Tag: ISIS
Why now and what next
Today’s big story is the American-led air attack on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) installations, mainly in and around Raqqa in eastern Syria, and on Khorasan, an Al Qaeda alumni group thought to be plotting attacks on the US homeland. As usual, there is an air of triumphalism in the press coverage, which derives mainly from the Pentagon: this and that were hit, little collateral damage was done, ISIL will have suffered serious losses. Five Arab countries are said to have pitched in to help.
But it is important to ask why this attack came now and what comes next.
The last few days have seen major ISIL advances against Syrian Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. More than one hundred thousand thirty thousand Kurds are reported to have entered Turkey. This is a colossal number in a short time, even for a country that has already absorbed ten times that number and prides itself on being well-prepared and generous to refugees. Another 400,000 may be on the move. The attack on ISIL in Raqqa is likely an effort to stem its advances against the Kurds, protect Turkey and prevent further losses of territory. In other words, it came now because the military situation is desperate.
It is not at all clear what comes next. The Free Syrian Army and its supporters are not strong in eastern Syria and likely will be unable to take advantage of the air strikes. The Kurdish forces may be in a better position, though they will have been weakened and scattered by recent ISIL advances. ISIL will quickly embed its forces with the civilian population, making it difficult to strike further from the air without major collateral damage.
Unfortunately this means is that the air strikes may be creating ungoverned spaces in which we have no means to prevent radicalization and haven for international terrorists. While perhaps necessary to save the Syrian Kurds from mass atrocities, there is no reason to believe we have the capacity to follow up with serious efforts to fill the vacuum we create.
The Administration has been slow to recognize the emerging problems in Syria and Iraq. Now it is acting more quickly than its allies can consolidate the gains. ISIL may not be a state, but it is more than a small terrorist group. Best to regard it as an insurgency against both the Syrian and Iraqi states. Winning will require a counter-insurgency strategy (clear, hold and build), not just a counter-terrorism strategy (kill, chase or capture them). You can begin to clear insurgents with air attacks, but finishing the job and moving on to holding and building will require capacities on the ground that we appear still to lack.
PS: Here is today’s related panel on the occasion of the Bipartisan Policy Center threat assessment of “Jihadist Terrorism” with Peter Bergen, Mary Habeck and Will McCants:
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
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Where strong men rule
I spent most of last week in Moscow talking with Russian Middle East experts. It was a deeply saddening experience. Not because of the Middle East: that is a gloomy subject even in Washington DC. It was above all Ukraine, but more broadly Putin’s Russia that darkened the mood.
First, the good news: Moscow looks good, the Russians I met were friendly and helpful, and the Bolshoi Opera is once again open. Contrary to my expectations, downtown the skyline has not changed much, Lenin is still in Red Square (though it is unclear how often his mausoleum is open or whether anyone bothers to visit it), and traffic is light compared other European capitals. Skyscrapers have not been allowed in the center. I saw them only at a distance from the Foreign Ministry, near the Arbat market. Most of the older buildings in the center are renovated, some like the GUM department store beautifully. Ditto the churches.
Walking streets lined with high-end fashion as well as low-end chic lace the center. As in the Gulf petro-states, the number of customers seems inadequate to support the investment. Recently enforced parking rules have cleared the streets of double parked cars and limited the number of people interested in paying a couple of dollars per hour for a space. Drivers are surprisingly respectful of pedestrians and each other. Public spaces (Red Square, parks, walking streets) are well-groomed. Security guards, private and public, are everywhere. Order prevails, at least in the center.
The smiling Moscow I found on the street evaporated quickly in the meetings I attended. Ukraine cast a long shadow. American and Russian leaders, the Russians said, are not communicating. There is a lack of trust. The media are biased. Russia has pursued integration with the rest of the world only to find itself blocked by sanctions, even after the recent ceasefire in Ukraine. US/Russia relations are at a nadir. Is it wise to sacrifice global issues for the sake of Kiev? Fascism is reemerging in Ukraine, which the West is using as a pretext for blocking Russia. All Russia wants is for Ukraine not to join NATO, for the Black Sea not to become a NATO lake threatening to Russia, and for the Russian navy to remain in Sevastopol. Crimea did not join Ukraine voluntarily. There is no reason why it shouldn’t return to Russia.
