Indian Defence Review

The Middle East is in turmoil. America had the economic and military resources and the confidence, as well as the ambition, to expand its presence and influence, and with this in mind, it developed a series of alliances in the world between Israel and Pakistan, as well as in South East Asia. Moscow reacted to the expansion of American power in the region and developed its pattern of alignments with a few states, and a Cold War rivalry ensued. But with the collapse of the USSR, America emerged as the sole superpower in the Middle East. Believing that it had won the Cold War, it expanded NATO by incorporating east European states into the NATO and European Union fold, and thereafter a process to intervene in the Middle East region began, which American practitioners believed they could control as there was no international opposition to their expansionism. The rhetoric was to promote regional stability under American leadership and to build the foundations of democracy and civil society in the region again according to American norms and interests.

The rise of the ISIS is not a freak episode. It has been years in the making. It is a Salafi group, proclaimed itself as the caliphate in June 2014 and is led by Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. According to Wikipedia data, it now controls over 10 million people in Iraq and Syria and has some control in Libya and Nigeria and appears to have affiliates in South Asia. It is a battle tested organisation, having participated in the Syrian civil war, in the Iraq conflicts (2003–2011), in the Iraqi insurgency (2014– present) and in the Libyan civil war. It played a role in Nigeria with Boko Haram and has been involved in north-east Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemeni conflicts. Unlike al-Qaeda, which targeted US interests, the ISIL/ ISIS strategy has been to secure territorial control of large territories in the Middle East and develop its claim as the new caliphate on this basis.

The ISIS/ISIL has not been recognised by the world community as a new state, but the fact is that it exists and has filled the vacuum created by the destruction of the state structures of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen; these states exist on paper and in the UN system, but they are nonfunctioning and dysfunctional entities. The twin facts – the destruction of four states that were formed by the colonial powers after the First World War, following the wrecking of the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of a new caliphate – are signal events in modern world history. Until recently, Bangladesh was the first new country to achieve statehood through a political and a military fight after World War II; the rise of the ISIS/ ISIL is a reminder that as international institutions weaken or fail; as great powers fail to create order, stability and authority in the international system; and as bad behaviour by the major and lesser powers becomes endemic, non-state actors see an opportunity to build their ideological and military positions in areas with a power vacuum.

The ISIS has evolved in its affiliations and claims as per Wikipedia’s information. It joined al-Qaeda in 2004, declared the existence of the Islamic state in Iraq in 2006, claimed territorial control in Syria in 2013, split from al-Qaeda in February 2014 and declared the ISIL/ISIS caliphate in June 2014. In November 2014, it also claimed to control territory in Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and by January 2015, it claimed to hold territory in Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India and expanded its list to Nigeria (March 2015) and the North Caucasus (June 2015). Whether or not each claim can be verified, the list shows the scale of its ambition and a disdain for the internationally recognised law of sovereignty and state boundaries.

Its follows the ideology of Salafism and Wahhabism, which also inspired al-Qaeda and the ISI in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan; but al-Qaeda cut its ties with the ISIS/ISIL in February 2014 because of its ‘notorious intransigence’. The US and other Western powers stayed on the sidelines as the ISIS/ISIL was building its military and territorial positions and its claims as the new centre of moral and military authority in the Middle East and South Asian regions, but it took the loss of Iraqi territory to the ISIS/ISIL for the Obama administration to get involved militarily in 2014 in the form of air bombings and limited support to the Kurds and the Syrian rebels who were fighting Assad.

Even though Muslims have been critical of the ISIS/ISIL actions (the beheadings and destruction of cultural sites) and believe that it has moved away from true Islamic teachings, thus far, it has been immune to such pressures from moderate Muslims and clerics and instead it has shown a capacity to maintain territorial control over large territories and to use the social media to spread its message and to attract foreign recruits from among Muslim, Russian (Chechen) and Western populations in Europe, North America and Australia. Wikipedia’s report ‘Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant’ provides the maps for areas controlled by various forces where the ISIS/ ISIL is involved. Estimates of the size of the ISIS/ISIL forces vary between 20,000–30,000 according to the CIA and 200,000 according to the Kurds, and the huge gap in the estimates shows the limitations of Western intelligence in the Middle East and the ability of a tightly organised political and military organisation to overrun a vast region.

Several factors explain the rise of the ISIS/ISIL:

• According to the Oxford University’s Islamic Studies online report, the marginalisation of the Sunni population in Iraq was an important factor and Iraq’s parliamentary elections in 2010 was a turning point. Ayad Allawi won the support of the Sunni population and defeated Maliki’s Shia party but Maliki and Shia coalitions with US backing formed the government with Maliki as prime minister. He targeted Sunni leaders, and the internal division grew within Iraq as did the mistrust of US policy. 

