Tag: Libya
How to degrade and destroy
President Obama has now clarified his goal in the war on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): it is to degrade and destroy. His model is what was accomplished against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That should be little comfort to those who live in areas where ISIL operates. A dozen years of war have rendered parts of the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan even more lawless and ungovernable than it was before the US intervened there starting in 2001. But it is fair enough to say that the remnants of Al Qaeda that remain there are little threat to the United States.
What will it take to defeat ISIL?
The military campaign will require a 360 degree effort against ISIL. This means an international coalition that includes not only those NATO members willing to engage but also the security forces of Iraq and Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan as well as Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of which are seriously threatened if ISIL is able to consolidate its position inside Iraq and Syria. The precise division of labor will have to be negotiated, but the United States should expect that its bombing of ISIL in both Syria and Iraq is only the tip of the spear. Iraq and the Syrian rebels will need to provide the biggest share of the ground forces. The others should be prepared to attack from the air or provide funding, advice and equipment.
The military campaign against ISIL will go much faster and much better if the mainly Sunni populations in the areas it controls rise against it. This is what enabled the American “surge” in 2006 and 2007 to succeed against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then it was the Sunni tribes that rebelled and helped the Americans to destroy Al Qaeda. Any serious effort to destroy ISIL will need to make something similar happen now. But it won’t be easy: without boots on the ground, the Americans will be unable to organize or pay for a Sunni “awakening.” The Saudis and UAE have shown little aptitude in this direction, but it is high time they learned how to get what they pay for.
While confronting ISIL militarily, the coalition acting against it will need to weaken its sources of financing and recruitment. This is shadowy work that requires the best efforts of many intelligence agencies working together. The focus on foreign fighters coming from the US and Western Europe may be necessary to prevent their flow back to those places. But most of them appear to be coming from other places and need to be slowed or stopped, whatever their origins. This is an area where the Russians can contribute: Chechnyans play a significant role, as do others from the Caucusus. Rumors of Qatari financing have been rife. It is time to stop any supposedly private contributions going from Doha to ISIL or its supporters.
The toughest issue in dealing with ISIL will be preventing its return to the places where it is militarily defeated. President Obama may think leaving the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan devoid of effective governance is all right, because eventually Kabul and Islamabad will fill in. But it is going to be a long time before Damascus or Baghdad can govern effectively in the eastern provinces of Syria or the western provinces of Iraq, respectively. If you want to degrade and destroy ISIL there you are going to have to make some provision for governance, justice and public services.
This cannot be done by remote control. Someone is going to need to establish a presence in the areas ISIS currently controls, unless we want to see it go the way of Libya, whose various militias are tearing the country to shreds. In Syria, it might be the moderate revolutionaries, but then they will need protection from Bashar al Asad so long as he rules Damascus. In Iraq, it will likely need to be Sunni Iraqis who take control and govern–initially at least–without much reference to Baghdad. International humanitarian and other assistance in both countries will be vital, unless we want to see them go the way of Libya, where militias are now battling each other for control of the state. The UN or maybe the Arab League had better get ready for big challenges.
Presidents have to deal with the world they are dealt, not the one they prefer. “Degrade and destroy” will take years, not months. Obama would prefer to do retrenchment. Maybe his successor will get the opportunity.
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Bombing is not sufficient
To bomb or not to bomb was yesterday’s question. Now most of Washington is agreeing that to stop the Islamic State bombing is necessary. The questions currently asked concern how much, whether to do it in Syria as well as Iraq, the intelligence requirements and how many American boots needed on the ground, even if not in combat.
Bombing may well be necessary to stop extremist advances, but it is certainly not sufficient to roll back or defeat the Islamic State. If you think the United States is at risk from the IS, you will want to do more than bomb. Quite a few people are proposing just that, though the numbers of troops they are suggesting necessary (10-15,000) seems extraordinarily low given our past experience in Iraq. Presumably they are counting on the Kurdish peshmerga and the 300,000 or so Iraqi troops the Americans think are still reasonably well organized and motivated. How could that go wrong?
But the military manpower question is not the only one. The first question that will arise in any areas liberated from the IS is who will govern? Who will have power? What will their relationship be to Damascus or Baghdad? How will they obtain resources, how will they provide services, how will they administer justice? The Sunni populations of Iraq (where they are a majority in the areas now held by IS) and of Syria (where they are the majority in the country as a whole) will not want to accept prime minister-designate Haider al Abadi (much less Nouri al Maliki, who is still a caretaker PM) or President Asad, respectively.
