Most people envisage war by the images projected from the twentieth century. The "Great War "of 1914-18 came as the world was changing from the era of horse transport to that of the internal combustion engine. It was a "Soldiers war "- fought on the battlefields of France and Belgium and the machine gun made frontal charges suicidal. Millions of men in uniform died - and it was called "the war to end all war "!
The Treaty of Versailles made another war inevitable, and twenty years later the world was fighting a very different war. This was a mechanised war and far fewer were to die on battlefields, but the killing fields now moved to the cities and civilian casualties mounted as aerial bombardment carried warfare onto the home front. At that wars end, a combination of the development of nuclear weapons and delivery by ICBM's gave promise of a future in which all civilization might be annihilated.
Strangely, the sheer threat of an all consuming holocaust kept the remainder of that century relatively peaceful. There were minor wars, but the array of rockets aimed at east and west kept fingers off the triggers, but a new form of warfare was quietly building - and with it came the ultimate horror - the threat of a "Holy War ".
Not since the Middle Ages have the world's armies fought religious battles, but out of Wahabist Saudi Arabia a man named Osama bin Laden began to preach Jihad. His message found resonance amongst young Sunni Muslims and so began attacks against what they called "the decadent regimes of the west ". This culminated into an attack on the World Trade centre in New York and the emergence of more extreme Islam - calling for world domination and the establishment of a Caliphate ruled by Sharia law.
The genie is now out of the bottle. The Sunni Jihadists will not tolerate any other form of religion, including the Shia and a form of extremism is emerging that is a doctrine of "total war ". This interpretation of the Koran condones such savagery as crucifixion, beheadings and the execution of any who decline to convert to the Sunni concept of life. It imposes the demand that women be veiled, uneducated and totally subservient. It is a step back - to a distant age. The promise of "Paradise "for holy warriors killed in battle has appeal to the unemployed and uneducated masses of the Middle East and central Africa. Jihad is a growing force, fast adding adherents in the more affluent societies of the west.
Just as modes of warfare constantly changed during the twentieth century, it seems that this twenty-first century may be the age of war against the enemy within. A growing sect within Sunni Islam has declared war on the Shia, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and all other world faiths. There is a promise of war by terrorism. The planting of bombs to main and kill in the cities of the world until sufficient numbers can be gathered to openly control the levers of government - and install radical Islam as a Caliphate.
This seems to be the face of World War 111. This may be a century in which the enlightened countries of the world fight an internal enemy which seems like a phantom force and the losers will certainly be moderate Islam. Many of the followers of the Koran are perfectly happy to practice their religion in peace with the other religions of the world, but the moment the word " Islamic Terrorists "is labelled, the stigma applies to all who follow that creed. When a section of the public is declared "the enemy " - battle lines are drawn. It is inevitable that if guerrilla war is being waged on the streets of cities, similar opposing forces will emerge to pack back in kind. Parts of the world may face the atrocities committed in Irish cities when two great schisms of Christianity went to war against one another.
The sad thing is that the tenets of all religions contain forgiveness, hope, charity and goodwill, and yet there are people who bend them to their own design and use them as a weapon in their seeking to gain power, and that seems to be a very human trait.
This world has never been without war. Unfortunately the cardinal subject of disagreement has emerged from centuries of relative peace and we face the prospect of becoming World War 111 combatants in a religious war that exceeds all boundaries. Even the threat of nuclear Armageddon was less of a danger to the world !
Perhaps we are already fighting the first stages of a war that might last a hundred years - or become a war that never ends !
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