Chris Marshall: Independence won’t save us from IS

WHILE most of Scotland will be waking up on Friday to the result of a referendum currently too close to call, terrorism experts from across the UK and beyond will be gathering in St Andrews to mark ten years of the university’s seminal Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence and discuss the growing threat of the group calling itself Islamic State (IS).

Scottish aid worker David Haines. Picture: SWNS

Whatever the outcome of the vote, Scotland and Scots will continue to be threatened by the organisation which is quickly outpacing al-Qaeda to become the international community’s biggest security concern.

The murder of Scottish aid worker David Haines again underlined the ruthless and indiscriminate way IS is prepared to go about its business.

However, we should be under no illusion that a Yes vote will do little, if anything, to reduce the threat we face.

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We are told an independent Scotland would unilaterally disarm by removing the Trident nuclear missile system from Gare Loch.

It’s fair to assume that Scotland would also be less likely to join any future “coalition of the willing”, where countries simply fall into line behind the United States for military action.

But it would be misguided to believe this would make us less of a target.

Take Denmark, a country with roughly the same population as Scotland, which deployed around 500 troops during the Iraq war, compared with the UK peak figure of 46,000 during the 2003 invasion.

It is a member of Nato, but has no nuclear weapons of its own. Despite this, the country has been among those threatened by IS fighters in recent weeks, some of whom were Danish nationals before leaving for Syria.

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While the beheading of two Americans and now a Briton has met with widespread media attention in the West, IS has also killed Syrians and Kurds using the same gruesome tactic.

There are estimates that the group may hold as many as 20 westerners, including a Dane, a Japanese and Italian aid workers Greta Ramelli, 20, and Vanessa Marzullo, 21, kidnapped while working in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Regardless of the referendum result, Scotland must continue to be part of the battle against Islamist extremism.

Increasingly, it looks as if this is a fight which will not entirely be won by boots on the ground, but by a more intelligent response to the threat faced.

Amid warnings yesterday from analysts that the Scottish military would be a “hollow force” after independence, it’s unclear what we could add to an international coalition anyway.

But whether we are part of the UK or an independent country, we should not retreat within ourselves and invite the threat to come to us.

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