Politicians’ currently angry in the face of the Paris attacks is totally understandable. So too is dignified public resolve to carry on and deny the terrorists a psychological victory. People always behave well immediately after such incidents, although the real test of resolve, liberality and social cohesion comes six months or a year later.

For now, the biggest ever terrorist attack in Europe has put the spotlight back on the anti-Isis strategy of western governments; particularly on the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.

That campaign is better than it looks because it is having some military effect. It is facilitating a series of advances on the ground among Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, small groups of national opposition fighters and (in effect) Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces who have pushed Isis back to just over half the territory they occupied at the high watermark of their advances last year.

Isis put a great effort into capturing Kobani on the Turkish border, and failed. It lost Mosul Dam, Tikrit, Baji and Sinjar; and while its home base at Raqqa in Syria is being regularly attacked, the long-awaited offensive against its base at Mosul in Iraq is about to begin. Its command structure is under evident pressure and US drone strikes from Libya to Afghanistan are killing Isis commanders such as Ali Awni al-Harzi and Abu Nabil, and its communicators such as Mohammed Emwazi.

The bombing campaign has also helped destroy the flow of illegal oil on which Isis has been building its proto-state. It still makes about $1m a day from this oil, which renders it a rich terror organisation but a very poor state; one that claims jurisdiction over 8 million people. Coalition strategy has also armed the anti-Isis forces, somewhat patchily, but sufficiently enough to keep them in the field. A bombing strategy that took a long time to make a difference on the ground is now paying off as Isis is forced on to the defensive – which is precisely why it has now added to its traditional military campaign the element of outright international terror against European soft targets.

Maybe the Paris attacks will act as a political tipping point. Maybe they will bring most Europeans closer to US policy to “degrade and destroy” Isis; maybe Russia will now make Isis its top target following the attack on the Metrojet airliner last month; maybe there will be some consensus over how the Assad regime might figure in a reworked Syrian state.

SOURCES: The Guardian  & Aljazeera

The Times didn’t mention Erik Prince, the American businessman and defense contractor who founded the controversial Blackwater Worldwide company, which he left in 2010. (Blackwater later changed its name to Xe and then Academi.) Early last year, Prince met with the president of Nigeria and gave him a business proposal: to deploy foreign “contractors” for hire, the same type of mercenary force Nigeria is now reportedly using.

Two sources familiar with the meeting in Nigeria said that Prince told the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, that his company could assemble a well-trained fighting force of non-Nigerians to battle Boko Haram. The terrorist group kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls last April and recently swore allegiance to the Syrian and Iraqi rebel force Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), known for beheading Western captives. The mercenaries — though Prince himself never uses the term — would lead the combat operations against insurgents, taking the load off the Nigerian military, which has often been accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

A third source, familiar with Prince’s version of events, said that the American businessman presented a proposal to President Jonathan, but that it was for a “police” force for Nigeria’s northeast region, rather than a military unit. This source says Prince made the pitch on behalf of his company, Frontier Resources Group, a private equity fund registered in the Cayman Islands. Prince is Frontier’s managing director.

Much about Prince’s proposal remains murky, and it’s unclear if President Jonathan signed off on his business proposition. But the bid itself highlights how Prince, who campaigned to privatize large pieces of America’s military efforts during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has exported his push for the outsourcing of war to other parts of the world. And even more important, it underscores the way that soldiers-for-hire, employed by for-profit businesses, have entered the already chaotic clash between terrorist networks and traditional armies that serve national governments.

It is not clear that the South African mercenaries now reportedly operating in Nigeria are in fact doing the job that Prince had bid to do or even whether they are employed by Prince’s company. Two sources said that Prince’s business pitch was declined by the Nigerian government, which would mean that the mercenaries who are operating in the country are not connected to Prince.

But one source familiar with the deal said that Nigeria’s government did agree to do business with Prince. This source said that he believed the South African mercenaries are indeed part of a force affiliated with Prince.

Prince himself could not be reached for comment.

Prince is a U.S. citizen, and State Department arms trading rules generally require Americans who broker foreign defense service deals to obtain licenses and get advance approval. But there are exemptions, especially if the brokering is done with the authorization of other agencies, such as the CIA or Pentagon. The State Department said it does not release information about specific licenses or approvals. A Department of Defense spokesman, Major James B. Brindle, emailed a statement to BuzzFeed News, saying, “We are aware of the reports. We have nothing to add, and direct you to the Government of Nigeria for queries relating to their possible use of security contractors.” The CIA, which has clashed with Prince in the past, declined to comment.

Prince is best known for his role in Blackwater, the most active of the private military companies that flourished over the last decade and a half during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2004, four Blackwater guards were savagely killed in Fallujah, where their bodies were burned and displayed, sparking a massive U.S. assault against the city and changing the tenor of the war. And in 2007, Blackwater guards in counterassault vehicles in Baghdad’s Nisour Square killed 17 innocent Iraqis in an unprovoked massacre. Last year four of the Blackwater guards were found guilty in a federal trial in Washington, D.C.

In the company’s heyday, it ran security for the State Department and CIA officials throughout Iraq, protected U.S. convoys in the Middle East, trained Afghan forces, and provided aviation services to the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The CIA even briefly hired Prince to set up an assassination wing to kill terrorists, according to former officers and published accounts, though that effort was canceled.

But Prince left Blackwater years ago, and the firm was renamed Xe and then Academi.

For some time, Prince operated in Abu Dhabi. The New York Times in 2011 reportedthat he had helped the United Arab Emirates set up a unit of Colombian security contractors to conduct missions inside and outside the tiny Gulf state. He was also linked to an effort to train an anti-piracy force in Somalia.

Prince, more recently, has been best known for running Frontier Services Group, a company traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The firm is backed by the CITIC Group, which is majority-owned by the government of China.

The name of that company is similar to Frontier Resources Group, Prince’s Cayman Islands firm and the one through which he pitched Nigeria’s president on the force to combat Boko Haram. But the two are separate entities.

The government of Nigeria did not respond to request for comment on this story. But President Jonathan told the Voice of America news service last week that the foreign contractors were “technicians,” and a government spokesman has been quoted in the BBC saying that foreign troops were acting as trainers.

By: Aram Roston at BUZZ FEED NEWS