Why Obama’s Strategy to Defeat the Islamic State Won’t Work

By Glenn M Stewart B.A., M.A. Oxon:

The recent statement by the Obama administration outlining a strategy to defeat the Islamic State issued in an attempt to cover its irresponsible but honest admission that it does not have a strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is inadequate at best and laughable at worst.

That strategy is to use targeted air strikes to degrade their military capability to narrow their scope of action, use regional allies to shrink their territory and drone strikes to take out their leadership. This he claims will allow the US to use local forces to combat them without the need for US troops to join in the fighting. He went on to say that the regional partners would be especially important in hosting training camps and advising moderate opposition forces who might serve as proxy fighters in Syria.

US officials have said that the Islamic State cannot be defeated without rooting them out of their stronghold in Syria. Obama has stated that the “moderate coalition in Syria is one that we can work with…”

He has also stated that the key to defeating the Islamic State in Iraq is to create an inclusive government in that country. In conjunction with that strategy is one of arming and using the Kurdish Peshmerga forces as our proxy fighters in Iraq.

These proposals and this strategy will not work and here is why:

1.

There will be no meaningful inclusive government in Baghdad. The Shi’a had been oppressed by the Sunni minority in Iraq from the time of establishment of the modern state there in 1933 until we liberated them in 2003. Now that they have power they will not willingly cede any meaningful power back to the Sunni groups in the country. The inclusion of Sunnis at senior levels in the government will be for show only and effectively nothing more than a willful political fantasy imposed on the Iraqi government by the United States in an attempt to paper over the differences.

More importantly than any of this is the fact that Iran will not allow it. The current government in Baghdad is an Iranian proxy and the only reason that Nuri al Maliki stepped down is because the Iranians pulled their support from him. However, as his successor Haider Al-Abadi comes from the same parliamentary block as al Maliki nothing has changed in terms of the Iranian position in Iraq and their control over it. The United States gave Iran this power in Iraq  through its misguided and unbelievably ignorant policy there in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi Army is not an adequate military force and no amount of US training can ever overcome the fact that a Shi’a army will not be able to operate effectively in the entirely hostile environment of the Sunni heartland. Any attempt by the Shi’a army to advance into the Sunni areas will merely drive tribal elements that may have been hostile to the Islamic State and its ideals into alliance with them. Resistance will merely stiffen. For the US to carry out airstrikes on Sunni tribal elements in support of a Shi’a advance will merely consolidate the position of the Islamic State and increase support for them in other Sunni areas of the region such as Jordan, Sa’udi Arabia and Qatar

2.

The use of Kurdish forces in the North has limitations. Yes, with proper arms and US advisors the Kurds will be able to make some advances and push IS back but they cannot conquer Northern Iraq on their own. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the Kurds political motivation will largely be expended when they retake areas that were traditionally Kurdish where Saddam settled Sunni Arabs in an attempt to expand the Arab sphere of influence in the North. Secondly, the Kurds will face the same problem as the Shi’a army as they enter predominantly Sunni Arab areas. They will have no popular support. They will be seen as conquerors and will drive the tribes into alliance with IS to resist a Kurdish takeover. Finally, war is not just about weapons, it is about logistics. The Peshmerga will not possess the logistical capability to advance far into a hostile environment with continuous guerrilla action taking place in their rear area. Is the US going to provide the necessary logistical support? Once again are we going to take sides in a civil war and thus create more support for IS among other Sunni groups in Iraq, Syria and the region?

3.

Syria is even more complex. First off we have no proxy force in place there. Let’s say that we decide that there are some so called moderate groups that we could strengthen and arm. What happens if IS defeats these disunited groups in detail and captures the weapons? Then we’ve only armed and strengthened IS, a likely outcome.

Are we going to engage in a series of major airstrikes to degrade IS’s position in Syria? If we do that we have effectively entered Syria’s civil war in support of the Assad regime and not merely supported another faction in that war. To help preserve Assad in power is to help maintain Iranian influence in the region. That is not a policy goal that we should entertain even for a minute. Iran is in fact our most powerful enemy in the region, even more so than the Islamic State at this point as Iran is actively working to acquire weapons that potentially truly strike at our interests that will hurt us far worse than the spectacle of beheading two journalists.

There is also a Kurdish force in Syria that could be used as a proxy but the same problems exists there as in Iraq.

The Solution

So what is the solution? Unfortunately the solution is complex and will require a real investment of outside military force in the region. We will need to put troops into the Sunni areas of Iraq and work with the tribal groups there that would oppose IS to defeat IS but in order for this to succeed we will have to give them a state in the upper Tigris- Euphrates valley encompassing the Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. If we don’t offer them this prize why should they support us instead of IS which is delivering this state and liberating them from Shi’a hegemony? That this solution is an admission of our failure and incompetence in Iraq is an unfortunate byproduct of history but our past incompetence is not entirely irreversible if we truly had the guts to confront the challenge posed to the US and the West by radical Islam.

The next step is to set up an independent Kurdish state encompassing the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria and using it as a springboard to strip the Kurdish areas of Iran from Iran. Iran needs to feel pain on its doorstep so that its regional reach is curtailed. The Turks need to be engaged in sensible negotiations to cede parts of Kurdish Anatolia to the new Kurdish state. The compensation for this adjustment would be to join the Azeri part of Iran to Azerbaijan and create a greater Azerbaijan. This would liberate a large group of Turkic people from the yoke of Iranian oppression while further diminishing the power of the Iranian regime.

A diminished Iran would also give us greater influence in the rump Shi’a state in southern Iraq and reduce the Iranian threat to Sa’udi Arabia and Bahrain.

This would also leave a rump ‘Alawi/Christian state in Syria which is not a fully elegant solution to the problems in that country but the overall readjustments of political entities along these lines would increase the level of stability in the region.

Finally the United States needs to establish military bases in the new Kurdish state. They would welcome us and it would allow us to project power throughout the region at will. There will never be peace in the Middle East. There are too many ethnic, sectarian and cultural fault lines. The best that can be achieved is to police the region in such a way that the turbulence of the area does not spill over and threaten the rest of the world. The above suggestions would achieve that end. The Obama strategy will not.

Glenn M Stewart was educated at Oxford University where he was a member of The Queen’s College, Glenn M Stewart obtained a BA and an MA in Oriental Studies with an emphasis in Islamic History and Arabic language. He resided in the Middle East for 27 years working with Arab-owned businesses giving him a unique and unparalleled view into both the business, cultural and political aspects of this challenging region. He is one of the world’s foremost experts in Islamic commercial law and has lectured on Middle Eastern affairs at Oxford and Harvard Universities.