reflectivepundit

After Air Strikes against ISIS and Two Big Surprises (II)

By Brigitte L. Nacos

My previous post focused entirely on the joint air strikes against ISIS in Syria and possible follow-up military actions. But military responses from the air and on the ground will not entirely change the conditions in which terrorist guerrillas like ISIS operate and commit their atrocities—not in Syria and not in Iraq or elsewhere.  For this, far-reaching political changes would be needed; and these will not be easily achieved.

Of the two states in which ISIS controls large territories, Iraq is better situated for defeating ISIS and perhaps start to work towards a political compromise that accommodates the rights of its various religious and ethnic population groups.

To begin with, the military push against ISIS in Iraq has made for strange bedfellows in that both the United States and Iran are militarily involved in the fight against ISIS.  Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday according to the New York Times, “Had it not been for Iran’s efforts to rush military advisers and weaponry to Iraq three months ago, the radical group ‘would be residing in southern Baghdad’ today.” He actually chided the U.S. for not sooner moving against ISIS in Iraq. While both Tehran and Washington deny coordination between their military “advisors,” they nevertheless fight both against ISIS.

Shiites and Kurds depend on and want assistance by the Iranian and American military, but Sunnis are suspicious that Iraq’s Shiite dominated government in concert with Tehran and Washington fights not merely ISIS, Sunni extremists, but Iraq’s Sunni majority population. These sentiments on the part of Sunnis are understandable. After Sunni tribal leaders and their men joined the U.S. military in fighting and defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the predecessor of ISIS, Sunnis were denied equitable representation in the Bagdad government and some of their political leaders persecuted by the al-Maliki regime.

A first step towards reconciliation would be if Iraq’s new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi puts together a new government in which Kurds, Shiites, and the Sunni majority are fairly represented. Only then would there a chance, not certainty, that Sunnis again join the fight against terrorists, this time ISIS, as they fought AQI side by side with Americans in the Anbar Awakening.

After Air Strikes against ISIS and Two Big Surprises: What Next?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

If anyone had told me a few days ago (1) that the governments of five Arab states would join the United States and Western allies in flying air raids against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (abbreviated IS, ISIS, or ISIL) in Syria and (2) that the 15 member states of the UN Security Council (including Russia and China) would unanimously adopt a legally binding resolution requiring them to prevent and suppress their citizens from joining terrorist organizations abroad, I would have considered it a most uninformed prediction, a bad joke.

Well, I was wrong.

Five states, all with Sunni majorities, have been involved in the first two days of targeted air attacks on strategically important sites of Sunni jihadists. It does not matter that unquestionably the U.S. took and will take the lead in these joint raids. What matters is that Arabs now fight with U.S. and other Western forces against their barbaric ISIS brethren.

To be sure, Jordan and the four Persian Gulf states Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, and Qatar did not get involved to keep terrorists from threatening Americans inside and outside their homeland. Rather, these governments are well aware that in ISIS’s grand Caliphate design their states are the next dominos to fall after the full conquest of Iraq and Syria. For this to happen, ISIS bets on new recruits in the neighborhood so that the Arab monarchies can be attacked from within and outside.

It may well be that other Arab states, perhaps Egypt, and Turkey step up. The Turkish government can no longer hide behind the four dozen or so Turkish hostages held by ISIS. Whatever prize Ankara paid for their safe return, at minimum Turkey must now secure its borders to prevent ISIS recruits to enter Syria.  

However important the involvement of all of these states is, an air war will not defeat ISIS. Like Hamas in Gaza, ISIS fighters use civilians as shields—particularly, while under attack. And both Western nor Arab countries do not want collateral damage in form of killed civilians. Ultimately, the only hope to get the better of guerrilla types of terrorists like ISIS would mean fighting them on the ground.