Thinking the Unthinkable: Coming to Grips with the Survival of the Islamic State
‘The king is dead, long live the king’
Reports that self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the
leader of the Islamic State, was seriously wounded in a coalition strike in
early 2015 has done little to weaken the group as it fights multiple battles in
Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State (IS), despite news reports that Al-Baghdadi
was paralyzed in the attack has stood its ground in Syria, made advances in
Iraq, and according to some Iraqi lawmakers as well as the group’s captured
Baghdad bomb maker, infiltrated Baghdad that is regularly rocked by bombings.[1]
A photo picturing Al-Baghdadi sitting knees crossed that was published by a
Kurdish news agency in mid-July suggested that reports that he had been injured
were false or that he had since recovered.[2]
CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr at the same time quoted US officials
as saying that Al-Baghdadi had been sighted in June in the Syrian city of
Raqqa.[3]
Al-Baghdadi’s resilience is emblematic of the group’s
ability to survive significant military pressure rather than collapse under its
own weight as it licks its wounds in an environment in which the attitudes of
some of the United States’ closest allies towards militant Islamist militias,
including some associated with Al Qaeda, are ambivalent and in flux. A
continued willingness to forge tactical alliances with groups considered by not
only the West but also other major powers like China and Russia beyond the pale
coupled with IS’s resilience raises the spectre of jihadist groups becoming a
more permanent fixture on the Middle East’s political landscape.
The IS leader’s resilience is also a reflection of the
murky, shifting politics of Saudi-led Gulf support of jihadist groups,
including IS, despite the obvious danger of backlash as is evident in IS’s
declared targeting of the kingdom as well as the Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi
Arabia in the very first years of the 21st century,[4]
and more recent IS attacks on Shiite mosques in the kingdom and Kuwait and on
Saudi security personnel.[5]
In a speech in 2014, former head of the British Secret
Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, recalled Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and former head of
Saudi intelligence, warning him more than a decade ago that "the time is
not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help
the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."[6]
Dearlove left little doubt that Gulf states had contributed to the rise of IS
as part of their bid to not only to counter Iran but to force the demise of
Syrian president Bashar al Assad, "Such things simply do not happen
spontaneously," Dearlove noted. He said, referring to the kingdom’s
austere interpretation of Islam, that Saudi strategic thinking was rooted in deep-seated
beliefs that that there "can be no legitimate or admissible challenge to
the Islamic purity of their Wahhabi credentials as guardians of Islam's holiest
shrines." Dearlove argued further that Saudi leaders were convinced that
they possessed a monopoly on interpretation of Islam that leads them to be
"deeply attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge
Shiadom."[7]
Scholar Madawi al-Rasheed took Dearlove’s comments a step
further, noting that attacks on Shiite mosques in 2015 in Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia had been perpetrated by Saudi nationals. “Such terrorism is not an
export from the Levant to Saudi Arabia and its neighbours, but rather the
return to its historical home of an indigenous trend of political violence. The
justification for such sectarian terror was established in Saudi Arabia, where
it has its ideological roots and has since seized the imagination of a new
generation. It is thus unsurprising that the perpetrators were Saudis. ISIS is
not simply a problem unfolding in the Levant but is in part an outcome of
religious indoctrination and political conditions in Saudi Arabia… There is no
doubt that hate preachers are an entrenched reality in Saudi Arabia. This is
not a new phenomenon that was initiated by ISIS but is an important cornerstone
of the Saudi-Wahhabi religious tradition. It flourished in the eighteenth
century and continues to inflame the imagination of a wide circle of clerics
and their followers today,” Al-Rasheed argued.[8]
Dearlove and Al-Rasheed’s comments on Saudi and Gulf
ambivalence in the fight against IS by implication pointed to other equally
fundamental factors that shape attitudes in the kingdom and other regional
sheikhdoms. Leaving aside the merits of foreign intervention, the refusal of
Saudi Arabia and other regional players with the exception of Iran to commit
ground forces to the fight against IS highlights how the kingdom is blinded by
a sectarian approach to a legitimate struggle for power.
Committing ground troops would mean Saudi troops fighting
alongside the Iraqi military and Shiite militias that both answer to a Shiite
government in Baghdad – a heresy in a Saudi world view that despite the arrest
of hundreds of alleged IS operators in the kingdom sees Iran rather than IS as
the greater threat to Saudi national security. In fact, if national security is
defined as survival of the Saudi regime, both IS and Iran pose a mortal threat.
Both challenge the Saudi claim as the Custodian of the Holy Cities, Mecca and
Medina, to have developed the one and only legitimate form of Islamic rule.
The Islamic republic’s challenge is multi-fold: a republic
rather than a monarchy established as the result of a truly popular revolt and
legitimized by an institutionalized, albeit flawed, electoral process, that
propagates a revolutionary instead of a status quo approach to geopolitics. For
its part, IS’s declaration of a caliphate by implication dismisses the Islamic
credentials of Saudi rulers and propagates political activism and jihadism
rather than the kingdom’s adherence to quietist Sunni precepts of obedience to
the ruler.
