The many-layered fight against Daesh

Training anti-Daesh forces in Mafraq is a commendable move that should have been resorted to two years ago.

It is a move that brings to Jordan its natural role as a regional player in the Middle Eastern political arena.

The new volunteers in this force, both Iraqis and Syrians, lack the superior fighting skills that some Daesh fighters acquired in Afghanistan while being trained by the American Green Berets to defeat the Russian occupation soldiers there.

Those skills were passed from the older fighters to the younger mujahedeen whom we see in Raqqa and Mosul.

Daesh seized from the Iraqi army the most advanced weaponry Washington had earlier supplied to the Baghdad government.

The superior quality of the state-of-the-art American equipment guaranteed an easy defeat of the Kurdish peshmerga who fought in Tell Keif with 20-year-old rifles.

The same applies to the Anbar Sunni tribes, who were denied any modern weaponry by the Shiite commanding officers in Baghdad.

Jordan had to step in to help modernise the outmoded training of Anbari Sunni volunteers and initiate them in modern weaponry that can be a true match to the missiles and tanks used by Daesh.

Such a stratagem was resorted to in many other countries, including Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia. 

What is needed in parallel is for ideological training to accompany the military.

It is ideology that will ensure deeply rooted immunity against defection to the other side.

The true believers in Daesh have to be defeated by equally committed true believers in the just Islamic cause they are fighting for.

A recent report by the International Labour Organisation indicated that the annual increase in unemployment figures in the Arab world is three million.

That raises the numbers of unemployed in Arab countries to 23 million, a percentage of 24 per cent of the labour force.

Such figures explain the rich reservoir from which Daesh draws its new recruits.

In Jordan, former minister of labour Mahmoud Kafaween announced that 250,000 are unemployed, living mainly in Maan, Ruseifa, Zarqa, cities that are hotbeds for Daesh supporters.

What is needed in Jordan is a programme, run by respected scholars with a high degree of credibility, that demystifies Daesh and exposes its fallacy, quoting Islamic principles and Koranic tenets.

Since Jordan has declared war on Daesh, Amman must have the resolve to win by fighting at multiple levels: militarily, ideologically and economically.

The 2,000 Jordanians fighting in Iraq and Syria show that we are not doing our job properly.

We have to be extra alert when the anti-Daesh fighters arrive here.