Tag: Kurds
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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Relief yes, complacency no
Ten days ago I noted the negative impact a “yes” vote in the Scottish referendum would have on Ukraine. It would have encouraged separatists there, as well as in Catalonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and other places. Whatever the merits of independence for Scots, the geopolitical implications would have been dreadful.
So what does the strong “no” vote mean? The message is nuanced. The outcome deprives separatists elsewhere of momentum, which is important in politics. But the “no” came about in part because London was willing to offer more devolution, especially of authority to tax and provide welfare. If fulfilled, this will allow Scotland to pursue its preference for a stronger welfare state than London is inclined to do under its Conservative-led governments. Edinburgh’s tea party wants to spend more, not less.
It is also important that Scotland has essentially no human rights complaints against Westminster. Scots have enjoyed the full benefits of liberal democracy in one of its bastions. That of course is not the case everywhere. The lesson Madrid, Kiev, Baghdad, Sarajevo, Pristina, Tbilisi and other central governments should draw from the Scottish experience is that they should provide maximum freedom to their citizens and devolution to provincial and local governments, consistent with the integrity of the state.
What that last phrase means is the heart of the matter. It will mean different things in different places. Iraqi Kurdistan lies at one extreme. Its Kurdish population has every human rights reason to want independence, including mass atrocities inflicted with chemical weapons, expulsion of its population from the country, and unequal treatment. The main remaining authority Baghdad has over Erbil is to deny Kurdistan oil revenue and prevent it from exporting its own oil, which it has been doing since January. Kurdistan still remains part of Iraq because the Americans, Iranians and (to a declining extent) the Turks insist on it. That geopolitical resistance may not last forever.
In other situations, it may be sufficient to allow minority populations a large measure of local authority (especially over language, culture and education) along with economic and political benefits. This is what Kosovo has successfully done with most of its Serbs, who live south of the Ibar river. It now needs to do the same with those who live north of the Ibar, which includes four municipalities that have always had Serb majorities easy access to contiguous Serbia.
Ukraine is the most difficult case right now. Its constitution requires that any referendum be undertaken in the whole country, not in unhappy provinces. Even Russia–which annexed Crimea supposedly on the basis of a referendum–has not recognized the pseudo-referenda and independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two main eastern communities harboring rebels against Kiev’s authority. The paramilitary forces there will have to be demilitarized, demobilized and reintegrated in due course if Ukraine’s territorial integrity is to be preserved. But devolution of authority to local governments is included in the Moscow/Kiev ceasefire agreement and will be important if the hostilities are to be brought to a definitive end.
Maintaining state integrity–in Iraq, Kosovo, Ukraine and elsewhere–will be much easier than if Scotland had approved independence. But nowhere is it easy once abusive or corrupt central authority loses its legitimacy with segments of the population. Relief should not lead to complacency. If state structures are to be preserved, central governments will need to respect the rights and culture of all their citizens while providing tangible political and economic benefits as well as local control over important aspects of their lives.
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Obama Needs Both a Peace and a War Plan
The Middle East Institute ran this piece on its website today:
Last week, President Obama said that he has no strategy yet to confront the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. He was attempting to counter speculation about American bombing of IS targets there. It had been rumored that the President wanted to decide on a war plan by the end of the week.
Before the Commander-in-Chief reviews war plans, he must give strategic guidance that specifies his intent. What is he trying to accomplish? It does not suffice to wax metaphorical about the IS being a cancer. He needs to decide whether the objective is to destroy it and prevent it from spreading, to contain and perhaps shrink it, or more modestly to limit the damage. In less metaphorical terms, the President might want to ensure that the IS is less capable of committing atrocities against civilians and harming Americans (his declared objectives in Iraq). Without guidance on goals, it will be impossible to design a strategy or to judge whether progress is being made.
Circumstances in Syria make setting the goals particularly challenging. The IS and other extremists, including the Al-Qa‘ida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, are not the only problem. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has conducted a war against its own citizens that has killed more than 200,000 Syrians, displaced more than a third of the population, and forced 3 million to become refugees, mostly in neighboring countries. Intervention focused against the IS and other extremists could inadvertently free Assad to suppress the more moderate rebels and help him to reestablish his authoritarian rule. The United States must ensure that their friends, not Assad or Islamist extremists, benefit from U.S. military intervention.
Moderates in Aleppo, for example, are being attacked from the north by the IS and from the south by regime forces. Targeting IS could cause Aleppo to be captured by the regime. Likewise, the IS has taken over Raqqa in eastern Syria from the regime in the last few weeks. Attacking them there could enable regime forces to return.
A White House spokesman has suggested that the President’s objective will be containment and some rollback. Containment should be feasible, if it means preventing the IS from crossing rural and desert expanses to attack population centers, either in Syria or Iraq. But it would require destruction of Syria’s air defenses, which itself is a major military enterprise.
