Daily Times

The innocuous English word “salaryman” has negative cultural connotations in Japan. A salaryman is a white-collar worker in theory but he is also someone cruising on autopilot, hoping to work for the same company all his life and eventually retire with a livable pension. If he goes through the motions long enough, the salaryman believes things will work out on their own. Much like NATO’s war against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.

NATO advertises this war as a 65-member coalition but most partners are working at cross-purposes. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word coalition as “A group of people, groups, or countries who have joined for a common purpose.” The common purpose here, we are told, is to dismantle IS permanently. In practice, every party has a different reason for partaking in this conflict, each cloaked by the banner of coalition. “The US is one way and Moscow is in the opposite direction,” deplores Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Arab political scientist, adding “It is fine to send in airplanes, but that is no way to defeat [IS]. It is just showing off force without any clear strategy.”

Germany, the latest NATO member to pledge its war chest, typifies this crossed-wires coalition. Berlin will commit 1,200 soldiers for defensive purposes and a naval frigate to guard the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Moreover, German Tornado planes will conduct recon sorties to aid the targeting of IS supply lines and personnel. NATO-ally Turkey, however, will not get hold of this intelligence, Der Spiegel magazine reports. Berlin worries that Ankara will use the surveillance data to hit Kurdish militias allied to the west, thereby diminishing NATO’s only reliable, on-ground force. As you can imagine, such a degree of suspicion among partners tied to the pact of collective defence is troublesome. Turkey, meanwhile, has brought further chaos to an already roily battlefield by starting a potentially combustible sideshow with Russia. Any ambitions of a unified, multipolar front against IS evaporated on November 24 when Turkish F-16 jets shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber on Turkey’s border with Syria, killing one pilot.

Moscow’s reaction was swift and visceral. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the downing “a stab in the back” and demanded an unconditional apology. When Ankara dithered, he accused the country and its president, Tayyip Erdogan, of leaguing with IS and patronising the group’s illicit oil trade. Ankara countered that the Russian plane had violated Turkish airspace and denounced Putin for ordering attacks on Syria’s Turkmen ethnic group who are fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Although notions of a third world war are farfetched, Putin is turning the screws on Turkey’s economy by stopping visa-free travel, imposing a slew of sanctions on imports and shelving the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. These will hurt because Russia is Turkey’s second biggest trading partner. Unfortunately for NATO, Erdogan’s attempt to arm-wrestle Moscow has only strengthened the case for Russian intervention in Syria and downgraded the outlook on Assad’s speedy exit.

Clearly, US President Barack Obama needs to lasso his NATO allies into a single file formation to re-sharpen the war’s focus on IS. Furthermore, even though Obama has expressed his unequivocal support for Turkey in any conflict with Russia, Ankara’s casual attempts to gate-keep the country’s borders do not please Washington. US defence officials warn Turkey it should expect a “significant blowback” from NATO’s European partners if troop deployments to seal the border with Syria are not put in place posthaste, especially after the Paris attacks. Ankara retorts that an airtight border is impossible unless NATO enforces a safe zone inside Syrian territory, and progress to this end depends on the US’ willingness to commit boots on the ground.

Obama’s biggest headache right now may be how the Muslim world that he desperately needs on board perceives this war, especially after Europe started turning away Syrian refugees. When the anti-IS bombing campaign began in August 2014, the White House was eager to brand it a pan-Arab initiative that the US would simply shepherd to its natural conclusion. Indeed, initial sorties against IS targets involved warplanes from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar.

By August this year, however, US planes dropped 99 percent of the coalition bombs in Iraq and Syria. Obama’s ideal, Arab-led alignment collapsed for two reasons. First, Arab partners prioritised Assad’s removal over the urgency to destroy IS, which Washington could not get behind. Two, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) war against Houthi rebels in Yemen turned from a cakewalk to deep quicksand, forcing it to redeploy military assets on the eastern front.

If you think about it, NATO’s anti-IS effort so far is akin to the military-medium bowling of 1990s English cricketer Mark Ealham. He never looked like taking wickets and his stats concurred. NATO cannot defeat the militant group unless it starts thinking outside the box soon and halts a remarkable capacity for self-sabotage.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad