Category Archives: Wars of the Middle East

The Shores of Tripoli 4.

Posted on by
Reply

Still, serious problems loomed. For one thing, the post-Qaddafi government guarded its independence. They rejected any international security force. For another thing, a gap opened between the men in suits–the Westernized exiles who had fronted the revolution with the Western powers–and the men with guns—the Libyans who had done what fighting there had been. The men in suits had no influence in the country, while the men with guns dominated the scene. Worse, the men with guns divided between Islamists and secularists. Each faction of fighters just recruited its own group of men in suits to front for them with the Western powers. This put a veneer of Western politics on something very different. Secretary Clinton, to the extent that she still thought about Libya, saw the men in suits as the natural leaders. In fact, brutal factional struggles had already begun among the men with guns.

A third problem appeared in the failure of the gun buy-back program. The State Department had hoped to work through the interim government. The absence of a real government made this impossible. Militias arming for civil war didn’t see the logic of selling their weapons. The Islamist groups continued to receive weapons from Qatar and the non-Islamist groups from the United Arab Emirates. To the extent that the program worked at all, it was by turning the militias into middle-men in a much larger regional arms market. They bought stuff cheap outside Libya, imported the weapons, and re-sold them to the Americans at a mark-up. Other weapons they may just have sold outside Libya. For example, an estimated 20,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles just vanished. Qaddafi’s weapons have turned up in Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Egypt, Gaza, and Syria. By Fall 2012, American intelligence analysts were deeply alarmed by the spread of these weapons.

In January 2012, Jibril was out as temporary prime minister, and was replaced by a former engineering professor from the University of Alabama. The professor, perhaps inured to the faculty politics of American universities, warned of the danger of civil war if the opposing factions were not disarmed and pacified with various concessions.[1] Soon, everyone wanted elections. This continued the farce that the men in suits controlled events. In fact, as the American ambassador warned in February 2012, the projected July 2012 elections would be under militia control. As it happened, the victors in the election were factions fronted by men in suits with whom Secretary Clinton was familiar. Jibriil was back in office.

The most pressing problem facing the government lay in the militias. At the very least, the government needed a reliable army of its own to help it face down the militias. On the one hand, it made sense to find a way to integrate the fighters in the militias into a peacetime society. Instead of embracing a plan to give the fighters government jobs or aid in starting small businesses or getting some education, the government merely agreed to put the militia commanders on retainer. On the other hand, the different regions—represented by their individual men with guns—struggled for predominance in the constitution that remained to be written. Violence accelerated.

Secretary Clinton’s instinct to push people around began to run into serious opposition after Libya. She proposed putting pressure on Qatar to halt the flow of arms to Libya. Both the Middle East experts at the State Department and the Defense Department argued against putting the American relationship with Qatar at risk. President Obama supported Clinton’s opponents.

Soon after the July 2012, Libya began to descend into even worse violence. The Islamist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi in September 2011 was merely the most eye-catching—for Americans—incident. The country itself began to fragment into a Western region (with a government supported by Qatar and Turkey) and an Eastern region (with a government supported by Egypt and the United Arab emirates). The break-down of government opened the way for many migrants to try to reach Europe by sea.

[1] See the recent controversy over funding STEM education versus the traditional liberal arts.

The Shores of Tripoli 3.

Posted on by
Reply

In May 2011, Secretary Clinton met some rebel leaders in Rome. Their fight against the Qaddafi regime had stalled. They wanted more weapons to tip the balance. On behalf of the United States, she declined to help. The Obama administration worried that American-supplied arms would end up in the hands of Islamist extremists. (They had reason to worry. In June 2011, one load of arms from the French had fallen into the hands of a former inmate in a CIA “black site” prison.) The rebels went looking elsewhere. By Summer 2011, both Qatar[1] and the United Arab Emirates had emerged as major weapons suppliers to the rebels. Among those rebels were a number of Islamist groups, like those centered on the town of Misurata Cert.[2] As with her warning to the administration that France and Britain would go ahead with attacks on Libya without American participation, Secretary Clinton argued that the US had to participate if it was not to be left behind. Secretary Clinton persuaded President Obama to launch a covert program to arm the “moderate” rebels centered in Benghazi. On 15 July 2011, the United States recognized the rebels’ “Transitional National Council” as the legitimate government of Libya.

