Why is ISIS so resilient?
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/November 29/15
When I visited Syria in 2013 for a report for the U.S. Army War College on the Resurgence of al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, ISIS was one of the new insignificant groups. My main focus was on Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s official group in Syria. I was therefore surprised that within a year ISIS had emerged with such power, ferocity and organisational prowess. If you could say nothing else about ISIS, you’d have to concede that the group has managed to surprise us, and continues to do so.
It may be on the back-foot in the Levant now, a fact that has coincided with renewed terror attacks in other countries (in Egypt and France to name just the two we hear most about in the media), but that it should have risen to the power and status it has, and that it manages to hold on to it when it looks like the entire world is at war with it, could seem like a rather impressive achievement. Especially in the eyes of young Muslim alienated from modern society, for example.
In the caliphate, all Muslims are equal before their God, it’s just that some are more equal than others. tern power wants to put boots on the ground. The fact that the Assad regime would rather fight the Free Syrian Army, or indeed any other moderate rebel group, than fight ISIS. And Russia is doing the exact same thing. The fact that Turkey would rather fight the Kurds, so the Kurds now have to fight on two fronts.
‘Useful idiots’
But probably what helps the most is the fact that ISIS is not what we in the West think it is. It is not a rag-tag army of beardy preachers and deluded Western teenagers. The entire ISIS top leadership is made up of former Baathist army and intelligence officers and senior administrators from Saddam Hussain’s regime. These people have largely replicated the organisation and the operation of Saddam’s state. After the Bush’s disastrous de-Baathification policy many former Saddamites realised that the only way they can have any hope of returning to power is through militant Islam which will also give them an air of legitimacy.
There was after all little appetitive for a return to Baathism. They know how to govern and know how to terrorise a population into submission when necessary. Indeed, an Israeli General I recently met told me he was convinced that Baghdadi, the ‘Caliph’, was selected by the Baathists rather than the other way around.
Our enterprising aspiring mujahedeen, the young Jihadists that leave the West to join the “glorious Revolution”, on the other hand, have been described as nothing more than ‘useful idiots’ to do their bidding. They have very little value outside the propaganda value. They are not military trained, usually unfit and out of shape, and can’t speak the language. Which is why they spend all day doing social media and propaganda videos, or are sent by the ISIS leadership on suicide missions – primarily missions against other Muslim groups in the region, with whom as outsiders they could have no prior affiliation or sympathy.
Their propaganda role is also the reason why they live in relatively plush conditions compared with the local Arab fighters. In the caliphate, all Muslims are equal before their God, it’s just that some are more equal than others. The perverse aspect of all of this is that this rather extraordinary set of circumstances should be a rather unstable state of affairs. If any one of the major power players in the conflict shifted strategy to actually focus on ISIS and engage with it properly, the situation would shift dramatically.
Or indeed, if the Western recruits or the seasoned Arab fighters just got fed up with the other group and some kind of open conflict emerged, the propaganda machine of ISIS would be completely decimated, and it would fall soon after. But nobody seems that intent on actually tackling ISIS head on. And nobody seems capable of driving a wedge between the really rather disparate groups that make the ISIS alliance. In this, our leaders in the West have demonstrated a failure of imagination and of competence on the scale of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And now, all they can come up with is more aerial bombardment of areas with large civilian populations. Because clearly that will make the 10 million or so Sunni Muslims who live in ISIS territory see things our way. What should surprise us is not that ISIS has gotten to where it is today. It is that the rest of us, the West, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Gulf states and everyone else involved have been so seemingly incompetent at engaging with the conflict.