Bombing may solve one problem, but it opens a host of others. This is, of course, why President Obama has tried to avoid it. He heeds Colin Powell’s warning: you break it, you own it. The governance question should not be regarded as mission creep, or leap. It is an essential part of any mission that rolls back or defeats the IS. Without a clear plan for how it is to be accomplished, bombing risks making things worse–perhaps much worse–rather than better.
Sadly, the United States is not much better equipped or trained to handle the governance question–and the associated economic and social questions–than it was on the even of the Afghanistan war, 12 years ago. Yes, there is today an office of civilian stability operations in the State Department, but it can quickly deploy only dozens of people. Its budget has been cut and its bureaucratic rank demoted since its establishment during George W. Bush’s first term. Its financial and staff resources are nowhere near what will be required in Syria and Iraq if bombing of the IS leads to its withdrawal or defeat.
The international community–UN, European Union, NATO, Arab League, Organization of the Islamic Conference, World Bank, International Monetary Fund–are likewise a bit better at post-war transition than they were, but their successes lie in the Balkans in the 1990s, not in the Middle East in the 2010s. They have gained little traction in Libya, which needs them, and only marginally more in Yemen, where failure could still be imminent. Syria and Iraq are several times larger and more complex than any international statebuilding effort in recent times, except for Afghanistan, which is not looking good.
Even just the immediate humanitarian issues associated with the wars in Syria and Iraq are proving too complex and too big for the highly capable and practiced international mechanisms that deal with them. They are stretched to their limits. We don’t have the capacity to deal with millions of refugees and displaced Iraqis and Syrians for years on end, on top of major crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and ebola in West Africa.
President Obama has tried hard to avoid the statebuilding challenges that inevitably follow successful military operations. He wanted to do his nationbuilding at home. We need it, and not just in Ferguson, Missouri, where citizens clearly don’t think the local police exercise their authority legitimately. But international challenges are also real. Failing to meet them could give the Islamic State openings that we will come to regret.
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Where international help likely won’t arrive
France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States Wednesday denounced the growing violence in Libya, where armed groups are going at it with increasing intensity. The Western powers rightly say the violence threatens Libya’s transition and suggest it may breach international humanitarian law, as it targets civilians.
The question is: are they going to do something about it? The newly seated Libyan parliament asked this week for international peacekeepers. That is not going to happen. None of the countries denouncing the violence is ready to intervene. Nor will the UN, which will want a political settlement first. It deploys once there is a peace to keep, not before.
Egypt and Algeria, Libya’s most powerful neighbors, might like to see a dictator back in charge in Tripoli and the Islamists crushed, but neither will be willing to take the risks associated with making it happen. The UAE is believed to be paying for some of the anti-Islamist “dignity” campaign of Khalifa Hiftar in Benghazi, but he has been less than fully successful.
That’s the problem in Libya: despite two relatively good elections since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, its Islamists and non-Islamists are still struggling for predominance. The government has little capacity to establish law and order. The city-based revolutionary brigades, most notably Zintan allied with the non-Islamists and Misrata with the Islamists, are fighting for control over the vast patronage that Libya’s oil revenue enables. Everyone fears being excluded and even destroyed. People with existential fears fight hard for survival. The government continues to cut checks for 260,000 “revolutionaries” on all sides of the chaos, no more than 20% of whom actually engaged against Qaddafi during the revolution. It is too frightened of the people it is paying to cut them off.
The Libyans need what neighboring Tunisia now has: a political pact that eliminates the existential threats its many factions now think they face and moves their disputes from a violent arena to a political one.
No one but the Libyans can reach such a pact. But the internationals can and should help. The UN mission in Libya is the right organization to reach out to the Islamists, who think they have the most to fear from disbanding militias and consolidating the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of violence. Some of the Islamists are extremists associated with terrorist organizations of one sort another, but there can be no political settlement without them, because they’ll spoil it if one is attempted. The Western powers will need to stand aside and allow the UN to do the difficult work of trying to entice the Islamists into a political discussion and eventually a pact that will allow transfer of the conflict into nonviolent means. Neighboring Tunisia did this successfully on its own, but Libya lacks the union and civil society organizations that brought the Islamists and non-Islamists to an agreement in Tunis.
