BICOM

On Friday, 4 December, BICOM hosted a conference call for journalists with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council, a post he held from 2004 to 2006, who also served in the Israel Defense Forces for 33 years, heading the Strategic Planning Branch at the end of his career. The briefing to discuss how the UK can defeat ISIS. Below is an edited transcript.

I will give you my short assessment of the situation. I think that certain things are still not being done. The West is too relaxed. It won’t take the necessary measures. I will try to point out what these measures should be.

From a purely military point of view, ISIS is very weak. They do not have an air-force, long-range missiles, or sophisticated weapons. But ISIS is also a very dangerous organisation, not only because of their totalitarian ideology but because they speak to the hearts and the minds of so many Muslims, not only in Iraq and Syria but in many other countries, especially in the West. They will not hesitate to take any possible measure to cause damage. So far they have used only relatively simple, conventional weapons. But if they acquire unconventional weapons, especially chemical weapons or biological weapons, they will be happy to use them. This is something that we cannot exclude. ISIS will also try to cause problems through the use of cyber-terrorism, to cause the collapse of infrastructure. I would suggest not to under-estimate their strengths.

So, what has been missing from the fight against ISIS?

First, we need better cooperation between the West and Russia with regard to ISIS. I know there are conflicting interests here, especially when we speak about Syria, but I think the priority should be clear. It is important to the international community to defeat ISIS and later to discuss all other controversial matters.

At least give the Russians some credit. They identified the possibility of an Islamic caliphate about 12 years ago. They spoke about that very clearly and explicitly. The vacuum that was created in Iraq after the not-very-successful war in 2003 would, they warned, lead eventually to the creation of such an Islamic state. I think that they were not wrong. I do not really understand why the West is not cooperating with them against a common enemy.

Second, while Turkey is a distinguished member of NATO, it is operating against the interests of NATO. Let’s be very clear. Turkey is assisting ISIS directly and indirectly, and in this regard the Russians are 100 per cent correct. I think that the time has come for a very clear message to be sent from the other NATO members to Turkey. That is also missing right now.

Third, the Kurds are actually the forces ready to fight ISIS on the ground. It is very hard for them because they are poorly equipped. The Turks interrupt some of the ways in which the Kurds can be supplied and resupplied. The international community does not want to put boots on the ground, not Western forces, so it really needs to give the necessary support to the Kurds.

Fourth, in order to be effective against an enemy like ISIS, there has to be a major coordinated intelligence effort and that also has been missing thus far. The intelligence efforts so far have been very sporadic and not well-organised. Intelligence is not being translated in real-time into actionable intelligence. To beat ISIS we have to create an advanced intelligence centre that will be able to produce real-time targets that can be sent to airplanes and UAVs in minutes. I’m not impressed by the sorties that are being carried out by the Americans, the British, the French, the Dutch, whoever. It can only be effective when it is based on real-time intelligence. An effort has not been made so far to create that strong intelligence centre that can create the necessary targets in real-time.

Fifth, it is amazing that so far there is no clear UN resolution that makes clear that any state, company or individual that trades with ISIS will face very painful sanctions. This is such a simple decision that I am sure would receive support from all the relevant parties, especially the Russians.

Sixth, we must fight a media war. ISIS manages to reach thousands of potential supporters in the west by using social networks. I’m not sure who is fighting back against that. We should shut down some of their sites, and make sure that neither YouTube nor anyone else post their terrible pictures and horrible videos. We should also engage in the battle of ideas: speaking to Muslims, presenting not only the case that the West is right and ISIS is wrong, but also telling all the bad stories that can be told about these people, who are extremely cruel on the one hand, but extremely corrupt on the other. That should be exposed. And of course there is a lot of information and intelligence that can be gathered, but in order to do that you have to recruit a lot of Muslims who would be ready to work for the Western agencies. So far I do not see this being done.