Moreover, Gulf engagement with jihadist groups was further
part of what international relations scholars Bulent Aras and Richard Falk
described as authoritarian leaders’ “learning process” in their desperate need
“to develop new strategies…(and) cope successfully with recent geopolitical
challenges,” making use “of concrete geopolitical reasoning to shape a
problem-solving agenda designed to facilitate authoritarian survival.” Aras and
Falk argued that the popular revolts had rewritten the political geography of
the Middle East and North Africa with “the erosion of regional structures,
alienation of non-Arab elements, empowerment of non-state actors and
reproduction of old problems in a new context.”[9]
IS in particular by challenging the notion that political conflict occurred
exclusively within the boundaries of or between sovereign nation states called
into question the regional order in the Middle East and North Africa. “New
territorial entities are surfacing on the periphery of regional
geopolitics…(that are)…directly challenging the stability of central powers
acting within this regional system,” Aras and Falk said.[10]
In effect, IS, with its roots in the Islamic State of Iraq
founded more than a decade ago by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is not simply a product
of the United States’ ill-conceived invasion of Iraq but more importantly of a
fundamental crisis of Sunni Arab politics. IS is “a true and genuine product of
the current reality and is objectively indicative of the extent to which
political, moral, cultural, and social conditions (in the Middle East and North
Africa) have deteriorated… It as an ‘entity’ alien to the outcomes and
consequences of corrupt authoritarian regimes, on the one hand, and
deteriorating social contexts, on the other hand. These malaises are further
exacerbated by the stagnation and defects of the intellectual and
jurisprudential systems in the region as a whole… (It) is an expected product
of the current Arab social and political reality, particularly in Iraq and
Syria. IS has re-emerged and found a fertile chaotic climate, where sectarian
and ethnic conflicts are raging, and the nature of the struggle has transformed
into an identity-driven one, turning political processes into societal
conflicts, rather than purely political or partisan competition,” concluded
scholars Hasan Abu Hanieh and Mohammed Abu Rumman in a study of IS.[11]
Playing jihadists
The most recent IS attacks and Al-Baghdadi’s declaration of
the caliphate, a direct challenge to the fundamental precepts of the kingdom,
have recently swung the Saudi pendulum back to jihadist groups opposed to the
Islamic State with Jabhat al Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate, in the forefront.
Nusra and its allied have made significant advances in Syria and put the Assad
regime on the defensive. Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Turkey appear
willing to grant support despite the failure of Qatari efforts to persuade
Nusra to break its ties to Al Qaeda.[12]
A flurry of meetings of various rebel groups; the recent
dissolution of the Levant Front, the largest rebel alliance in Aleppo;[13]
the unexpected presence of the leader of the Saudi-backed Islam Army that
operates out of Damascus, Zahran
Alloush, at a recent gathering of Syrian clerics and rebel groups in Istanbul;[14]
and talk of Saudi efforts to bring rebel groups together in Riyadh to discuss
the creation of some kind of representative political entity, suggests stepped
up Saudi, Turkish and Qatari efforts to turn the tide in Syria’s four year-old
civil war.[15]
Jamal Khashoggi, a well-connected Saudi journalist quipped
in a recent tweet that Alloush’s visit “to Turkey removes the last obstacle for
Saudi-Turkish-Qatar cooperation in Syria.”[16]
Alloush’s cousin, a leader of the Revolutionary Command Council, an insurgent
alliance that includes the Islam Army, added that Turkey was seeking to unite
rebel groups across Syria.[17]
The Saudi-led efforts to defeat Assad involve playing
jihadist groups against one another, a risky strategy that irrespective of the
outcome of internecine jihadist struggle would ensure that jihadism remains
deeply entrenched within the legal boundaries of Syria. It also means that IS,
widely viewed as the world’s richest jihadist group despite reduced revenue
streams as a result of curtailing by the US-led coalition of income from the
sale of oil from captured Syrian and Iraqi oil facilities and diminished ransom
returns from kidnappings, is likely to be a major player.
IS is aided by the fact that confrontation of the jihadist
group does not constitute the top priority of any of the forces arrayed against
it. “None of its enemies considers defeating ISIL to be its paramount priority.
All…have at least one other enemy or goal that it firmly believes is more
important. Hence a band of terrorist maniacs – who seem almost as suicidal as
they are homicidal – is surviving armed conflict with everyone else
simultaneously. The prioritising of something or someone else constantly holds
these parties back from fully attacking ISIL or provides it with some kind of
backdoor out of calamity,” argued Gulf scholar Hussein Ibish.[18]
Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah needs to take its
position at home into account and keep an eye on Israel with pundits predicting
that another war with the Jewish state is inevitable; Iraq needs to get its own
house in order before being able to focus all its energies on IS; Jordan is
struggling economically as a result of the influx of Syrian and Iraqi refugees
and is dealing with fallout of the Palestinian issue; Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states are fighting a troublesome war in Yemen; Syrian president Bashar
al-Assad is happy to see the US-led coalition do its dirty work while he
concentrates on confronting other Syrian rebels; and Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish
rebels are seeking to strengthen enclaves of their own as Turkey targets
primarily the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) rather than IS.
Recent IS attacks in Gulf states like the mosque bombings in
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia should make confronting the group a higher priority for
the conservative sheikhdoms. Successfully challenging IS would however would have
to entail a fundamental change of policy that alongside counterterrorism would
allow Gulf autocrats primarily in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to launch a sincere
dialogues with citizens of different religious beliefs and adopt inclusive
policies that no longer marginalize Shiite communities. No Gulf state appears
willing to embrace the kind of reforms that would be needed to confront IS on
levels more effective than the military battlefield.
