Not too late, still

During a recent TV interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, US President Barack Obama “confessed” that the US intelligence underestimated the dangers of the Islamic State, failed to understand that the “political chaos in Syria over the past several years would create an environment favourable for extremist groups like the Islamic State to thrive”.

Nothing new here.

Whether by design or due to genuine lack of understanding of the situation — difficult to accept from the intelligence services of the greatest world power — the Middle Eastern problems keep on being misunderstood with, as a result, complete chaos and millions dead.

In Syria’s and Iraq’s cases, now, the extremists did not only strive, they “became ground zero for jihadists around the world”, the US president rightly read the situation.

True, failure to correctly assess IS’ proliferation is common to many other countries, including Middle Eastern, and not a US trait alone.

Its price is high and attempts to rectify the situation will be a long and costly endeavour.

Yet, while US intelligence played down the political and security situation in Syria, His Majesty King Abdullah sounded the alarm from the very beginning of the conflict there.

The King’s warnings unfortunately fell on deaf ears in many parts of the world. And now Daesh is out of the bottle, at great cost to Syrians, Iraqis, our region and beyond.

During his own interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes last week, King Abdullah said that action against IS should have commenced a long time ago.

Had the world listened to the King carefully in 2011, the region would not have found itself in the present mess and the ominous advances of IS in Iraq and Syria would not have happened.

At least now many in the world show willingness to act, and, it is hoped, realise that besides the air strikes, there is need for a political solution as well.

That only comes with democracy, fair sharing of power and proportional representation for all citizens, in Syria, in Iraq and everywhere else in the region.

It is hoped that the coalition fighting the IS cancer will score successes, after which, countries will address the reasons for extremism, radicalism and despair, and address them equitably.

Short of permanent democratic political solutions that can withstand the test of time, the countries in the region will continue to be plagued by violence, chaos and death.

They deserve better.