In conclusion, the bottom line is that the international community has not yet developed a clear strategy. It is not ready to carry out the necessary measures. I emphasise that I don’t think that these measures at this point should include deploying boots on the ground. It should include the activities that I’ve said are relatively simple, relatively inexpensive, and not hugely risky. Yet for some reason we see a kind of a weakness. It is really hard for me to understand why this is the situation. I would expect the leading Western countries to take a much more pro-active approach and much stronger measures against an enemy that is actually is the enemy of the civilised world.

This is my assessment of what is needed to defeat this enemy.

Question: What is needed to get better real-time intelligence?

Eiland: Look, about six months ago ISIS managed to conquer the city of Ramadi in Iraq. Ramadi is a big city and it’s a strategic point on the main road between Baghdad and Amman in Jordan and sits on the bank of the biggest river in Iraq. The city was conquered on a Sunday, during the day time, when hundreds of Toyota vehicles brought hundreds of ISIS fighters from the north to this city across open ground. It took them a few hours to arrive in the city. It is amazing that no one at this time knew about this activity. What could be better prey for UAVs?

Two things were missing: intelligence and operational procedure. There are four different sources of intelligence. Vision intelligence is gathered by cameras, from satellites, UAVs which fly 24 hours a day, or other cameras. Signal intelligence is the ability to locate, intercept and listen to communications: pagers, texts, mobile phones, and so on. Human intelligence is gained by recruiting people who will work for you. There are systems that enable you to recruit the right people who will give the right information. They don’t necessarily have to be people who belong to ISIS. They could be ordinary people who live in cities like Raqqa or Mosul who can inform. And there is the internet, which gives you a huge variety of intelligence which I cannot go into right now. However, in order to be effective you have to create one big centre that can receive and use all this intelligence and then translate it to targets that can be attacked in minutes.

In order to make intelligence actionable we need the right operational procedure. You cannot take 24 hours before making a decision. UAVs must in the air, and the Western countries can put UAVs in the air 24/7, it is very inexpensive in relative terms. That gets you information in real time and targets that can be attacked in minutes or even seconds from the moment the information is available. That mechanism is missing right now. I know that this is the main role of the Americans, but international cooperation can be very helpful. I cannot see that cooperation so far.

Question: David Cameron has cited the figure of 70 000 rebel fighters who can fight ISIS. Is that a fantasy figure? If not what are the practical challenges that force will face.

Eiland: I didn’t hear what he said and I’m not sure about the figure. He probably knows what he’s talking about. On the ground you have different Kurdish militias, some of them operate in Iraq, and some of them operate in Syria. You don’t necessarily need many other kind of rebels, especially in Syria where the rebels suffer from conflicting interests; some of them are against ISIS, but at the same time are against Bashar al-Assad. The most reliable partners are the Kurds, but I don’t think that the international community has yet made a clear statement that everybody should support the Kurds in their battle. If I were a decision maker in the West the very first thing that I would do would be to give the Kurds all necessary assistance. They are the most loyal and committed forces fighting against ISIS, and that is not because they want to serve the West but because they want to save their own lives I’m not sure that the Iraqi forces could be a real solution. I cannot count on all other groups of rebels in Syria, their loyalty is under a big question mark.

Question: The Kurds are not too far from Raqqa. There have been discussions with some of their leaders to push on toward Raqqa, but they’ve been reluctant. They don’t see it as their territory to protect.

Eiland: I’m not sure that the most important target for the Kurds right now is Raqqa, which is quite an ambitious objective. The Kurds complain not only about the lack of military support and equipment but also the absence of real coordination of their manoeuvres on the ground and the air support that can be given to them.

I believe that if there are Western advisors stationed with the Kurds able to coordinate the air support, so that whenever they carry out some kind of ground assault it will enjoy a full and close air support, that would be very helpful, but so far there is no connection whatsoever between the way that they carry out their ground operation and the sporadic air strikes that are carried out even there by the other Western forces.