In that void, IS has the space to entrench itself and carry
out well-prepared plans for the creation of a revolutionary state. A cache of
documents belonging to one of the architects of IS that were obtained by German
magazine Der Spiegel illustrates how a former Iraqi Baathist military officer
designed in neat diagrams the structure of a future Islamic state divided into
provincial councils that are dominated by intelligence and security services.[19]
The plan involved the provision of financial service and the
operation of schools, day care centres, media and public transportation. It
envisioned a state and institutions that has the making of sociologist Ervin
Goffman’s concept of a ‘total institution’ in which “all aspects of life are
conducted in the same place and under the same single authority…, each phase of
the member's daily activity will be carried out in the immediate company of a
large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the
same thing together… all phases of the day's activities are tightly scheduled,
with one activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole circle
of activities being imposed from above through a system of explicit formal
rulings and a body of officials… (and) the contents of the various enforced
activities are brought together as parts of a single overall rational plan
purportedly designed to fulfil the official aims of the institution.”[20]
Der Spiegel’s analysis of the cache of documents concluded
that “it is true that jihadist experiments in ruling a specific geographical
area have failed in the past. Mostly, though, that was because of their lack of
knowledge regarding how to administer a region, or even a state. That is
exactly the weakness that IS strategists have long been aware of -- and
eliminated. Within the ‘Caliphate,’ those in power have constructed a regime
that is more stable and more flexible than it appears from the outside… Within
IS, there are state structures, bureaucracy and authorities.”[21]
An Al Jazeera Center for Studies analysis of IS’s state
structure mapped its government as being made up of councils, including the
advisory Shura Council that in theory has the power to depose the caliph, but
in practice makes recommendations for senior appointments and offers non-binding
advice on issues of war and peace and day-to-day issues that are not explicitly
covered by the Quran or the Sunnah, teachings, deeds and sayings of the Prophet
Mohammed. Ahl al-Hal wal Aqd (Those Who Loosen and Bind), the equivalent of a
parliament that is rooted in Islamic jurisprudence and includes members of the
Shura Council as well as local leaders, was the institution that appointed
Al-Baghdadi as caliph. Other councils deal provide Islamic guidance, operate
the judiciary, oversee media policy, manage finance and budgets, supervise the
military, oversee security and intelligence, and administer IS’s provinces.[22]
Some Iraqi officials believe nonetheless that the Baathist
contingent in IS’s power structure could also prove to be the group’s Achilles
Heel. The officials argue that the jihadists had dashed Baathist hopes that
they would be the dominant force and instead have exploited the skills of the
former officers and officials of the regime of Saddam Hussein for their own
purposes. “The plan of the former Baathists was to use ISIS as a Trojan horse
to derail the political process and to take over. But in the end, it is ISIS
that used them instead,” Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Asal, a senior Iraqi Interior
Ministry officer and the former police chief for overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar
province, told The Wall Street Journal.[23]
The officials point to signs of divergence between the
Baathists and the jihadists, including a number of statements by one, major
group of Baathist insurgents, Jaish Rijāl aṭ-Ṭarīqa an-Naqshabandiya (The Army
of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order)
founded by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was reportedly killed by Iraqi
troops in April 2015.[24]
As Saddam’s right hand, Al-Douri had been responsible under the former Iraqi
leader for forging ties with militant Islamist groups.
Nonetheless, by linking the name of his group of insurgents
to a Sufi order, Al-Douri was putting on public display the differences between
the Baathists and the jihadists with their austere interpretation of Islam. The
group condemned in February 2015 the burning alive by IS of a captured
Jordanian pilot and has taken issue with the group’s destruction of religion
and heritage sites and persecution of minorities. It also paid condolences for
the death of Saudi King Abdullah and congratulated King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al
Saud, a sworn enemy of IS, on his ascension.[25]
Talking the talk, walking the walk
Visits to Lebanon by Syrians residents of IS-controlled
territory highlight problems in how the international community copes with an
entity that holds out the prospect of longevity despite being a pariah and
under continuous military, economic, and political attack. The visitors often
in Lebanon to visit family are frequently stopped by security forces on
suspicion of being jihadist operatives because they carry identity cards issued
to every resident by IS. The visitors are caught in a bind being unable to
travel in or out of the Islamic State without those identity cards.[26]
Similarly, IS’s neighbours have turned a blind eye to smuggling that
contributes significantly to its income stream.[27]
“IS has done what others talked of. It has an army
comprising highly equipped regular forces as well as guerrilla forces, it
controls a large territory, it has an oil industry, it has a tax system, it has
a system of local government and a system of justice. It fights like a state,
it sees like a state and it punishes like a state. It carries conviction and
meets with belief. It doesn’t care that it horrifies us; it knows that millions
of Muslims have been horrified by what our governments have been doing to
them,” said Middle East historian Hugh Roberts.[28]
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that IS had introduced the
licensing of Internet cafes and ordered them to ensure that their wireless was