Rollback is even more difficult. It would require not only destruction of Syrian air defenses but also vigorous and sustained U.S. air attacks. Pushing the IS back from an isolated, fixed installation in the desert, as was done in Iraq at the Mosul Dam, is relatively easy. Getting IS out of Syrian cities and towns will be far more difficult, as the confrontation lines change often and who controls what is not clear. Targeting is therefore harder and collateral damage likely. Even if defeated in Aleppo or Raqqa, IS cadres can melt into an urban population, lying low until a new opportunity presents itself.
Rollback also raises the question of who would secure and govern any areas that are taken back from the IS. Washington recognizes the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) as the political representative of the Syrian people, and it will need enormous strengthening if it is to provide policing and governance in areas from which IS has been rolled back. The SOC will also need continued military protection. Assad has often bombarded liberated areas, including hospitals and schools, in an effort to make them ungovernable. The strategy will therefore have to include a commitment to continued application of military force as well as a plan for governance, justice and delivery of services. If liberated areas are left unprotected, the IS or the Assad regime will return, sooner rather than later.
Defeating the IS in Syria and preventing it from spreading would be even more demanding. Defeat is already proving difficult in Iraq, even with Kurdish and Iraqi security forces fighting IS on the ground. They are far stronger relative to the IS than the SOC-loyal forces in Syria. Defeat of the IS in Syria will also require a difficult political straddle: while supporting a Shi‘i-led government in Iraq, the United States will need to provide the mostly Sunni rebels in Syria with the means to defeat the IS as well as the Shi‘i-allied Assad regime.
If the IS is defeated and the territory it controls falls to the opposition, the SOC would then be in a far better position to negotiate with the Assad regime than it was in January, when the Geneva II talks failed to produce the political transition that the United States and the SOC wanted. Syrians are understandably reluctant to oppose Assad if they think the alternative is the IS, which not only abuses the civilian population but is also largely manned by non-Syrians. Without the IS boogey-man, Assad’s days will be shortened.
The post-war state-building tasks in both Syria and Iraq will be colossal. With its oil infrastructure in the south undamaged, Iraq can in principle pay for its own rebuilding; it is a wealthy country with about $100 billion in oil revenue at current prices. But Syria cannot. Its oil production was declining even before the war, its fields are now damaged, its infrastructure is devastated, and its bills are unpaid. If the IS is defeated, someone is going to have to foot a big bill. Washington need pay only a fraction. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have supported the revolution and should be expected to pay the lion’s share if it succeeds. But U.S. diplomacy may be required to remind them of that responsibility. Hopefully that is on the agenda of Secretary Kerry, who is scheduled to head to the Middle East to build an international coalition to support the fight against the IS.
President Obama is late to the realization that the IS represents a serious threat. But haste should not obscure the need for clarity about goals and plans for peace as well as war.
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Advice for the peacelorn
I get some interesting questions from readers. Here are a few with my attempt at answers:
1. What does Dr. Peacefare make of Zaid al-Ali, a former legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq and the author of a book on Iraq’s future. He said the American insistence on inclusive politics is misguided. Iraq’s recent governments have included representatives from all the major sects, he noted, “But this is not a solution — it has never translated into the trickle-down politics that everyone assumed it would.”
What does Ali mean here? What alternative is there to an inclusive government (besides some kind of military victory)?
A: I’m not sure what Ali intends, but he is certainly correct that recent governments have included Kurdish and Sunni representation, as does the Iraqi parliament. But representation has not meant real sharing of power, which accumulated in the hands of Prime Minister Maliki. He bypassed the parliament in appointing military officers, including those whose troops fled when the Islamic State attacked. He gained what appeared to be undue influence over constitutional court decisions. He acquired direct command over counterterrorism forces. He undermined the influence of independent institutions like the central bank.
And above all he failed to keep commitments he made to Kurdistan to settle outstanding issues and encouraged the arrest of major Sunni politicians. His declared intent after winning the April election was to form a “majoritarian” government that would have relied even less on Sunni and Kurdish votes than his previous government.
Inclusion should not just mean tokenism. Nor should it be personality-based. What Kurdistan and many Sunnis are asking for is institutionalization of their control over resources and governance in a fashion that Baghdad can’t interfere with. That goes far beyond anything Maliki was willing to offer. We’ll see if Haider al Abadi is willing to deal.
2. Given the abject, massive fraud in the Afghanistan election, how does Dr. Peacefare see the way forward? Yes, the West wants it over with and that means acquiescing in Ghani’s victory. But how nasty is the stench from the fraud? How deep is the divisiveness? Abdullah and company will get over it in time … with an “inclusive government,” the terms of which Kerry already brokered. But Ghani is apparently now hedging, no? Or is scar tissue developing here among Tajiks and other non-Pashtuns? Any impact at all on White House or Obama’s thinking? Or is the President adamant to seal his legacy as the man who (pick one):
“ended the war in Afghanistan”
“withdrew American forces in Afghanistan while war continued, and possibly intensified.”
