Terrorist attack in Dhaka: what does it say about the current government?

To an interested albeit casual outside observer, politics in Bangladesh has long seemed a highly personalized duel between the leaders of the country's two main parties: Sheik Hasina of the Awami League, the current prime minister, and Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).  Punctuated by fairly regular charges of election fraud and nationwide strikes and boycotts, this rather dysfunctional political setting has not distinguished itself in recent months when faced with the challenge of rising jidahist-militant violence, including a string of fatal attacks on bloggers, academics, and others.

The attack on the restaurant in the Gulshan district of Dhaka, for which ISIS claimed responsibility and in which 20 people who had been taken hostage were killed, has led to renewed attention to what the current government has been doing -- or more to the point, not doing -- about the threat and actuality of militant violence.  As Ishaan Tharoor notes in a July 2 WaPo piece (see esp. the links toward the end of the article), close observers have criticized Hasina's government for downplaying or denying the extremist threat and focusing too much effort on consolidating its power at the expense of the BNP.  Until the government's basic approach changes, Bangladesh, which has been one of the Muslim world's relatively secular, as opposed to theocratic, polities, will probably continue to be seen by ISIS and other extremist groups as fertile ground for expansion.

ETA: See also this by J. Allchin, which goes into detail on the recent history and gives one a sense of the complexities of the political situation in Bangladesh.

One (questionable) prescription for U.S. policy in the Mideast

I was just listening to a rebroadcast on C-Span radio of a panel discussion from earlier in the week at the Hudson Institute. Michael Doran [Wiki entry here], a senior fellow at Hudson Institute who served on G.W. Bush's National Security Council (and has a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton), argued that the U.S. is neglecting and/or dissing its traditional allies, e.g. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and that the Obama admin and the leading Repub candidates are perpetuating illusions about the Iranian and  Russian role in the region. 

In an analysis noteworthy for its complete candor about the presumptive desirability of American hegemony, Doran said that while the U.S. doesn't share the same values as the Saudi Arabian rulers or (increasingly) Erdogan of Turkey, they have shown themselves to be "status quo" powers (Doran's phrase) who accept a continuing American hegemonic (Doran's word) role in the Mideast, whereas Iran and Russia are "revisionist" powers who want to diminish America's influence and generally make trouble for the U.S.

His prescription? More support for and collaboration with the U.S.'s "traditional allies." He made no mention of Saudi Arabia's recent actions (i.e. fairly indiscriminate, from many reports, bombing) in Yemen, for which it's been widely criticized. No mention of the amount of military aid the U.S. gives to, and/or arms sales the U.S. conducts with, Saudi Arabia. Doran criticized what he said were the false assumptions underlying the Obama admin's policy in Syria and the region but didn't offer a specific alternative beyond (1) more support for 'traditional allies', (2) more support for 'moderate' groups in Syria, and (3) a focus on the area of jidahist activity stretching from Baghdad to Aleppo (his phrase) without a single-minded focus on ISIS.

The main strategic goal should not be the defeat of ISIS, he argued, but the countering of the Russian-Iranian combination and its "network of militias" so as to facilitate the groundwork for a new regional order (or words to that effect). Of course the '03 invasion of Iraq was also supposed to lay the groundwork for a new regional order. We know how that worked out.

Republican incoherence

I'm using "incoherence" because it's the politest word I can think of under the circumstances.  Those circumstances being that Jeb Bush has called, albeit vaguely, for ground forces to fight ISIS, and that call has also come from John Kasich (not to mention, needless to say, Lindsey Graham and other Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, although the latter has probably been so vague as to have deniability for anything).

According to an NBC News report of a Kasich speech at the National Press Club:

[he] proposed leading a coalition that includes soldiers fighting on the ground in both Syria and Iraq. He would not indicate a number and said the coalition should not be involved in Syria's civil war.

How soldiers can be on the ground in Syria without being involved in its civil war defies the imagination.  This person is a serious presidential candidate?  Not to mention Trump, Cruz, et al.?  This is a disgrace.