only available in the confines of their premise rather than also to their
neighbours in an effort to control access to information.[29]
IS has proven capable of institutionalizing taxation and
levies and administering Sharia’a justice. Absentee landlords who receive rents
from property owned in IS-controlled territory report that they receive
payments with officially documented taxes deducted by the group’s
administration.[30]
IS has further fixed power lines, dug sewage systems and painted sidewalks in
northern Syria. It enforces food security controls, searching markets for
expired food and sick animals. It runs a regular bus service across what was
once the border between Syria and Iraq and recently reopened a luxury hotel in
Mosul. Newlyweds were offered a free three-night stay, meals and all. It has
advised wounded residents that they no longer need to travel to Turkey to
acquire prosthetic limbs because they are now produced domestically in the
Islamic State. In doing so, IS offers a semblance of order, albeit a harsh one,
in a region that has succumbed to mayhem and bitter sectarian warfare.[31]
“It is not our life, all the violence and fighting and death. But they got rid
of the tyranny of the Arab rulers,” said a worker and IS resident.[32]
Perhaps, more fundamentally, IS has focused on shaping its
next generation through education in a model that not dissimilar to the system
implemented in the 1970s by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that saw
children as less corrupted by bourgeois values and more able of adopting its
system of values. To that affect, teachers in IS-controlled territory are
forced to sign statements of repentance, retrained and indoctrinated; foreign
fighters are recruited as instructors; and curriculums have been rewritten. Music,
art, science, biology, history, philosophy and sports have been replaced with Islamic
studies, mathematics, Arabic and physical and military training. Boys and
girls, who are obliged to wear a hijab from the age of six, are segregated. [33]
IS’s jihadist ideology and military training is at the core of the Islamic
State’s education system. The product is frequently on display in
IS video
clips that show children cheering IS forces, attending execution, training to
fight, and learning how to use automatic weapons in ambushes and plant an improvised
explosive device (IED).
“They are giving them lessons in jihad. It was brainwashing.
They were teaching the children to rebel and inform against their parents,
telling them to put Islam first and encouraging them to disobey their parents
as blasphemers… This generation has no culture, no education, no future,” said
Wissam, a Syrian who fled to Turkey from Raqqa.[34]
Wissam was echoing conclusions of a United Nations report that noted that IS
“ISIS prioritises children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty,
adherence to their ideology and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see
violence as a way of life.” The report said some schools had been turned into
training camps. “In Raqqa city, children are gathered for screenings of videos
depicting mass executions of Government soldiers, desensitising them to extreme
violence. By using, conscripting and enlisting children for active combat
roles, the group is perpetrating abuses and war crimes on a massive scale in a
systematic and organised manner,” the report said.[35]
In focusing on education, IS is following in the footsteps
of newly independent states that after throwing off the shackles of colonialism
needed a new national narrative that countered the allegedly civilizing mission
of the former colonial power, introduced an element of heroism as part of the
development of a national identity and vision, and allowed the new rulers to
consolidate power. IS’s narrative is articulated, according to scholar Laurie
A. Brand,[36] in its educational curriculum directive that
replaces Syria’s official designation as the Syrian Arab Republic with the
Islamic State and bans the Syrian national anthem. Concepts of patriotism and Arab
nationalism make way for adherence to Islam, the community of the faithful, strict
monotheism and Muslim land on which God’s path governs. Homeland is God’s
rather than that of its inhabitants.
With
institutionalization, IS has put in place the building blocks it needed to
obtain at least the consent, if not the support, of significant segments of the
population it controls, including the ability to establish order in areas where
anarchy disrupted livelihoods, police a territory effectively and identify and
punish distractors and reward supporters, and govern and supply the local
population with public goods and governance.[37]
“ISIS has the capacity to deploy an organization staffed by motivated cadres,
and this goes a long way toward explaining its success and its ability to
prevail over its more fragmented rivals… Like other revolutionary groups in the
past, ISIS (IS’s past designation that was changed in June 2014 with the
declaration of the caliphate) has profited handsomely from the infusion of
foreign fighters in its ranks, a feature of rebel groups that have had the
capacity to rely on a diffuse transnational social movement. However, the
strength of ISIS cannot be reduced to the contribution of foreign fighters, who
remain primarily in the organization’s lower ranks, but instead is derived in
part from its ability to link up with the population, once it becomes its de
facto ruler.,” noted political scientist Stathis N. Kalyvas.[38]
Kalyas’ assertion appeared to be borne out by a resident of Raqqa,
the IS capital, who referring to IS ability to provide security and albeit
unevenly ban corruption, told The New York Times that “you can travel from
Raqqa to Mosul and no one will dare to stop you even if you carry $1 million. No
one would dare to take even one dollar.” Added an antiques dealer who fled
Raqqa: “Honestly, both are dirty, the (Syrian) regime and Daesh,” But IS “is
more acceptable here in Raqqa.” Much like the harsh order imposed by the
Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the dealer argued that IS was
“implementing God’s regulations. The killer is killed. The adulterer is stoned.
