Tag: ISIS
Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects
I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:
- First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.
- My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.
- But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.
- There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.
- The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.
- The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.
- The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.
- The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?
- More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.
- The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.
- The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.
- The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.
- The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.
- Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.
- The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.
- This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.
- When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.
- The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.
- The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.
- The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.
- That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?
- I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.
- What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?
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Shifting currents in Syria
As UN envoy Stefano de Mistura tries to reconvene Syria peace talks next week, there are important developments that could impact his prospects.
The Syrian government has continued to block aid to opposition-controlled areas, causing Stefano to abruptly curtail humanitarian task force deliberations last week. Moscow last week flew bombers from Iran, an innovation now reportedly suspended. The Russians also launched cruise missiles allegedly targeted against Jabhat al Nusra (which is generally embedded with more moderate insurgents) from the Black Sea. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Russia has now killed more civilians in Syria than ISIS, though it started years earlier. Moscow has shown no visible inclination to limit Syrian government strikes on civilian areas, which it targets on a daily basis.
At the same time, the situation in northern Syria has evolved in a direction favorable to the US. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are mostly Kurdish fighters, have retaken Manbij from the Islamic State and are heading for Jarablus on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Arab SDF forces are said to be preparing the assault from inside Turkey, which wants to block the Kurds from taking over the entire northern border of Syria. At the same time, farther east in Hasakeh, US-supported Kurdish forces are fighting with the Syrian army, with which they cooperated in taking the town a year ago and had maintained a truce since. The Syrian air force last week came close to clashing with US aircraft sent to protect the Kurds, who are reportedly trying to oust President Assad’s forces entirely from their northeastern “canton.”
If successful, these operations in northern Syria will cut off the Islamic State from its supply lines in Turkey and possibly end the ambiguous relationship of the Kurdish PYD forces with the Syrian government, though the Syrian opposition is unlikely to accept the PYD into its fold, not least because of Turkey’s opposition. The possibility of an attack on the Islamic State capital at Raqqa is starting to loom on the horizon, perhaps even before an effort to liberate Mosul in Iraq.
Still John Kerry is saddled as the Obama Administration draws to a close with the unenviable task of conducting Middle East diplomacy without any serious threat of coercion. The President, supported by most Americans, simply doesn’t want to use American force against anything but the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. This means not targeting the Syrian government and Hizbollah forces, even when they attack civilians. The Iranians and Russians in Syria are following his lead in a way: they are using force on the issues they care about and ignoring diplomacy. No matter what they say about not being wedded to Assad, the Russians and Iranians are mostly fighting the Syrian opposition in an effort to prevent regime change, with few relatively few attacks on on the Islamic State.
This free for all isn’t likely to work well for John Kerry in his efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. The proposition he has been flogging is this: US cooperation with Russia in targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (presumably including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the allegedly unaffiliated successor to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra) provided Russia ends attacks on the non-extremist Syrian opposition and convinces President Assad to ground his air force. The relative success of US-allied forces in northern Syria may strengthen Kerry’s hand, but there is no sign yet of any willingness on Russia’s part to meet its side of the bargain.
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Fighting to win
No, this won’t be about the American elections. It’s about Syria.
The Russians and the Iranians are doubling down in Aleppo, where the insurgent part of town is virtually surrounded, civilians are under daily bombardment, and too brief humanitarian pauses are routinely flaunted. The breach opposition forces have made in the siege is mostly unusable, as it is constantly under fire. The Russians are now flying their bombers from Iranian territory, in order to shorten the transit time and increase the ops tempo.
Why would they do this?
They have good reasons. If they ever did, Tehran and Moscow no longer have any hope that a successor regime in Syria would treat their interests respectfully. So many Syrians have now suffered from their intervention that they can count only on autocracy, of Assad or someone like him. They may not share Assad’s objective of retaking control of every inch of Syria, but they want him to win in Aleppo because they think that will ensure his survival in power.
Assad understands this and will drag his allies as deep into the hole he has dug for himself as possible. Yesterday and today he attacked Kurdish forces in northern Syria, if not for the first time still for the first time in a long time. There had been a de facto truce between the regime and the Kurds, who have gotten some support from the Russians (as well as the Americans). It looks as if Assad has decided to put the Russians on the spot, knowing that they don’t dare abandon him for the sake of the Kurds.
Assad is even looking strong enough for the Chinese to pitch some military assistance in his direction. They don’t really have a dog in this fight, but they presumably want to come out on the winning side. If that is an autocracy, all the better.
