Tag: Saudi Arabia
Sectarian war or regional power struggles?
Stimson Center’s discussion on The Escalating Shi’a-Sunni Conflict: Assessing the Role of State Actors featured a panel made up of Dwight Bashir of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Najib Ghadbian, Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas, and moderator Geneive Abdo, Fellow at the Stimson Center.
Dwight Bashir claimed that governments and countries in the Middle East with more religious tolerance have seen greater stability during and following the Arab Spring than those countries with less tolerance. Perhaps this is true superficially. If we consider the countries where positive reform has resulted from the popular movements which began in 2011, such as Jordan, Morocco, and most notably, Tunisia, the evidence for sectarianism both today and before the Arab Spring is limited. Meanwhile, if we look to Syria and Iraq, where the Islamic State is acting as an exemplar of sectarian and religious violence, it seems as if Bashir might have a point.
A more than cursory look at the numbers says otherwise. In Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, considerably more than 90% of the respective populations identify as Sunni Muslim, and in all of these countries the ruling class is dominated by the Sunni majority. Contrast this to Syria, with a 74% Sunni majority but with power held primarily by the Alawite minority, and Iraq where the Shi’ite majority (over 60%) is often at odds with the Sunni minority (over 30%, concentrated in the north). Further, Bashir’s suggestion that Syria and Iraq were notably intolerant as compared with certain other countries affected by the Arab Spring seems tenuous. Is it religious tolerance that has allowed greater stability in the Arab Spring success stories, or is it religious (and ethnic) homogeneity? There is a difference.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are interesting to consider in this context. While both have remained relatively stable, this has come at the cost of heavy-handed repression towards these countries’ non-dominant Shi’ite groups. Bashir explicitly outlined the problems presented by societal sectarianism endemic in Saudi Arabia on the country’s policies, and on its influence on external groups such as the Islamic State. Yet despite this apparent intolerance by its Sunni majority towards the Shi’ite 15%, Saudi Arabia, for now at least, is not at risk of instability on the scale seen in much of the Arab world.
It is clear that Sunni-Shi’ite tensions have escalated in some areas, generating inter-religious war that is a far cry from the original protests calling for political change and economic reform. Ghadbian believes the war in Syria was increasingly driven towards sectarianism by outside actors. He points to Saudi Arabian radical sheikhs who have used satellite TV stations and social media to incite Sunnis to jihad against the Assad regime on the one hand, while noting Iranian support for Assad – and the direct intervention of the Shi’ite Hizbollah from 2012 – as having further served to turn the narrative of the Syrian civil war into one of Sunni jihadists versus a Shi’ite regime.
It increasingly appears that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others are fighting proxy wars. Each sees itself as the leading nation for their respective branch of Islam, and both seem keen to install governments and groups favorable to themselves across the region. This has manifested itself most prominently in the Syrian conflict, and also in conflicts such as the ongoing Houthi uprising in Yemen. The Saudi-Iranian power struggle is nothing new, but it is now exacerbating and intensifying conflicts across the Middle East.
American support for Saudi Arabia, and hostility towards Iran, means that there is an increasing perception in some quarters that the US has picked a side in the regional proxy wars. Both Bashir and Ghadbian closed by calling for consistency in US policy when dealing with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Solutions to localized conflict can not be addressed only locally. Solutions need to include, and address the concerns of, the regional powers.
The Arab Spring did not begin as a religious conflict. But it has become increasingly tied to an escalating Sunni-Shi’ite proxy war, at times been driven by elements in Saudi Arabia and Iran. De-escalating these tensions on the ground will not only be important to find a lasting end to the ongoing crises in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, but will be vital for any future state building efforts.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
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.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
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.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Answers to Friedman
In reply to my friend @giacomonyt, here are answers to Friedman’s poorly composed questions:
1. Can they name the current leader of the Syrian National Coalition, the secular, moderate opposition, and the first three principles of its political platform? Extra credit if they can name the last year that the leader of the S.N.C. resided in Syria. Hint: It’s several decades ago.
A: The SNC (Syrian National Council) is no longer what Friedman says it is. He means the Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (usually abbreviated SOC), which includes the SNC. The SOC leader is Hadi Bahra. I have no idea when he last resided in Syria, but it isn’t likely to be recently given the oppression there. Hadi was born in Damascus but went to university in the US. So what?
The SOC principles are these:
- Absolute national sovereignty and independence for Syria.
- Preservation of the unity of the Syrian people.
- Preservation of the unity of the country and its cities.
- Overthrowing the Syrian regime and dismantling the security forces and holding responsible parties accountable for crimes against the Syrian people.
- Not to engage in any dialogue or negotiations with the regime.
- Uphold our commitment for a civil democratic Syria.
Of course they’ve violated number 5 by going to the Geneva 2 negotiations, which was the right thing to do but has produced no good outcome.
2. Can they explain why Israel — a country next door to Syria that has better intelligence on Syria than anyone and could be as affected by the outcome there as anyone — has chosen not to bet on the secular, moderate Syrian rebels or arm them enough to topple Assad?
A: I have reason to believe that the Israelis are helpful to the Syrian opposition when possible, even though they understand perfectly well that it will be more insistent on return of Golan than Bashar al Asad, who has essentially let the matter drop. Israeli intelligence officers can tell you all about the configuration of forces on their border with Syria and the risks that extremists pose there. They have wanted Asad gone, because they knew that letting him stay would increase the likelihood of an extremist succession.
3. The United States invaded Iraq with more than 100,000 troops, replaced its government with a new one, suppressed its Islamist extremists and trained a “moderate” Iraqi army, but, the minute we left, Iraq’s “moderate” prime minister turned sectarian. Yet, in Syria, Iraq’s twin, we’re supposed to believe that the moderate insurgents could have toppled Assad and governed Syria without any American boots on the ground, only arming the good rebels. Really?
A: Does Friedman really believe that invasion and foreign occupation is the only way to bring down a dictator? Maliki was sectarian before we left. He didn’t turn that way afterwards. The moderates we should have supported in Syria from the first were the nonviolent protesters. Had they been successful–and it is likely they would have been much faster than the armed rebellion–this question would not have arisen.
4. How could the good Syrian rebels have triumphed in Syria when the main funders of so many rebel groups there — Qatar and Saudi Arabia — are Sunni fundamentalist monarchies that oppose the very sort of democratic, pluralistic politics in their own countries that the decent Syrian rebels aspire to build in Syria?
A: This implies that if the Qataris and Saudis get their way Syria will be a Sunni fundamentalist monarchy. Really? There is good reason for both the Saudis and the Qataris to oppose the Islamic State and to support a relatively moderate regime in Syria.
5. Even if we had armed Syrian moderates, how could they have defeated a coalition of the Syrian Alawite army and gangs, backed by Russia, backed by Iran, backed by Hezbollah — all of whom play by “Hama Rules,” which are no rules at all — without the U.S. having to get involved?
A: Whatever US involvement is needed now to defeat the Islamic State will be much greater than would have been required two years ago to defeat Asad.
6. How is it that some 15,000 Muslim men from across the Muslim world have traveled to Syria to fight for jihadism and none have walked there to fight for pluralism, yet the Syrian moderates would not only have been able to defeat the Assad regime — had we only armed them properly — but also this entire jihadist foreign legion?
A: Friedman needs to meet the many Syrians and expats who have returned, not only to fight but more importantly to provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian population, establish some semblance of governance in liberated areas and counter the push toward extemism and sectarianism. The jihadist foreign legion was attracted by Asad’s success. They would not have emerged in Syria had he failed early in the game.
PS: In my haste this morning, I skipped an important point. The arming of the moderate opposition was never proposed to defeat Asad’s forces. It was intended to bring him to a serious negotiation for a democratic transition. That it might have achieved, had it been aggressive enough.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
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.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Mission leap
I’ve been wondering, as many of my readers have, how long the war in Gaza will continue. This depends on what Hamas and Israel are trying to achieve. What is the mission? What is an acceptable end state?
Hamas has been pretty clear: it wants an end to the siege of Gaza, which means opening it to trade and commerce with both Egypt and Israel. Hamas also wants release of the West Bank operatives Israel arrested in the prelude to this latest Gaza war. It will resist demilitarization and try to maintain its hold on governing Gaza.
Israel is more of a mystery to me, so I listen carefully when an Israelis speak. They initially seemed to focus on ending Hamas’ rocket threat. But Iron Dome has effectively neutralized the rockets, one-quarter to one-third of which have either been used or destroyed. Destroying many more would require a full-scale reoccupation of Gaza, which the Israelis are loathe to do.
The tunnels into Israel now loom larger as a security threat, albeit one limited to the immediate surroundings of Gaza. So far, the Israelis have destroyed about half the tunnel network. But in order to be effective, the tunnels have to come up inside Israel. Sooner or later–likely sooner–the Israelis will acquire the technical means to detect the digging. The tunnels could then be destroyed inside Israel, making the kind of operation now going on in Gaza unnecessary. It may provide some satisfaction to destroy a couple of years of digging, but it puts Israeli soldiers at risk. If alternative ways are developed to reduce the threat they would obviously be preferable.
Israel’s objectives do not seem to be limited to restoring calm (aka ending the rocket attacks) and destroying the tunnels. It appears to want to break Hamas’ will to fight. The Israelis think they share this objective with Egypt, which regards Hamas as a Muslim Brotherhood organization and therefore an implacable enemy of the restored military regime in Cairo.
Both Egypt and Israel would like to see a post-war political evolution that puts the Palestinian Authority (PA) back in charge of Gaza. Israel has had bad experience trying to engineer regime change in the Arab world (witness the 1956 effort to overthrow Nasser and its later Lebanon machinations). But the Israelis still imagine they can, with cooperation from the international community, help the PA by steering reconstruction funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and border openings in the right directions. Hamas was already in trouble before this latest war, perhaps even on the verge of collapse as a viable governing entity. More radical groups like the Islamic State have little traction in Gaza, the Israelis think.
Unless one side or the other is victorious, the end of this war will likely involve a trade: improved security for Israel, reconstruction and economic benefits for Gaza. But there is no guarantee of the political outcome the Israelis and Egyptians are hoping for. Displacing Hamas entirely is not just mission creep but mission leap. In the meanwhile, Gaza’s civilians are paying an exorbitant price.
RSS - Posts
