Daily Times

The world is learning the scope and complexity of the situation in Iraq and Syria, where Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants are apparently not being deterred by air strikes launched by the US and its allies. While they have been contained in some places in Iraq, they have made advances in some parts of Syria, threatening the Kurdish town of Kobani and starting an exodus of an estimated 200,000 Kurds across the border into Turkey. Indeed, ISIS’s sudden emergence as a significant force, posing a serious threat to regional stability and becoming a magnet for international jihadists, has taken much of the world by surprise, causing trepidation. In a recent television interview, President Obama admitted that US intelligence agencies had underestimated ISIS. On the other side of the equation, they had overestimated the Iraqi army and state as capable of dealing with terrorism in all its forms. The ease with which ISIS forces were able to occupy Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with the Iraqi army making a run for their lives and abandoning the US-gifted arsenal for ISIS, proves the point.

To quote Obama from his interview: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned [ISIS was] able to reconstitute themselves [from the shattered al Qaeda outfit it was] and take advantage of that chaos.” And: “This became ground zero for jihadists around the world.” They advanced so fast that even Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, seemed within their reach, only saved by US aerial intervention. While ISIS is consolidating and even in places strengthening its hold on Iraq, the situation in Syria is even more dire. It is a witches’ brew of terrorist activity with ISIS clearly the dominant jihadi group. The US aerial bombing there seems to have, for the time being, brought together the feuding terrorist groups behind ISIS.

And then there are the so-called moderate rebels that are the preferred US choice to fight both ISIS and the Assad regime on the ground. They were supposed to be vetted by the US intelligence to qualify for US military assistance because of the fear that military weapons and equipment for them might fall into militant hands. But they reportedly will now receive an estimated $ 500 million worth of weaponry to confront apparently both ISIS and the Assad regime. This looks like US policy on the run because nothing has really changed to ensure that they will be an effective force or, for that matter, their weapons will not fall into the militants’ hands. To further add to the confusion, there is the Assad regime that the US is committed to overthrow with the help of the moderate rebels.

In the present circumstances, the Assad regime would be a natural ally of the US against ISIS but such a tactical arrangement against ISIS is virtually vetoed by the US’s Arab allies like Saudi Arabia. This is because of the larger Sunni-Shia sectarian divide in which the Syrian regime, for sectarian reasons, is regarded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchs to be like the Iranian dagger pointing into the heart of Sunni Arab lands. This larger sectarian power play led Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies into funneling funds and weapons into the hands of militant groups out of which ISIS has now grown into a monster threatening both Sunni and Shia regimes alike. This is also preventing the US and Iran from cooperating fully against the common threat of ISIS. Therefore, despite the US’s success in creating a broad international front against ISIS, including some Arab kingdoms, it is not making things any easier. This brings home the bitter truth that air strikes on their own will not stop ISIS, suggesting that combat troops will need to be deployed sooner rather than later.

The Turkish government could play an important role to thwart ISIS advances now that its parliament has approved its participation in the international coalition. However, despite all the international pressure to help the beleaguered Kurds in Kobani, just across the border, it is dragging its feet because it wants the US to simultaneously overthrow the Assad regime by putting up a no-fly zone in Syria as well as creating a security cordon across the Turkish border for Syrian refugees. At the same time, it worries that the focus on fighting ISIS might strengthen the Kurdish autonomy movement that Turkey has been trying to suppress over decades.

As pointed out earlier, the aerial war against ISIS would need to be supplemented with ground warfare. But there is still no consensus about who, among the coalition partners, will contribute the ground troops. The US and its western allies contend that it is the Arabs’ fight and that they should be doing the actual fighting on the ground. And, indeed, the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga are engaged in the operations against ISIS. However, the Iraqi forces, despite all their training by the US over the years and with US-supplied weaponry, have been more adept at fleeing rather than fighting, though there are recent reports that their morale has improved and things might change for the better. This remains to be seen. The Kurdish Peshmerga, on the other hand, are said to be motivated fighters and have been doing their bit but they lack high calibre weaponry to confront ISIS. In other words, the ground forces that are supposed to take on ISIS militants are not battle ready yet. That would leave the US and its allies to fill the gap at some point. However, President Obama has made it clear that the US will not put boots on the ground even though he has already sent 1,500 combat ready experts as advisers and trainers.

One just has to wonder what they will do in terms of training and equipment, not done during the time they were in Iraq from 2003 to 2011? Would that mean that the US might, at some point, put its own troops on the ground, as it considers ISIS a threat to its own security? ISIS might even be goading the US in that direction if its recent statement is anything to go by. The statement said in part: “You will pay the price when your economies collapse. You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.”

Whether or not the US will put boots on the ground remains to be seen. One thing though is clear: it will be a long drawn out war.

The writer is a veteran journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au