Meanwhile, the Americans are sticking to their game plan, which requires them to focus exclusively on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS): the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken the strategically important northern town of Manbij from ISIS and are heading towards Jarablus, on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Washington has supposedly promised that the Kurds will withdraw from the Manbij “pocket” once the fighting is over, leaving Arabs in charge to prevent the Kurds from controlling the entire northern border of Syria and thus to please the Turks. We’ll see if that intention holds.
The big losers in all this are non-extremist Syrians, particularly those who live in opposition-controlled areas. Their cause at this point seems lost, which I suppose is why the White House persists in its indifference. Only resounding defeat of ISIS will play well in the American election campaign. Obama is also fighting to win, but in a different war from the one Putin and Assad are pursuing.
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Nation-building isn’t a four letter word
Donald Trump yesterday followed in a long tradition of American presidential candidates and presidents who have forsworn nation-building.
George H. W. Bush said he was sending the marines to Somalia in 1992 to restore order and enable feeding the population. When Washington discovered that we couldn’t get out without leaving chaos behind, we turned the nation-building over to a UN mission (run by a US Navy Admiral) that failed. We are still fighting insurgent terrorists in Somalia.
Bill Clinton said in 1995 we would send US troops to a NATO mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina for only a year, to oversee implementation of only the military aspects of the Dayton peace agreements. He discovered the obstacles to peace implementation didn’t divide neatly into civilian and military components. US troops stayed for almost 10 years and some still remain. They likewise have stayed in Kosovo much longer than initially projected. In both Bosnia and Kosovo, their presence has had positive effects.
George W. Bush declared during the 2000 election campaign that US troops don’t do nation-building. But once he had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq he discovered that we couldn’t get the troops out without it. He then launched the two biggest and most expensive nation-building efforts since the Marshall Plan after World War II.
Barack Obama has been more disciplined than his predecessors: he pulled US troops out of Iraq almost completely (in accordance with an agreement and timetable negotiated and signed by his predecessor) and has tried to get them out of Afghanistan. The negative consequences of failure to build an inclusive state in Iraq, including Prime Minister Maliki’s turn to sectarianism and the rise of a Sunni insurgency, are documented in the Washington Post this morning. The consequences in Afghanistan are all too obvious: the Taliban are back in force and the Islamic State is trying to gain traction. Obama has said that one of his worst mistakes was failing to provide adequate assistance to Libya after the fall of Qaddafi.
When Trump yesterday declared an end to nation-building, he was repeating what his predecessors have said, and mostly regretted. The American people are reluctant to govern others, even if they are quick to tell others how to govern. Trump followed that tradition too, by announcing that he would somehow make sure that lesbians, gays, transgender and queer people are treated with respect abroad and honor killings stopped.
It is of course unfair to blame all the consequences of reluctance to do nation-building on American presidents.
First, because they are reflecting the real preferences of their constituents. Americans want their resources expended at home, not abroad. Many believe that 25% of the Federal budget is spent on foreign aid, even though the actual figure is less than 1%. If I thought one-quarter of my tax money was going overseas, I would want foreign aid cut too.
Second, because the task they are trying to avoid really is difficult and expensive. It is properly called state-building rather than nation-building, a term presidents prefer because it sounds pejorative. But what we needed in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya is a legitimate organization that could govern on a particular territory. The people on that territory might or might not constitute a “nation.”
Given what we know about terrorist groups and their affinity for weak or fragile states that cannot fully control their territory, state-building is not optional. Without it, post-war Syria or Yemen will, like post-war Iraq and Afghanistan, provide haven to people who wish harm not only to their own state but also to us.
That doesn’t mean the US has to be responsible for the state-building. You break it, you buy it is the prevailing rule. The Russians and Iranians in Syria along with the Saudis and other Gulf states in Yemen should be thinking about that as they bomb with abandon. The UN is already stuck with the job in Libya, where it appears to be making slow headway in gaining traction for a national unity government.
But what kind of state-building will Russia and Iran, or the Gulf states, do? Not the kind of state-building that even Donald Trump says he wants. What presidents call nation-building may not be what they want to do, but it is not a four letter word either. If you want to keep America safe, you are going to have to figure out how to get it done.
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The race isn’t over
Donald Trump delivered his much-ballyhooed Islamic State speech today. He began with a lengthy account of extremist attacks aimed at doing exactly what the Islamic State intends: scaring people. Beyond that, the speech was mostly a rehash of well-worn ideas:
- If you won’t call your enemy Islamic extremism, you can’t fight it.
- Guantanamo has to remain open.
- Immigration has to be restricted, and from some unspecified countries stopped.
- We should ship people home who don’t share “our” values.
- We should continue using drones and amp up intelligence but also capture a few more bad guys.
- We shouldn’t do nation-building, but
- We should somehow protect LGBTQ people and prevent honor killings abroad.
- We should have kept the US military in Iraq to hold on to its oil.
- Clinton and Obama are responsible for the rise of the Islamic State.
- We should convene an international conference to form a coalition to fight it, including NATO [sic] and Russia.
I suppose the relatively restrained tone of this hodge-podge and absence of any unfortunate adlibs will generate a new barrage of people saying he is now on track. But we are not likely more than 24 hours from one more outrageous remark intended to attract the media attention this speech is unlikely to get.
What Trump did not offer were any serious new ideas about how to deal with the Islamic State and other Islamist extremists. Nothing in this pale recitation comes even close to something anyone would call a new strategy.
I don’t really think there is one to be had. As Benjamin H. Friedman suggests, there is more danger in overreacting to international terrorism than from the phenomenon itself. It might even be said that is the purpose of many terrorists. Despite his even tone today, Trump is clearly willing to take that risk, at least so far as domestic policy is concerned. But he did not suggest he would do anything different about the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen than what Obama is already doing. Even his suggestion that we work with the Russians is nothing new. John Kerry has been pursuing that idea for months without much visible progress so far.
The sad fact is that this guy is not ready to be a Congressman from Wyoming, much less president of the United States. The polling, as interpreted by 538, has him with an 11.1% chance of winning. There is even informed talk of a Clinton landslide.
Trump didn’t do himself a lot of good today, even if he avoided any big mistakes. But these are early weeks in a long campaign. Frightening as it is to me, I suspect at least 40% of voters will vote for him. Clinton is winning because Trump is losing. She has not overcome the trust and likability deficits that have plagued her candidacy. No one should imagine the race is over.
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Who founded ISIS?
Donald Trump says it was President Obama, along with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State:
This is bullshit (as is his claim to have opposed the invasion of Iraq before it occurred).
But it is well worth recalling some of the history of the Islamic State, whose origins are to be found in Al Qaeda in Iraq, founded to resist the American forces there after the 2003 invasion (though there was a precursor organization under Saddam Hussein led by the real founder of the Islamic State: Abu Musab al Zarqawi). I would not call President Bush the founder of ISIS, but it is nevertheless fair to say that without the American invasion it is difficult to picture how the group would have gained the traction it did. That said, by the time of the American withdrawal in 2011, the Islamic State in Iraq had been largely defeated.
Trump will no doubt claim that it was the American withdrawal, conducted under President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, that enabled the ISIS revival. But that simplistic and fallacious allegation, post hoc ergo propter hoc, ignores several wrinkles:
- The agreement for the 2011 American withdrawal was negotiated and signed under President Bush, prior to President Obama taking office.
- The revival of the Islamic State in Iraq was due primarily to the exclusionary governing methods of then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who tried to repress peaceful Sunni demonstrations with force.
- The even more repressive methods of Syrian President Bashar al Assad from 2011 on created chaotic conditions that enabled the Islamic State to expand into Syria.
If you want to distribute blame, I’d put it more or less in this order: Maliki>Assad>Bush>Obama. Obama’s culpability is for failure to do as much as he should have to limit Assad’s depredations against Syria’s population.
I don’t expect Trump to accept any of this. He is obviously thrilled with the reaction of his supporters to his blaming Obama and Clinton. That will be enough for him to continue repeating his allegations.
What he won’t mention is the vigorous effort of the current administration for the past two years to kill Islamic State cadres and deny it control over territory, relying on local forces and without the loss of more than a handful of Americans. I am among the first to criticize the Obama Administration for taking an overly militarized approach to defeating ISIS. But give credit where it is due. ISIS has lost thousands of fighters, about 50% of its territory in Iraq and more than a quarter of its territory in Syria over the past year. It has also lost ground in Libya, where its capital at Sirte has reportedly fallen. Obama’s military effort against the Islamic State is a strikingly successful one.
So too is the effort to prevent Islamic State fighters from entering the US. The recent ISIS attacks (San Bernardino, Tampa) have been ISIS-inspired rather than directed. Only a handful of immigrants have been arrested for affiliation with the Islamic State, which suggests that the screening procedures are working remarkably well.
The truth is that the Islamic State does not, as Trump claims, “honor” President Obama. But it likes Trump and his ilk a lot. His effort to exclude Muslims from the US feeds the ISIS propaganda machine, which claims Muslims will never get a fair shake in the West. Trump did not found the Islamic State any more than Obama did, but he is aiding and abetting its efforts. I trust Americans will know what to do about that at the polls.
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