The Campaign Against ISIS

Guest post by Peter T.
(For his previous posts, see here, here, and here.)

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What are ISIS’ prospects of holding out against the coalition now formed against them? And how do the military prospects inform the outlook for a political resolution of the civil wars?

ISIS continues to hold significant parts of northern and western Iraq and north-east Syria, and is putting up a stiff resistance to Iraqi efforts to regain Ramadi and to a Russian-backed Syrian offensive around Aleppo. Various Islamic radical movements around the world continue to sign on as ISIS affiliates, and the extreme violence (gruesome forms of execution, suicide attacks, mosque bombings) characteristic of ISIS has spread to Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and further. How far can ISIS go?

ISIS is several things. At the core, it is a millenarian movement, preparing for (and trying to bring about) the end of days. It draws on Salafist Islam, Islamic eschatological doctrines and holy warrior traditions, and seeks purity through violence. This mix is attractive to many young men, and at the centre of ISIS military strength are some few thousands of devotees – fierce, cohesive, aggressive and, by now, thoroughly competent in battle. Around this core are Sunni tribe members, local conscripts, and foreign volunteers, adding up to some tens of thousands.

Against ISIS are the Iraqi and Syrian armies, Iraqi Shi'a militias, some Sunni tribes, Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces, competing rebel groups in Syria and, of course, Western (mostly U.S.) and Russian air forces and Iranian advisors.  Numerically, this coalition is far stronger.  It is also better equipped and supplied, and can draw on much larger populations.  Yet the record, so far, is decidedly mixed.  The regular Iraqi Army performed poorly against ISIS up to mid-2014. The Syrian Army has likewise not done too well.  Iraqi Kurdish forces have been effective in defense, but made very limited gains.  The Syrian Kurds have done better, sealing off the border with Turkey as far west as the Euphrates, but lack the numbers and equipment to attack major ISIS strongholds directly.  In Iraq, the most effective forces have been the Shi'a militias and in Syria the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

Up to now ISIS has been able to offset numbers with elan, ferocity, cohesion, greater military competence, and the advantages offered by being on the offensive. These have been enough to seize territory against weak opposition, but not enough to overcome any determined resistance.  In the longer run, they are unlikely to be enough to hold what ISIS has gained.

ISIS has been slowly but steadily losing territory and populations in Iraq since mid-2014, and must now defend against greater forces along a wide front.  Forces have to be tied down in defence of key points, such as the roads between Mosul and Raqqa.  As the aura of success fades, and as supply tightens, its tribal allies and subordinates become less reliable, and greater pressure is needed to keep them in line. At the same time, the competence and morale of its enemies rises. Each successful battle (Kobane, Tel Abyad, Tikrit, Baiji, Hassakah, Shengal, currently Ramadi) costs ISIS core cadres and chips away at its aura of invincibility.  Taking towns ringed with IEDs and defended to the last is a slow process, but it can be and has been done. This is not blitzkrieg, but a steady pressure against a determined but weaker force.

Military geography does not favour ISIS. Both Mosul and Raqqa are exposed, and comparatively minor gains by Kurdish forces in northern Iraq or eastern Syria would sever communication between the two.  Likewise, ISIS has to hold Euphrates valley towns to access western Anbar and the Saudi border, but garrisons are vulnerable to Iraqi forces and their supply open to air attack.  And ISIS has to maintain forces in northern Syria against the very effective Kurdish YPG to ensure access to the Turkish border.  So its striking power is limited and its small elite vulnerable to attrition.


The Balance in Syria

Calculation of the military and political situation in Syria is more complex than in Iraq. The Assad regime in Damascus cannot muster the same numbers or depth of popular commitment as Baghdad, has to fight on several fronts, and faces a relatively stronger set of enemies. Its own indiscriminate use of fire-power has alienated many who might otherwise find it the lesser evil. While Baghdad enjoys support from all sides, the U.S. is hostile to the regime in Damascus and continues to tinker futilely with support for a “third party” -- a secular (or at least non-fundamentalist) and pro-democratic opposition.  Although the Pentagon has recently ended its effort to train separate ‘moderate’ forces to fight ISIS, a CIA program to train ‘moderates’ to fight Assad apparently continues.  Turkey is also hostile to Assad, and somewhat supportive, in terms of actions if not rhetoric, of both ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.

In the broader view, it is all one war. Not only is ISIS a common enemy (certainly for all Shi’a, at any rate), but Syrian Allawis, the core supporters of the Assad regime, are close to the Twelver Shi'ism of Iraq (and Iran), the Zainab shrine near Damascus is a major Shi'a pilgrimage centre, and there are close family ties between leading Shi'a religious families in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.  Iraqi militia are reported to have deployed to Syria in support of the regime, and Iraqi or Kurdish successes in northern Iraq will certainly be pursued into Syria – Iraq is not about to halt its campaign against ISIS at the border.

