ISIS… seems as if it is yet another eruption of violence and terrorism in the Middle East and now the U.S. is launching air strikes and sending “advisers” to Iraq. It's enough to make Yogi Berra sigh, “It's de ja vu all over again.”
It seems to me that there are three critical questions that ought to be front and center in any discussion of whether we as Americans have any reason to get involved:
Who are we opposing and are they any different from any of a large number of other bad actors around the world ?
Are there any national interests … do we have anything at stake?
Can we succeed?
WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
ISIL, ISIS, IS, the so-called Islamic State ... how many groups do we have to keep track of? We’re only concerned with one group, that started out as al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly after the US invaded in 2003 as part of a larger resistance movement among Sunni Iraqis. But when al-Qaeda in Iraq shifted the focus of its violent assaults on Shia Iraqis to include Sunnis and began to challenge Sunni tribal leaders and local power brokers for control and began to pick fights with other Sunni-based anti-government groups, they were quickly isolated and relegated to hideouts in the desert.
Then Syria collapsed into civil war. The anti-Assad protesters were never a unified, organized movement. When the Assad regime turned to large scale violence against its opponents, they splintered into a farily large number of locally based groups, ranging from middle class secular democrats to rural and urban poor religiously inspired factions. Some of these groups included people with military training and experience; others were more dedicated than capable.
What started as a protest movement against an entrenched dictatorship quickly became redefined by actors outside of Syria as part of a larger struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. Iran and Hezbollah, the powerful Shia militia in Lebanon, came to aid of the Assad regime because they defined the struggle as Syrian Sunni forces (aided and abetted by Sunni fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and Gulf).
Not to be outdone, conservative social and religious forces in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States began to actively support some of the Syrian groups who shared their values and were quite willing to define the struggle as Sunni versus Shia. Al-Qaeda in Iraq saw an opportunity to reinvent itself and joined the fray. Relatively quickly the struggle for support and dominance among the increasingly well armed Islamist groups became as important as the struggle against Assad.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq emerged as one of the major beneficiary of outside aid and one of the most effective fighting forces and expanded its self definition to be the Islamic State in eh Levant, or ISIL in English. In Arabic the Levant (the part of the Arab world bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea) is known as ash-Shām; hence ISIS as the acronym. When ISIS had succeed in establishing control over a significant area of Syria adjoining its strongholds in Iraq, (and been kicked out of al-Qaeda itself for failure to consult and “notorious intransigence”) it chose to reinvent itself again as the Islamic State and declared the establishment of a Caliphate. (In Sunni Muslim political theory an institution that combines religious and civil leadership for all Muslims throughout the world. The last Caliphate was abolished at the end of the Ottoman Empire.)
If you think “Islamic State” is a grandiose term for a group of fundamentalist hard liners who control some territory by fear and violence and/or you want to disrespect them, you add “so-called” to the Islamic State. Somewhat arbitrarily I’ll use ISIS in this essay.
Unlike al-Qaeda itself, or other violent movements around the world (e.g. Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda), ISIS exercises effective control over a significant portion of Syria and Iraq, including major cities such as Mosul and Fallujah. It is far more violent than other groups, both in terms of the number of people it kills and its willingness to engage in mass executions of people it considers heretical, apostate, or non-Muslim. ISIS is better financed than other armed groups and militias in the area and no longer relies solely on donations from wealthy fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf but has the assets of looted banks in cities it has conquered and oil fields in Syria and Iraq that it controls. And ISIS troops are better equipped (including American supplied weapons and military equipment seized from defeated Iraqi army units), trained and led.
When ISIS started to move beyond the territory it had captured in Syria from either the Assad forces or other rebel groups into Iraq, the Iraqi army disintegrated. ISIS fighters moved with lightning speed to capture such major Iraqi cities as Mosul and Fallujah and threaten Baghdad itself. They looked unstoppable until a combination of Kurdish military units (the pesh merga) and American air strikes blunted the advance on Haditha Dam and the city of Kobani.
The ISIS program is simple: establish a society in which adherence to the strictest and most conservative version of Islam leads to purity and righteousness and which offers to restore the glories of the Golden Age of the 11th and 12th Centuries when the world of Islam stretched from China to southern Europe and was the center of civilization. It is that simplicity and vision of grandeur that lies at the heart of ISIS’ propaganda appeal to disaffected Muslim youth throughout the Middle East and in Europe and North America.
Actually, the dreams of ISIS and similar Islamist movements have less to do with the highlights of Islamic civilization in the Middle East during the Middle Ages than with a glorified vision of a bedouin camp. They do not long for the days when Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo or Toledo were cosmopolitan crossroads where scholars explored ancient and modern philosophy, laid the foundations of modern science, medicine and mathematics, and poetry, music and graphic arts flourished. ISIS and other fundamentalist conservatives dream of a simple community where there is no moral ambiguity or confusion about gender or age appropriate roles and life is regulated and constrained by traditional social norms.
Typically when we say “terrorist” we mean someone who uses violence randomly against innocent people in order to spread fear and undermine peoples’ trust in each other and their government. ISIS is no longer a terrorist group in that sense. They certainly use violence as an expression of ideology when they seek to eradicate entire groups like the Yazidis or Iraqi Christians and by all accounts they use violence as a tool of suppression and control in the areas they occupy. But ISIS has gone beyond trying to undermine an existing order to conquering territory and creating new systems of control.
This matters because the fact that ISIS exercises direct control over territory, acting like a government with administrative structures and responsibility to provide basic services like water and electricity and law and order, poses different strategic challenges than would a more fluid and amorphous band of terrorists with distinct hideouts and safe havens.
SO WHAT? WHAT DO WE HAVE AT STAKE? (IS INVOLVEMENT WORTH IT?)
I assume that nations, like individual humans, act only in their self interest. (That doesn't mean selfishness – there are many times and ways in which you or I can see that what is good for us is also good for someone else; often we realize that we can only get what we want if others get what they want.)
Let’s start with what I think is NOT an issue: the threat that they’re going to come get us. I do not think ISIS is a direct threat to you and me. They are focused on establishing and expanding their state and expelling the West and all its evil works from the Muslim world. Diverting resources to some kind of spectacular assault on a symbolic target in the US or Europe does not directly contribute to the primary goal.
There is concern in some quarters that some of the British, French or American citizens who have already joined ISIS forces will return home (or perhaps be sent home) to cause trouble. To the extent that this is a real possibility, I think the precautions already in place and the additional measures being taken by European and American security services should be quite adequate.
Paradoxically, the more people worry about ISIS or returning jihadists coming to get them, the more it serves ISIS’ interests by reinforcing the image of them as a ferocious and frightening force and making people less supportive of attempts to deal with them.
Many knowledgeable observers disagree strongly with this analysis. Ryan Crocker, former US ambassador to Iraq who also served in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan has said "If we don't think we're on their target list, we are delusional."
I think there are two major U.S. interests potentially threatened by the emergence of ISIS: human development and stability.
Human Development: whether you agree with John Donne that “no man is an island” or want to argue pragmatically that a society or world with extremes of wealth and poverty cannot last, ISIS is a clear and present danger to any hope of a decent future for the citizens of Iraq and Syria and beyond.
I'm using “human development” to include the political, economic and social dimensions.
Politically, Iraq under Saddam or Syria under the Assads were stagnant regimes in which opportunities for political involvement and action were carefully limited. Elections were a cynical sham and regime critics were often jailed. The original ideological ferver of the regimes, based on the promise of democratic socialism and guided development, had long since played itself out There was some room to do or think what you wished as long as you did not openly challenge the status quo. One factor underlying the authoritarianism and anti-democratic features of many regimes in the developing world has been the concerted effort to replace parochial communal identities with a national one. To a significant extent that did work: especially in urban settings, an Iraqi or Syrian identity did exist as a felt reality that was more important than religious or ethnic ties.
Economically, the physical quality of life and standard of living did improve over time in both Iraq and Syria, although the rate of growth has slowed dramatically in the past two decades and the distribution of wealth has become more unequal.
Socially, both Saddam’s Iraq and the Assads’ Syria invested in secular, Westernised education and promoted equality and opportunity for women. Development was uneven, poverty and traditional attitudes toward gender roles persisted, but until political and economic stagnation drastically slowed progress, peoples’ every day lives did improve.
But ISIS government in the areas it controls verges on repressive totalitarianism. Some people are by nature so impure, so far removed from the ISIS version of “orthodox” Sunni Islam that they cannot be allowed to survive. For the others, the ISIS progrm of creating a new, pure state with new, pure and righteous men and women demands coercive enforcement of unconditional public adherence to a rigid code of behavior.
The idea of International Stability offers a second rationale for outside intervention against ISIS.
The new secular national identity that has emerged in many less developed countries around the world including Iraq and Syria, does not mean that older religious, ethnic or tribal identities disappear. When day to day life is interrupted by a major upheaval that undermines national identity and the institutions that support it, those older identities surge into the foreground, complete with the negative stereotypes of other groups that make it possible to displace the anxiety and distress of social upheaval into anger and hostility directed at them.
