FORMULATING a reasonable and rational international response to the several crises in Iraq and Syria is a geopolitical challenge of immense complexity requiring some quite incredible diplomatic twists and turns.

Enemies become friends; old hatreds are lost in the sands of a region in which the secret world has no rules or at best the trading traditions of the Levant.

This is a time for opening a dialogue with Russia in order to produce a wider international response to Isis rather than simply a western response (with its difficult imperial/pro-Israel legacy in the region). No country outside of the Middle East has more fighters involved in the IS army than Russia through its Chechen rebels ("Foreign fighters in Middle East wars threaten West", The Herald, August 22). Russia has a critical role to play. Indeed, Russia's soft southern borders are a major threat to Moscow, and so there is a strategic common interest in some form of mutual anti-Jihadist strategy linking the West, Russia and indeed China. China has concerns with its own Muslim insurgency and might see its interests being served through a more global alliance against the violent extremism of ISIS and its cohorts.

The danger is that the West under the self-important influence of ancient and contemporary realities will seek to lead the charge and ignore new global realities.

TM Cross,

18 Needle Green, Carluke.

IN 2003 there were no al Qaeda in Iraq and no massacres taking place there. A majority in the US and Britain were persuaded to support war anyway. Today the Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda, has its own state in large parts of Iraq and Syria. It is massacring anyone who is of a different religion from its extreme version of Sunni Islam. Unlike al Qaeda, it has a strong conventional military.

It's understandable that the Iraq war has made us less willing to get involved in wars in the Middle East. The last Iraq war let al Qaeda into Iraq. Along with the arming of Sunni rebels in Syria by Nato and the Saudis, these allowed the rise of the Islamic State (IS).

There is now an overwhelming case for going to war on IS. Morally can we let Iraqi and Syrian minorities be massacred? Is it in our self-interest to let a group as extreme as al Qaeda carve out a bigger state and a more powerful military and gain control of oil revenues?

We must learn the lessons of Iraq, by not going to war unless there is a good reason; and Syria, by being careful about who we supply arms to; stopping promoting arms as a government-subsidised export industry; and co-operating internationally to close down the black market in arms.

Funding the pay of new non-sectarian Iraqi units that must contain members and officers from all religious and ethnic groups, and providing arms for them, could provide forces that could fight IS, without the kind of repression of and atrocities against Sunnis that have created support and allies for it in Iraq and Syria.

Backing these up with air strikes and special forces means increased risk of terrorist attacks in our own countries, but that risk can be justified.

At the least we must continue to provide aid to refugees fleeing IS forces, and air lifts and air strikes to help them escape.

Duncan McFarlane,

Beanshields,

Braidwood,

Carluke.