Recent news that British pilots on secondment to other air forces have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Syria has been as much a revelation as the UK government's handling of the matter.
There has been domestic anger over prime minister David Cameron’s disregard for a 2013 parliamentary vote against military action in Syria, which he pledged at the time to respect.
The Ministry of Defence’s justification is that the pilots were embedded with American, French and Canadian armed forces, and so were authorised “to participate in coalition operations” under their chain of command. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it was “absolutely standard practice” to exchange personnel with allied forces, there was “no mystery about that”, and “most people have known”.
Except that most people did not know. News of it, which took parliament by surprise, only came out due to a freedom-of-information request – hardly a sign of a government acting transparently. This would be a concern in any democracy, but particularly so in a country where it is a widely-held view that parliament was misled into voting to invade Iraq in 2003 – an event still fresh in the public’s memory.
The government’s actions are not only deceitful, but counter-productive to Mr Cameron’s reported desire for a second parliamentary vote on the matter sometime after summer. He is less likely to succeed next time around now that his government has betrayed parliament’s will and trust.
Furthermore, barring an ISIL attack on British soil, he is unlikely to be able to make a more convincing case for military action than he did in 2013. Mr Cameron has changed his justification – last time it was to defend Syrians against further regime chemical attacks, this time it is to defend Britons from Islamist terrorism, describing it as “the threat of our generation, the battle of our generation”.
The calculation is that parliament and public opinion will be more amenable to intervention if they believe their own security and wellbeing are at risk.
Former prime minister Tony Blair employed a similar strategy, using the infamous (and false) spectre of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being able to be deployed within 45 minutes to frighten MPs into voting for war.
However, Mr Cameron has yet to make a convincing case for how striking ISIL in Syria will safeguard Britain and its people. It would not have saved those tourists who lost their lives in Tunisia in June. That the majority of victims in that attack were British was a coincidence. A concerted campaign again ISIL in Syria could result in the deliberate targeting of British civilians abroad or at home.
That would not necessitate ISIL fighters entering Britain. Its attacks beyond its so-called caliphate, including the one in Tunisia, have been carried out by local sympathisers.
Like its former parent organisation Al Qaeda, ISIL is a franchise – there is nothing to suggest that striking it in Syria will hinder that franchise. After all, its recruitment efforts – including those that have enticed British Muslims to move to the group’s territory – are carried out online.
Recent history suggests that expanding military operations against ISIL may heighten the terrorist threat level at home.
That was the British intelligence community’s own assessment of the repercussions of the UK’s participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, which Mr Blair assured Britons would make them safer.
That assurance was followed by the deadly 7/7 bombings in London, whose perpetrators specifically cited Iraq as one of their motivations.
Weakening ISIL militarily does not degrade its ability to spread its ideology. If those who are radicalised feel that travelling to Syria is no longer an option, they may well decide to act on their newfound extremism at home. As such, a military strategy is doomed to fail without domestic efforts to pinpoint, understand and tackle the causes of such radicalism.
Mass surveillance and profiling of British Muslims, as well as populist calls for them to “do more” to stop fellow Muslims being radicalised, are counter-productive to that strategy as they only increase Muslims’ sense of alienation and demonisation.
Expanding airstrikes to Syria would be more complicated than in Iraq, whose government authorises them. Damascus and its principal allies – Iran, Russia, China and Hizbollah – are hostile to coalition airstrikes over Syria, and the regime wrote to the British parliament in 2013 to dissuade MPs from voting in favour of such action.
There is also no indication that British airstrikes over Syria would make any tangible difference to the war against ISIL. The coalition campaign against the jihadist group, which was launched in September last year, has yet to decisively change the balance of power on the ground. In some areas, ISIL continues to expand.
Mr Cameron would face the same legitimate concerns and questions that he did in 2013. Airstrikes alone have been shown to be largely ineffective, yet the British public would understandably not countenance boots on the ground, particularly after the Iraq debacle. Should another parliamentary vote take place, there would be continued concern over the potential for mission creep.
There are also lingering fears over involvement in an open-ended conflict with undefined or ambiguous parameters, goals and timeframes that would be more difficult to exit than to enter.
It is unlikely to attract support from Syrian rebel groups – which have been at the forefront of the ground battle against ISIL in Syria – if they see it as a further diversion from their goal of toppling the regime. This is something of which they already accuse the US.
That leads to another fundamental oversight in the coalition campaign against ISIL. It leaves in place a vicious dictatorship in Syria that has destroyed the country and brutalised its people, and a sectarian, increasingly autocratic government in Baghdad that is a serial human rights abuser and reliant on militias whose atrocities are well documented.
The practices of these regimes provided ISIL with fertile ground to thrive, yet the one in Iraq is a coalition partner, and the one in Syria is increasingly viewed as the lesser of two evils with which an accommodation is possible or even necessary.
As long as the causes are not dealt with, the effects will resurface. That is why the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq did not spell the end of jihadism in that country. Grievances merely festered until another group – ISIL – took up the mantle.
The murder of British tourists in Tunisia has emboldened Mr Cameron to be more strident against ISIL. On the surface this will play well with the electorate, but a gung-ho, simplistic approach will at best be ineffective, and at worst dangerous to the very people and interests the government is trying to safeguard.
Sharif Nashashibi is a journalist and analyst on Arab affairs