The ISIS Challenge

By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Ph.D., is the Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and an Affiliate Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington-Seattle. His book, Insecure Gulf: The End of Certainty and the Transition to the Post-Oil Era, was updated and re-released by Oxford University Press in September 2015.

Internal and external dimensions of security have become inextricably linked to regional security threats and domestic challenges in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The policy dilemma facing officials and regimes in the Gulf is that there appears to be no easy answers to the set of profound political, economic, and security questions that have been triggered by the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The rise of ISIS particularly presents a dangerous new security threat to the GCC states in the way that it transcends national boundaries and interlinks the domestic and regional dimensions, defying easy responses.

The eruption of ISIS onto the regional security landscape in 2014 prompted a range of belated policy responses at both the national and international levels. U.S. concern with the apparent lack of control over charitable-giving and private fund-raising in Kuwait manifested itself in a blunt statement in March 2014 by Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen, in which he said that Kuwait had become “the epicentre of fundraising for terror groups in Syria.” He also noted more generally that a new financial tracking unit set up by the Kuwaiti government to investigate suspicious financial transactions and money laundering was still not operational. Moreover, Kuwait’s Justice and Endowments Minister, Nayef al-Ajmi, resigned in May 2014 after being described by Cohen as having a history of “promoting terrorism.” Ajmi’s ministry came under suspicion for allowing non-profit organizations and charities to collect donations for the Syrian people at mosques in Kuwait, which Cohen argued was “a measure we believe can be easily exploited by Kuwait-based terrorist fundraisers.”

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Categorized as:Middle East Reporting

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