A deal – or even a stalemate – with ISIS is hard to envisage (one Syrian rebel leader observed “You can't talk to them; they take their orders from God”). If defeats continue, ISIS is likely to go the way of their Algerian equivalent, the GIA (or, for that matter, the several similar groups that arose in 17^th-century Europe): splintering in defeat into deserters and die-hards.  It may be possible to broker an accord between Damascus and the rebel groups in southern Syria, and possibly even with the Nusra Front, along the lines of the resolution of the Algerian civil war.  For that to happen, first ISIS would need to be defeated, and then both the regime and the rebels convinced that a military solution is out of reach.  Both are some way off.

I used to work as an intelligence analyst, a profession notorious for hedging bets.  But, if I were pressed to give a definite forecast, I would say that ISIS is unlikely to hang on as an organised force for more than another two years, and the defeat of ISIS is a precondition for any resolution of the Syrian civil war.  That said, the defeat of ISIS is contingent on the coalition against them maintaining its present loose unity, and on the ability of the Damascus regime to avoid further major losses of territory.

One effect of the war is that whatever remained of the Shi'a tradition of political quietude has been largely abandoned.  While Khomeini's advocacy of a commanding political role for the clergy remains controversial, pretty much all the leading Shi'a figures advocate some form of political activism.  The days when the response to regime oppression was to don one's death shroud and wait are gone.  This in itself makes the outcome of the civil wars pivotal for the wider Muslim community.

-- Peter T.

No 'linkage'

I've said before that I don't think reaching a nuclear deal with Iran means that Iran will (or should) become a U.S. "partner" in the region.  This seems to be a hard point to get across, judging from recent discussions of policy toward Iran that I've encountered (I'm not giving specific refs. now, perhaps later).  A nuclear deal does not imply that the P-5 countries would thereby approve of any aspects of Iranian foreign policy.  A nuclear deal would not legitimize Iranian support of Hezbollah, for instance.  I'm not entirely sure why various people seem to find this so difficult to understand, unless they're pretending not to do so because such a pretense serves their purposes.

One thing at a time

Update (4/8): Just to mention that N. Lees, who has occasionally commented here, has resumed posting at his blog; his posts are always worth reading. 

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In the wake of the Iran nuclear 'framework' announcement, a couple of commenters at Internet sites I occasionally visit have suggested that Iran would make a good 'strategic partner' (in the words of this commenter) for the U.S., because the U.S. and Iran share interests in, among other things, opposing ISIS and Al-Qaeda.  That may be, but there are other issues (e.g., support of Hezbollah and of Assad) where U.S. and Iranian interests diverge.   Note also that when Iran was heavily involved in aiding the Iraqi army's recent effort to retake Tikrit from ISIS, the U.S. hung back; when Iraq requested U.S. airstrikes after the offensive had stalled, Iranian involvement in the offensive apparently diminished (I say "apparently" because I'm sure that the situation on the ground was extremely tangled and complicated and I did not even try to follow it closely). 

In short, I don't think the "let's make Iran our new strategic partner in the region" response makes a lot of sense.  It's the opposite of those who are groundlessly concerned that reaching a nuclear deal with Iran somehow amounts to recognizing its putative hegemony in the region.  Carts should not be put before horses.  Get the nuclear deal done and see how that goes, then worry about broader issues of the future of U.S.-Iran relations.  The amount of time it took to get the U.S.-India nuclear deal ironed out -- a civil (i.e. non-military) nuclear deal with a country that the U.S. has much better relations with than it does with Iran -- would suggest that no one should think implementing the details of the Iran 'framework' is going to be especially easy.

The alleged tilt to Iran

Col. Derek Harvey (Ret.), appearing recently on the PBS NewsHour, voiced some criticisms of U.S. policy in the Middle East:

Well, what I see happening in Iraq in particular — let’s take a look at that — the Abadi regime there, along with Iranian support, has given free rein to Shia militias who are conducting atrocities almost on a daily basis. And they openly proclaim the U.S. is supporting their operations, which feeds into Sunni Arab paranoia and supports the ISIS narrative about a divide and that the U.S. is aligned against Sunni Arabs in the region. So that hurts us in many ways. The U.S. has a choice here. We could declare no-fly zones, no-go zones in Syria. We could have put more capability on the ground and shown some leadership and commitment, which is what Sunni Arabs are looking for in the region, be they in the Gulf or in Ankara, in Turkey. But we have yet to really show real commitment.