Oh yes, I almost forgot: Kasich also wants a new government agency devoted to spreading "Judeo-Christian values" around the world. (The phrase is in quotes to indicate that these are, from what I gather, Kasich's words.)

Landis interview on Syria

From Nov. 9: Joshua Landis interviewed by RT (Russian English-language TV) (h/t).  One point that goes beyond the immediately topical is his argument that there are no state apparatuses in the M.E. separate from the particular regimes that are in control; hence, regime change always means chaos. I might have some further comment on it later. 

ETA: See also, somewhat relatedly, this widely linked piece in The Nation from last month, describing interviews with ISIS fighters being held as prisoners in Iraq.  Interesting on the issue(s) of motivation.

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.

Roots and implications of the Iran nuclear deal

Peter T., who has guest-posted and commented insightfully at this blog, sent me an analysis (link) of the Iran deal by Sharmine Narwani.  She argues, essentially, that the changed strategic situation in the region represented by the rise of ISIS and its gains in Syria and Iraq (and continued strength of other extremist Sunni groups, e.g. the Nusra Front) drove the U.S. to make an opening to Iran in 2012 in order to take "the old American-Iranian 'baggage' off the table..., allowing [the U.S. administration] the freedom to pursue more pressing shared political objectives with Iran."  Iran stood up to 'the Empire' and its allies, Narwani maintains, rode out UN sanctions, and emerged with an agreement that, in exchange for sanctions relief, blocks it from doing something it never wanted to do in the first place: namely, acquire an operational nuclear weapons capability.

While Narwani's assessment has its strong points, it perhaps goes too far in painting a rosy prospect of Iranian-U.S. strategic cooperation in the region.  The two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations; unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran that are unrelated to its nuclear program but relate to its support for groups such as Hezbollah are, afaik, unaffected by the nuclear deal; and 36 years of 'baggage' cannot be entirely taken off the table, istm, in one fell swoop. The past several decades must have left a substantial residue of psychological scar tissue between Iran and the U.S. that no agreement, no matter how 'win-win' in its basic structure, can remove overnight.

Narwani's piece looks behind certain statements of the principals to get at what she thinks are the real motivations behind the deal.  This mode of proceeding is not without merit, but it risks overlooking some points.  The main U.S. ally in the region, for better or worse, is Israel, to the maintenance of whose military superiority -- its 'qualitative military edge', in the ghastly-sounding bureaucratic phrase -- the U.S. is committed to the tune of several billion dollars a year (a commitment that may go up).  This fact standing alone imposes certain limits on the degree to which Iran and the U.S. can jointly pursue their "shared political objectives".  Iran's human rights record and the fact that it still has several American citizens, one of whom is an American-Iranian reporter for The Washington Post, in custody also tells against an immediate warming of U.S.-Iran relations in the wake of the deal (assuming the deal survives congressional scrutiny and Obama retains enough congressional support to sustain a veto of a disapproval resolution, which I think he will).

Finally, it might be worth scrutinizing the "shared political objectives" of the U.S. and Iran a bit more closely.  Iran is of course a major backer of Assad.  And the fact that the Pentagon, as detailed for example in a front-page NYT article of July 31, is trying (with very limited success to date) to train 'moderate' Syrian fighters primarily to attack ISIS, rather than Assad, might suggest, as some other developments (including arguably the deal itself) do,  a convergence of interests between Iran and the U.S.: ISIS is the main perceived threat by both.  And yet the very same NYT article of July 31 pointed out that the CIA still has a covert program in place to train Syrian fighters to battle Assad, noting that the CIA and Pentagon programs are working somewhat at cross-purposes.

Narwani may be right that the nuclear deal represents a quasi-epochal shift in strategic alignments in the region.  I would be inclined however to a more muted judgment.  The Obama administration was not motivated to reach, along with its allies, a deal with Iran mainly because of the rise of ISIS, contrary to what Narwani suggests. The Obama admin was also facing a situation in which the pressure for a military "solution" to the perceived Iranian nuclear "problem" was rising, both domestically and also from Israel.  What the nuclear deal most obviously and immediately does is remove much of the pressure for a military "solution," pressure to which the Obama admin was unlikely to have succumbed but which might have grown increasingly irksome and irritating. This, it seems to me, is perhaps the deal's most significant implication.

