German minister says schools, jobs key to defeating IS

DUBAI: The Islamic State group will not be defeated on the battlefield alone but by teaching tolerance and creating economic opportunity, Germany´s defence minister said on Saturday.

"We should complement the coalition against terror with a coalition for education," Ursula von der Leyen told a Gulf security conference.

She said members of the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists needed to counter the "brutal lies" of IS with a message of hope for a better future.

"Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and many more platforms have been weaponised," she told the Manama Dialogue. "People without prospects are easily led to believe such false promises and such brutal lies."

To win the war we have to dominate the Internet. But to win peace we have to offer hope and prospects. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian echoed the theme in an address to the same forum.

He, too, said the jihadists could not be defeated by military means alone as they fed off poverty and underdevelopment. France has carried out air strikes against IS in both Iraq and Syria and has military advisers on the ground.

Germany has provided weapons and training to Kurdish peshmerga fighters taking part in the campaign against IS in northern Iraq. Retired US general David Petraeus, a candidate for secretary of state under president-elect Donald Trump, said that although IS and its self-proclaimed caliphate will be defeated in Iraq and Syria, "we cannot put a stake through the heart of the ideological caliphate that is out there in cyberspace."

Petraeus, who led the US troop surge in Iraq from 2006 to 2008, said education, rule of law and inclusive governance are among the non-military elements needed for success. "You can´t just drone strike and Delta force your way out of this problem," he said.