• Secondly, according to Oxford’s analysis, ISIS/ISIL fighters are battle hardened while Iraqi forces are not and they are also not motivated to fight in Syria.
• Third, the ISIS has been able to exploit captured oil fields to gain revenue in millions of dollars, to ask for large ransoms for kidnapped people and to use captured Iraqi military equipment of US origin to pursue its aims.
• Fourth, because of US policy failures in the Middle East, the ISIS/ISIL has been able to secure the support of anti-US sentiments in the region and it is part of its appeal to the foreign media and a part of the campaign against Westernstyle democracy and the policy of interventions – military and political – in the region’s military crises and in local elections and domestic politics.
• US policy under Presidents Bush and Obama has followed a pattern of surge followed by retreat, and this pattern has not created the basis of a military or political settlement among warring parties; instead, it has created power vacuums in different parts of the Middle East, which the stronger, better armed and organised and motivated force can exploit.

The ISIS/ISIL has a calculated military and a political-psychological calculation and strategy. Its local military commanders fit a pattern of decentralised organisation, and they are trained to act independently but to avoid fights they cannot win. As in the case of Mao’s military tactics, the local commanders are authorised to act at the weak points in the enemy camp. It has calculated to occupy land which the Shias and the Kurds will not fight for and die.

For instance, the ISIS/ISIL took Mosul, an important gain, because the Kurds and Sunni Arabs would not fight for Maliki. Part of the calculation is not to attack Baghdad because there is no assurance of military success and an ability to control the population. Not only do they use the social media to their advantage to spread fear among the watchers and listeners, they also use social contradictions among Middle Eastern leaders and groups to their advantage. There appears to be a strong touch of Mao’s military thinking in the ISIS/ISIL conduct. Apart from ransoms and plunder, it controls about 60% of Syrian oil fields, which give it a secure source of revenue to maintain its political and military organisation.

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The rise of the ISIS/ISIL points to the rise of a strategic triangle: the ISIS/ISIL + Sunnis versus Iran, where the US is marginal on the ground but has shaped the political-psychological-cultural environment by intervening and retreating and by aiding Malaki but not the Sunnis. Lastly, the US/P5-Iran nuclear talks and agreement showed the US recognises Iran as a major regional player and a potential partner for other issue-specific regional cooperation in Afghanistan and in the fight against the ISIS/ISIL. While the US is not seen as a friend of the Sunnis, even Saudi Arabia, USA’s long-time ally, now mistrusts the Obama establishment and policy. The Iranian militias have been fighting along with the Kurds to shore up the opposition to the ISIS/ISIL and to contain its territorial advances.

The ISIS/ISIL is now a credible territorial organisation with strong roots in the Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East. Regional geopolitics also plays a role because the Saudi-Iranian rivalry has a long history and plays into the politics of conflicts in Iraq and Syria – the two main frontlines in the region, along with Yemen. President Obama and his advisers have no answers to the deep-seated conflicts because, unlike the British colonials, Washington lacks knowledge and understanding of local politics and alignments and is instead interested in maintaining and developing international arrangements which protect its commercial and political interests and which maintain a liberal international economic order under US hegemony. As such, the warning sides feed off the cycle of violence and interact on that basis. Still, the ascendency of the ISIS/ ISIL is not the end of the Middle East story because the political table of the Middle East is being reset by the rise of new and previously unimaginable coalitions. To a discussion of this we now turn.

The Middle East is now a case of disorderly chaos because there are a large number of well-armed participants in regional/subregional conflicts and there is a continuous blame game being played along with ongoing conflicts. The rise of the ISIS/ISIL is associated with the brutality of the Assad regime in the Western narrative. In Russian thinking, it is associated with mistaken US policies which produced regime change in Iraq and Libya and outside the region (in Ukraine) and attempted regime change in Russia itself. The criticism here is that US military-political actions created a void in the region which the ISIS/ISIL has now filled. Even if Russians admit that Assad is a part of the problem, his brutal policies are not seen as the whole problem. And then there is the view that the source of instability lies in the nasty fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran, between the Shias and the Sunnis, and this is now being played out in an intensified military fashion in the Middle East/Gulf region. The competing narratives cannot be reconciled because there is no international centre to adjudicate the narratives and the conflicts they produce and the UN, which was meant to be the guardian of world security, is a weak and conflicted organisation and is now mired in corruption scandals after the oil-for-trade scandal in Iraq.

The issue – who is to blame for the present crises – is now academic, and it is best left to historians to untangle the cause-effects. For us, it is sufficient to think of Syria as the main hub of military-diplomatic action in the region and the flow of refugees from Syria into Europe as an important side effect. The ISIS/ISIL now controls most of eastern Syria. The Kurds (Democratic Union Party) control large parts of northeastern Syria.

Islamist rebels, including al-Nusra (a local franchise of al- Qaeda), control north-west Syria. West-backed rebels and al-Nusra control Quneitra province, next to the Golan Heights, and much of Dera province south of Damascus. The Syrian government controls Damascus and the western coastal areas (Homs, Hama and parts of Allepo are contested).

