OPINION:
The Islamic State could be planning to wage guerrilla warfare on European cities, according to a counter-insurgency expert, leading to a terrorist army living and growing in capitals across the continent, destroying the Europe we know today, forever.
AFP reports on comments by David Kilcullen, an Australian army veteran, who became the senior counter-insurgency adviser to U.S. Gen. David Petraeus during the Iraq War. Considered a key architect of the “surge” strategy that helped turn the conflict around, Mr. Kilcullen said, “The Paris attacks showed the Islamic State group (IS) was morphing from a terrorist threat into a ’structured organization’ like the IRA in Ireland or ETA in Spain during the 20th century.”
“It’s early days but I think we are starting to see the emergence of a fairly widespread paramilitary underground movement in Western Europe … This is not like the expeditionary terrorist attacks of Al-Qaeda where they build a team in one country, smuggle them into another country and they all die…The way the Paris attacks went down — with safe houses, stolen cars, weapon caches, guys successfully going underground after attacks — this is a lot closer to the classical definition of urban guerrilla warfare.”
Mr. Kilcullen went on to say that the Western effort currently against the Islamic State is not working and will only allow the threat to grow. He recommends a sustained, aggressive air campaign, 20 or 30 times the amount of sorties that are being flown today.
“I don’t think there’s an alternative,” he continued. “Paris shows us it’s not containable. We’re treating IS like a terrorist organization, trying to target individual leaders and weapons posts. We should be targeting them as an enemy state. That’s what they are. We need be knocking out the power, the water supply, their control of oil fields and refineries, the cities they control.”
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