which justified human rights violations in West Papua.

“Stop making reckless statements, [such as from] the MPR speaker and the President about capturing, eradicating the TPNPB. It means that the state justifies casualties in the process of pursuing the group,” Wetipo said.

Armed conflict has been escalating in Puncak Regency since April 8, 2021, when the TPNPB shot dead Oktavianus Rayo, a teacher in Beoga District suspected by the group as an Indonesian spy.

Since then, five people have died including the intelligence chief in Papua, Major General Anumerta IGP Danny NK, who was killed in crossfire last Sunday. The TPNPB was also accused of burning schools in Beoga.

A Jubi source was told that the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police were seen pursuing the TPNPB troops in North Ilaga District since Tuesday at 9 am local time.

“We saw the security forces in three helicopters, [flying over] in Misimaga, Efesus, and Tegelobak Village. The helicopter landed at the Mayuberi creek, [then flew and] has not returned. Whether [the helicopter] has gone to Sinak or Beoga, we don’t know,” he said.

At 5 pm, firefights broke out between the TPNPB led by Lekagak Telenggen and the TNI and police in Makki, Misimaga, Efesus, and Tegelobak Village. The security forces also reportedly bombarded the villages, prompting villagers to evacuate to churches, forests, and nearby villages such as Tanah Merah and Gome.

No civilian casualties
There were no reports of civilian casualties reported by yesterday.

However, two Mobile Brigade (Brimob) personnel were wounded and one died in the crossfire, Papua Police spokesperson Senior Commander Ahmad Musthofa Kamal confirmed.

The wounded policemen are Second Insp. Anton Tonapa who was reportedly shot in the back and Chief Brigadier M Syaifudin, shot in the stomach. Meanwhile, Second Agent Komang died of a gunshot wound.

All wounded military personnel have been evacuated to Mimika General Hospital.

Meanwhile, TPNPB commander Egianus Kogeya claimed his party had shot dead three TNI members in Nduga Regency on Monday, who Kogeya accused of burning five houses in Alguru District.

TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom, responded to Jokowi’s order and Soesatyo’s statement, saying the group would never back down in the face of the Indonesian government’s military operations.

“TPNPB is ready,” Sambom told Jubi.

“We are standing on our own land. Indonesia with the TNI and police are the thieves coming to steal our natural resources while killing us,” he said.

Sambom urged the Indonesian government to act in a “democratic” way and send a negotiator, instead of security forces, to meet with the TPNPB.

“We warn President Jokowi not to sacrifice any more [Indonesian] soldiers. President Jokowi must be open to negotiations with TPNPB’s negotiators,” he said.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has unreservedly condemned the Australian federal police raid yesterday on a News Corp journalist’s home in the capital of Canberra.

Intimidation of this kind poses a grave threat to journalists’ independence and to respect for the confidentiality of their sources, RSF warned.

READ MORE: MEAA protests over police raid on Canberra journalist’s home

The target of the raid, the kind of surprise visit every journalist could do without, was Annika Smethurst, political editor of News Corp’s Sunday newspapers, including The Sunday Telegraph.

Armed with a warrant issued by a Canberra magistrate for an investigation into “alleged publishing of information classified as an official secret”, the police searched her home and seized her computer, her mobile phone and printed documents.

The raid was prompted by a story published in April 2018 revealing that the departments of defence and home affairs were considering extending their powers so that they could order the intelligence agencies to spy on the emails, text messages and bank accounts of any Australian citizen.

Intimidation
“National security cannot be used as grounds for violating press freedom in a story that is so manifestly in the public interest,” said Daniel Bastard, head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.
“This search warrant is clearly an attempt to intimidate reporters who want to investigate subjects that could embarrass the government.

“And it poses an unacceptable threat to respect for the confidentiality of their sources. We call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government to stop harassing journalists.”

After today’s raid, Ben Fordham, a presenter on the Sydney radio station 2GB and a contributor to Sky News, revealed that he is being investigated by the Department of Home Affairs in connection with his story on Monday about six asylum-seeker boats that are bound for Australia.

Australia is ranked 21st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index, after falling two places this year.

Phillip Knightley, the investigative reporter who has died aged 87, was a wonderful storyteller. Once he told my students at City University (where I was a journalism lecturer from 1984 to 2003) how, when he was a rookie reporter in the late 1940s on a suburban Australian rag, the news appeared to have dried up for the next edition so his editor asked him to invent a story.

Phillip promptly wrote a “report” about a man (he dubbed him “the hook man”) who terrorised women on the local buses by lifting up their skirts with a clothes peg. So the front page splash headline: “‘Hook man’ terrorises women on the buses” duly appeared on the Friday.

Not surprisingly, Phillip worried about the response of the local cops to his invented “exclusive”. Monday passed without any call from the cops.

Then on Tuesday, he received a call from the local police station. “Is that Knightley?” the cop asked abruptly. “Yes,” he responded nervously. “Well,” the cop continued, “you know that ‘hook man’ – we’ve caught him!”