The thief’s hands are cut.”[39]
Institutionalization in territories controlled by IS coupled
with the group’s battlefield resilience and the fact that the state’s
neighbours are forced to deal with the reality of its existence as evidenced by
the problems posed by travellers suggests the irredentist entity is a fixture
that is not about to be vanquished. The entity’s continued existence calls into
question the goal of the US-led alliance announced with the launch in 2014 of
airstrikes of degrading and destroying the Islamic State. It also punctures the
notion that Iraq and Syria can be restored as nation states in their status
ante quo. The US effort to definitively defeat IS are further undermined by the
fact that allies like Iraq and Saudi Arabia represent models of governance that
have failed to deliver and have fuelled the proliferation of Sunni jihadist
sympathies.
“It’s time to ponder a troubling possibility: What should we
do if the Islamic State wins?... An
Islamic State victory would mean that the group retained power in the areas it
now controls and successfully defied outside efforts to ‘degrade and destroy’
it… (Political scientist Barry R.) Posen says that the United States (as well
as others) should deal with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with
other revolutionary state-building movements: with a policy of containment. I
agree,” said international relations scholar Stephen M. Walt.[40]
Ineffective wars
Underlying the debate between realists like Posen and Walt
who root their argument in the alliance’s unwillingness to commit ground troops
to the fight, the inherent weakness of the Iraqi armed forces and past
experience of revolutionary states like the Soviet Union, China, and most
recently Iran – all states that were initially ostracized but ultimately
integrated into the international community -- and proponents of a
military-focused approach is a straight forward question: What constitutes the
greatest threat to regional and international stability, IS’s disruptive
expansionary goals or its ideology? Is the confrontation with IS primarily a
war in the traditional sense of the word or a war of ideas?
Lawrence Rubin argues in a book published in 2014 that transnational
ideologies present a greater and more immediate national security threat than
shifts in the military balance of power.[41]
“An internationally recognized Islamic State would create an ideational
security dilemma with its neighbours in which ideological power, not military
power, would be the primary trigger of threat perception and policy. Even if IS
did want to become a legitimate state, the internal threat it poses through the
potential recruitment and mobilization of the citizens of Sunni Arab states
would make its socialization within the Middle Eastern order extremely
difficult and unlikely,” Rubin wrote.[42]
The problem with the debate is that it focusses on the
nature of the threat and ways to neutralize it rather than on what has sparked
not only an immediate threat but one that has been emerging and mushrooming
over a period of decades. The debate ignores the fact that radicalisation is
being fuelled by misguided foreign policies and diplomacy as well as
repressive, exclusionary domestic strategies that produced social marginalization,
huge gaps in income distribution and dislocation of resources in corrupt
autocracies with youth bulges that populate a swath of land stretching from the
Atlantic coast of Africa to the Indian Ocean. It also ignores the fact that IS
is equally a product of an epic power struggle in the Middle East and North
Africa being waged by some of the closest allies of the US in its campaign to
defeat the group.
At the bottom line, neither military action nor intellectual
engagement is likely to defeat IS without a questioning of the notion that
autocracies irrespective of their ability to provide goods and services and
ensure that citizens regardless of ethnicity or faith have a stake in society
either guarantee stability in the Middle East and North Africa or are the
better of two evils. Policy and academic debate has seemingly chucked aside the
realisation in 2011 that governments, analysts and pundits were caught off
guard by a wave of mass anti-government protests and popular revolts because of
a false belief that the region was characterized by popular apathy in the face
of strong regimes.
Retrograde forces lead transition
If anything, IS despite its unprecedented brutality and
intolerant ideology, suggests a radicalization of what initially were peaceful
attempts at regime change as a result of counterrevolutionary policies by
autocrats who are equally brutal in their repression of dissent and no less
willing to risk the region being engulfed in sectarian strife in their bid to
retain absolute power. The brutal suppression with the help of Saudi troops of
an initially non-confessional popular revolt in Bahrain in 2011 and the Assad
regime’s violent forcing of the transition of peaceful anti-government protest
into bloody civil war are prime examples.
Developments in the region suggest that rather than
approaching the Middle East and North Africa in terms of an Arab Spring that
has transformed into an Arab Winter, there is a need to recognize that the
region remains in transition, albeit one that is messy, ugly and bloody as much
because of retrograde forces like IS that have taken the lead in response to
counterrevolutionary forces determined to avert change at whatever cost.
As a result, a defeat of IS with or without a bringing in
from the cold of Jabhat al Nusra would do little to halt radicalization or
prevent the emergence of a yet more extreme group in much the same way that IS
eclipsed Al Qaeda. Containing IS rather than seeking to defeat it may be
riskier in the short-term and involve a far greater effort to achieve real
change but is likelier to produce greater and more sustainable stability in the
middle and long-term.
In many ways, containment would build on key lessons learnt
from confrontation with politically violent groups, particularly religiously
motivated ones, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, Palestine's Hamas, Pakistan's
Lashkar e-Taibe and Afghanistan’s Taliban. By creating a state, IS has taken
the success formula of militant politicized religious groups - the provision of
social services, education, health, and enforcement of law and order – to new
heights.