From the American perspective, the Russians are in denial. They deny their army has anything to do with the rebellion in Ukraine. They ask Americans to understand that Ukraine for them is an emotionally searing internal question, apparently unaware that this implies that they do not recognize the independence or sovereignty of their neighbor. They deny Ukraine the right to make a free choice about joining the European Union and NATO. They fail to mention the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the deaths of Russian soldiers, or the photographic evidence of Russian army tanks and other heavy equipment crossing the border. They insist that Russia is in no way involved in Ukraine, even while trying to justify anything Moscow and its proxies might be doing there.
The Russian attitude on Ukraine is linked to broader themes. The Russians I spoke with do not regard Moscow as having lost the Cold War. It liberated itself from the Soviet Union, defeated totalitarianism and initiated a democratic transition on its own. While this was achieved under Boris Yeltsin, no one has anything good to say about him. President Putin is viewed as the best available leader, attractive because of his efforts to restore Russian power. Nostalgia for that power is palpable: even a casual conversation produces admiration for the Soviet Union. Czarist Russia is not far behind in the memory pantheon. The opposition to Putin is all more nationalist than he is, claim his defenders. Americans should view Russia as an equal, a superpower that Washington should treat with caution and respect.
It is not easy to convey what the Russians had to say about the Middle East with this static in the air. Harking back to Condoleezza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy,” we were told rigid American ideologically driven efforts to export democracy triggered the Arab uprisings, even though democracy is inappropriate for traditional societies in which family relations are predominant. The UN, the G7, the G8 and the G20 are all fronts for American ambitions, which are driven by an “energy elite” thirsting for hydrocarbons (no mention was made of America’s soaring energy production and reduced dependence on imports). Ukraine is part of the American democratization program. Ultimately, Washington aims at regime change in Moscow.
The Russians see what is happening in Syria as vindicating their support for Bashar al Assad, even as they repeat the refrain that they are not necessarily attached to him personally. The Russian port facilities at Tartous are not vital to Moscow. The Russians attribute the emergence of Islamic extremists, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to American mistakes and even to American assistance. At the root of the crisis is the American invasion of Iraq, which gave power to the Shia and incited the Sunni rebellion in both Syria and Iraq.
Fearing that it will eventually infect Russia’s Muslim population, the Russians want ISIS defeated. It will take a long time. The US should team up with Russia for the fight. Russia can be helpful in identifying and blocking foreign fighters, especially Chechnyans coming not only from Russia but also from Austria and other European countries. Bombing ISIS in Syria without permission of Damascus would be wrong and likely counter-productive. Arms sent to the opposition will end up in the hands of jihadists. Rejection of the election results in Syria while accepting them in Ukraine demonstrates America’s double standard. Assad has to play a role in the Syrian transition. Russia may prove useful in promoting intra-Syrian dialogue, though the regime has not yet accepted this idea.
My last night in Moscow was spent at a marvelous performance of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.” This iconic Russian opera features a guilt-ridden hero who rises to the throne by murdering the heir apparent. Guilt was not something I found in Moscow last week, but confidence in strong men was much in evidence.
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Demonization obscures a good argument
Eric Edelman, Dennis Ross and Ray Takeyh write in the Washington Post:
The Islamic Republic is not a normal nation-state seeking to realize its legitimate interests but an ideological entity mired in manufactured conspiracies. A persistent theme of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speeches is that the United States is a declining power whose domestic sources of strength are fast eroding. In today’s disorderly region, Iran sees a unique opportunity to project its influence and undermine the United States and its system of alliances.