In every respect, that was a typical Phillip story: extremely funny – but was it true or false: fact or fiction? In reality, the story as well as being extremely entertaining was a device to encourage his audience to be sceptical.

Indeed, Knightley was for me the supreme journo: always sceptical, fiercely intelligent, courageous, witty, highly sociable, politically astute – as well as being a brilliant writer and storyteller.

Vast achievements
His achievements in journalism and publishing were vast: major roles in The Sunday Times’s investigations into the thalidomide scandal and Kim Philby, the British intelligence chief exposed as a Soviet spy; twice awarded the Journalist of the Year award; closely involved in the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – and so on.

But his contribution to the development of journalism education in this country was substantial too. His major texts (The First Casualty, his seminal history of war reporting; The Second Oldest Profession, on spying, and his autobiography, A Hack’s Progress) are essential reading for all journalism students.

They capture the best elements of journalism: original, clear writing, the synthesis of a vast amount of often complex information, a political awareness, an immediacy; a sense of history and a fascination with the complexities of human nature.

As he wrote at the end of A Hack’s Progress: “So my advice for the new generation of journalists is to ignore the accountants, the proprietors and the conventional editors and get on with it. And your assignment is the same as mine has been – the world and the millions of fascinating people who inhabit it.’

Moreover, Phillip clearly enjoyed the contact with students and his appearances at City University and more recently at the University of Lincoln (after I became a professor there in 2003 and where Phillip was appointed a Visiting Professor) always drew big, appreciative crowds.

He was also inspirational in smaller, workshop settings, forever keen to share his knowledge of investigative techniques and his spin on various tricky ethical/political dilemmas. For instance, intriguingly, he never had a bad word to say about cheque-book journalism.

Phillip spent a lot of his career writing on the intelligence services – but he was never seduced by the lure of the secret world and very critical of the hacks who got too close to the spooks. As he wrote: “…although journalism is riddled with people working for intelligence services, I would stay clear of the game.”

In his autobiography, he concluded wryly: “The main threat to an intelligence agent comes not from the security service in the country against which he is operating but from his own centre, his own people.”

Highly managed operation
And he bravely revealed that the Philby scoop was, in fact, a highly managed operation. The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) “knew beforehand what we were about to publish each week. The editor-in-chief of The Sunday Times, Denis Hamilton, had come to an agreement with the service.” So much for intrepid investigative reporting!

Phillip was also an activist journalist. For instance, in 1999, I organised a meeting at the Freedom Forum in London protesting at Fleet Street’s coverage of the Nato attacks on Serbia and Phillip immediately agreed to speak on a panel.

At international forums and in media articles (in both the prestigious press and alternative, progressive journals), he constantly criticised government and military moves to censor and sanitise the reporting of war – and journalists’ failure to confront the secret state effectively.

As he reflected: “I know now that the influence journalists can exercise is limited and that what we achieve is not always what we intended. It is the fight that counts.”

Richard Lance Keeble is joint editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. This obituary was first published on the Ethical Space blog. Knightley’s journalism career began in Fiji.

• Journalist behind some of The Sunday Times‘ greatest investigations – The Guardian
• Pacific Journalism Review of A Hack’s Progress about Knightley’s Fiji connection

The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) are being handed more powers by the New Zealand government, and given legal backing for spying on New Zealanders — in spite of yet another example of their wrongdoings being exposed this week.

It has been revealed by The Intercept and Television New Zealand that in 2012 the two agencies harassed and persecuted a New Zealander, Tony Fullman, whose only activity had been expressing negative opinions about the post-2006 coup military backed Fiji government.

This new episode is just another example of a long line of repressive actions against New Zealand citizens who pose absolutely no threat to this country whatsoever – the cases of David Small, Aziz Choudry, Ahmed Zaoui and Kim Dotcom are good examples of citizens or residents who suffered from mistaken and/or illegal surveillance by the spies.

And the total number of “terrorists” uncovered and brought to justice numbers exactly zero.

New government legislation is based on the Cullen-Reddy Report which recommended extending the powers of the spies and instituting a more rigorous warrant system.

However, past experience shows “oversight” always fails; in 2014 the GCSB could not properly give account of the number of warrants it was operating, and Sir Michael Cullen himself, when he was a senior minister in the 1999-2008 Labour government, lied to the country about spying on New Zealanders when he presided over a warrant system that failed.

In the unlikely event that warrants are properly constituted the evidence above suggests they are likely to be used to make innocent people suffer.

The GCSB and the SIS have demonstrated incompetence and victimisation over many years.

It is not the time to give them greater powers but is the time to close them down completely.

Close down the GCSB and its Waihopai spy base and pull out of the Five Eyes system.

Close down the SIS and transfer its functions to the Police who (theoretically at least) have to justify their actions in a court of law.

Murray Horton is organiser of the Anti-Bases Campaign in Christchurch, New Zealand.

• Special investigation: Inside one of the SIS’s biggest anti-terrorism operations – Television NZ
• The raid: The bungled spy operation – The Intercept
• The Tony Fullman NSA files

One of the “Thumbs up for democracy” in Fiji videos, 3 June 2011. Video: Truth for Fiji

The “war on terror” was supposed to contain violence, but the whole world is a battlefield now.