Proponents of containment note that some two decades of military
efforts to defeat jihadism has failed to dampen the ideology’s appeal and has
probably enhanced the ability of militant Islamist groups to recruit. “Case
studies from Algeria and lessons learned from the Cold War suggest that if the
strategic goal truly is the complete defeat of IS, success will likely come
more from IS internal failings rather than external military force,” said
Middle East scholar Clint Watts.[43]
Containment’s success depends however on significant segments of IS’s
population not only becoming disillusioned with the group’s ideology and
practices but also being offered credible alternatives. That again would have
to involve fundamental change in countries across the Middle East that have
joined forces against IS. Essentially arguing in that vein, scholar Marc Lynch
warned that defeated insurgencies and movements “often rise from the ashes even
stronger and better adapted than before.” Lynch pointed to the resurgence of
al-Qaeda after its 2001 defeat in Afghanistan and IS itself after having
suffered significant setbacks in in Iraq in the years between 2007 and 2010.[44]
Shared strategies
In a 2009 study, Eli Berman, a former member of the Israeli
military's elite Golani brigade-turned-University of California economist,
argued that it was not religion that turned the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas
into some of the world’s most lethal and seemingly sustainable militant groups,
but their creation of a mutual aid environment that limits the ability of those
under their control to seek economic and social opportunities elsewhere.[45]
IS fits Berman’s definition of such militant groups as economic clubs that
cater to the spiritual and material needs of their dependent members. It is a
lesson that has seeped into the doctrine of counter terrorism and counter
insurgency hearts-and-minds strategy but appears to be have been lost in the
debate between realists and those that put the emphasis on the war of ideas.
As a result, in a twist of irony, IS and the US military
have adopted similar approaches, which involve a “clear, hold, build” strategy
that is dependent on the buy-in of a local population. IS focuses on
resource-rich areas and urban centres where it can impose taxation and
introduce a governance structure that excludes its Islamist competitors. “The
provision of services is a key tool through which IS initially appeals to
people in its area of command, and it has sometimes dismantled existing
institutions and sought to implement its own state structure by establishing
courts, police and schools and imposing sharia law… IS sometimes appropriates
schools and other institutions, giving those working within them the ‘option’
of keeping their positions, but under its control,” noted Middle East analyst
Lina Khatib.[46]
In doing so, IS relies on the fact that security and safety in war-battered
Syria is a more important concern than democracy and liberal freedom. Its
continued sway is enforced by intimidating brutality in an environment where
resistance is barely an option.[47]
Exclusively military-focussed efforts like initiatives to
confront IS on the battlefield of ideas fail to take IS strategy into account
weaken the ability of the group’s opponents to exploit its weaknesses. This
failure increase the likelihood of IS’s state becoming a more permanent
fixture. Neither addresses the fact that popular support for IS is less
ideological and more because its residents either don’t have alternatives or
see it as the best of a set of bad options; growing discontent with public
brutality and a governance system that remains in flux and contradictory as it
develops; differences within the administrative and military ranks of IS as a
result of ideological fluidity; resentment against the undermining of tribal
authority; and complaints about favouritism accorded foreign fighters in terms
of income, housing and access to goods and services.[48]
In perhaps the first indication that IS is sensitive to public opinion,
Al-Baghdadi in July 2015 banned further publication of videos showing
beheadings in an effort source "to be considerate of Muslims and
children's feelings who may find these scenes grotesque,” according to Arab
media reports.[49]
"People hate them, but they've despaired, and they
don't see anyone supporting them if they rise up. People feel that nobody is
with them," a 28-year-old Syrian with family in IS-controlled Mosul who
asked to be identified only by the nickname he uses in political activism,
Adnan, told Associated Press. Adnan was one of 20 Syrians and Iraqis
interviewed by the news service about life under IS that they backed up with
leaflets, application forms, and other paperwork documenting restrictive rules
and regulations that were brutally enforced by the Hisba, the state’s religious
police.[50]
The international community’s piecemeal approach rooted in
concern about overreach in confronting IS in select geographies like Iraq
rather than globally as an expansionary phenomenon alongside the military and
ideological focus effectively gives the group and its state space to dig in. A
recent Institute of War study based on war simulations concluded that “ISIS
(IS’s former designation) likely will expand regionally and project force
globally in the medium term… Avoiding or delaying action against ISIS will not
necessarily preserve strategic options in the future. Instead, US strategic
options may narrow as adversaries grow in strength and potential allies suffer
losses and turn to other partners… Military planners in the simulation
perceived that the United States does not have enough armed forces to undertake
a multi-theatre campaign to degrade and defeat ISIS on its own. The U.S.
therefore must choose between increasing its armed forces, relying on coalition
partners to achieve the defined mission, or changing the defined mission
against ISIS.” [51]
The United States, in an effort that critics say is hindered
by a history of broken promises in Iraq, has more recently sought to forge
alliances with potential opponents of IS in Syria. Modelled on the US-sponsored
Sunni Awakening that in 2006 drove IS’s predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq, out of
predominantly Sunni Anbar province, US officials have begun to U.S. officials have begun to map the social
and economic landscape of northern and eastern Syria with a focus on the
region’s intricate Sunni tribal and clan relationships, including family ties
to IS.[52]
US officials hope the mapping exercise will enable them to forge a force
capable of confronting IS on the battlefield.