In August 2011, Qaddafi’s power-base had begun to collapse. Professional diplomats, like Jeffrey Feltman, were deeply alarmed at what had developed. Qatar continued to support Islamist groups as they maneuvered for power in post-Qaddafi Libya. Mohammed Jibril, the Libyan rebel leader with whom Secretary Clinton had been so impressed in March 2011, flew back and forth between Libya and Qatar to transmit orders. Jibril seemed totally unconcerned about disarming the foreign-armed militias that had—under cover of American air power—“defeated” Qaddafi.[3]

By October 2011, Qaddafi was dead. Secretary Clinton’s myrmidons celebrated her triumph. In an important step that reflected unhappy experience in post-Saddam Iraq, the State Department launched a $40 million program to “secure” (i.e. buy back from the militias) the huge stocks of weapons plundered from Qaddafi’s arsenals. In another important step, Secretary Clinton arranged for the release to the interim government of billions of dollars of Qaddafi’s “frozen” assets held outside the country.

Soon thereafter, Secretary Clinton disengaged from the Libyan issue. Partly, her tenure at the State Department began to wind down (and her preparations for another run at the White House in 2016 began to ramp up). More importantly, the Syrian front in the “Arab Spring” had blown up. Secretary Clinton switched her focus from intervening in Libya to overthrow Qaddafi to intervening in Syria to overthrow Assad. She urged President Obama to arm and train Syrian rebels.

President Obama resolutely refused to become embroiled in Libya as the Bush II administration had become embroiled in Iraq. He wanted the Europeans to take responsibility for Libya, but both France and Britain were pre-occupied with domestic issuers. He also rejected Clinton’s plan to arm Syrian rebels. Secretary Clinton had chosen adherence to President Obama’s wishes at the beginning of the crisis. She declined to change course afterward.

[1] See: “Your mind’s in the Qatar.”

[2] HA! Is art history joke.

[3] Scott Shane and Jo Becker, “After Revolt, a New Libya ‘With Very Little Time Left’,” NYT, 29 February 2016.

The Shores of Tripoli 2.

Posted on by
Reply

In an approach that would be repeated in Syria at the time of the chemical weapons “red line” incident, the President first decided for intervention and then asked his military advisers what was possible. As would be the case later, he didn’t like what he heard. The eastern Libyan city of Benghazi formed the heart of the resistance to Qaddafi. His troops were advancing on the city, driving people before them. A no-fly zone wouldn’t do any good because Qaddafi possessed a huge advantage in conventional arms. Qaddafi “would have lined up the tanks and just gone after folks,” in the later words of then then-CIA director David Petraeus. This forced the President to seek a mandate from the UN for more than a mere no-fly zone.

The big rock in the middle of the road here was the Russians. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin opposed to American interventionism.[1] At first, the Russians opposed even a no-fly zone. Clinton consulted with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. She assured Lavrov that the US didn’t want another war in the Middle East. “Doesn’t mean that you won’t get one,” he replied laconically. Still, for reasons that the NYT story artfully elides,[2] the Russians agreed not to veto a UN resolution allowing “all necessary means” to protect civilians. The resolution carried on 17 March 2011.

On 19 March 2011 Secretary Clinton was in Paris to co-ordinate strategy with French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron.[3] Here Sarkozy blind-sided her by saying that French jets were already airborne for strikes, but that he would recall them if she wanted. Although this meant that the Americans would not control the pace of the initial campaign, Clinton declined to ask for the recall of the attacks.[4]

President Obama claimed that he had no intention of engaging in regime-change. On 22 March 2011, Secretary Clinton publically stated that the purpose of the mission did not include tossing Qaddafi out on his ear. The president ordered the Defense Department to prevent any massacres, and then to pass the task to the French and the British after ten days. Within three days, American forces had suppressed Libyan air defenses and halted the advance on Benghazi. However, the anti-Qaddafi uprising then spread to other areas. These uprisings were rooted in tribal or regional or religious identities long suppressed by Qaddafi. Their success might tear the country apart over the long run. The debate among national security officials turned to questions that might well have been considered before intervention. Was the “protection” mission to extend throughout Libya? Could Libyans be protected without evicting Qaddafi? What kind of government would replace him?