This is nonsense. Ideology and conspiracy theories hardly distinguish Iran from other nation states, including many that are friendly to the US. Nor do speeches by a leader claiming the United States is a declining power whose domestic sources of strength are fast eroding. That is a view many of our friends as well as our enemies hold. Iran’s effort to project its influence and undermine the United States and its system of alliances is the very definition of a state pursuing what it believes are its legitimate interests. Iran may be an an enemy, but it is still a normal nation-state.
This demonization of Iran and its anti-US policies is combined with much more powerful and important arguments against cooperating with the Islamic Republic: its goals are inconsistent with US goals, and such cooperation would reduce the likelihood of gaining the Sunni Arab cooperation necessary to defeat the Islamic State (IS).
The inconsistency of ultimate goals might be overcome. After all, the US cooperates with many countries whose ultimate goals it does not share, provided their cooperation brings net benefits. This is true not only for unavoidable powers like China and Russia, but also for friendly but problematic countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Right now every IS fighter Iran’s proxies in Hizbollah do away with is one less for American allies in Iraq and Syria to deal with. If Hizbollah is going to weaken the IS and do away with a few of its own fighters in the process, realists in Washington should count the result as positive.
Cooperation with Iran could however have a negative impact on the Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria as well as the Sunni participants in the international coalition against IS. That is a strong argument against aligning openly with Iran, even if IS is also their enemy. We would not want a victory for Bashar al Asad in Syria or for Shia militias in Iraq. If Sunnis mistakenly came to believe that we do, they would be far less inclined to fight IS or to support the coalition the US is trying to cobble together.
Secretary Kerry Friday left the door open to contributions from Iran. That would better be done in private than in public, but it is unavoidable. Tehran has compelling interests in helping its friends in Baghdad and Damascus to fight the IS. Washington can’t stop it any better now than it could when it occupied Iraq. But the Americans would be wise to ensure that Syrians and Iraqis of all sorts view the US as helpful, not only in the effort to defeat the IS but also in efforts to rebuild legitimate and friendly democratic regimes in both places. That is where American interests diverge from Iran’s.
Iran has tried for decades to portray the United States as the Great Satan. We are not, and neither are they.
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The fate of the displaced
After more than three years of fighting, the Syrian civil war shows little sign of abating. Meanwhile there has been an intensification of the humanitarian crisis. The rise of the phenomenally violent Islamic State, which has spread from its de facto capital in Raqqa, displacing Syrians previously inclined to remain in spite of the war, has in part contributed to the problems. An increase in the willingness of the government to use tactics which indiscriminately target the Syrian population such as barrel bombing, and the continued use of certain types of chemical weapons, has further added to the number of Syrians seeking refuge. This ongoing displacement has enormous implications not only for the future of Syria, but also for neighboring countries currently playing host to refugees.
Seeking to address some of the issues the region is facing, Carol Batchelor, the Turkey representative in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Brian Hansford, the UNHCR spokesperson in Washington DC, and Andrew Tabler, senior fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, Tuesday joined Elizabeth Ferris, the co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement in a discussion on Syrian Displacement: Views from the Region.
Opening the dialogue, Brian Hansford noted the sheer number of Syrian refugees now registered by the UNHCR. As of August 29, that figure stood in excess of three million, though Hansford stressed that this does not account for those internally displaced within Syria, or for those who have crossed borders but failed to register. Indeed, those Syrians who are now registered often report having been displaced within the country multiple times before attempting to cross the border. He also drew attention to the number of children – making up more than half of the refugees – now in camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
Carol Batchelor picked up on the significance of the number children in refugee camps, noting that this is exerting a toll on the education of a generation of Syrian children. The situation is complicated further in Turkey where the lack of a common language between host and hosted has led to educational difficulties. In some cases children have now missed up to four years of schooling. This is important when considering the long term strategies for rebuilding Syria. If its people are to succeed in reconstruction then they must be furnished with skills and opportunities so as to be empowered to rise to the challenges of rebuilding a state.