Initial US success in marshalling Sunni tribal forces
benefitted from the presence of US troops in the country, frequent on the
ground meetings that created an environment of trust, US financial and military
support, and a US pledge to ensure that Sunni Muslims would have a stake in the
Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, which would include the integration of
their militias into the Iraqi armed forces. More than four years into the Syrian
civil war, the US lacks the assets it was able to leverage in Iraq. Sunni
tribal leaders moreover recall that US failed in making good on its promise to
ensure their inclusion in the post-Saddam power structure. They also remember
that President George H. W. Bush effectively called on Iraqis in the wake of
the 1991 liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation to revolt against Saddam
only to then allow the Iraqi leader to brutally repress a predominantly Shiite
revolt. Those memories are reinforced by the US refusal in its confrontation of
IS in Iraq to arm Anbar’s Sunni tribes because it fears that would undermine
the authority of the Iraqi government. In talks with US and Arab official,
Syrian tribesmen contrasted the US refusal with its willingness to arm the
Kurds in northern Iraq.[53]
Conclusion
Current military and ideological confrontation of IS will at
best contain it and hinder its plans at global expansion. The likelihood that
defeat of IS being unachievable in the foreseeable future is compounded by
counterrevolutionary and sectarian policies fundamental to US allies, foremost
among which Saudi Arabia for which opportunistic support of jihadist groups is
a tool to box in Iran and ensure regime survival. As a result, IS more likely
than not to remain an irredentist force not only in the immediate vicinity of
its territorial entity but far beyond. Containment rather than eradication will
therefore inevitably become the goal of the US-led coalition. That could deprive
IS of its revolutionary appeal that has served it well as a recruitment tool
but at the same time threatens to give rise to an even more extremist and
brutal force as difficult as that may be to envision.
James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute
of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the
same title.
[1] Martin
Chulov and Kareem Shaheen, Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'seriously wounded
in air strike,' The Guardian, 21 April 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/21/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-wounded-air-strike
/ Christoph Reuter, 'I'm Not a Butcher': An Interview with Islamic State's
Architect of Death, Der Spiegel, 16 July 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-conversation-with-an-isis-suicide-bomber-logistician-a-1043485.html
[3]
Barbara Starr, Sources: Baghdadi may have been in Raqqa, CNN, 15 July 2015, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/baghdadi-raqqa-isis-terrorism/index.html
[4] Lori
Plotkin Boghardt, Saudi Arabia's Old al-Qaeda Terrorists Form New Threat, The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 11 February 2015, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/saudi-arabias-old-al-qaeda-terrorists-form-new-threat
[5]
Maha el Dahan and Sam Aboudi, Islamic State suicide bomber in women's garb
kills three in Saudi Arabia, Reuters, 29 May 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/29/us-saudi-security-idUSKBN0OE10E20150529
/ Mark Sappenfield, Why Islamic State bombing in Kuwait was an attack on
tolerance, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 June 2015, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2015/0626/Why-Islamic-State-bombing-in-Kuwait-was-an-attack-on-tolerance
/ Al Jazeera, Suicide bomber injures two in Saudi capital, 17 July 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/car-bomb-explosion-kills-saudi-capital-150716181919023.html
[6] Richard
Dearlove, Terrorism and National Security: Proportion or Distortion?, Royal
United Services Institute, 7 July 2014, https://www.rusi.org/events/past/ref:E539EC3CF6F5A4/
[7] Ibid.
Dearlove
[8]
Madawi al-Rasheed, Saudi responsibility for sectarian terror in the Gulf, Hurst
Publishers, 21 July 2015, http://www.hurstpublishers.com/saudi-responsibility-for-sectarian-terror-in-the-gulf/
[9]
Bulent Aras and Richard Falk, Authoritarian ‘geopolitics’ of survival in the
Arab Spring, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 36:2, p. 322-336
[10] Ibid.
Aras and Falk
[11] Hasan
Abu Hanieh and Dr Mohammed Abu Rumman, The Islamic State Organisation: The
Sunni Crisis and the Struggle of Global Jihadism, Friederich Ebert Stiftung,
2015, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/amman/11458.pdf
[12]
David Roberts, Is Qatar bringing the Nusra Front in from the cold?, BBC News, 6
March 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31764114
[13]
Aron Lund, The End of the Levant Front, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 21 April 2015, http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=59855
[14]
Zaman Al Wasl, Zahran Alloush in another show off in Istanbul, 21 May 2015, https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/10144.html
[15]
Al Araby Al Jadeed, Syrian rebel groups await formation of a Saudi-Turkish
alliance, 21 April 2015, http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/4/21/syrian-rebel-groups-await-formation-of-a-saudi-turkish-alliance
[17] Ibid.
Al Araby Al Jadeed
[18]
Hussein Ibish, ISIL survives because all its enemies have other priorities, The
National, 26 July 2015, http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/isil-cannot-be-beaten-without-concerted-turkish-involvement#full
[19]
Christoph Reuter, The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of
Islamic State, Der Spiegel, 18 April 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html
[20]
Ervin Goffman, Total Institutions, The Inmate World in Claude C. Bowman (ed), Humanistic
Sociology, New York: Meredith, 1973, p. 272-3
[21] Ibid.
