剿灭ISIS不等于消灭恐怖主义

It is hardly news to the people of Barcelona and London, and before them the citizens of Paris and Brussels, Istanbul and Ankara, St Petersburg and Stockholm, or Nice and Berlin, that jihadis inspired and incited by Isis can terrorise their cities, even as an array of forces recaptures Isis strongholds in Mosul, Raqqa and, now, Deir al-Zor. The Islamic State caliphate, in all its monstrous vainglory, will perish. But jihadism, in all its blood-addled and doctrinal simplicity, would seem to have a fiery future.

对于巴塞罗那、伦敦的人们以及之前巴黎、布鲁塞尔、伊斯坦布尔、安卡拉、圣彼得堡、斯德哥尔摩或者尼斯、柏林的市民而言，受“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)煽动的圣战分子能够威胁他们所在的城市早已不是新闻，即便各路武装力量正在夺回ISIS位于摩苏尔、拉卡及代尔祖尔的据点。这个极端狂妄的哈里发国——“伊斯兰国”必将灭亡。但嗜血且教义简单的圣战主义似乎有一个炽热的未来。

Attacks like last month’s on Barcelona’s Ramblas, or at Westminster and London Bridge, are not, of course, new — nor purely a tactical riposte to territorial defeat in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Isis may be the first modern, Sunni jihadist movement to have set up a proto-state. But it always urged its followers to use the full gamut of irregular warfare, from classic terrorism and hit-and-run guerrilla insurgency to vans and knives. The world will now see more of this as the jihadis melt back into local Sunni Arab towns and tribes, and build their global networks and regional franchises.

上月巴塞罗那的兰布拉大道上或者威斯敏斯特和伦敦桥上发生的那类袭击，当然不是最近才有的——也不是ISIS在叙利亚、伊拉克等地节节败退后发起的纯粹战术反击。ISIS或许是首个建立雏形国家的现代逊尼派圣战运动。但它一直在号召追随者使用各种各样的非常规战争手段——从经典的恐怖主义、打了就跑的游击战，到利用货车和刀具伤人。随着圣战分子悄悄重返逊尼派阿拉伯城镇和部落，并打造他们的全球网络和区域地盘，世界将目睹更多的此类袭击事件。

Getting a good sense of their numbers is hard. But it is worth remembering that the precursor to Isis, the Iraqi chapter of al-Qaeda created by the sanguinary Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was all but destroyed in 2007-09 by the US military “surge” and revolt of the Sunni tribes of central and western Iraq. Resurrected by Syria’s descent into sectarian carnage, and given new backbone by allying with the Sunni supremacist, residual power structure of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party and army, Isis stormed back into Iraq to set up its caliphate five years later. Can it repeat this phoenix trick?

很难获得关于圣战分子数量的准确数字。但值得记住的是，ISIS的前身——由血腥的阿布•穆萨布•扎卡维(Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)创建的“伊拉克基地组织”(Al-Qaeda in Iraq)——曾于2007至2009年在美军“增兵”和伊拉克中部和西部逊尼派部落转变立场后基本被剿灭。叙利亚陷入宗派屠杀使其死灰复燃，与逊尼派至上主义者以及萨达姆•侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)的阿拉伯复兴社会党(Ba'ath party)和军队残余势力结盟使其获得新的主干，这股势力拉起ISIS的大旗，在5年后杀回伊拉克并建立自己的哈里发。它能重新上演这种“重生”吗?

The war in Syria, now in its seventh year, has made Isis — at its core, Iraqi — a much bigger phenomenon than its al-Qaeda predecessor. Yet the question goes beyond Isis. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of the Jabhat al-Nusra movement spawned by al-Qaeda, now fields one of the biggest armies in Syria.

已经进入第七个年头的叙利亚内战，使ISIS(核心在伊拉克)成了一个比其基地组织前身大得多的现象。然而，这个问题超出ISIS的范畴。基地组织分支“努斯拉阵线”(Jabhat al-Nusra)最新更名为“解放沙姆联盟”(Hayat Tahrir al-Sham)，该组织如今已成为叙利亚规模最大的武装之一。

Although much of Tahrir al-Sham’s estimated 30,000-strong force is bottled up in Idlib province in the north, it has successfully annexed most rival Salafist fighting groups, controls a long strip of Syria’s north-west border with Turkey, has a plentiful supply of suicide-bombers and demonstrable offensive capacity. Unlike Isis, as the French Syria scholar Fabrice Balanche remarks, this group “practises discretion in order to avoid antagonising locals” and, crucially, “relies more on the potency of its network than on the accumulation of territory”.