Batchelor also warned of the dangers that have arisen as the humanitarian crisis has become more protracted. While she praised the generosity of the Turkish state in its efforts to accommodate refugees, she expressed concern that little has been done to transition from short term, reactive strategies focussing on the emergency encampments set up at the onset of the crisis, to a longer term strategy. As the situation stands, the psychological well-being of the refugees is suffering after three years of living in tents. If this is not addressed there may well be implications both for short-term stability and for longer term rebuilding efforts.
For Andrew Tabler the primary concern lies not with the refugees inside of the camps, who are relatively well cared for despite their growing numbers. Instead he drew attention to those refugees who are unregistered and unaccounted for, whom he believes represent a two-fold security concern. On the one hand there is concern for these displaced persons’ personal security and well-being, which without support from the UN and NGOs may become vulnerable. On the other hand there is the more general security concern that these unaccounted refugees could become radicalized or facilitate attacks and unrest in host nations.
The panelists were all in agreement that there is no end in sight, either for the war or for the displaced Syrians. Tabler estimated the crisis could easily continue for five years, with full settlement taking a decade or more.
But there was disagreement as to how Syria might one day be reconstructed. Though Tabler claimed that it was beyond Syrians themselves to put the pieces back together, both Batchelor and Hansford stressed that the refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan do not see themselves staying in their host countries indefinitely: generally they want to return, and to play a role in shaping the country’s future once it is safe enough to do so. It is now important for the UN and the international community to ensure that these refugees are empowered so when the time comes they are able to realize this future.
Listen to the event here.
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Wrong lessons learned
ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. It has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.
Thus President Obama misdiagnosed the problem in last night’s rallying cry for a military effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
ISIL is certainly an organization that uses terrorist means, but it is also more than that. It now controls and even governs a swath of territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq populated by millions of people. While it slaughters its enemies with ferocity, it is wrong to say it has no other vision. Its vision is the destruction of the states of the Iraqi and Levantine states (at the least Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Israel and Palestine), as well as the recreation of a caliphate governed under its peculiarly harsh notion of sharia.
This misdiagnosis is leading President Obama to repeat the mistakes of his predecessor, George W. Bush, in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to avoid them. The United States won the wars in it fought in those two countries in 2002 and 2003 respectively. What it lost was the post-war transitions, for which it did little to prepare.
In Afghanistan, the intention was to “kill Al Qaeda and get out,” as Republican advisor Phil Merrill told me at the time. He found ludicrous the notion that we would worry about how justice is administered after we had succeeded. Twelve years later, it is clear that the Taliban took advantage of this failure to re-establish itself, especially in the eastern and southern provinces, while Al Qaeda took refuge in Pakistan.
In Iraq, General Tommy Franks, the American military commander of the invasion, refused to plan for “rear area security,” which is the military euphemism for law and order in the areas liberated from the enemy. The planning for civilian administration, one of three pillars of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), was weak to non-existent. ORHA floundered, then got displaced by Gerry Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, which managed to create the conditions for the Sunni insurgency by disbanding the Iraqi army and barring many Ba’athists from senior positions.
ISIL is a direct descendant of that insurgency. It began its notorious existence as Al Qaeda in Iraq and played a major role in the Iraq civil war of 2006/7. The American counter-insurgency campaign against it was at least partially successful with the support of Sunni tribesmen, but ISIL rose from the ashes in the last few years partly due to the war in Syria and partly due to Nouri al Maliki’s exclusion of Sunnis from real power (not from positions–there were as many Sunnis or more in his governments than in the current one Secretary Kerry has labeled “inclusive”). There is no reason to believe ISIL won’t revive again, unless there are states in Syria and Iraq that have legitimacy with their Sunni populations.
The failure of the President to take into account the requirements and costs of post-war transition once ISIL is defeated in Iraq and Syria means that he is underestimating the risks of his decision to go to war. The costs need not all be American, and they don’t necessarily require American troops. But there has to be a plan for the UN, Arab League, EU and others to support state-building once the anti-ISIL war is won.
