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