Note: Minor edit after initial posting.

Added later: For another perspective, see this article in Counterpunch (7/15/15), which views the nuclear deal as a move toward U.S./Iran détente and examines the forces impelling it as well as the motives behind the opposition.  

ISIS now denies responsibility for Jalalabad

Via FP's South Asia Daily for April 22, linking this.

ISIS claims responsibility for Jalalabad bombing

Here.

(p.s. Haven't forgotten I still owe a comment on previous post. Update: Comment now added.)  

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.

ISIS and the Reformation

T. Greer at The Scholar's Stage has a characteristically long post about ISIS, taking off from the much-discussed Graeme Wood article in The Atlantic (that I haven't read).  On a quick read, I agree with some of what T. Greer says, but I am leery of his endorsement of the analogy between the current struggles within Islam and the Reformation.  (D. Nexon, I believe, is also opposed to the analogy, and he knows more about the Reformation than I do.  I can't say I recall the *precise* grounds on which Nexon opposes the analogy, without refreshing my memory by looking at the relevant passages in his book or other writings, which I'm not going to do right now.) 

Speaking for myself, I'm uncomfortable about an analogy between the religious struggles within Christianity (Christendom? whatever) of the 16th and 17th centuries and the struggles within Islam today. For one thing, the Protestant reformers were not trying to recapture an historical golden age by recreating a territorial entity under their control -- i.e., no analogy to the restoration of the Caliphate.  That is just one difference.  I'm sure there are others. 

ETA: Such as differences in the content of the ideologies and the methods.

Peter T. on the U.S. in the Middle East (Part 1)

Note: This is the first part of a two-part guest post by Peter T.  He is a retired civil servant who worked in Australian national intelligence for 12 years, then in law enforcement intelligence and related fields.  He traveled in Asia in the 1970s and taught in Iran in 1978.  He has degrees in history and International Relations (Sydney University and University of Kent).

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That U.S. policy in the Middle East is a mess is very nearly a truism.  For instance, a first quick look at my local library turned up a book by an American journalist with several decades of experience in the area, Patrick Tyler.  It's a long survey of six decades of the twists and turns of U.S. policy as shaped by the personalities of Presidents and their close associates.  Page 11: “After nearly six decades of escalating American involvement in the Middle East, it remains nearly impossible to discern any overarching approach to the region...What stands out is the absence of consistency...as if the hallmark of American diplomacy were discontinuity.”  And that's from a sympathiser.

To illustrate briefly: in 1975 the U.S.'s chosen major strategic partners were Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.  Iraq and Syria were in the Soviet orbit, the Afghan central government in the U.S. one, and the Kurds had just been abandoned to Iraqi mercies after a few years of not-so-covert support. Insofar as radical Islam was on the radar, it was not favoured.  A decade later, the U.S. was actively helping Iraq against Iran and the Kurds, and was running a proxy war against the Afghan government in alliance with a radical Islamic movement funded by Saudi Arabia.

A decade after that, in 1995, the U.S. was at odds with both Iran and Iraq, again offering aid to the Kurds, and becoming less comfortable with radical Islam.  By 2005, it was bolstering the Afghan central government against the tribes and radical Islamists, trying to keep an Iranian-aligned Iraqi government and the Kurds on side, but still supporting the Saudi government even as it funded a radical Islam declared to be the U.S.’s prime enemy.  By 2015, the U.S. was in a de facto alliance with Iran against a radical Islamic movement in Iraq and Syria, supporting “moderate Islamists” allied with the radicals against a Syrian government backed by Iran, propping up the Afghan government against the tribal and radical Islamist coalition it had nurtured in the ‘80s, backing the Saudi government against both radical Islam and Iranian-supported Shia populism in the Arabian Peninsula.  The U.S. is now on all sides of all the fights in the region apart, of course, from the Israel-Arab (or Israeli-Palestinian) conflict.  And, even there, it is not obvious that Israel and the U.S. are on the same sides, or which way the leverage runs between Washington and Tel Aviv.

