Politics first

The American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead talked of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,”  which is like putting the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble.  We are at risk these days of doing that in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rapid advance toward Baghdad is getting a lot of attention, as it should.  But Sunni-based ISIS is not a military threat to a city of nearly 4 million people, most of them Shia.  ISIS might target the western outskirts near Baghdad International Airport and Abu Ghraib prison, which will grab big headlines. But ISIS is not going to march into what used to be called the Green Zone.

Nor did ISIS take Mosul, Tikrit and other Sunni-majority towns in the north and west solely because of its military prowess.   Its success is due to broad Sunni support for action against Prime Minister Maliki, who proved his popularity among the Shia in April’s election but has governed in an increasingly authoritarian and sectarian way.  That’s why President Obama has made assistance to him conditional on taking a more inclusive approach.  Yesterday’s meeting and declaration of support from a broad cross-section of Iraqi politicians was meant to be Maliki’s response.

What we are facing in Iraq is not merely a military challenge but rather a political challenge to a fragile state.

The outcome of this challenge may well be determined by neither Sunni nor Shia, the prime protagonists of the current fighting. Kurdish peshmerga under the command of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have already filled the vacuum left in Kirkuk by the evaporation of the Iraqi Army.  The Kurds have long claimed Kirkuk as their own and won’t leave it without a fight.  It is a major oil-producing area that could bring the KRG to the breakeven point:  100% of the oil produced within KRG control could generate as much revenue as the 17% of all of Iraq’s oil that Baghdad is supposed to provide. But Maliki has cut off KRG revenue for months, due to a dispute over accounting for it and over the KRG’s authority to decide on the export and sale of oil independent of Baghdad.

In the past, Kurdistan’s political independence seemed impossible because of Turkish opposition. But Turkish attitudes are changing. Ankara this year received oil directly from Kurdistan, allowing it to be stored and then sold without Baghdad’s permission. Prime Minister Erdogan has appreciated the KRG’s cooperation in tamping down Kurdish violence inside Turkey. Even the Turkish military might think an independent and relatively secular Kurdistan would be a more attractive neighbor than either an ISIS-run Sunnistan or a Shia-run autocracy.

The Kurds will not want to go their own way until ISIS is defeated or contained. But KRG President Barzani even before the latest ISIS advance was promising Kurds a referendum on independence. If he ever follows through, the vote will be overwhelmingly in favor. It is hard to picture the Sunnis staying in an even vaguely democratic Iraq that would then be 60-70% Shia. Sunnistan under ISIS control would be a real threat to the United States and to Iran, which is why Tehran and Washington are trying to make nice these days even as they compete for influence with Maliki while trying to keep Iraq unified.

Focusing exclusively on Iraq would be another fallacy of misplace concreteness.  ISIS does not confine its ambitions to a single country. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are already a single theater of operations. The place to attack an enemy is where he is weakest.  That might well be inside Syria rather than in Iraq. The Obama administration was unwise to let ISIS get as strong as it has in western Syria. It is late to beef up support to its competitors or help them succeed against Bashar al Asad, but it is still worth a bolder try than Washington has made so far.  The issue is not just a military one in Syria either: one of the key shortcomings of the Syrian Opposition Coalition there is its inability to deliver services in liberated areas. That is a political and governance issue, not only a military one.

The same is true in Libya. I’m delighted Ahmed Abu Khattalah is in US custody and will be tried in a civilian court.  But whatever role he played in Libya’s Ansar al Sharia will be filled quickly by another jihadist. The problem in Libya, as in Iraq and Syria, is a weak state that lacks legitimacy with its people and is unable to maintain even a modicum of law and order.  Dealing with this problem only by training up a General Purpose Force and leaving the governance and political issues unresolved is one more fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

PS:  On Iran, best to listen to Randa Slim on NPR this morning: