Secretary of State John Kerry, who suggested that preventing the fall of the Syrian town of Kobani to Islamic State fighters was not a strategic U.S. objective. He said the idea of a buffer zone should be thoroughly examined.
Patrick Cockburn talking:
what’s happening there is immensely significant in a number of respects. I mean, first of all, despite what President Obama was saying, that if ISIS, if the Islamic State, take Kobani, this will be a victory for them, and this will be their response to Obama saying he was going to degrade and destroy ISIS. I think that what’s coming out of Washington, saying somehow it doesn’t matter and they’re going to attack the infrastructure and the control headquarters of ISIS, is really a diversion. ISIS is a guerrilla organization. It doesn’t have many Pentagons scattered over Iraq and Syria from which it controls its operations. So I think that if it does fall, this will be a symptom of a pretty massive military failure.
And it’s not just in Syria this is happening, that in Iraq, as well—it’s very little reported because it’s so dangerous to go there—that much of Anbar province, this enormous province, about a quarter of Iraq, much of the province that wasn’t under ISIS control has fallen since an offensive began on the 2nd of October. So they’re very close to, in fact, beginning to get into West Baghdad. So this is really a massive setback that seems to be happening to President Obama’s policy for dealing with the Islamic State.
ISIS’s a pretty proficient organization. It combines extreme religious fanaticism with military expertise. And it’s an organization that exalts martyrdom, so it can take quite a lot of casualties. Another reason is that despite what President Obama was saying about this great big coalition of 44 countries, that the U.S. has held at arm’s length the people who are actually fighting ISIS, such as the Syrian Kurds and the Syrian army and other groups in Iraq and Syria. And their alliance is with those who are not fighting ISIS and say they don’t intend to, such as Turkey. So, I think that this lack of direct liaison with the people who are fighting on the ground probably makes it much easier for ISIS to withstand these air attacks and for these air attacks to have any accuracy.
I think John Kerry is either avoiding the issue or doesn’t quite understand what’s happening on the ground. I mean, the places he mentions, ISIS didn’t really fight hard for. One of the impulses behind ISIS, which makes it attractive to so many Sunni and young men in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere, is that it’s a winner, that it captured Mosul with 1,300 men, the second-largest city in Iraq, on the 10th of June, when there were 20,000 Iraqi troops and police in it. Now it seems about to win another victory. And I suspect that that’s one of the reasons why the Islamic State has been so intent on capturing Kobani, is that they wanted to have a very visible victory to show that the airstrikes were really not holding them back. And the important point to get across here is that despite all the rhetoric from Washington, from European capitals, from various regional associates of the U.S., the Islamic State—the caliphate, so called—is not contracting, it’s still expanding. And this, by any count, is a great failure.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad talking:
the problem is in who are the allies of the Americans in fighting ISIS. I, you know, spent some time with the Shia militias north of Baghdad in Diyala. And they were very effective. They have managed to actually stop the advance of ISIS to Baghdad from the north and northeast. But what’s the price for that? You know, all those militiamen are the product of civil war in Syria. They are so radicalized. They’re so militant. They are, you know, keen on sectarian cleansing of the areas north of Baghdad, the mixed Sunni-Shia areas north of Baghdad. They are different from all the Shia militias I’ve worked with before in Iraq. Those are guys who—you know, they don’t differentiate between what is ISIS and what’s an average Sunni. So, your partner in this war against ISIS is basically a sectarian militia that is keen on ethnic cleansing. You know, they talk openly of killing the males, military-age people, who can threaten or can work as an incubator for an ISIS presence in the area. So that is the problem at the moment, is if you want to fight ISIS, you have to join hands with Shia militias of Iraq. These are no different from your average civilian militia.
one of the biggest, you know, things we know about ISIS is what ISIS is telling us about themselves. We don’t know anything about ISIS from the inside. Everything we seem to know about ISIS is what ISIS is reflecting about itself. So, the whole issue of the Baathists joining ISIS is—you know, it’s a valid point. But also I would like to—you know, if I answer Jeremy’s point, it’s—ISIS is not one monolithic organization. The insurgency, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, as Patrick knows very well, is not one dominated by ISIS. I went to Ramadi a few times before the fall of Mosul, and let’s remember that the whole Sunni war against the central government had started back in December 2013. So, in 2014, I went to Ramadi, and Ramadi had already fell out of the control of central government. The government had a few bases inside the city, but the streets were controlled by the insurgents. Who were the insurgents? They were a coalition of Baath army officers, former generals, different groups of the insurgency, all having their grievances with the Shia-dominated government in Iraq. So, the war that ISIS is waging on—at least in Iraq, on the Iraqi government, is a coalition of many different tiny, little wars. The Sunni insurgents in Ramadi are different from the Sunni insurgents in Diyala. The Sunni insurgents in Mosul are different from the guys in South Baghdad. So, everyone has his own grievances against the central government of Iraq, yet ISIS have managed to include them all and under a single one umbrella. So that is one, you know, very important point.
If we decide, if you decide, if America decides to fight ISIS as this monolithic organization, it’s bound to fail. You know, fragmented into its own components, what are the people of Ramadi fighting for? When I was in Ramadi in April, it wasn’t a Sunni-Shia war. It was a Sunni-Sunni war—Sunnis allied with the government of Iraq, Sunnis allied with the insurgents. Why these people of Ramadi are fighting against the central government of Iraq? Because the unequal distribution of wealth and economy, you know, amongst the tribes of Ramadi. The people of Diyala and the people of South Baghdad are fighting for a different cause. They’re fighting because they see their area dominated by the Shia, while in Ramadi you don’t see any Shia. So, that’s the main point that I would like to make, is this is not one monolithic war that stretches from the borders of Iran all the way to Lebanon, to Balbec. This is a combination of many different local wars.