ISIS and similar movements turn that anger and hostility into violence and destruction, threatening the continued existence of the national government. For all the myriad faults of national governments around the globe, a world in which the traditional nation-state is the dominant form of political community offers a better hope for the future than any other system, especially one based on religion, ethnicity or tribal ties.
The global economy that supports the high standard of living in Western Europe and North America and is largely responsible for the significant improvement in the standard of living for billions of people in less developed countries, ultimately rests on orderly relations between nations and internal peace within them.
TOO LATE
The question of whether we should get involved in the struggle against ISIS is moot. It does not matter whether you believe that there are vital national interests at stake and we can be successful in defending them or whether you believe that the President has committed the United States to the effort, we are conducting air strikes in both Iraq and Syria, soon there will be 3,000 American military “advisors” trying to put the Iraqi army back together
BUT CAN WE “WIN”?
As usual, much depends on what “win” means.
If “win” means forcing ISIS out of Iraqi territory and the areas they hold in Syria in the next few months, I think the answer is no.
I think that would require a very large, very effective military force that combined infantry, heavy weapons and air strikes. Even if the various forces fighting (or fleeing) ISIS: the Iraqi army, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Kurdish pesh merga, and the many disparate Syrian opposition groups could somehow communicate and co-ordinate (two chances: none and less than zero) they lack both the personnel and firepower. And a series of pitched battles in the areas currently controlled by ISIS would produce a staggering number of dead and wounded innocent civilians.
If “win” means contain ISIS militarily in the short run, cut off their sources of funding, supplies, an recruits and expect (hope?) that ISIS will collapse as a governing body in the face of discontent and unrest in Mosul, Fallujah and other cities aided and abetted by fighters from Shia Iraqi militias and Iran?
This would require:
Increased air strikes. We have already had some success helping Iraqi and Kurdish units with air strikes. After a string of rapid victories, ISIS was unable to hold the Hamidi dam and has so far failed to conquer the border city of Kobani. The US has been able to persuade other countries, including France and Britain and Qatar to play a role in an air campaign but the bulk of heavy lifting will be done by US aircraft.
Cutting off outside support to ISIS and expecting an insurgent campaign from within. It is estimated that ISIS gets several million dollars a month from contributions from wealthy conservatives in Saudi Arabia and Gulf States, oil sales on the black market, and the flow of new fighters from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa and from Europe and North America. Western governments have substantial experience in following the money and disrupting the flow to groups like al-Qaeda and international criminals.
Figuring out what to do with the estimated 30,000 ISIS members. It is one thing to target ISIS leaders for drone strikes, dealing with thousands of young men from across the Arab world and beyond is a fundamentally different challenge. But if ISIS does collapse in the face of external pressure and internal resistance and the foot soldiers disperse to their home countries or other troubled regions, we may end up with a whole series of ISIS-like groups.
I think (perhaps “hope” is a better word) that this can be done. The problems to be solved and obstacles to be overcome in securing the cooperation of governments like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey and non-governmental forces like Syrian and Iraqi tribes and militias are significant.
The Kurds will continue to be a major factor in this struggle but
where do I list them? While the powers that be in the Kurdish
region of Iraq look like a government, walk like a government,
squawk like a government and tax like a government, it suits
everyone’s interests to pretend they’re not a government. But the
Kurdish miliary is far better organized, and has far more combat
experience than anti-regime militias in Syria or the Iraqi army or
the various tribal militias in Iraq.
I also think a that US politics may be as big an obstacle to a strategy against ISIS that require sustained effort over many months. Right now those on the left who have deep reservations about US involvement are effectively silenced by popular revulsion at ISIS brutality and beheadings and by the desire to support a beleaguered President. And Obama’s critics on the right have largely restricted their criticism to the notion that he isn’t doing enough. Polls suggest that there is broad support for “doing something” about ISIS.
But as this operation drags on with little visible success and perhaps some American casualties, I think it is likely that both those who think we are doing too much and those who think we are doing too little will become increasingly disenchanted with Obama and the issue will become more and more contentious. A more bitterly partisan, grid-locked Congress and the bevy of 2016 Presidential contenders will probably lead to every small success being trumpeted as “THE TURNING POINT!” and every small setback framed as “WE KNEW IT WOULD NEVER WORK!”
For better or worse we are profoundly involved in the future of Iraq and Syria. I think one of the most important lessons we should have leaned from Iraq and Afghanistan is that in long run the political, economic and social dimensions of complex situations are more important than the military. If we persist in treating ISIS as essentially a military problem, we are very unlikely to be happy with the results.
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