Events moved ahead of debate. By April 2011, the US had deployed drones to strike Qaddafi loyalist targets and inserted CIA officers to provide rebel commanders with combat intelligence. Increasingly, it became apparent that the Qaddafi regime would be destroyed, regardless of what the mandate from the UN authorized. Even so, the rebel offensive couldn’t move beyond Brega, on the coast road to Tripoli, where Qaddafi’s initial offensive had stalled months before.

In Washington, the scales began to fall from the eyes of the interventionists. Many in Congress were angry with President Obama’s contention that the War Powers Act did not apply because Americans were killing foreigners, but no Americans were being killed by foreigners. The Russians claimed that they had not approved regime change. The Arab League said the same.

[1] There is a report that Putin suffered a stroke in the womb before he was born. His obsession with physical attainments, from his judo matches to his riding a horse bareback to his hunting tigers are expressions of a heroic will to master his environment. It shows up in his politics and diplomacy. Or lack of diplomacy.

[2] See: “Obama versus Putin.”

[3] Why was the Secretary of State, rather than the Secretary of Defense, coordinating military plans with allies?

[4] Did she vote for the attack on Iraq in 2003 because she didn’t want to be labeled a “dove” when she ran for President in 2008? It’s always difficult reading the crystal ball, but Obama won as a “dove” in 2008.

The Shores of Tripoli 1.

Posted on by
Reply

In Spring 2011, came the “Arab Spring”: Tunisia, then Egypt, and then Libya.[1] Unlike the Tunisian or Egyptian leaders, the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi threatened to drown the rebellion in blood rather than yield power. Already in February 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looked forward to more trouble: “imagine how difficult [the transition of power] will be in Libya.”[2] By March 2011, the British, the French, and the Arab League—none of whom had real military power—wanted the US to intervene against Qaddafi. President Barack Obama, who had risen to prominence on the basis of his opposition to the 2003 attack on Iraq, was suspicious of the adventure. Compounding the difficulties, the government had little useful information about Qaddafi’s intentions. One State Department official told the NYT that they were captives of news reports to find out what was happening.[3]

Against this backdrop, a contest of policies raged inside the American administration. Voices of caution (notably Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) had warned against tossing overboard Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak just to gratify the young people in Tahrir Square. Now Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon argued that the Bush II administration had “taken its eye off the ball” in Afghanistan by invading Iraq in 2003. Intervention in Libya would have the same effect when the Obama administration struggled to extricate itself from those two long-running conflicts. Some in the intelligence community worried about what would happen if Qaddafi lost power.

Against them were younger aides—not identified by the NYT—who made a moral and sentimental appeal: “Mr. President, you’ve got to be on the right side of history.” This exerted real power on President Obama, who favored a forward policy in responding to the “Arab Spring.” Still, it would be hard to go against the opinion of the adults in the room once again. On 15 March 2011, Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, told the French ambassador that “you are not going to drag us into your shitty war.”

Abruptly, Secretary Clinton chose to join the side of the interventionists. Her motivations remain opaque. On the one hand, several of her former aides insist upon the “lessons of history.” President Bill Clinton had rejected intervention in Rwanda, to everyone’s regret; he had intervened against Serbia in the 1990s. Secretary Clinton did not want to stand idly by while another blood bath took place. On the other hand, she was very anxious to gain entry to the president’s inner circle of advisers.[4] Did she allow this desire to shape her policy?