The Army of Conquest (set up in March 2015) is backed by Qatar and Turkey, and Saudi Arabia gained a position in north-west Syria and appeared to move the frontline to Latakia province close to the Mediterranean, which threatens the Russian base at Tartus. Assad is threatened by rebel coalitions as well as the areas taken by the ISIS/ISIL, but for Russia, there is a threat to the Caucasus/central Asia region and it is significant that about 2,000 Chechen/Georgian fighters are involved in the Middle East against Assad and Putin and having fought a bitter battle against the Chechens,

Moscow’s concern is not to roll back ISIS/ISIL conquest but to contain its expansion into western Syria (where Russian military assets are located) and to control the eastern Mediterranean, which is the backyard of US naval power.

Despite the intensifying conflicts and instability, a pattern of alignments has emerged. These are tactical cooperative arrangements which indicate that the changing alignments focus on geopolitical enmities rather than ideological affinities, and the rank order of enmities has also changed. During the Cold War, the diplomatic and military lines were clearly drawn between the US and Soviet camps (China was not in the Middle East picture) and the frontlines respected the boundaries of the Middle East states which the European colonial powers had established. Three developments have changed the Middle East’s strategic landscape. First, the state structures of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen have collapsed. The USSR collapsed. And US/Western authority and the ideology of democracy are not an effective counter to the theory that jihad is the way forward for Muslims.

Changing US red lines has eroded its political and moral authority. Removal of Assad was Obama’s first priority; now it is to defeat the ISIS/ISIL, and this has been adjusted to ‘degrade’ it and the narrative that the fight is a long one. Furthermore, Iran was viewed by George W. Bush as a part of the ‘axis of evil’; for Obama, it emerged as a negotiating partner in the recently concluded nuclear deal. Even as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini is telling the Revolutionary Guards that no further negotiations are envisaged with the US because it uses negotiations to penetrate the Iranian establishment, there are convergent interests between the two in Afghanistan, and in fighting the ISIS/ISIL. Now, the Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards fighters are silent partners of the US and the Iraq government in the fight against the ISIS/ISIL.

The rank order of the enmity between the US and Iran is changing. The US military is advising Iraqi and Iranian militias fighting the ISIS/ ISIL, and there is intelligence sharing to avoid hitting the Iranian fighters. Both project antagonistic postures on the world stage, and this is necessary for the two to maintain their domestic legitimacy as the guardians of national security. But adjustments are occurring on the ground, and both have concrete self-interests to do so. The Great Satan is now viewed as the ‘Little Satan’ by Tehran practitioners. Both have a common interest to check the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Tehran in addition worries about the drug trade into Iran from Afghanistan and the flow of refugees. The Afghan conflict is also a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia because Riyadh financed the madrassas in Pakistan, fed them the Wahhabi ideology and motivation and nourished Pakistan-Taliban links.

Another big change in the rank order of enmities is the adjustment in the Saudi-Israel relationship. They do not have a diplomatic relationship because of the old Saudi demand that Israel make concessions to the Palestinians before Saudi Arabia would consent to a peace process and recognition of Israel, but a new pattern of political engagement has emerged. Dora Gold, the new head of the Israeli Foreign Office, met recently with Anwar Eski, a retired Saudi general who advises the Saudi King, and both spoke publicly that Iran is a threat to regional security and both believe that ultimately Iran will deceive the world on the nuclear deal. But the fly in the ointment for Israel is that Russia is moving fast into the Middle East, and its moves have caught Washington by surprise.

With Western sanctions and a crippled economy because of poor oil prices and internal mismanagement, Russia was deemed to be a weak player on the world stage. Instead, Putin is building new links with the Middle East players. It is willing to sell missiles to Iran. It is building an intelligence-sharing arrangement with Iran, Syria and the Iraq government, which also caught Washington by surprise. Its military action in Syria and build-up of its bases there make Syria its platform in the Middle East/Mediterranean area. By aligning with Iran in the fight against the ISIS/ISIL, Moscow is taking a pro-US position, but at the same time, by attacking Syrian rebels who are supported by Washington, Putin is taking a pro-Assad and anti-Washington position. Although Turkey is a NATO member, Putin is building an economic partnership by the sale of gas for Turkey’s energy needs, and this explains Turkey’s caution in dealing with Russia.

To sum up, the Middle East now has several significant constant or permanent features. First, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry has a geopolitical and ideological focus, and it is non-negotiable. Secondly, the breakdown of the system of states, the theory of territorial sovereignty and the rule of international law, including humanitarian law, and the failure of US leadership facilitated the rise of the ISIS/ISIL. Even if the caliphate is not accepted as a legitimate enterprise by the world community, it is now a fact of life. Thirdly, the rise of the ISIS/ISIL implies the growing irrelevance of the Western narrative about the Arab Spring and the importance of democracy. And most of the military participants in Middle Eastern campaigns today do not enjoy democratic credentials.

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Finally, the resurgence of Russia as a strategic player in the Middle East is a story in the making. It is possible that Russia may get stuck in the Syrian conflict as in Afghanistan, in which case the likelihood of degrading the ISIS/ISIL will likely diminish and the Middle East will remain the centre of a messy conflict with shifting frontlines and with well-armed militias.

Notes and Reference

I have drawn on Wikipedia for information about the rise of the ISIS/ISIL and various Western media reports.