Getting there may take time. The brigades seem far from exhausted. Only when they are convinced they will be no better off by continuing the fighting than by reaching an agreement will they be amenable to stopping. This “ripeness” is difficult to predict. It might be accelerated by Egyptian and Algerian pressure or UAE funding, but it is easy to picture the current situation persisting for another year or more, with catastrophic consequences for many Libyan civilians. But they are not a minority crowded onto a mountaintop surrounded by nut-job extremists and threatened with genocide. They will have to fend for themselves.
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An unhappy Eid
For most Muslims, today marks the begining of Eid al Fitr, the feast thats end the month of Ramadan. It won’t be an Eid Mubarak (Blessed Eid) for lots of people: there is war in Syria, Iraq, Gaza/Israel, Sudan and Libya, renewed repression in Egypt and Iran, instability in Yemen. The hopes of the Arab spring have turned to fear and even loathing, not only between Muslims and non-Muslims but also among Shia, Sunni and sometimes Sufi. Extremism is thriving. Moderate reform is holding its own only in Tunisia, Morocco and maybe Jordan. Absolutism still rules most of the Gulf.
The issues are not primarily religious. They are political. Power, not theology, is at stake. As Greg Gause puts it, the weakening of Arab states has created a vacuum that Saudi Arabia and Iran are trying to fill, each seeking advantage in their own regional rivalry. He sees it as a cold war, but it is clearly one in which violence by surrogates plays an important role, even if Riyadh and Tehran never come directly to blows. And it is complicated by the Sunni world’s own divisions, with Turkey and Qatar supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia opposing it.
The consequences for Arab civilians are dramatic. Well over 100,000 are now dead in Syria, half the population is displaced, uncounted more are dead in Iraq and millions more displaced. Egypt has largely reversed the liberation of its aborted 2011 revolution but still faces more violence than before it. Libya has been unable to tame or dissolve its militias, which are endangering its population and blocking its transition. While the total numbers killed in the Gaza war are far smaller than in Syria or Iraq, the percentage of civilians among the victims–and the broader impact on the civilian population–is causing anti-Israel revulsion worldwide.
Greg wants the United States to favor order over chaos. The trouble is it is hard to know which policies will do what. Will support for Iraq Prime Minister Maliki block the Islamic State, or will it incentivize extremist recruitment and make matters worse, perhaps even causing partition? The military government in Egypt, with which Greg thinks we should continue to engage, is arguably creating more problems with extremists in Sinai and the western desert than it is solving with its arbitrary and draconian crackdown against liberals as well as Islamists. The Obama administration is inclined to support America’s traditional allies in the Gulf, as Greg suggest, but what is it to do when Qatar and Turkey are at swordpoints with Saudi Arabia ?
Many Arab states as currently constituted lack what every state needs in order to govern: legitimacy. The grand failure of the Arab spring is a failure to discover new sources of legitimacy after decades of dictators wielding military power. The “people” have proven insufficient. Liberal democracy is, ideologically and organizationally, too weak. Political Islam is still a contender, especially in Syria, Iraq and Libya, but if it succeeds it will likely be in one of its more extreme forms. In Gaza, where Hamas has governed for seven years, political Islam was quite literally bankrupt even before the war. Their monarchies’ ability to maintain order as neighbors descend into chaos is helping to sustain order in Jordan and Morocco. Oil wealth and tribal loyalties are propping up monarchies in the Gulf, but the demography there (youth bulge and unemployment) poses serious threats.
The likelihood is that we are in for more instability, not less. Iran and Saudi Arabia show no sign of willingness to end their competition. They will continue to seek competitive advantage, undermining states they see as loyal to their opponent and jumping in wherever they can to fill the vacuums that are likely to be created. Any American commitment to order will be a minor factor. This will not, I’m afraid, be the last unhappy Eid.
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I surrender
While I agree with those who see the world developing in positive directions over the longer term, I confess to feeling drained of all I have to say for the moment on Gaza, Ukraine as well as Iraq, Syria, Libya and several Balkans conflicts. Somehow this struck a chord:
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Peace picks July 21-25
- ISIS, Iraq, and the Gulf States Monday, July 21 | 10:00 am – 11:30 am Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 1799 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND A panel discussion with Dr. Shireen Hunter of Georgetown University, Dr. Abbas Kadhim of SAIS, Ali Al-Ahmed of The Gulf Institute, and Kadhim Al-Waeli, an Iraq military analyst, concerning the present and future of ISIS in Iraq and the Gulf States.
