Ultimately this:
Education. Jobs. Some degree of prosperity.
Yet first the stability and a sense of justice and representation by the government at hand.
With only the living practice of futility and injustice, in any population, radical extremism will spawn. How was such a point reached for the actors of ISIS?
The genesis, command, and structure of ISIS is solely a result of the Iraq power vacuum created by the illegal and incompetent US invasion and restructuring of Iraq:
- From the knee-jerk disbandment of the Iraq army...
- .. through to the US backed Iraqi government coup of denying power to the elected president in favour of the continuation of a Shia led government that maintained the derision, marginalisation and persecution of Sunnis.
- Much of the ISIS leadership came from the disbanded Iraq army, rose up against US occupying forces, were incarcerated and abused by that illegally invading foreign power, and on multiple occasions rebelled against the US backed Shia government that repeatedly and to this day maintained a marginalising persecution agenda against Sunnis....
- When backed into a corner, many moderate Sunnis chose the likes of ISIS as its genesis was conditioned by US led abuse, and also found a anarchy free reign and cause in the neighbouring civil war of Syria...
- As a last resort saviour against the genocidal Assad regime and sectarian bent derision of the Iraqi government, some Sunni populations chose a devil as their saviour... An error, and many are now stuck and even further persecuted as a result.
The crux also comes down to a long list of inexcusable errors that have compounded the severity of every scenario, and certainly no simple solution and no clean solution, other than a vow to have truly learn from history and never again repeat the criminal asinine act of a war of destabilising aggression against a state such as Iraq.
In practice (as the current missions) siding with the far more destructive and deadly Assad regime (in only a few ears, astronomically higher deaths against civilians than the limited
Islamic State) or fight both fronts including what could be shots with Russian forces who truly have thrown their lot with the genocidal megalomaniac of Assad.