A MAIDEN trip to the Middle East by US President Donald Trump has underlined several dangerous contradictions at the heart of the global fight against militancy. If there is some unity left in the world today, it is about the understanding that virtually every country faces a militant threat. And in the militant Islamic State group, virtually every country faces a common threat. But global coordination against IS and other militant threats is being undermined by national, regional and international approaches to fighting militancy that are contradictory and self-defeating. Indeed, the placing of Mr Trump’s avowed goal of crushing IS at the centre of his administration’s foreign policy may unwittingly be helping the militants’ narrative of a war between Western and Islamic values. The war against militancy must be led and coordinated by the Muslim world. Militancy is first and foremost an existential threat to Muslim countries and any strategy against it that relies fundamentally on Western leadership and coordination will not succeed and can be counterproductive.

To be sure, Western nations face a dangerous problem of home-grown militancy and have intelligence and counterterrorism apparatuses that are vital to the global fight against militancy. No nation, not least the open, democratic societies in the West, can meekly surrender before millenarian terrorists who seek to destroy the very fabric of society. The serial devastation wrought across many European countries in recent times and the memory of 9/11 in the US loom large in any international conversation about militancy. Within the law and constitution of those countries, and in a way that aids the overall fight against militancy, the steps Western countries take in this battle can have desirable long-term effects. But the security of Western nations cannot be re-established in the long term without a global understanding that the fight against Islamist militancy must be led by Muslim countries and the fight to protect the minds of Muslims from violent ideologies must be led by Muslim societies.

Unhappily, the eagerness of Mr Trump to cast himself as his country’s protector against a militant threat he clearly has little understanding of is allowing Muslim-majority countries to once again escape responsibility for crafting a workable strategy to jointly defeat terrorism and militancy. While Saudi Arabia is rallying Sunni-majority countries to its side under the umbrella of the Islamic Military Alliance, Iran is continuing with its strategy of extending its influence across the Middle East via proxies. Meanwhile, the militant groups that all Muslim nations purport to fight are deepening their ideological influences in those very societies. Mr Trump will likely be on the world stage for four or eight years; militant ideology has a shelf life far greater. Long after Mr Trump and his bombast are gone, the Muslim world will still have to contend with the evil that lies within.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017