The promise of the “global war on terror” was that “it was better to fight them there than here.” That promise brought mass violence to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and Somalia — in the name of peace in the West.

That formula has clearly failed. Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels come on the heels of similar incidents in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Istanbul; Beirut; Paris; and Bamako, Mali, all in the last six months. Rather than containing violence, the war on terror turned the whole world into a battlefield.

We should not be surprised. Violence inflicted abroad always comes home in some form. Last year, the U.S. military dropped 22,110 bombs on Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon says these bombs “likely” killed only six civilians, along with “at least” 25,000 Islamic State fighters.

The true number of civilian deaths, though, is likely to be in the thousands as well.

War on terror kills more civilians
Indeed, we know that the war on terror kills more civilians than terrorism does. But we tolerate this because it is “their” civilians being killed in places we imagine to be too far away to matter. There is no social media hashtag to commemorate these deaths; no news channel tells their stories.

Because we pay little attention to the effects of our violence in the places we bomb, it appears that terrorism comes out of the blue. When it does happen, then, the only way we can make sense of it is by laying the blame on Islamic culture.

When opinion polls find that most Muslims think Westerners are selfish, immoral and violent, we have no idea of the real causes. And so we assume such opinions must be an expression of their culture rather than our politics.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have exploited these reactions with their appeals to Islamophobia. But most liberals also assume that religious extremism is the root cause of terrorism.

President Obama, for example, has spoken of “a violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction — a tiny faction — within the Muslim community that is our enemy, and that has to be defeated.”

Based on this assumption, think-tanks, intelligence agencies and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have spent millions of dollars since 9/11 conducting research on radicalisation. They hoped to find a correlation between having extremist religious ideas, however defined, and involvement in terrorism.

In fact, no such correlation exists, as empirical evidence demonstrates — witness the European Islamic State volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of “Islam for Dummies” or the alleged leader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis.

‘Radicalisation’ models
But this has not stopped national security agencies, such as the FBI, from using radicalisation models that assume devout religious beliefs are an indicator of potential terrorism.

The process of radicalication is easily understood if we imagine how we would respond to a foreign government dropping 22,000 bombs on us. Large numbers of patriots would be volunteering to fight the perpetrators. And nationalist and religious ideologies would compete with each other to lead that movement and give its adherents a sense of purpose.

Similarly, the Islamic State does not primarily recruit through theological arguments but through a militarised identity politics. It says there is a global war between the West and Islam, a heroic struggle, with truth and justice on one side and lies, depravity and corruption on the other. It shows images of innocents victimised and battles gloriously waged.

In other words, it recruits in the same way that any other armed group recruits, including the US military.

That means that when we also deploy our own militarised identity politics to narrate our response to terrorism, we inadvertently reinforce the Islamic State’s message to its potential recruits. When British Prime Minister David Cameron talks about a “generational struggle” between Western values and Islamic extremism, he is assisting the militants’ own propaganda.

When French President François Hollande talks of “a war which will be pitiless,” he is doing the same.

Utopian and apocalyptic vision
What is distinctive about the Islamic State’s message is that it also offers a utopian and apocalyptic vision of an alternative society in the making. The reality of that alternative is, of course, oppression of women, enslavement of minorities and hatred of freedom.

But the message works, to some extent, because it claims to be an answer to real problems of poverty, authoritarian regimes and Western aggression. Significantly, it thrives in environments where other radical alternatives to a discredited status quo have been suppressed by government repression.

What’s corrupting the Islamic State’s volunteers is not ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in an era with no alternatives to capitalist globalisation. The organisation has gained support, in part, because the Arab revolutions of 2011 were defeated, in many cases by regimes allied with and funded by the US.

War creates terrorism
After 14 years of the “war on terror,” we are no closer to achieving peace. The fault does not lie with any one administration but with the assumption that war can defeat terrorism. The lesson of the Islamic State is that war creates terrorism.

After all, the organisation was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime — responsible for far more civilian deaths than the Islamic State — and prolonging the war in Syria that enables the militant group to thrive.

Meanwhile, the alliances that we consider crucial to the war on terror have worked in the Islamic State’s favor. The group’s sectarianism and funding have come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the West’s closest regional allies after Israel.

And the groups that have been most effective in fighting the Islamic State — the Kurdish militia — are designated as terrorists by Western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.

The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger.

Paradoxically, we support the very regimes that have enabled the Islamic State’s rise, such as the Saudis, the most reactionary influence in the region.

With our airstrikes, we continue the cycle of violence and reinforce the militants’ narrative of a war by the West against Islam. Then, to top it all off, we turn away the refugees, whom we should be empowering to help transform the region.

If we want to avoid another 14 years of failure, we need to try something else — and first, we need to radically rethink what we’ve been doing.

Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His latest book The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror was published by Verso Books in March 2014. Born and bred in London, he moved to New York in 2010 on a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations and now lives in Harlem. He is the author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year in 2007. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and teaches at New York University. This article first appeared on the Washington Post website.