We cannot hide in the futile hope that Daesh will look elsewhere. Yet, many blame western policy rather than the autonomous agency of this fascism. Jeremy Corbyn argues that, ‘It is the conflict in Syria and the consequences of the Iraq war which have created the conditions for Isis to thrive and spread its murderous rule.’
We might also say that Barack Obama prematurely quit Iraq, which helped Nouri al-Maliki provoke Sunni revolts that combined with Syria’s separate collapse. But we now face a movement that chooses to oppose everything democrats hold dear. Western injustices are part of their repertoire but others do not use blanket guilt to justify terror against civilians. The Kurds could say that the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement forced them into a Sunni-dominated state, which conducted genocide, but they reject terrorism, seek to be our allies and aspire to our democratic values.
Their institutions are secular but Kurdistan is Muslim. The Kurds illustrate that this is not a war between Christians and Muslims. Kurds concede a problem with Sunni Islam because it is not theoretically capable of interpretation. Fuad Hussein, adviser to Masoud Barzani, the region’s president, recently told me that the difference between Islam and Islamism resembles that between Marx and Marxism. In short, you can be Muslim but reject Daesh or respect Marx but not Lenin or Mao’s Little Red Book, for example. The Kurds as a moderate Muslim model are well placed to puncture the pretensions of the so-called caliphate.
Iraqi Kurds are at the heart of the Middle East and are up against it now with a budgetary blockade by Baghdad, falling oil prices, a third more people to look after as nearly two million people escaped there from Daesh. The cost of war and economic crisis is exposing political faultlines and economic inefficiencies. Without the Peshmerga and western airstrikes, Daesh could now control Kurdistan and its vast energy resources.
But the west is spoonfeeding them militarily because they fear Kurdistani independence will fuel instability or divide Kurdistan. Such fears are reasonable but ignore de facto Iraqi partition and the need for an entirely new governance within Iraq to encourage Sunnis to break with Daesh. It is said the Kurds make Iraq a better place, but Baghdad should respect and not hamper them by slashing their budget and abandoning internally displaced persons.
Airstrikes cannot alone destroy Daesh but they have worked in Iraq and Syria already. Kurdistan could have fallen last year to Daesh and Kobane and Sinjar were taken back from Daesh with air support. But in Iraq neither the Kurds nor Baghdad’s largely Shia forces can hold Sunni cities. They may play a supportive role but will need other forces that do not prompt Sunni reluctance or resistance.
But the battlefield crosses the fictional border between Syria and Iraq, and gives Daesh strategic depth as well as resources. Yes, we can go after their oil supplies and external funding but they have been reduced and this action is also insufficient.
Syria is clearly what makes the next steps seem impossibly complex. If Iraq illustrates the perils of intervention then Syria illustrates the failures of inaction. Many assumed that the 2011 revolt against Assad would win. We flunked the need in 2013 to punish Bashr al-Assad for crossing the red line of using chemical weapons, and Assad is still the single biggest killer of Syrians. The Ba’athist regime in Syria sowed the seeds of today’s conflict, both by repressing reasonable alternatives and by supporting jihadists and terrorists as their ideal enemy.
Inaction also signalled weakness to Russia, which felt able to take Crimea, and created a void into which Russia dived to prop up Assad, along with Iran and Hezbollah. The solution is to phase the battle by first destroying Daesh and seeking a political settlement without Assad, who is a self-contained threat to humanity while Daesh is a global threat. Assad must eventually go or Sunnis will not break with jihadists, who can offer better self-defence for people struggling to survive. Russia may keep its bases and Turkey needs persuading that Daesh is the enemy. Moderate Syrian rebels and Kurds are our allies on the ground until a new and acceptable Syrian army is built.
The complexities fuel arguments that we best stay aloof. And then there are concerns about mission creep and exit strategies. Employing military force should always be accompanied by a political strategy and contingency planning about what enemies may do. But conflict is dynamic and defeats and setbacks are inevitable. All possibilities cannot be predicted and devising a perfect schema is often about stopping good or less bad activity. Nor can we rule out the need for outside ground troops, possibly including western ones, if we are to eliminate Daesh. What does it say about us that we want somebody else to do the fighting for us? France is our ally. The Socialist government in France wants our assistance – will we fail the call of solidarity?
Defeating Daesh is also the first step to supporting forces who ask for our backing, and moderating Iran and Saudi Arabia in a step-change that retrieves the civilisational potential of the region. Europe was long a byword for mass slaughter. Latin American dictatorships seemed permanent. Africa was bleak but is changing. It is tempting to accept the continuing integrity of the struggle between jihadism and petrostates, Sunni and Shia.
But most people in the Middle East want what we want and, even if we do not sometimes believe it ourselves, our interventions can empower leaders and peoples who reject being condemned to horror and lost promise. The Kurdistan region, saved twice by our interventions, is a small but strategically vital linchpin nation. Its success could be pivotal in not only defeating the Daesh virus but also modernising the Middle East as a whole.