On 14 March 2011, Secretary Clinton, who had voted for the attack on Iraq, met with the leader of one of the Libyan factions. “They gave us what we wanted to hear,” reported one of Clinton’s aids. “And you do want to believe.” Later that day, one French diplomat found her “tough” and “bullish” in favor of intervention. On 15 March 2011, even as Susan Rice made her blunt remarks to the French ambassador, Secretary Clinton warned the President and his other national security advisers that the French and the British were going to launch airstrikes on their own to create a no-fly zone. If things went wrong, the US would have to fish them out of the drink.[5] Clinton’s advocacy for action seemed to tip the balance, or at least to give President Obama the backing he needed to go against expert advice.

[1] Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Clinton, ‘Smart Power,’ and a Dictator’s Fall,” NYT, 28 February 2016.

[2] Scott Shane and Jo Becker, “After Revolt, a New Libya ‘With Very Little Time Left’,” NYT, 29 February 2016.

[3] Those accounts inflated the death toll, claiming thousands had been killed where Human Rights Watch would later count 350. However, the real issue is the suggestion that neither the US nor—astonishingly—the French had important intelligence assets in Libya. Even the French vastly under-estimated the amount of weapons that Qaddafi had accumulated. See Shane and Becker, “After Revolt,…”

[4] The NYT story tells of one 2009 episode in which she learned from the radio that there was a cabinet meeting scheduled for that day. “Can I go?” she asked aides.

[5] Apparently one “lesson of history” that Secretary Clinton did not learn was that President Eisenhower had let the French and British get out of their own mess in Suez in 1956.

The Great Game–latest round.

Posted on by
Reply

“What do Russians want?”—Sigmund Freud.

One theory holds that the pursuit of foreign policy gains is driven by domestic concerns.[1] Russian actions in Syria and Ukraine are intended to distract Russians from their current economic hard times by reviving Russian parity with the United States. However, even though Russia remains burdened by economic sanctions imposed over the Ukraine and constantly assailed by Western leaders, Putin has called for new parliamentary elections in April 2016. That doesn’t look like a worried man. More likely, Putin’s chief concerns are international rather than domestic.

Vladimir Putin habitually gloms together a range of international events as evidence of the malign effects of American interventionism: Iraq (2003), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Libya (2013). Georgia and Ukraine may seem like a bad case of emotional sunburn, but it’s hard to argue with the examples of Iraq and Libya. As Putin made clear to New York Times reporter Peter Baker some years ago, he wants the Americans to stop it.[2] Apparently, Syria is the place where he intends to make his point.

Russia is trying to show that it is a better ally and worse foe than is the United States. In essence, the Russians want Assad to stay in place until they agree that he should go and that he be replaced by a regime friendly to Russia. At the moment, the Russians are willing to fight and the Americans are not, so Putin is likely to get his way.

The Russian intervention in Syria has been modest: 50 aircraft; 6,000 troops to service and protect the planes; and about $3 million a day. With that backing, however, Assad’s forces have expanded their territory at the expense of their foes. The anti-Assad forces approved of by the West often fight cheek-by-jowl with the anti-Assad forces disapproved of by the West (the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front). The Russians don’t seem much inclined to fine distinctions and the most-recent cease-fire agreement allows for attacks on both ISIS and the Nusra Front. The current fear in Washington seems to be that the Russians will continue their attacks on a broad swathe of anti-Assad forces after the cease-fire nominally goes into effect. If past performance is any guide, the US will not do anything more than protest as its nominal clients are killed.

However, now Assad’s troops are close to encircling the rebel city of Aleppo. If they can cut the main supply routes into the city before the cease-fire begins, then the cease-fire will allow a siege to run forward undisturbed. Any attempt by Assad’s opponents to break out of or break in to Aleppo would constitute a violation of the cease fire. Seen in that light, Putin’s insistence that he will honor the cease-fire may be “sincere.” The fall of Aleppo might put the last nail in the coffin of the non-ISIS part of the insurgency.

That still would leave ISIS. Would the Russians back a Syrian effort to reconquer the eastern part of the country from the Caliphate? If they did, what sorts of questions might that raise for other countries? The United States would have to decide if it would co-operate with such an attack. After having complained that the Russians have not been attacking ISIS, it might be embarrassing to refuse to join an attack on ISIS. If the Syrians did attack eastward, would they navigate around the Syrian territories held by Kurds? Leaving the Kurds in place would pose a problem for Turkey’s President Erdogan, who has been after Assad’s head for years. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!”[3]

[1] Neil MacFarquhar, “Russia Wins Policy Points. Now What?” NYT, 24 February 2016.