The policy and the arguments are now approaching farce.  The think tank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has just put out a paper arguing that “pursuing U.S. regional interests must involve targeting not only ISIS but also its Shiite adversaries.”  Presumably the authors will simply assume that some alternative force conformable to U.S. preferences can be conjured into being (new improved Iraqi Army anyone?).  And that targeting both sides in a war will produce something other than anarchy.  Or take the recent announcement that the U.S. and Turkey had agreed on the training of “moderate” Syrian rebels.  They just disagreed on who the rebels will fight, ISIS or Assad.

No Friends, Only Interests?

Iraqi Kurds, Afghan Tajiks, Hazaras, Pushtuns, Iraqi Shi'ites have all been the victims of abrupt changes in U.S. policy; Iranian policy-makers have been treated to talk of reconciliation and then slapped with sanctions; Iraqi Sunnis were first treated to “de-Baathification,” then bribed to cease fire, and are now being bombed.  With experiences like this, it is no wonder that Pew reported that only 30 per cent of Middle Easterners had a positive view of the U.S. in 2014 –  by far the lowest score of any region of the world.

We've all seen those movies where the central character ends up in a nun outfit on top of a skyscraper with an ex-lover, a criminal, a banker, a lunatic, a stuffed bear and a stolen yacht.  The French do them really well.  As you watch the film, each move is explicable (“I was on my way to get some milk for the cat when....and because I love animals...and then the door opened...”), so much so that the end result is not so much a surprise as a culmination.  The foreign policies of Great Powers are not supposed to resemble these movies.

So this is one of those outcomes – like a depression for economics – that offers a teaching moment. There are plenty of reasons offered why the U.S. did and does intervene in the Middle East: oil, Israel, the geopolitics of anti-Communism, the “war on terror”.  There are large books (often written by the policy-makers themselves) explaining why each decision was perfectly rational and the consequences unforeseeable.  It is a journalistic trope that the Middle East is a strange, complicated place where people are irrational, extremist, un-modern....

Really? The Middle East is more complicated than the Balkans, South-East Asia, Latin America? Oil may explain why the U.S. is interested, but hardly explains why, to guarantee supply, it had to impose sanctions on Iran or wreck Iraq, or encourage, abandon, protect, discourage and then promote Kurdish autonomy (see also Northern Alliance, Pashtuns, Shi'ites....).  The same books that proclaim the regrettable irrationality of Middle Easterners often also lay out in detail the (perfectly rational) calculations behind each move – both their own and others'.

What can explain this?  One common phrase, loosely paraphrased from Lord Palmerston, is that “states don't have friends, they have interests.”  Like many such aphorisms, it dissolves on closer scrutiny.  Whose interests?  How are they identified?  How are “interests” reconciled and assigned priorities?  Don't states have an interest in being seen as reliable allies?  What interests have led the U.S. into this position?

Oil as Driver of U.S. Policy?

Oil?  The U.S. interest in ensuring oil flows to the world market was offered as a reason for supporting Iraq against Iran in the ‘80s (though the U.S. also secretly sold weapons to Iran), for U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, and for the heavy U.S. presence in the Gulf.  But it sits oddly with ongoing efforts to limit Iranian exports, particularly after chaos in Iraq, Libya and Syria markedly reduced flows from those countries.  It also sits oddly with the maintenance of sanctions on Saddam and with the strategies adopted in the Second Gulf War.  There does not seem to have been any great focus on protecting oil installations or ensuring continuity of trained personnel.  There were, of course, a few planning papers, but not so much focus on the ground.

One much-cited source is a 2001 study commissioned by, among others, Dick Cheney, which identified Iraq's oil as the key to averting a looming supply crunch.  The report recommended that the U.S. “should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.  The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies."  It should do this “with the ultimate goal of stemming the tide of anti-Americanism in the Middle-East and eas[ing] Iraqi oil-field investment restrictions.”  This is pretty much a description of what the U.S. did not do.

