Chair, before doing so, I've neglected to mention the presence of Commodore Scott Bishop, who is here as well.
Sorry, Commodore, I didn't see you at the end of the table there.
Mr. Chisu, thank you for that question.
We know that the phenomena of jihadist terrorism is not new. This is a uniquely pernicious form of violence and political instability that ranges all the way from West Africa and Nigeria, with Boko Haram, down to militias in Mindanao in the southern Philippines, in an arc of violence that claims hundreds of victims, often every day, and that seeks increasingly to project its dystopian vision of a caliphate, based on a violent application of 7th century sharia legal concepts, throughout the world.
What is unique with the so-called ISIL movement, or in Arabic “Daesh”, is that it has explicitly declared itself the caliphate, an idea that is unfortunately very seductive to many radicalized individuals who are attracted to this dystopian idea. This is why the number of people willing to risk or sacrifice their lives for this so-called caliphate has continued to increase.
We—and when I say “we” I mean the civilized world—must do everything that we can to ensure that this movement does not have the capacity to metastasize from a pseudostate into a real state. Had the world not taken action with the coalition beginning last fall, had ISIL been able to continue gaining territory in Iraq by taking advantage of certain weaknesses in that country, had it been able to take possession of oilfields and other cities—they took possession of the second-largest city in Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamian capital of Mosul—and had they been able to continue doing this, their prestige as a movement would have grown. Their capacity to recruit individuals and their resources and finances would have increased, and they would be posing a very serious, perhaps existential, threat to security in the Middle East.
Let us not forget that most of the militants who have joined Daesh are people who have come from other countries—all the way from West Africa, to North America, to Western Europe, etc.—and many of these people pose a security risk to us should they return home. We believe there is not an insignificant number of Canadians participating in the jihadi campaign of Daesh. It is incumbent upon us, at the very least, to contain this death cult, as I characterize it, to prevent it from gaining new territory and additional resources, to degrade its capabilities, and ultimately in partnership with our allies in the Middle East to destroy it. That will send an important message to those who might be inspired to Daesh's message of radicalization that it is not in fact the realization of this dystopian dream of the caliphate, and that it is just a bunch of rag-tag thugs.