[2] See: “Obama versus Putin.” https://waroftheworldblog.com/2014/09/28/obama-versus-putin/

[3] Joel, 3: 14.

Africa Adio.

Posted on by
Reply

A while ago, you wouldn’t have thought that Sub-Saharan Africa would become a hot-bed of Islamism. In culture, it was African, rather than Arab; in religion it was Sufi, rather than Wahhabist.[1] Sufi leaders—many of them not particularly well-educated and perhaps similar to the village priest of the European Middle Ages or the mountain reverend of the Appalachians–preached accommodation with formally secular governments and co-existence with Christians. People sought the consolation of religion mainly when they grew older.

However, the situation has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. As was the case before with post-liberation Arab states, Sub-Saharan governments have failed to deliver higher living standards or respectable authority. Meanwhile, since the 1970s, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has sponsored conservative Sunni evangelists throughout the Muslim world. Sub-Saharan Africa was no exception. Thousands of eager young theology students from the region have studied in Saudi “universities.” Modern telecommunications allowed for the rapid spread Wahhabist preaching.[2] As a result, in recent years vast numbers of the Muslims of Sub-Saharan Africa have switched affiliation to Wahabbism.[3] More mosques are attended by larger congregation of younger people.[4] Many of those mosques have been built with Saudi money.

Then the American overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 opened one pathway between the ISIS caliphate and Sub-Saharan Africa, just as it opened a pathway in the opposite direction for migrants driven by poverty between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean sea-route to Europe. The migration to Europe and the rise of Boko Haram are two sides of one coin.

As a result, pro-Western governments have been operating in an increasingly difficult environment. Boko Haram turned to armed struggle in northern Nigeria in 2009. In 2013, an Islamist movement partnered with an indigenous Tuareg rebellion in Mali.[5] French troops beat back that threat. When the president of Niger openly sympathized with the victims of the Islamist attack on “Charlie Hebdo” in early 2015, mobs burned down forty Christian churches and the French cultural center. Additional British, French, and American special forces soon joined the fight, while the US set up bases for observation drones in Cameroon and Niger. On the other hand, ISIS seems to have increased its support for the Islamists, both remotely through the Internet and directly through dispatching advisors. Driven off the battlefield, Boko Haram resorted to terrorism. In January 2016, Islamists terrorists killed 86 people in Dalori, Nigeria, 32 people in Bodo, Cameroon, and 30 people in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.[6] In early February Boko Haram suicide bomber killed 58 at a refugee camp in Dikwa, Nigeria.

Yes, these bastards need killing. However, mowing the lawn isn’t going to solve the problem over the long term. It will take sustained economic development and good government.

[1] Basically, esoteric (focused on individual communion with Allah and loosey-goosey about assimilating elements of traditional African religion), rather than exoteric (focused on the strict observance of rites).

[2] In a different context, the American-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki offers a good example. See: “Just like imam used to make.”

[3] See Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2003).

[4] Would it force the analogy to see the supporters of Bernie Sanders and of Donald Trump in the same light? Angry or idealistic people who see the system as rigged against them is one common feature. That isn’t meant to denigrate either the young Islamists or the supporters of the American candidates denounced as “populists” in the mainstream American media. Nor is it an endorsement of their policies.

[5] See: “Sahel of a Good Song.”

[6] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Jihad Comes to Africa,” WSJ, 6-7 February 2016.

A Geographer Reads the Newspaper 2.

Posted on by
Reply

Attacks by the military forces of other countries, notably of Chad, have driven Boko Haram off the conventional battlefield in northern Nigeria.[1] Two things have resulted from this military success. On the one hand, Boko Haram has turned to ordinary terrorism: suicide bombings in villages, along with attacks on hotels frequented by Westerners in states neighboring Nigeria. Suicide attacks happen almost daily now. The attacks have disrupted the local economy. Food has become scarce. Famine is a real danger. About 2.8 million people have fled the region for safety in the south.[2] However, there is no organized system for dealing with these refugees. Some have gone to live with relatives, some are housed in makeshift camps. Much of the income of these states comes from oil, so the fall in prices has squeezed budgets.[3]

On the other hand, many of the estimated 2,000 captives seized by Boko Haram in the last several years have been liberated. While Westerners transiently mobilized behind the “BringBackOurGirls” hashtag (and then largely forgot about the 200 captives), the actual families of the returnees are not so enthusiastic. The women among them have been labelled “annoba” (epidemics) or “Boko Haram wives.” There is a suspicion that they were radicalized in captivity. They might have been allowed to return as recruiters of new jihadists. Moreover, many had been raped or forced into marriage with Boko Haram soldiers; some are now mothers of children or are pregnant. This adds to the difficulties of reintegration.

Partly, there appears to be a widespread belief that character is transmitted through the blood or genetically.[4] Local people have said that the children—born or not-yet-born—carry “bad blood.” They have been described as “hyenas among dogs.” One mother said that “When I think of the baby that will come, it disturbs me a lot because I always ask myself this question: will the child also behave like [Boko Haram]?”

Partly, one wonders if traditional notions of “honor” and “purity” are involved. Are the women now seen as not fit for marriage and likely to be permanent economic and psychological burdens on their families. The food shortages and displacements would only compound these anxieties. That’s not pretty to say and may have no basis.

The two different strands of this problem entwine in the female suicide bombers who carry out some of the suicide attacks. On 9 February 2016, two girls killed 58 and wounded 78 at a camp in Dikwa, Nigeria.[5] Some of them appear to be captives who were turned into weapons. Theories about these suicide bombers vary. Some believe that the women have been “brainwashed” in some fashion (like Patty Hearst with the Symbionese Liberation Army). Others believe that the women are unwitting (like the “muscle hijackers” on the 9/11 flights) or extorted in some way, and that the bombs are detonated by remote control. A third possibility is that the female captives share the “bad blood” or “honor” assumptions of their fellow villagers and believe that their lives are effectively over. Some recent female suicide bombers wore their hair pulled back away from their faces in a local burial style.

[1] Dionne Searcey, “Women Freed From Boko Haram Face Rejection at Home,” NYT, 17 February 2016.

[2] In comparison, Germany has taken in about a million refugees in the last year in what is generally regarded as an eye-catching human catastrophe.

[3] The propensity of government officials in Nigeria to steal everything that isn’t nailed down or red-hot adds to the problem. Moreover, many of the Nigerian refugees are Muslims in a predominantly Christian country.

[4] John Locke and his “tabula rasa” haven’t penetrated much here apparently.

[5] Usam Sadiq Al-Amin and Dionne Searcey, “Young Bombers Kill 58 At Nigerian Refugee Camp,” NYT, 11 February 2016.

CrISIS 6.

Posted on by
Reply

The Turks want the Assad regime gone as a first order of business, and they are attacking Kurdish forces as a second order target. The Saudis want the Assad regime gone and they are attacking Houthis in Yemen as a second order target. The Russians want the Assad regime to remain in place and they are attacking non-ISIS opponents of the regime. The Iranians want the Assad regime to remain in place and they have committed both their own military advisers and client Hezbollah forces from Lebanon to that end. The Shi’ite government if Iraq isn’t making any concessions to the Sunnis of Iraq in order to win them away from ISIS. In the past year, Germany has received about a million refugees from the Syrian civil war. The Kurds are fighting ISIS, even if the rest of the Iraqis are making a half-hearted effort, but that’s because they are trying to establish the territorial basis for an independent Kurdistan. Germans are more concerned about the behavior of Muslim hicks toward European women than they are about the undoubted dangers of terrorist wolves hiding among the refugee sheep. In short, nobody—except American politicians—seems very concerned about ISIS these days.