———————————
Gary Kent is director of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region but writes in a personal capacity. He tweets @garykent
———————————
Good old, Gary.
Still supporting plans to put young British lives on the line all these years after he did the same over Iraq.
Despite the author’ seemingly significant stature, I found the article quite confusing. Was the article written in a rush or does it try to say too much that the main thrust has ben lost. The flow of argument along with the drift from theme to theme (Latin America, Africa, Ukraine) together with some opinion stated as fact and poor expression in English in parts. I will confine my comments to extracts that seemed to me to be saying something.
“The solution is to phase the battle by first destroying Daesh and seeking a political settlement without Assad……,” no problems there then.
“Nor can we rule out the need for outside ground troops, possibly including western ones, if we are to eliminate Daesh.” You mean we may go to war with foot soldiers but fail to know whether we need to or not.
“What does it say about us that we want somebody else to do the fighting for us?” having previously said I was unclear, actually I have decided we will go after all.
“The Socialist government in France wants our assistance – will we fail the call of solidarity?” Even though we hardly recognise our duties of solidarity on so may other fronts not referred to.
“…could be pivotal in not only defeating the Daesh virus but also modernising the Middle East as a whole.” So it looks like a motive of regime change and the introduction our liberal democracy is on the agenda after all.
I did not follow his lines of argument. But if he thinks more bombs in Syria willl make things better, then he is wrong. I also agree with Verity below that we do NOT want to put any UK boots on the ground.
I agree Verity with your assessment. “The solution is to phase the battle by first destroying Daesh……….”. My immediate response when I got to this statement was that the author of the piece really doesn’t understand the complexity of the situation the world faces.
Corbyn’s position, not to intervene, is perfectly reasonable at this point in time and is supported amongst others by voices amongst US neoconservative republicans. This fact seems to be ignored by the British press.
The western world with all our high tech weapons and surveillance systems is now facing a threat it has never encountered before. Radicalised disaffected muslims live within all our major cities. They don’t need to have gone to Syria for training. They only need to get their hands on a 4by4 vehicle to cause mayhem in our streets and meeting places.
There is no shame or cowardice in saying, no, let’s not rush to retaliate before we know who we are fighting, why they are our enemy, what is our end goal here and what the implications of our actions maybe.
A somewhat simplistic analysis, partially correct but containing several errors and misapprehensions:
The problem is not just ISIS/Daesh but also the al-Nusra Front, both of whom want a caliphate (with different favoured Caliphs), with the minor difference that Nusra may be prepared to wait a year, possibly 18 months, before imposing this state upon the people.
Many of the other rebel groups, in temporary or semi-permanent alliances, are also extremely problematic because they have called for the establishment of an Islamic state (not a caliphate) but fully implementing sharia law. Some have also called for the extermination of all Shia (Twelvers and Seveners) and ‘infidels’ within this territory including: Alawites, Druze, Ishmaili, Yazidi , Sufi and the Kurds.
The attitude towards Christians is not likely to be favourable with the probable best-case scenario of Jizya, as currently implemented in Qarytayn by ISIL: “Pay Jizya (Non-Muslim Tax) Or You Will Be Executed And Your Wives Will Become Our Sex Slaves”, coupled with the destruction of crosses and other religious artifacts.
The Islamic Front is a powerful umbrella group of 7 major factions supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar but containing factions designated as terrorists by the UAE, UK, US etc. They are anti-ISIS, anti-Kurd, anti-Shia, anti-‘infidel’ but they sometimes collaborate with other rebel groups, including the terrorist al-Nusra (supported by Turkey etc.) and some (relatively) more moderate jihadi, salafist and islamist opposition forces. They desire an islamic state, under sharia law with ethnic cleansing of Shia, Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Ishmailis, Zahidis, Sufis etc but unfortunately may well be included within David Cameron’s “moderate rebel” category!
NB. There is also a Kurdish Islamic Front but don’t let the name confuse anyone, because they are a Salafist group aligned with ISIS, who are fighting against the Kurdish YPG. They also run islamic schools, to indoctrinate Kurdish children, in Aleppo and elsewhere.
David Cameron and the Labour MPs, in favour of an immediate bombing response have yet to make a coherent case for this latest military intervention and with the sole concentration on targeting ISIS, while completely ignoring the other dangerous terrorist rebel groups and their sponsors, including Turkey, detailed above. Is this due to laziness, ineptitude or incompetence, or perhaps a combination of all three?
The best case against intervention (in the form proposed) was made by Stewart Hosie MP, Deputy Leader of the SNP, on the Andrew Marr Show 29/11/2015, 7 minutes definitely worth watching, see link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p039ktf1
For those who favour military intervention but on a strategic and rational basis, should also view George Galloway, at his scintillating best, when interviewed by Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics (from 4:08 onward):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n-Uik4UBzk&feature=youtu.be