The Second Gulf War stands out, of course, as the nadir of incompetence and wishful thinking.  Yet it is not obvious that supposedly more professional and realistic administrations have a very much better track record.  The Bush I/Clinton sanctions regime killed nearly as many Iraqis as the second war and its aftermath.  The U.S. officials making Middle Eastern policy have access to all sorts of expertise.  The evidence is that they do not use it.  Further, they mostly can't be bothered to actually engage with even the most basic realities in terms of thinking through what they might mean for strategy.  This is largely a failure of imagination, but it's also due to the fact that, up until quite recently, Middle Eastern peoples mostly lacked the means to assert their own interests.  Various factions and interests in the major powers could use the place as a playground, policy could hop from one foot to the other and it didn't matter.  The locals were powerless.  Policy did not have to be careful, considered, cautious.  The oil would flow even if State made empty promises, the CIA played James Bond, and the Pentagon sold and tested new weapons.  There were few domestic consequences, and no other power cared either.  And if the U.S. stuffed up in one country, there was always another nearby.   The meddling was just another manifestation of Great Power status, but the incoherence was not because the Middle East was important but complex: it was because it was complex (as everywhere is) and weak.  If the meddling had had more immediate or drastic consequences, quite a few policy minds would have been concentrated.[1]

Some Realities

What are some basic Middle Eastern realities?  One is that politics in the Middle East has an embedded religious dimension.  It is, after all, mostly Islamic.  Secular alternatives are not realistically on offer.  Ignoring Sunni, Shia, Druze, Allawi identities is silly.  So is supposing that they can be easily supplanted.  This does not mean that people are doomed to fight over religion.  It does mean that policy that does not take the religious angle seriously will be fragile.  Of course, religious identities cross-cut with ethnic and national ones, but in this the Middle East is no more complicated than Europe.  A map of the current front lines in the Syrian civil war is pretty much a map of the country's religious and ethnic affiliations, down to the village level.

A second reality is that no policy that seeks to exclude or ignore Iran is likely to succeed.  One can no more exclude Iran from the Middle East than one can exclude France or Germany from Europe. Iran is simply too big, too central, and too closely linked to its neighbours.  It has withstood U.S.-supported invasion, sanctions and threats, developed its transport and other links with neighbours like Turkey, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Pakistan, has close ties with the governments in Baghdad and Damascus and with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and built a modest but quite formidable local defense capability.  Quite simply, Iran has the diplomatic, military, and economic capacity to withstand more pressure than the U.S. can bring to bear, and so its interests have to be taken seriously.  This means accepting Iranian control over its civil nuclear program, something that occupies the same place in Iranian politics as revocation of the unequal treaties did in Chinese politics up to 1949: the acid test of sovereignty.  The signs are that the U.S. has not yet quite grasped this.  It took 20 years for the U.S. policy establishment to grok that things had changed in China.  It looks like taking at least 40 years for the penny to drop on Iran.

So if I were a U.S. policy analyst, I would advise reaching a modus vivendi with Iran as soon as possible, resignedly accept that Iraq will be a Shia-run state aligned with Iran, back Kurdish independence, and tell State that if they get involved in the Syrian five-way dog-fight they will get bitten.  So pick one dog to back or stay out, because being bitten by a few is better than being bitten by all.  But on past form, if I were a policy analyst my advice would be entirely disregarded except as it agreed with the listener's prejudices.

-- Peter T.

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[1] There are other places that resemble the Middle East in that outside powers used them as playgrounds without regard for consistency (or for the locals).  China 1860-1949, Latin America up to the 1990s or Central Asia in the period of the Great Game fit the bill, as does, ominously, Eastern Europe post-1989.  Even the tropes are the same: there is much talk of irrationality, corruption, regimes mired in ancient superstition and needing to be dragged into the Modern World, of bringing efficiency, order, enlightenment.  As well as, of course, making money.

 

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.         

Quote of the day (Yassin Al Haj Saleh)

From an interview in New Politics (Winter 2015) with Yassin Al Haj Saleh, "one of Syria's leading political dissidents":

[The U.S.] war on ISIS is saying that the regime that killed or caused the killing of more than 200 thousand people is only a detail; the thuggish entity of ISIS is the real danger.  And of course American military training will follow the American political priorities, using Syrians as tools in their (the Americans') war, not for concluding our struggle for change in Syria.... I do not have any essentialist grudge towards the United States, but the superpower was extremely inhumane towards my country, and its present war is extremely selfish.