Question: I’m frankly astonished to hear that you don’t think that all of the types of intelligence – visual, signal, human and internet – are being used as effectively as they might be. What makes you think that the Western powers are failing in that area?

Eiland: For three kinds of reasons. First, I spoke with some people, I cannot say more about that. I spoke with some who are American, some who are Israelis, from the agencies. Second, I just described Ramadi. That attack was carried out by ISIS successfully without interruption, despite lasting a few hours during the day, in an open area. It was not even interrupted by the West, and that reflects a complete failure of intelligence, so I don’t need other sources to state with confidence that this is my conclusion. Third, I do know what has to be done in order to have an effective intelligence capability. As I said, it requires certain measures that I believe the Western countries are still reluctant to take.

We suffered a wave of terrorist attacks in Israel about 10 years ago. It was not the first wave, but it was a very challenging situation. We knew that to intercept the terrorists who carried out dozens of suicide attacks inside Israel at that time, we had to do two things. I believe both are missing today in the response to ISIS. First, we made a real effort to recruit people who would work for us. It is a terribly dirty world. You recruit people not because they want to help you but because you take advantage of the weaknesses of people; you know certain things about them and because of the embarrassment it might cost them, because of the price they might pay, you manipulate them to work for you. It is a dirty world, but it is justified because it can save a lot of lives.

Question: It is the sort of thing that the British did in Northern Ireland.

Eiland: I don’t know how it was done there. Western intelligence agencies tend to be very passive. They tend to wait until the information is known. Intelligence is based on being pro-active. You make potential targets do something. You manipulate their family members, and other people. You create a chain reaction that will expose them. It is a dirty world but it is essential. It’s something which is missing from the culture of the Western intelligence agencies right now. The second thing is what we call signal intelligence, along with internet activities. But to create effective signal intelligence, it is not a matter of locating your sources today and they are effective tomorrow. It takes years before you manage to create a map in which you can monitor and observe every potential telephone, or every potential laptop, or every potential computer, or whatever.

Question: The British government declared yesterday that the first airstrikes were really effective and they hit, I think some oil supply lines.

Eiland: You have reminded me of something that I should have said in my opening remarks. 70 per cent of ISIS’s income comes from oil. They possess many oil fields both in Syria and Iraq. So far the West has not bombed them because the West does not want to create any environmental problems and because everybody believes that the good guys will one day enjoy this oil. But we have to understand this is war.

In the Second World War you first destroyed the economic infrastructure of the enemy. You rebuild it after the victory. The very same thing has to happen now. It is not enough that two aircraft bomb something. We should fly hundreds of sorties every day and bring the complete destruction of oil fields. After ISIS is defeated, of course it will have to be rebuilt, but you have to understand that you cannot defeat ISIS by practically symbolic airstrikes. It has to be something that means within a few days ISIS loses 70 per cent of their income. This is essential and it should have begun two years ago. I don’t understand why it was not.

Question: You said it was quite clear Turkey was operating against NATO interests and it is assisting ISIS. Can you say more?

Eiland: Yes. First, they are actually fighting the Kurds, preventing assistance to the only friendly forces that fight ISIS on the ground. That has to change. Second, as I already said, they buy oil from ISIS. When Putin says that, he is right. Three, how do all those volunteers from the UK and France and elsewhere manage to reach ISIS in Syria or in Iraq? They do it via Turkey. Do the Turks do whatever they can to prevent this flow of people? The answer, of course, is no. Four, look at the interception of the Russian aircraft. I’m speaking now as a military person. When I observed all the information, including the information released by the Turks, it was clear to me that it was a calculated ambush. It was not that they were afraid that the Russians were violating their airspace. The Russians patrol along the border; they do not go into Turkey but along the border. There is a piece of land where the map has a sudden curve to the south and the Russian aircraft simply crossed this little enclave, posing no threat to the Turkish territories whatsoever. They probably put their F16 in the air waiting for something like this to happen. They were looking for it. This creates unnecessary tension between NATO and Russia which does not serve the interests of the West.