Reuter
[22] Hassan Abu Haniyeh, Daesh’s Organisational
Structure, Al Jazeera Center for Studies, 04 December 2014, http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/dossiers/decipheringdaeshoriginsimpactandfuture/2014/12/201412395930929444.htm#.Vayzjmo68a0.twitter
[23]
Yaroslav Trofimov, Can Iraq’s Baathists Become Allies Against Islamic State?,
The Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-iraqs-baathists-become-allies-against-islamic-state-1438854305#livefyre-comment
[24]
Jamie Dettmer, He Served Saddam. He Served ISIS. Now Al Douri May Be Dead. The
Daily Beast, 17 April 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/17/he-served-saddam-he-served-isis-now-al-douri-may-be-dead.html
[25] Aymenn
Jawad Al-Tamimi, Naqshbandi Army Statement: Condemnation of the Burning of
Muadh al-Kasasbeh: Translation & Analysis, 14 February 2015, http://www.aymennjawad.org/2015/02/naqshbandi-army-statement-condemnation-of
[26] Ibid.
Ricklefs
[27] Guler
Vilmaz, Opposition MP says ISIS is selling oil in Turkey, Al-Monitor, 13 June
2014, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html#
[28]
Hugh Roberts, The Hijackers, London Review of Books, 16 July 2015, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n14/hugh-roberts/the-hijackers
[29]
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “Islamic State” storms internet cafes in
the city of al- Raqqa, while closes others in “al- Furat State” and asks their
owners to issue licences, 3 August 2015, http://www.syriahr.com/en/2015/08/islamic-state-storms-internet-cafes-in-the-city-of-al-raqqa-while-closes-others-in-al-furat-state-and-asks-their-owners-to-issue-licences/
[30] Norman
Ricklefs, Assessing the threat of the Islamic State, Seminar at S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, 28 April 2015
[31]
Ben Hubbard, Offering Services, ISIS Digs In Deeper in Seized Territories, The
New York Times, 16 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/world/middleeast/offering-services-isis-ensconces-itself-in-seized-territories.html
[32] Ibid.
Hubbard
[33] Lauren
Williams, Syrian refugees describe ISIL-run schools as recruitment centers, Al
Jazeera America, 17 July 2015, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/17/syrian-refugees-describe-isil-run-schools-as-shariah-institutes.html
[34] Ibid.
Williams
[35]
United Nations, Rule of Terror: Living under ISIS in Syria, UN Independent
International Commission of
Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 14 November 2014, http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/5469b2e14.pdf
[36] Laurie
A. Brand, The Islamic State and the politics of official narratives, The
Washington Post, 8 September 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/08/the-islamic-state-and-the-politics-of-official-narratives/
[37] Stathis
N. Kalyvas, Is ISIS a Revolutionary Group and if Yes, What Are the
Implications?, Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol: 9:4
[38] Ibid.
Kalyvas
[39]
Tim Arango, ISIS Transforming Into Functioning State That Uses Terror as Tool,
The New York Times, 21 July 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/world/middleeast/isis-transforming-into-functioning-state-that-uses-terror-as-tool.html
[40] Stephen
M. Walt, What Should We Do if the Islamic State Wins? Live with it, Foreign
Policy, 10 June 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/10/what-should-we-do-if-isis-islamic-state-wins-containment/
[41]
Lawrence Rubin, Islam in the Balance, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014
[42]
Lawrence Rubin, Why the Islamic State won’t become a normal state, The Washington
Post, 9 July 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/09/why-the-islamic-state-wont-become-a-normal-state/
[43]
Clint Watts, Let Them Rot: The Challenges and Opportunities of Containing
rather than Countering the Islamic State, Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 9:4
[44]
Marc Lynch, Contesting the caliphate, The Washington Post, 22 July 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/07/22/contesting-the-caliphate/?postshare=2201437600013242
[45]
Eli Berman, Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism,
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009
[46]
Lina Khatib, The Islamic State’s Strategy, Lasting and Expanding, Carnegie
Middle East Center, 29 June 2015, http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/06/29/islamic-state-s-strategy-lasting-and-expanding/ib5x
[47] Zeina
Karam and Vivian Salama, Inside ISIS’ rule: creating a nation of fear,
Associated Press / The daily Star, 18 June 2015, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Jun-18/302616-inside-isis-rule-creating-a-nation-of-fear.ashx
[48] Alessandria
Masi, The Islamic State’s Strategy For 2015: From Militant Group To Jihadist
Government, International Business Times, 28 December 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/islamic-states-strategy-2015-militant-group-jihadist-government-1767722
[49]
All4Syria, البغدادي
يأمر بوقف تصوير عمليات الذبح في إصدارت “داعش”17 July 2015, http://www.all4syria.info/Archive/233218
[50]
Associated Press, ISIS's bureaucracy of terror: Repentance cards, execution
certificates, and innumerable rules, 20 June 2015, http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.662163
[51]
Harleen Ghambir, ISIS’s Global Strategy: A Global War, Institute of War, July
2015, http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS%20Global%20Strategy%20--%20A%20Wargame%20FINAL.pdf
[52] Jamie
Dettmer, Wasn’t ISIS Supposed to Fall Apart by Now?, The Daily Beast, 17 July
2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/wasn-t-isis-supposed-to-fall-apart-by-now.html?via=mobile&source=twitter
[53]
Kim Sengupta, Isis in Syria: Influential tribal leaders hold secret talks with
Western powers and Gulf states over possibility of mobilising against militants,
The Independent, 8 July 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-syria-influential-tribal-leaders-hold-secret-talks-with-western-powers-and-gulf-states-over-possibility-of-mobilising-against-militants-10373445.html
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