IT WILL TAKE A COALITION TO DEFEAT THE ISIS "CALIPHATE" / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENT & ANALYSIS

It will take a coalition to defeat the Isis ‘caliphate’

Common threads in the Middle East need to be pulled together before they unravel

by: David Gardner

The caliphate declared one year ago by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seemed a vainglorious boast at the time but here it still is, amid violent ebbs and flows, untroubled by any real strategy that might defeat it. Isis can be contained and eventually reduced to a manageable threat, but only if the west and regional powers rethink the politics of this confrontation. If this really is, as David Cameron, the British prime minister, told the BBC this week, “the struggle of our generation”, then it needs a strategy that measures up to the challenge.

At one level, Isis is a sophisticated and tactically flexible army, made vertebrate by cadres from Saddam Hussein’s army, which the US disbanded and gratuitously gifted to the jihadis after the 2003 invasion that toppled him. At another, by assassinating Sunni rivals, massive suicide bombing, obscene executions distributed on the internet and attacks on vulnerable targets (Christians or Alawites, Yazidis or Shia, British tourists or French satirists), it defines terrorism: targeted attacks with a random multiplying effect to sow fear and panic. Who can say they are not succeeding?

The response to Isis across the Syrian-Iraqi battlefield is less than the sum of its moving parts.

A telegraphic summary might include: US forms coalition with Europeans and Sunni Arabs to bomb Isis; finds Iraqi army still will not fight; and has trained only a handful of its kind of rebels in Syria. It finds reliable ground troops (to Turkey’s horror) only in Kurds; and, to Sunni discomfiture, in Iraqi Shia militia. Iran orders Syria’s Assad regime to retreat to defensible lines; Saudis make umpteenth attempt to bribe Russia away from Syria; Jordan wants to establish a buffer zone in south Syria; Turkey says it wants one in the north too. All clear so far?

Yet there are common threads here. They need to be pulled together before they unravel. If Turkish troops do cross into Syria, for instance, their first order of business is likely to be preventing Syrian Kurds — the most effective fighters against Isis — from consolidating an autonomous entity Ankara has warned it will never accept.

 

The key to success is to break the sectarian spiral on which Isis feeds, especially between Sunni and Shia. Partition is becoming a de facto reality in Syria and Iraq. One facet of that, however, is that Isis finds it hard to break out of its Sunni areas, getting beaten back when it tries to break into territory held by Kurds or Shia. But since the latter regard dislodging Isis as a job for Sunni forces, it follows that an effective strategy must win over disaffected Sunni from the extremists. How?

If an Iran nuclear deal is finally struck in coming days, the US — with Russia (now worried about Isis in the northern Caucasus) — should gather together all external actors, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and seek a new compact against Isis.

First, they need to drain the poison of the Sunni-Shia sectarianism. That means Saudi Arabia and Iran reining in their proxy warfare and requires the Saudis, in particular, to repudiate totally Isis’s totalitarian ideas. Even al-Qaeda has distanced itself from Isis. Saudi Wahhabi clerics denounce it as “deviant” but say little on the bigoted interpretation of extreme monotheism they share with the jihadis. Saudi persecution of the Shia must end. And if a revamped coalition emerges, it needs to be clear which ground forces it has — Sunni, Shia and Kurds — and to co-ordinate them.

Second, an effective coalition must do more to help the Sunni. That means more and better arms for Sunni tribal fighters in Iraq and Syrian rebels taking on Isis. Protecting rebel enclaves is vital. The time for a no-fly zone may have passed but it beggars belief the most powerful air force in world cannot make the Assad regime stop its mass murder by barrel and chlorine bombs — a few salutary actions would suffice.

Third, helping the Sunni means massive and clever humanitarian aid for (mainly Sunni) refugees in neighbouring countries: between 1m and 2m in each of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan.

This is a potential reserve army for Isis: they may not be predisposed to jihad but despair drives people to desperate acts — and Isis pays well and looks after the families of its “martyrs”.

Isis will not go away soon, but if it cannot expand then the aura of invincibility that seduces disaffected Sunni will fade — the first step to its eventual defeat.