Maurizio Delli Santi
Ed. Aracne
pp. 120
There are not many books published in Italy on ISIS, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now known also as IS, Islamic State (according to the new name adopted in June 2014).
The organization led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi has established itself as the most famous and criminal Islamic religious terrorist group among those who declared jihad to the West, and aims to establish a Salafist trend in Iraq, Syria and the Levant , waving the myth of the return to the "Caliphate".
A notable contribution on the subject is offered by the volume of Maurizio Delli Santi, L'ISIS and the threat of the new terrorism. Among representations, legal issues and new geopolitical scenarios, recently appeared for the types of Aracne Editrice (120 pages, 10 euro), which presents itself as a (successful) attempt to analyze and understand its origins and evolutions, leadership, strategy , the organizational structure, the ability to proselytize and recruit internationally (so-called foreign fighters), the attraction of "solitary wolves", the communication strategy and sources of funding.
The book also addresses the question, today much debated, of the legal qualification of a terrorist movement that has been transformed into an almost state - which controls and administers in the Middle East, between Iraq and Syria, a territory vastly less than Italy - and which is evolving from militia into "conventional" army. According to the author, just these two new elements, territoriality and conventional military force, could lead to an "international recognition", if the Islamic State would do without its "terrorist and criminal component" (p.26). But the IS is not renouncing the "asymmetrical fight of terrorism" as "organization guilty of crimes against humanity" (p.87): and therefore can not aspire to any recognition. Hence the "full legitimacy" of the use of force against the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria, by the international community in application of the Charter of the United Nations, through the Security Council (chapter VII) and the right to self-defense or self-defense within the limits of necessity and proportionality, enshrined in Article 51.
An agile and documented essay, this by Maurizio Delli Santi, which invites us to reflect on the multiple causes and the heterogeneity of the components of the "new terrorism" that threatens international security and the measures necessary to combat it.
Nicola Festa