A: You are indicating more than I know about fraud in the Afghanistan election. I’m still waiting to see the results, after the Election Complaints Commission finishes its work. Some people I’ve talked to think Ghani won, if not fair and square at least by a margin larger than the fraud. The deal the Secretary of State brokered makes sense to me. Ghani and Abdullah are both capable candidates and to my knowledge relatively uncorrupted individuals. I know a lot of countries that would be privileged to have the likes of either one of them as president. If they can figure out how to govern together–which won’t be easy–that will likely be the best for Afghanistan, which is going to face enormous challenges as the Americans withdraw.
The President seems adamant to me, and what has happened in Iraq has likely strengthened his resolve. He may well need to redeploy American forces to Iraq and Syria, should he decide to not only contain but defeat the IS. That said, there are still more than two years before withdrawal is supposed to be complete. A new president in Kabul who appeals for help while making it clear that Afghans will carry the bulk of the burden might get a better hearing than President Karzai, who chose to blow his relationship with the Americans in an apparent (and fruitless) effort to reach a negotiated settlement with the Taliban.
3. Another reader asked in a comment: As an interested layman I can’t understand why the Syrian government, which counts on the support of allies such as Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, among others, and is not loath to use the full might of its military, and has local knowledge, is unable to defeat the Islamic State in Syria? I replied:
A. It’s not trying. The Syrian government has seen the IS as a counterweight to the more moderate armed forces and has not generally attacked it. The government prefers to use IS as the boogeyman that strikes fear into regime supporters and helps to justify attacks on the moderates.
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What to do about the Islamic State
President Obama yesterday pledged, in addition to military and humanitarian assistance to Iraq:
…we will continue to pursue a long-term strategy to turn the tide against ISIL [the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] by supporting the new Iraqi government and working with key partners in the region and beyond.
What does turning the tide mean? Does it mean defeating ISIL? Does it mean helping the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga to retake territory from ISIL? Or does it mean only disrupting ISIL’s efforts to govern the territory it controls? What lies behind these few, vague but suggestive words?
A lot turns on the answer. It wouldn’t be the first time this president, and his predecessors, promised a long-term strategy and never delivered a clear set of goals with the ways and means to achieve them. Even more than some of his predecessors, President Obama seems inclined to manage problems rather than solve them, especially when doing so would conflict with the overall goal of removing U.S. troops from war zones. That is something he and the American people want.
But the statement yesterday could also represent a change in President Obama’s attitude towards towards the ISIL threat, which he has wanted to ignore when it was limited to Syria and even when it first entered Iraq. That would be a mistake. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both hoped to ignore or at most disrupt and deter the Al Qaeda threat and lived to regret it. ISIL has picked up the Al Qaeda standard from its defeats in Afghanistan and Yemen and carried it from Syria into Iraq, daring along the way to declare a caliphate that the remnants of Al Qaeda say is premature.
For the moment, ISIL does not appear to threaten the United States directly. It prioritizes establishing the caliphate and has its hands full with that. In Syria, it is advancing on Aleppo from the north even as the regime is making progress in encircling the city center. In Iraq, it yesterday lost control of the Mosul Dam to Iraqi and Kurdistan government forces taking advantage of American air strikes, though it still controls more or less one-third of the country. If it remains in that posture, it won’t be long before ISIL takes a crack at the US, either by attacking forces deployed in Iraq or by striking–perhaps using proxies–American civilians.* The US is far from impregnable, as 9/11 and subsequent attempts have demonstrated, and American citizens are vulnerable throughout the Middle East.
We have no reason not to take the ISIL threat seriously. Brian Fishman prefers to contain it for now, while building up governance capabilities in Iraq and Syria that could eventually take on the job of defeating it. That requires a lot of wishful thinking, since the many years of American efforts to build up governance in Iraq have come to nought. Others want the President to commit to defeating ISIL militarily. Bing West suggests what that would take. The quality and quantity of the commitment he thinks necessary are nowhere to be seen right now.
Sunni attitudes towards ISIL and its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi are one critical factor determining how long ISIL thrives. Hussein Ibish reports unwillingness among Sunnis to acknowledge that ISIL is real and has strong roots in Sunni communities. Many prefer to imagine that ISIL is a Western or Israeli construct (even that Baghdadi is a Jewish actor), which means they don’t like it but also don’t own it. He writes:
So as long as many Sunni Arabs hide behind conspiracy theories or point the finger elsewhere, the real meaning of the horrifying IS phenomenon will remain unexamined, and a serious response aimed at correcting the social and cultural distortions that have produced it will be unattainable.