[note: I don't necessarily agree with everything he says in this interview, just thought it was interesting.]

Maps and myths

See here and my (Disqus) comment.

Degrade, not destroy

You (a generic "you") may notice that I haven't been writing recently about what's going in the world now, preferring instead to meander through the French Revolution and Napoleon. Ok. Time to opine on ISIS and the air campaign. Actually I don't have much to say about it beyond the thought that Obama should not have set the goal as being to "destroy" the group. That's too high a bar, and also not necessary. "Degrade seriously" would be enough.    

The 'authority' debate, once more

At the time of the Libyan intervention, there was a debate about the President's authority to participate, with air assets etc., in that French-initiated operation (without congressional approval). Now there may be a rerun of the debate with respect to his authority to expand air strikes against ISIS. Except that Congress is going to fall over itself in its haste to pass something that says "yes yes," so in the end the debate about presidential authority in this case won't, practically speaking, matter much. 

Is "al-Qaeda-linked" a useful designation?

Joshua Keating suggests that because, for example, ISIS has "directly disobeyed" Zawahiri and clashed with Jabhat al-Nusra, it may not be useful to describe the former (or the latter) as 'al-Qaeda-linked.' He writes:

The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which is still being used to justify U.S. counterterrorist operations in places like Somalia, pertains to the groups that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Dangerous as ISIS may be for its region, it seems like a bit of a stretch to describe its goals as in concert with those of al-Qaida central, circa 2001. As Osama Bin Laden’s successor, Zawahiri, appears less and less in control of the actions of groups like ISIS, al-Shabaab, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and others that routinely fall under the “al-Qaida” umbrella in media accounts, it seems like it may be time to narrow our definitions a bit.

I understand the point but I think there may be some reason to treat groups as linked if they share a common ideology, even if their specific aims differ. But it's true that the ordinary U.S. consumer of news, hearing the phrase "al-Qaeda-linked," probably has no clear idea what that means. And there's another point: 'al-Qaeda central' itself, c.2014, may not share the goals of 'al-Qaeda central' c.2001. What are Zawahiri's current goals, other than to survive uncaught and to keep issuing videos?

'Three-way war' in western Iraq

A WaPo piece about the apparent fall of Fallujah to al-Qaeda (ISIS) paints a picture of a confused situation:

The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war.

A few thoughts: 

(1) The U.S. 'surge' of 2006-07 in Iraq depended on making allies of the local Sunni tribes in the west in the fight against al-Qaeda. Those groups still oppose each other, but what was more-or-less a two-way conflict then has now become a three-cornered one, as the tribes are apparently no longer willing to make any kind of common cause with the Iraqi government. This point leads to:

(2) Had Maliki's government made more of an effort to reach out to Sunnis and bring them into positions of responsibility/authority, the disaffection of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province might have been less and there might not have been the demonstrations against the Maliki government that led to the Iraqi security forces' response and thence to the current situation that the linked article describes. That's a lot of "mights," but it seems hard to avoid the inference that Maliki's shortsightedness, foolishness, fearfulness or a combination thereof have contributed to the current mess.

(3) It might be tempting to argue (as McCain and others no doubt will) that had the Obama admin adopted a more interventionist position on Syria, the al-Qaeda forces currently operating across the Iraq-Syria border would not have had the opportunity to reconstitute themselves in the way they have over the past year or so. But this assumes, first, that a U.S. intervention in Syria would have been able to alter the dynamics of the Syrian civil war fairly quickly and easily, and second, it assumes that if Assad had been removed from power, 'moderate' rebel forces in Syria would have been strong enough both to hold the reins of the state and to keep at bay al-Qaeda and/or the Nusra front and the other anti-Assad Islamist elements. Both these assumptions seem questionable (if not simply wrong).

Added later: Liz Sly (WaPo) has another piece on various Syrian rebel groups fighting against ISIS in northern Syria. (I will put in the link later.)