ISISU.K. details strategy to defeat ISIS, remove Assad, rebuild and stabilize Syria

Published 27 November 2015

The U.K. government on Thursday released a 36-page dossier offering detailed arguments why it would be militarily, legally, and morally right for Britain to join the U.S.-led coalition in attacking ISIS targets in Syria. The document was released ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech at the House of Commons in which he called on all House members to vote for allowing the campaign. Cameroon said that ISIS posed a “very direct threat to our country and our way of life” and that inaction by the United Kingdom posed even greater risks for the country.

The U.K. government on Thursday released a 36-page dossieroffering detailed arguments why it would be militarily, legally, and morally right for Britain to join the U.S.-led coalition in attacking ISIS targets in Syria.

The document was released ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech at the House of Commons in which he called on all House members to vote for allowing the campaign.

Cameroon said that ISIS posed a “very direct threat to our country and our way of life” and that inaction by the United Kingdom posed even greater risks for the country.

Cameroon noted that Britain was already participating in the coalition’s attacks on ISIS in Iraq, and these attacks have, over the past few months, reduced the territory under ISIA control by about 30 percent.

“If we won’t act now, when our friend and ally France has been struck in this way, then our friends and allies can be forgiven for asking: If not now, when?” Cameron said.

Here are the main arguments offered in the dossier, as summarized by the Independentand the Telegraph.

The threat
ISIS already poses the “one of the greatest threats to our security,” the dossier said, and bombing ISIS targets in Syria will not increase the risk to the United Kingdom because the country is already in the “top tier” of ISIS targets.

The Islamist terror group should be hit in its headquarters in Raqqa because this is where the plots for the main attacks by the group’s followers are “planned and orchestrated.”

ISIS must be denied a safe haven because “the longer ISIL is allowed to grow in Syria the greater the threat it will pose.”

The terrorist organization has a “dedicated external operations structure in Syria which is planning mass casualty attacks around the world,” the dossier said.

ISIS had been behind forty successful terror attacks around the world in the last year, including the murder of thirty British citizens in Tunisia in June.

The British police and MI5 have foiled seven ISIS plots in the United Kingdom in the last twelve months, but of the 800 British jihadists who have travelled to Syria, around half have returned home.

ISIS lures and radicalizes young people online urging them to carry out attacks in the United Kingdom.