Defeating ISIS requires a shift in international policy
Lina Khatib/Al Arabiya/November 29/15
The Paris attacks were the most audacious act in Europe by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), signaling the dawn of a new era in which nowhere is immune from terrorist threats. However, they have not sparked a significant shift in policy by the international community. On the contrary, the global reaction to the Paris attacks is playing right into ISIS’s hands. The group’s strategy prior to its advance in Mosul in 2014 was offense-based, built on gaining territory. This was used as concrete evidence for ISIS’s slogan “lasting and expanding.” After the Mosul advance, many observers continued to measure the group’s success in terms of territorial gains. The slowing down of its physical expansion was erroneously thought of as a sign of weakness. The reality is that ISIS was simply entering a new phase. Military action alone will not defeat ISIS. It must be coupled with a political plan that addresses the root cause behind its existence.
ISIS strategy
Its beheading of two American hostages, just as it declared the establishment of a caliphate in June 2014, signaled a major shift in strategy as it began engaging in defensive warfare. The beheadings were meant to drive U.S. military intervention. Defensive warfare has been proven to be more favorable than offensive warfare to small groups fighting asymmetrical war. ISIS built its military strategy accordingly. Expansion came to have another meaning, that of global presence, not territorial gain. Opportunistic attacks around the world began, and were aimed at driving support for ISIS as it showed its sympathizers that it had global reach.
This was not just about image but also recruitment – now that it had captured enough territory to create a state, it needed fighters and residents to form its population. ISIS’s military calculations have been based on meticulous study of the West’s reaction to, and handling of, similar scenarios in the context of the Middle East since Sept. 11, 2001. It became clear to ISIS leaders that the West could be easily drawn into a war based on retaliation, not on comprehensive strategy. This happened in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and played out in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, with terrorist acts by Al-Qaida driving military reactions by the United States and its allies that only fueled the conflicts instead of ending them. The scars of the Iraq experience were a main driver behind the policies of the Barack Obama administration in the United States, as the president attempted to avoid repeating the same scenario in other Middle Eastern countries.
Intervention
ISIS leaders understood this, and gambled that the United States and its allies would try to avoid getting involved in the Syrian conflict, only to be dragged into it rather hastily when they were pushed to do so. The gamble was that after what happened in Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion, no Western county would want to commit boots on the ground in the Middle East again, meaning that any military reaction by the West would not be sufficient to defeat ISIS. The U.S.-led international coalition that has been engaged in airstrikes against the group since Sept. 2014 confirmed to ISIS the accuracy of its projection. It had been well prepared for airstrikes, hiding its leaders underground and intermingling its fighters within the civilian populations in Syria and Iraq. The strikes were used by ISIS to prove its narrative that it was defending Muslim lands against the aggression of “crusades, infidels and apostates.”
Through the Paris attacks, the group aimed to give the French no choice but to retaliate through similar military intervention. With other Western countries now considering following suit, the ISIS is succeeding in using popular anger and fear in Europe for its own benefit. Countries feel pressured to show their people that they are doing something about the group, either to avenge them or defend them. They turn inward, driving their attention to domestic security, while also feeling the pressure to act externally. This translates into the kind of external military action that is at best symbolic and at worst not thought through.
The U.N. Security Council resolution against ISIS that was unanimously agreed in the aftermath of the Paris attacks is another example of how everyone is feeling the pressure but lacking a viable strategy to implement. It also further affirms to ISIS supporters worldwide that anyone who is not part of the organization is a legitimate enemy. The formula is simple: Attack the enemy to showcase influence. Gain new members. Drive the enemy toward hasty military retaliation. Gain new members. The international community has a real common enemy in the form of ISIS, but it is time to stop being reactionary in how this threat is dealt with. The more countries focus on security, the further away they turn from politics. The further they are from politics, the more ISIS benefits.
Cause and effect
It is tempting to see the group as the problem, but it is in fact the symptom. The underlying problem is the continuation of the Syrian conflict. ISIS leaders know this, and benefit from the lack of strategy on the part of the international community to end the Syrian crisis. They watched in glee as the Vienna talks, which were meant to be about starting a political negotiation process over Syria, turned to matters of security instead. Military action alone will not defeat ISIS. It must be coupled with a political plan that addresses the root cause behind its existence. Otherwise the international community’s well-meaning reactions and interventions will only to serve to feed the beast.