- Tariq Fatemi on Pakistan’s Vision for Regional Peace, Prosperity, and Economic Development Monday, July 21 | 10:30 am – 12:00 pm Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 1799 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND The upcoming U.S. exit from Afghanistan, the radicalization across the region, and persisting political rivalries continue to impede South Asia’s growth and economic integration. However, the election of business-oriented leaders in most of South Asia provides reason to hope that the quest for prosperity will at last become the main driver of political relations across the region. Ambassador Tariq Fatemi, special assistant to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, will discuss Pakistan’s vision for regional economic integration and enduring peace and prosperity.
- Iran’s Nuclear Chess: Calculating America’s Moves Monday, July 21 | 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm Woodrow Wilson Center, Fifth Floor; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND The P5+1 and Iran have been negotiating since last January under a six-month deadline to convert an interim nuclear accord into a final agreement. The discussion will address the outcome of the negotiations—whether successful in yielding an agreement, extended to allow further negotiations, or at a point of breakdown. What are the implications for U.S. policy toward Iran moving forward? The meeting will feature discussion of the new Middle East Program monograph by Robert Litwak, vice president for scholars and director of international security studies at the Wilson Center.
- Libya: Update from the Field Monday, July 21 | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Atlantic Council; 1030 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND Libya’s democratic promise is more precarious than ever. The government recently reached a deal with armed groups over the oil field blockade; however, a political struggle is taking on an increasingly violent dimension. Fadel Lamen, nonresident fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center at the Atlantic Council, will discuss the status of Libya’s transitional processes, including the National Dialogue.
- Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East Monday, July 21 | 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm Rayburn House Office Building; 45 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND The Middle East Policy Council will hold its 77th Capitol Hill Conference. A questions and answers session will be held at the end of the proceedings, following talks by Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution, Paul R. Pillar, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University, Amin Tarzi, Director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University, and Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
- The Impact of Ukraine in the Neighborhood Tuesday, July 22 | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Woodrow Wilson Center, Sixth Floor; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support of separatists in eastern Ukraine is having ripple effects throughout Eurasia. But what has been the impact in the immediate neighborhood, the South Caucasus, Moldova, and Belarus as well as Ukraine itself? John Herbst, Atlantic Council, Eric Rubin, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Hon. Kenneth S. Yalowitz, Former U.S. Ambassador to Belarus and Georgia, will examine recent developments and prospects in each focusing first on the situation on the ground in Ukraine, the performance of the Poroshenko government, and the latest Russian moves.
- U.S. Policy Today for Africa Tomorrow Tuesday, July 22 | 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm US Institute of Peace; 2301 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND Home to burgeoning economies and brutal civil conflicts – sometimes coexisting in the same country – Africa is increasingly prominent in the foreign policy agendas of world powers. In early August, President Obama will convene most of the heads of state of the 54 nations of Africa in Washington, D.C. for the first-ever summit between U.S. and African leaders. Ambassador Johnnie Carson, Ambassador Princeton Lyman, and Ambassador George Moose will discuss Africa’s economic growth and poverty, growing trade between the U.S. and Africa, and concerns about closing political space in some countries, among many other topics.
- Hearing: Terrorist March in Iraq: The U.S. Response Wednesday, July 23 | 10:00 am – 1:00 pm Rayburn House Office Building; 45 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, D.C. The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs will have witness Mr. Brett McGurk, Deputy Assistant for Iraq and Iran, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State.
- Confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: Challenges and Options Thursday, July 24 | 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm Johns Hopkins SAIS, Rome Auditorium; 1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Conflict Management Program at SAIS will host a discussion about combating the rising influence of ISIS. MEI scholars Richard A. Clarke, Steven Simon, and Randa Slim will examine the current status of the organization and its support network, focusing on the steps that Iraqi political actors and the U.S. administration can take to address the spread of its influence. Daniel Serwer (SAIS, MEI) will moderate the event.
- The Congressional Role in U.S. Military Innovation: Preparing the Pentagon for the Warfighting Regimes of Tomorrow Thursday, July 24 | 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Root Room; 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. REGISTER TO ATTEND While conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. Congress can be a hindrance to U.S. military planning and budgeting, history tells a different story. Rep. Forbes, chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, and Rep. Langevin, ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, will discuss the proper force structure and defense strategy for the U.S. military.
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