虽然“解放沙姆联盟”约3万多人的兵力大部分被堵在叙利亚北方的伊德利卜省，但该组织成功吞并了对手沙拉菲派(Salafist)的多数作战势力，控制着叙利亚西北部与土耳其接壤的狭长地带，拥有源源不断的自杀炸弹袭击者以及经过证明的进攻能力。法国的叙利亚问题专家法布里斯•巴朗什(Fabrice Balanche)认为，与ISIS不同，该组织“行事谨慎以避免激怒当地人”，而且关键是它“更依赖组织网络的力量，而非扩张领土地盘”。

The international ambitions of Tahrir al-Sham, which marked its resurgence by breaking with al-Qaeda, at least formally, are unclear. But its potential to replace Isis in the affections of would-be jihadis abroad is obvious. These so-called “homegrown” extremists are probably a greater threat than volunteers returning to their native countries, given how many of the latter were expended as jihadist cannon fodder.

宣布与基地组织撇清关系(至少在形式上是这样)标志着“解放沙姆联盟”的崛起，其国际野心并不明确。但明显的是，它很有可能在海外准圣战分子的追捧下取代ISIS。这些所谓“土生土长的”极端分子可能比返回本国的志愿者更具威胁——鉴于后者大都成了圣战炮灰。

The outlook is doubly dark given a geopolitical context almost designed to inflame the Sunni disaffection that jihadis expertly transmute into despair.

考虑到当下极易煽动起逊尼派不满情绪(圣战分子巧妙地将这种不满转化为绝望)的地缘政治背景，前景越发黯淡。

The Sunni majority in Syria feels betrayed and the Sunni minority in Iraq, historically the cornerstone of power, feels dispossessed. The two countries are broken, by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then the turmoil of Arab upheavals after 2011.

叙利亚的逊尼多数派感到被出卖，而伊拉克的逊尼少数派(曾为政权基石)感到被剥夺了权力。2003年以美国为首的入侵伊拉克的战争以及2011年后席卷阿拉伯世界的动荡，使这两个国家陷入了四分五裂。

There is a debate about whether Syria and Iraq are beyond repair. It is merely theoretical, so long as there is no sign of any international or regional, much less internal, consensus on how they might be put back together. The main outside agents — the US and Russia, Iran and Turkey — are pursuing their own interests, heedless of how to stop this cauldron, bubbling with jihadist subculture, from tipping over.

对于叙利亚和伊拉克是否已无可救药，目前在上演一场辩论。这个焦点问题只是理论上的——只要在这两个国家如何可能重新凝聚起来的问题上不存在国际或地区共识的迹象(更别提国内共识了)。主要的外部势力(美国、俄罗斯、伊朗和土耳其)都在追求自身利益，不在乎如何阻止这口圣战亚文化发酵的大锅翻倒下来。

All are signed up to a greater or lesser degree to defeat Isis. Yet the US administration of Donald Trump seems to want Saudi Arabia, with its extremist Wahhabi ideology, to launch a Sunni jihad against Shia Iran. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Syria is the stage for its comeback as a world power. Iran and its Shia militia allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, is ruthlessly forging an axis from its borders to the Mediterranean. Turkey, a wobbling Nato ally and close to defunct EU candidate, is fixated on stopping US-allied Kurdish forces spreading self-government across northern Syria.

各方或多或少都希望击败ISIS。然而，唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的美国行政当局似乎希望信奉极端主义瓦哈比(Wahhabi)意识形态的沙特阿拉伯，发动针对什叶派伊朗的逊尼派圣战。对于弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)领导的俄罗斯，叙利亚是其回归世界强国的舞台。伊朗及其在伊拉克、叙利亚和黎巴嫩境内的什叶派民兵组织，正在无情地打造一个从其边境一路延伸至地中海的轴心。土耳其——一个摇摆不定的北约盟国，已近乎失去欧盟(EU)候选国地位——关注的是阻止与美国结盟的库尔德武装在叙利亚北部扩大自治。

Either these powers find some common denominator and purpose or there will be no resurrection of Iraq and Syria but, instead, a wealth of target-rich opportunity for the already virulent plague of post-caliphate jihadism.

除非这些外部势力找到一些共同立场和目标，否则伊拉克和叙利亚就不会获得新生，而是将成为滋生后ISIS时代圣战主义有毒祸患的温床。