The urge to have done something more in Syria is understandable, but the idea that "we could have put more capability on the ground" seems a non-starter given Obama's (also understandable) determination not to involve the U.S. in any substantial way in another ground war in the region, a determination reflected, albeit perhaps too vaguely, in the language of the proposed authorization for the use of military force just submitted to Congress.  Also, if ISIS is so concerned about appealing to Sunnis and playing up the narrative of the Sunni-Shia divide, their murder of the Jordanian pilot, who was (I assume) a Sunni Muslim, does not seem designed to further that goal, to put it mildly. 

Col. Harvey also said this:

Well, Sunni Arabs, be they in the Gulf, in Jordan, you know, in countries of Syria and Iraq, the Sunni Arab communities, Turkey, they want to see an effort directed at the Assad regime and a check on Shia militia and Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the U.S. administration is focused on rapprochement with Iran, and acknowledging Tehran’s regional hegemony in the process, and that alienates Sunni Arabs, Ankara, and as well impacts Tel Aviv in Israel. So, that creates real problems for us in mobilizing support, keeping people online, and having unity of effort.

First, the U.S. is not "acknowledging Tehran's regional hegemony"; the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Iran and Iran remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Trying to reach a nuclear deal does not equal recognizing Iran's regional hegemony.  

Second, the idea that the U.S.'s supposed focus on "rapprochement" with Iran "alienates" Sunni Arabs is overbroad: no doubt anything less than implacable hostility to the Iranian regime would displease some Sunni Arabs, but one need not be an expert on the region to find ridiculous the implication that all Sunnis feel this way.  "Sunni Arabs" are not a monolithic bloc, and although pan-Arabism is more or less defunct as a political movement, it only makes sense to assume that there are some political actors in the Arab world who still would rather work at overcoming their divisions than exacerbating them.  Who those actors are I'll leave to the regional experts, but I assume they exist, and for an analyst to go on TV and speak of "Sunni Arabs" as a bloc seems a disservice to American viewers.

As for all this "impact[ing] Tel Aviv": If the Israeli government had made any real progress on the Palestinian issue or shown itself open to genuine negotiations, it would have done more to reduce support for Iranian policies (and Hezbollah, and of course Hamas) in the region than anything else it could have done. Netanyahu's endless blustering about the (supposed) Iranian threat has accomplished nothing, except to confirm that the Israeli government is effectively clueless about its own long-term interests and how best to advance them. The main underlying problem for Israel's long-term security is Israeli policy w/r/t the Palestinian issue, not a supposed recognition by the U.S. of Iranian regional hegemony or the prospect of a nuclear Iran, which Netanyahu wrongly paints as some kind of apocalypse.

Lastly, and as already suggested, reducing everything analytically to the Shia-Sunni divide ignores that there are divisions within the 'camps,' and also other divisions.  As the Wash. Post noted in an editorial last month ("Headed Toward Chaos," Jan.13, 2015, p.A14), the conflict in Libya is mainly between "secular Sunnis [and] Islamists," a division that also "dominates the politics of Egypt, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories, and much of the rest of the Maghreb...."

In sum, the U.S. is not recognizing Iranian regional hegemony, and to put some kind of apocalyptic construction on U.S. efforts to relate to Iran in some way other than through unremitting hostility seems highly dubious.  Of course there must be ongoing concerns about the Iranian government's internal polices; it is hardly the model of a democratic, pluralist regime, and cases such as those of the Wash. Post reporter held for a long time in an Iranian jail deservedly garner attention.  Everyone remembers the Iranian regime's crackdown on demonstrations surrounding the 2009 election and the famous image of the young woman demonstrator beaten by regime-allied thugs and left to die in the streets.  However, the U.S. maintains relations with lots of governments that are human-rights abusers.  Anyway, Harvey's objections had nothing to do with Iran's domestic policies, so this whole line of discussion is of limited relevance to the interview.         

Clichés 101: "a tense time in the region"

The opening graph of an AP story in WaPo headlined "Hezbollah unravels CIA spy network in Lebanon as agency contains damage":

Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA’s spy network in Lebanon, severely damaging the intelligence agency’s ability to gather vital information on the terrorist organization at a tense time in the region, former and current U.S. officials said.

Two questions:
(1) When is it not "a tense time" in that region?
(2) What "vital information"? Well, of course we don't know because the article's sources, "former and current U.S. officials," no doubt wouldn't say. The result is an article about a putative intelligence disaster that never really explains why it's a disaster -- except insofar as some people working with the CIA may have gotten killed. But the article doesn't even confirm that since, as someone quoted toward the end mentions, Hezbollah treats different captured spies differently: some it "disappears," some it apparently doesn't.