F-16s are the easy solution. You can, you know, march the planes into the air, bomb the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi, and I can assure you, you will come back in the next two, three, four, five years, and you will bomb us again. I was bombed the first time when I was six years old by the Iranians, and I was bombed by the Americans again and again. This is the same cycle—I mean, unless you have a grand solution, a redistribution of wealth, a social solution, a solution that shows the Sunnis of Iraq, you know, this is—you’re part of this entity; you like it, you don’t like it, you’re part of it. Otherwise, we will continue this cycle.
You know, the Sunnis of Iraq made this—I mean, what I call what’s happening in Iraq at the moment, I call it the tragedy of the Sunnis. The Shia managed to consolidate their lines, and they’re secure in Baghdad. The Kurds are pushing down on. But tell me how the Sunnis of Mosul and Ramadi will manage to get rid of ISIS without destroying their own cities. So you need to assure the Sunnis. You need to bring the Sunnis to the table, and hold a loya jirga or whatever, and tell them there is another solution. They did this mistake in 2003, 2004, allied themselves with al-Qaeda. They did the same mistake in Syria in 2011. And now we’re back in 2014.
Haider al-Abadi’s been making all the right noises. You know, he disbanded all these authoritarian practices of Maliki. He’s disbanding the supreme military command post that he was holding, that Maliki was holding. So he’s doing all the right noises. But the problem in Iraq—and Patrick knows this probably more than I do—is it’s not a problem of a person. It’s not Abadi versus Maliki. The whole institution, the whole system, is so rotten to the core. Every single soldier is appointed after paying a bribe. Every military officer is appointed after paying a bribe. And the bribes are still being paid. If we go to the—you know, so the system of Iraq is a rotten system based on corruption.
If we go back to the militias, in June 2014, Iraq had four main Shia militias. At the moment, as we speak, Iraq has in the vicinity of 20 to 30 militias. So the same fragmentation that happened on the Sunni side in Syria amongst the rebels is happening in Iraq now. Why? Because people are pumping money in to go fight ISIS. So businessmen, tribal sheikhs will just create their own militias to go fight ISIS, because it’s a source of money. The Americans now, in Istanbul, in Amman, are shopping amongst former Iraqi generals, tribal sheikhs: “Who is willing to come and fight ISIS?” By pumping money, you’re just creating another layer of warlords to be added to the zillions of warlords who already exist in the Middle East. I know what I say kind of sounds kind of too romantic, but at the moment, by sending more weapons, sending more money, you’re just adding to the fuel of the war. You need a social contract with the Sunnis of Iraq.
Speaking at Harvard University last week, Vice President Joe Biden accused Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies of funding Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq. He went on a kind of apology tour this week, talking to Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia.
Patrick Cockburn talking:
the ideology of ISIS is very similar to Wahhabism, the variant of Islam which is prevalent in Saudi Arabia, which is hostile to Shia, is hostile to Muslims who do not have the same tenets as Wahhabism, is hostile to Christians and Jews. And in many ways, what ISIS believes is the same as Wahhabism carried to its logical conclusion, that Shia are just not non-Muslims, but they’re apostates and polytheists who should be killed, which is what ISIS does. So, there is a very strong connection in the ideology of Saudi Arabia and that of ISIS.
Of course, there are other connections, too, as Biden pointed out. And although his apology has not been quite full, what he says, you know, is obviously true. And for a long time, American officials, off the record, would say exactly the same thing. And this, of course, creates enormous problems for the moment, because their allies aren’t quite allies, that for the Turks and the Saudis, yes, they’re a bit frightened of ISIS, but they quite like the idea that the ISIS is creating more problems for the Shia and the Kurds than it is for the Sunni. So, this very strange, ambivalent coalition is of people who don’t really want to wipe out ISIS and then keeping at arm’s length those that really are prepared to fight them.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad talking:
We’ve seen money poured into Syria. Everyone was so focused on, you know, destroying the Assad regime, without paying any attention to the consequences of this, even arming the Syrian rebels at the moment. This is a pure civil war. Just point to me this one brigade of Syrian rebels that is so-called moderate or something. This is a pure civil war. This is no different from the Somalia civil war. So imagine yourself kind of saying, “Oh, let’s arm this Somali kind of militia, because they are moderate.” This is what’s the problem with Erdogan at the moment. He was so keen on toppling Bashar that, for whatever reason—you know, Bashar is a criminal, Bashar is not a criminal, this is something else—but at the moment, there is an absurdity of having the Saudis flying airplanes to bomb ISIS, that is not, to be honest, that different from the ideology of the Saudis themselves. So, it’s a pure hypocrisy at the moment.
And I think the Americans—and again, I find myself kind of in total sympathy with Obama and Biden—is finding themselves in a situation where they have to look, to shop for allies amongst the people who are not that interested in finding a solution—unless we break the cycle, unless we break the cycle, we disengage ourselves from toppling Bashar al-Assad. And let’s focus on ISIS and then continue the cycle. This is the brilliance of ISIS, by the way. ISIS is fighting seven enemies, and each of those seven enemies is the enemy of someone else. And that’s why they’re winning.
– source democracynow.org
Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His new book is The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Iraqi journalist working with The Guardian. Over the summer, he embedded with militias around Baghdad and wrote the article, “On the frontline with the Shia fighters taking the war to ISIS.” He was awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism this year for his coverage of the war in Syria.