The common assumption on the Potomac seems to be that ISIS has gigantic ambitions and will seek to wreak havoc in Western countries through terrorism. However, ISIS has little chance of expanding its territory. It made big gains in areas where the opposing forces were rotted by demoralization or were pre-occupied with other conflicts. There is little chance that it can make similar progress against the armies of Turkey, Iran, and Israel. It may not even want to make huge gains. In the words of one observer, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “wanted to create an Islamic state in Syria—sacred land that, according to Islamic prophecy, was to be the site of the apocalypse.”[1] (See: Islamism as a Story.) That’s not quite the same as conquering the whole of the Middle East.

Heightened security in Western countries can limit the danger of ISIS terrorism, even if it cannot totally prevent it. The Israelis have lived with this danger for decades. OK, it hasn’t done their society and politics a lot of good. Still, Israel is still there. ISIS poses no existential threat to Western countries.

That isn’t the same as saying that ISIS hasn’t created problems. The European vulnerability to the flood of Syrian (and other) refugees has opened a means for other states to pressure the Europeans. Turkey started the process, but the Russians are in a position to either add to or to reduce the flood. What would the West give Russia to get it to play ball in Syria? Probably it will not be much fun to be a Ukrainian.[2] Probably it will involve a climb-down on sanctions. Probably it will involve letting the Assad regime survive or transition out on Russian and Iranian terms.

[1] Sohrab Amari, WSJ, 9 February 2016, p. A11.

[2] At the same time, Western democracies already seem to be experiencing buyer’s remorse over their support for Ukraine. Pervasive corruption and a very halting program of economic modernization are angering many people who didn’t look closely at the Ukraine or at its quarrels with Russia before the most recent revolution.

CrISIS 5.

Posted on by
Reply

There is a certain irony in the conquest of much of Syria by ISIS.[1] After 9/11, the Assad regime declined to join the American “global war on terror” (GWOT) in any serious way. Instead, it harbored Sunni Islamists. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, large numbers of foreign fighters passed through Syria on their way to join Abu Musab al Zarqawi. One Islamist leader explained Assad’s tolerance for these terrorists: “we [are] focusing on the common enemy, America and Israel.”

In 2007, the balance of forces in Iraq suddenly shifted. Zarqawi’s fundamentalism and his savagery had estranged many Sunnis in Iraq. This led to the “Awakening” movement that greatly reduced the need for American forces while offering much intelligence to the American Special Forces man-hunters. The George W. Bush Administration surged in reinforcements that allowed the US to restore order in Iraq and to pursue the Islamists. The situation began to improve. The Americans killed Zarqawi. Soon, his surviving followers took shelter in eastern Syria, beyond the reach of the man-hunters and the bombs. This allowed many American decision-makers to start looking for an eventual escape route. For his part, Assad seems to have started rounding-up Syrian Islamists whose usefulness had now declined.

Then came the “Arab Spring.” Popular uprisings—generally non-violent—began against the tyrants who ruled (and still rule) much of the Middle East. These movements rocked Tunisia, then Egypt, then Syria, and then Libya. The Tunisian regime soon struck its tents, but it took various types of American pressure to bring “reform” to Egypt and Libya. America had no such leverage in Syria.

At first, Bashar al-Assad responded to the popular challenge by force. This might well have done the job if he had stuck to his last. His faced a loose coalition of talkers-more-than-doers who were often at odds with one another. Like the young Egyptians of Tahrir Square, they seem to have had little support among the populace at large.

Instead, however, Assad tried to tar the rebels as Islamists. To this end, he released a lot of experienced Islamists from his jails. As expected, they took up arms against the regime. Assad then cast his government as the only viable barrier against jihad. Meanwhile, the surviving Iraqi Islamists had reconstituted themselves in eastern Syria as ISIS, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their leader. As the civil war dragged on, ISIS took control of much of the eastern part of Syria. Then, in Summer 2014 it attacked into western Iraq, routing Iraq’s army.

