Last year was a 'red year' – massacres and beheadings, fallen cities, collapsed and collapsing states, the unravelling of a decade of foreign policy and military strategy.
We saw the rise of ISIS, the splintering of what seemed a viable government in Iraq, and foreign fighters—many from Europe, Australia and Africa— flowing into Syria at a rate ten to twelve times that during the height of the Second Iraq War. In David Kilcullen's words, 'What the hell happened?'
In this essential essay he calls on twenty-five years' experience, as a student, researcher and occasional practitioner of guerrilla warfare and counterterrorism, in an effort to answer that question. He draws on new interviews with war-affected communities and combatants, and data from his own research and that of others.
He seeks to make sense of today's crisis within a broader strategic and historical context, and to answer questions such as: What are the roots and causes of the global jihad movement? What is ISIS? Where did it come from? What threats does it pose to Australia? What does the current chaos in the international environment say about the effectiveness of Western counterterrorism strategy since 9/11, and what might a coherent future strategy look like?
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