A dangerous standoff

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11, the Islamic State after Paris, Beirut and Sinai. The western reaction repeats itself, with lesser fury but joined this time by an angry Russia.
The stage is set for another Afghanistan- and Iraq-like situation. Yet it cannot be another large-scale invasion because the US and its allies have been there and are perhaps less prone to imperial overstretch. Besides, Washington is not under the control of the neo-cons who wanted to launch wars on a massive scale to reassert the US as the dominant global power.
There is little doubt though that the Islamic (?) State has overplayed its hand and thereby succeeded in provoking a whole series of world powers. The US, France, Russia, Britain are ready to fight the IS. So are Turkey, Iran, Egypt, the regimes in Baghdad and Damascus, and Hezbollah. France has been quick to retaliate after the IS-sponsored massacre of civilians in Paris, by bombing their capital Raqqa in northern Syria. It is not clear what kind of damage the French air force has inflicted on the self-styled caliphate.
There are clear indications that the Islamic State would be subjected to sustained air attacks with chances of ground troops moving into certain areas. The first question coming to most minds is whether the ongoing air strikes combined with some ground operations would be able to destroy the IS as President Hollande claims or will only succeed in containing their forward movement towards Baghdad and Damascus.
Even if the al-Baghdadi led movement is forced out of Raqqa, they may melt away like the Taliban from Kabul. But far from being an end, the invasion of Afghanistan turned out to be an unending military campaign. Fourteen years on, the remaining US troops are hard-pressed to stop the Taliban from overrunning Kabul and regional capitals tenuously defended by the Afghan forces.
So what is a credible plan – to use Obama’s famous terminology of the operation against Al-Qaeda – of degrading and dismantling the Islamic State? Very little because unlike Al-Qaeda – but like the Taliban – the IS is an indigenous phenomenon with a large area under its control. If pushed out from the cities through ground operations, they can regroup in the country side. That too is a distant goal because after the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan there is little desire left to engage in open-ended ground operations. Air war can only achieve limited objectives.
No amount of rhetoric by Hollande, Cameron, Putin and a ‘lame-duck’ Obama, or the feuding contestants for the 2016 US presidential election, is going to change the ground realities in Iraq or Syria. Neither Baghdad nor Damascus has the resources or the will to re-conquer the largely Sunni dominated areas that are now under IS control. A de-facto partition of the two countries seems like the logical solution somewhat like the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq created under US sponsorship.
It is hard for western powers like France and Britain to concede that the boundaries drawn by them in Iraq and Syria have been undone in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq and the west-sponsored rebellion against the Assad regime in Syria. The example of an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq is tempting for Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. But the situation is complicated by the IS desire to advance towards Baghdad and Damascus, a scenario frowned upon equally by Shia Iran, Sunni kingdoms and emirates, Jewish Israel, Christian Europe and America, and orthodox Russia.
The Islamic State must re-evaluate its options and decide whether it can afford to have so many enemies at the same time or if it can come up with a strategy that may allow it to hold on to its core area of influence in northern Syria and north western Iraq. The present standoff is too dangerous to continue as it can result in greater hostilities and destruction.
Pope Francis referred to the recent IS attacks as part of a piecemeal third world war. He had also spoken nearly a year ago of a piecemeal third world war wrought by high levels of crime, massacres and destruction across the world. The Pope’s remarks are more about the levels of death and destruction through conflicts and the stranglehold of organised crime.
Events of recent weeks, however, point to the need to pull Syria out of the quagmire it has sunk into in the last four years with signs of further turmoil and destruction. The world’s most powerful nations have failed to find a solution, resulting in 300,000 deaths and millions of Syrians rendered homeless. The IS has only aggravated their pitiful situation.
The United Nations, which was created to cope with the vital issues of global peace and security, lies like a discarded tool in a barn. The victors of WWII who dominate the UN today have slowly turned the world body into a mechanism for pushing national agendas. Even if the UN role was to be revived it may be too late for Syria and Iraq, which are broken and devastated beyond repair.
Is the IS on self-destruct mode? Olivier Roy, the well-known French expert on jihadist groups is of the view that the IS is its own worst enemy. Writing in the New York Times, Roy, after giving a full list of IS foes, concludes that some of its regional enemies may not be keen on wiping out the IS for their desire to spite their enemies (who are among the IS’ enemies)!
The new message coming from the west and Russia is: it is no longer a matter of containing the IS, we must defeat it. There is a wide margin between defeating and wiping out. We may, therefore, be looking at a future that sees the IS on the run rather than entrenched but that still does not restore the fractured states of Iraq and Syria.
Email: saeed.saeedk@gmail.com