And, in turn, that will ensure that the pushback against the IS and similar fanatics is, at best, delayed or ineffective. The Islamic State itself should be delighted. Nothing could be better calculated to facilitate a continuation of their string of successes than Baghdadi Denial Syndrome.
Nor should American allow themselves to be deluded. Baghdadi is real and ISIL is a threat. We need to decide what to do about it.
*That didn’t take long: ISIL apparently executed today (8/19) an American journalist it took captive in Syria two years ago.
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The anti-ISIS fire brigade
I’m an Obamista–I campaigned for him and continue to support him. I even sympathize with his much-criticized reluctance to engage abroad. The United States needs a respite. We are a weary world policeman. Our most recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated our limitations more than our capacities.
But even while taking a break from our law and order role, we need to be prepared to lead the fire brigade. Uncontained fires that break out abroad can cause us serious damage here at home. The war in Syria, which the President initially viewed as one not directly affecting American national security, always had the potential to do so, by creating a safe haven for terrorists and by spilling over to neighboring countries.
Now both threats have become real. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has carved out a substantial area of control in both countries. While the challenges of governing may prevent ISIS from threatening the United States in the near future, the supposed caliphate it has established clearly intends to do so. Its threat to fly its black flag over the White House is bombast, but if it gains and consolidates a safe haven in Iraq and Syria ISIS will want to strike the United States. It would be delusional to think otherwise.
The President has chosen to act against ISIS, but in strictly limited ways. He is using American air power to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to threatened civilians as well as to prevent an advance on Iraqi Kurdistan, whose vaunted peshmerga have found it difficult to defend their long confrontation line with ISIS. The US is also providing advice and intelligence to both Kurdistan and Iraqi security forces, which performed miserably when ISIS advanced against Mosul and moved towards Baghdad.
The United States needs to do more. It needs to lead a fire brigade committed to containing and eventually defeating ISIS.
This should not be a US-only effort. ISIS threatens Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia more immediately than it threatens the US. But these are not countries that are used to cooperating with each other. Only Turkey has a habit of projecting military force into neighboring countries. But Turkey and Saudi Arabia are at odds over the role of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, Lebanon is preoccupied with its internal difficulties, and Jordan is overwhelmed with Syrian refugees.
The main ground forces available to meet the ISIS threat are Iraqis and Syrians.
The Iraqi Kurds need help: air power, logistics and intelligence. For the moment, the Americans are providing all three. But there is no reason why Turkey can’t provide at least some of the air power and logistics to help Kurdistan. Turkey’s long border with Kurdish-controlled territory and the immediacy of the ISIS threat would enable it to intervene from the air and supply the Kurds with whatever materiel they may need. Perhaps Qatar might help from the air as well. It participated in the NATO-led operation against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and it shares Turkey’s affection for the Muslim Brotherhood, making it a natural ally.
The Iraqi security forces also need help. They are getting intelligence and some supplies. But President Obama wants Baghdad to form an inclusive government before he commits fully. Nouri al Maliki is still refusing to step down, despite strong hints from Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the Iranians that he should do so. He is an extraordinarily stubborn man, and he has the largest block in parliament as well as a lot of personal preference votes in the April election to back his claim to the prime ministry. There are rumors that he is negotiating for a large security detail and immunity. It would be foolish not to give him both under current circumstances, if doing so will accelerate the process of forming a more inclusive government.
Simply changing the prime minister may not solve the problem. Iraq needs a new political compact that will give
- the Kurds money they are owed as well as some capacity to export their own oil and receive the proceeds from its sale;
- the Sunnis more power in Baghdad as well as control over their own destiny in the Sunni-dominated provinces and the money to realize their ambitions.
In exchange, the Kurds should be expected to commit to staying in Iraq and fighting ISIS while the Sunnis and their foreign supporters Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) should be expected to turn against ISIS and help defeat it.
Nailing together a pact of this sort in peacetime would be difficult. It may be easier in wartime, as the consequences of failure are all too clear.
ISIS will be easier to defeat in Iraq if it is also attacked in Syria. Bashar al Asad cannot be expected to do that in any but a perfunctory way. It serves his purposes well to have an extremist threat that he can blame for the uprising against his rule. It also conveniently fights against more moderate opposition forces. The Syrian opposition needs more and better weapons and training in order to attack ISIS. It also needs help from the Syrian Kurds, who can attack from ISIS’ rear and have proven effective against ISIS at times in the past.
So the anti-ISIS fire brigade looks something like this:
- Kurds in the north and east supported by Turkey and Qatar in addition to the US,
- Iraqi army in the south and Syrian opposition (including Kurds) in the west supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Putting that 360° coalition together is today’s challenge for American diplomacy.
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