The results of Assad’s policies has been appalling. Huge numbers of deaths, hordes of miserable refugees, and a society laid in ruins. Many observers regret that the powers had intervened early on to replace Assad and create some kind of viable successor state. There are reasons to question this view. On the one hand, Assad followed a particularly disastrous version of the same course that is being followed more successfully by Egypt.   There the army turfed the Muslim Brotherhood out of power and has used the struggle against radical Islam as cover for a revived military dictatorship. So far, that approach seems to be working, mowing down young secular opponents of the old regime with as much enthusiasm as Islamists. So, it was not a foregone conclusion that Assad’s policy would fail.

On the other hand, the “coulda-woulda-shoulda” view ignores the reality that the Syrian civil war is a proxy war for Shi’ites and Sunnis. It also ignores the reality that Russian agreement to yet another American intervention-overthrow would have been necessary to get UN approval. That wasn’t likely to happen after the Libyan imbroglio.

[1] Charles R. Lister, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Evolution of an Insurgency (OUP, 2015)

A Road to Aleppo Experience.

Posted on by
Reply

We’re at a dicey point in Syria.[1] When Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels made gains against the Assad government in Summer 2015, the Russkies greatly increased their support for Assad in September 2015. The Obama administration predicted that this would turn into an Afghanistan-like “quagmire” for the Russkies. It still may, but that isn’t what has been happening recently. Instead, the Russian-backed offensive[2] by the Assad government has cut the major supply routes from Turkey to the northern anti-Assad groups. It may go on to crush its opponents in Western Syria and bring that part of the war to an end.

Alternatively, other powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia could pile on so that the effort to unseat Assad continues. Intervention by Saudi Arabia and Turkey would not be just for spite. The Sunni-Shi’a civil war within Islam provides the context for this decision.[3] To see Assad survive in control of western Syria would mean that a client-state of Iran had tightened its grip. The Wall Street Journal‘s Yarolslav Trofimov reports that such an outcome would be regarded as a “catastrophe” in the minds of Turkish and Saudi leaders. “Can we accept Russia and the Iranians calling the tune in the region?” asked one Turkish diplomat. Many Sunni observers appear to believe that Russian intervention will trigger greater intervention by the Sunni powers.

How? For one thing, the primary supply line into Syria appears to run through Turkey. If that line is cut, will the Saudis try to open (or expand an existing one) through Jordan? For another thing, the key element in the Russian effort has been air power. Would Turkey or Saudi Arabia commit their own air forces against the Russians? Well Turkey did in November 2015, when it shot down a Russian strike jet that had invaded Turkish airspace on a bombing run. The Turks have been quaking in their boots ever since.

There are many questions, great and small.

The ground-based air-defense systems (anti-aircraft missiles) of Turkey and Saudi Arabia come from the United States. Would the US sign-off on transferring these to Syrian opponents of the Assad government?

Even if the Russkies were to back away, would Iran and Iraq? They are front-line states in the Muslim civil war. The outcome in Syria is just as important to them as it is to Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Would Turkey (and possibly Saudi Arabia) launch a conventional ground-force intervention? The Turkish military has been under attack by the Erdogan government. Their price for agreeing might be high. The Saudis haven’t been in a real war for many decades.

One of the key long-term purposes of both the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances was to rein-in the foreign policy independence of the client states of the United States and the Soviet Union.[4] Has the ending of the Cold War unleashed the client states to do any damn-fool thing that seems to be a good idea at the moment?

The 2003 invasion of Iraq looks worse and worse all the time. If that is possible.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Russian Victories Mark Turning Point in Syria,” WSJ, 12 February 2016.

[2] I suppose you can think of it as “inhumanitarian aid.” However, what is more “humanitarian” in this context: to end the war now or let it drag on along the same awful lines of the last five years?

[3] In the early days of the Iraq occupation, the Bush II Administration refused to call what was happening an “insurgency,” although it plainly was an insurgency. Now, the Obama administration seems reluctant to recognize that this civil war has created difficult problems for their Middle Eastern policy. Back in the day, the historian Henry Adams had great fun showing how the administration of Thomas Jefferson had been driven to adopt many of the policies of the previous John Adams administration—which Jefferson had bitterly criticized during the campaign. HA! Is joke.

[4] See John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987).