The notion that we can kill ISIL and get out, without any attention to what follows, is the same mistake George H.W. Bush made in Somalia (with the result that we are still fighting there more than 25 years later), Bill Clinton would have liked to make in Bosnia (but fortunately was convinced that he could not withdraw US troops within a year), and George W. Bush made in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won’t happen. We’ll get stuck with bills and tasks that we might have preferred to avoid, and for which we fail to prepare.
PS: I discussed some of these issues on WSJ Live this morning:
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The risk of misdiagnosis
Everyone agrees the President’s speech tonight has to make it clear to the American people that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) represents a serious national security threat and merits a strong military response, short of many more boots on the ground (there are already more than 1000 US troops in Iraq). This runs against the grain of both the Administration’s preference and public opinion, which have been focused on retrenchment from more than a decade of unhappy ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. But public opinion has already turned in a more belligerent direction, as has the President. ISIL’s beheadings of American journalists turned that tided.
What I will be listening for in the President’s speech tonight lies in a different direction: how does the President define the challenge ISIL represents? Are the tools he intends to employ adequate to the challenge?
So far, the Administration has defined the challenge as a military one: to degrade and destroy. This is a classic counter-terrorism goal.
But is ISIL really a terrorist organization, or is it an insurgency? It looks to me far more like insurgency: against Bashar al Asad’s rule in Syria and Nouri al Maliki’s in Iraq. It still uses terrorist techniques–like the suicide bombing yesterday that killed the leader of a conservative but anti-ISIL Islamist group in Syria. No doubt it would gladly use such techniques also against the US or Americans abroad.
But it is also clearing, holding and trying to govern several million people. That wouldn’t be possible without the acceptance of a good part of the local Sunni population in eastern Syria and western Iraq. The beheadings of American journalists were staged as executions, not terrorist acts. The mass murder of Syrian soldiers and Yezidis aimed to cleanse and establish control over territory. ISIL is reportedly setting up extensive networks to refine and distribute oil products, in addition to its criminal enterprises like kidnapping and extortion.
The problem with misidentifying insurgency as terrorism is that it leads you to the wrong solutions. You can kill a few dozen, or even a few hundred, terrorists. But an insurgency with popular support requires more than military responses. You need to be able to clear, hold and build in the territory where the insurgency once cleared, held and built. Governance, especially administration of justice, is a vital component of counter-insurgency warfare.
Attacking an insurgency as if it is terrorism is likely to cause a good deal of collateral damage and strengthen the insurgency rather than defeat it. This is especially true once the fighting moves from remote desert areas and major infrastructure like the Mosul and Haditha dams to big cities like Mosul or Tikrit. Without the political efforts to establish something like governing authority in Sanaa and Mogadishu, the drone wars in Yemen and Somalia would have produced a lot of dead bodies but little security for Americans. Even now, many argue that the military effort in those two countries is far too great compared to the limited civilian role in providing humanitarian relief, establishing rule of law and developing the local economies.
In Iraq, the governance issue is fairly straightforward. “Inclusion” of Sunnis and Kurds is the password of the day. But it is a bit misleading. The new prime minister, Haider al Abadi, has included no more Kurds or Sunnis in his cabinet than did Nouri al Maliki. The key is not inclusion in that sense, but inclusion in another sense: in the distribution of power. That’s why the Iraqi parliament approval of a new, provincially-based National Guard to provide local security is important. Empowerment in ways that enable people to govern themselves without dismantling the country is an important key to success in Iraq. So too is oil, which is the glue that will convince many Sunnis, if not Kurds, that they are better off staying than going.
Inclusion and empowerment is going to be far more difficult in Syria than in Iraq. While claiming military success, Bashar al Asad has destroyed much of his country and undermined the legitimacy of the Syrian state. We may well end up with a Syria divided into cantons subject to separate local authorities. There is little oil to glue the pieces together. But somehow the UN, Arab League, EU and others will have to come up with a way of reestablishing some sort of legitimate authority. Otherwise we’ll end up with a Syria that looks even worse than today’s Libya, where militias are tearing the country to shreds.
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