Tag: ISIS
Full circle, for some
Ten years ago, Iraq’s Sunni provinces came within a few thousand votes of defeating the referendum that approved the new constitution, negotiated in the summer of 2005 with little Sunni participation. Today, according to former deputy prime minister Rafe Eissawi and governor of Ninewa Atheel Nujaifi (who spoke this morning at Brookings), Iraq’s Sunnis want nothing more (or less) than full implementation of that constitution, in particular its provisions for forming regions.
There is deep irony in this turnaround. The 2005 constitution was written to suit Iraq’s Shia, who are the majority in the country as a whole and can reasonably expect to command the biggest block in parliament and name the prime minister, as well as its Kurds, who wanted an autonomous region with their own parliament, laws, budget, and control over newly discovered hydrocarbon resources. A decade ago and until fairly recently, many of Iraq’s Sunnis were still plugging a centralized state, one they hoped to control, though the demographic reality made that impossible unless Iraq returned to dictatorship.
Now things have changed. With the Islamic State (ISIS) in control of most of Ninewa, Anbar and Salaheddin–three unequivocally Sunni-majority provinces–Eissawi and Nujaifi are in Washington looking for its support to arm Sunnis to take back their own provinces. Eissawi underlined that the Shia militias are as bad as ISIS in their treatment of civilians. Allowing the reinvigorated Shia militias to try to retake Mosul would be a disaster, both believe. Instead they want Sunni police and voluteers armed to do the job, preferably as a legally constituted National Guard (though the legislation creating that institution is stalled in the Iraqi parliament).
Once Ninewa is taken back from ISIS, Nujaifi envisages elections and a referendum on making the province a region, with powers modelled on those of Iraqi Kurdistan, the only existing region in today’s Iraq. The other Sunni-majority provinces would likely follow suit. Whether they would combine into a single region, or remain as separate regions, is not yet clear.
Both Nujaifi and Eissawi envisage a need to rebuild and professionalize the Iraq security forces, an effort Eissawi wants overseen by joint committees in which the Americans would be important players. This too is a turnaround: Sunnis were once upon a time main opponents of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, which many Kurds and Shia welcomed because it rid the country of a Sunni-dominated dictatorship.
Eissawi and Nujaifi had kind things to say about Prime Minister Haidar al Abadi, but they are looking for him to do more than he has done so far. His government program says all the right things, they thought. But he is having trouble overcoming Shia resistance to fulfilling its promises. The Sunnis suffered much abuse under Nouri al Maliki, who arrested many of those who participated in the political process, assassinated many who rose up to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq, crushed those who demonstrated against him and filled Iraq’s prisons with illegal detainees. Now the Sunnis need more than a government program and the constitution. They need concrete action to open the way for return of displaced Sunnis to their homes, compensation and reconciliation.
The Sunnis may have come full circle, but the Americans and Baghdad have not. The Obama Administration is trying hard to limit its commitments in Iraq to the minimum necessary to roll back ISIS. It wants in particular to avoid putting Americans into combat roles. It may be willing to try to help both Kurds and Sunnis get from the Baghdad government what they say they need to defeat ISIS. But that will require more of a Shia turnaround than we have seen so far.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Peace picks April 27- May 1
- Insurgency in the Middle East and Its Threat to the United States | Monday, April 27th | 9:00 AM- 12:00 PM Elliot School of International Affairs | REGISTER TO ATTEND | 9:15-10:30: ‘Understanding Civil War, Insurgency and Terrorism in Today’s Middle East: Jon B. Alterman, Senior Vice President, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Associate Professor, University of Maryland, Dafna H. Rand, Deputy Director of Studies, Center for a New American Security, Joseph K. Young, Associate Professor, American University 10:45-12:00: ‘Understanding the Threat to the United States and Europe from Returning Jihadists’, Tricia Bacon, Professorial Lecturer, American University, Dorle Hellmuth, Assistant Professor, Catholic University.
- Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East: Priorities and Problems | Monday, April 27th | 1:00-2:30 PM | Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Ambassador Anne W. Patterson is a career diplomat, who currently serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Prior to returning to Washington for this assignment, Ambassador Patterson served as the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt (2011-2013) and as the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (2007-2010). She has served the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Deputy Permanent Representative at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and as the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General. She has also served as U.S. Ambassador to Colombia (2000-2003) and as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1997-2000).
- Defeating the Jihadists in Syria: Competition before Confrontation | Tuesday, April 28th | 11:00-12:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Faysal Itani acknowledges these positive yet limited results, but also presents the unintended consequences of this air campaign and US policy options given local Syrian realities. Itani details how coalition efforts accelerated the rise of the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate, and the near-collapse of nationalist rebel forces. He proposes a US strategy to assist nationalist insurgents to defeat ISIS and the Nusra Front–by enabling them to compete with and contain jihadist groups, and ultimately confront them. Speakers include: Robert Ford, Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute and Richard Barrett, Senior Vice President, The Soufan Group
- A Conversation with Ephraim Sneh | Tuesday, April 28th | 1:00-2:00 PM| Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | How does Israel look at the emerging U.S.-Iranian nuclear agreement? What are the prospects of negotiations with the Palestinians? And what are the implications of recent Israeli elections for Israel’s national security policies? Please join us for the second in a series of conversations with prominent Israeli politicians and experts about the future of Israel in the region and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Ephraim Sneh, Chairman of S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue, Netanya Academic College, and former Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense. Aaron David Miller, Historian, analyst, negotiator, and former advisor to Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State on Arab-Israeli negotiations, 1978-2003.
- In Search of a Syria Strategy | Thursday, April 30th | 12:00-1:30 PM |Cato Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND| What is the United States trying to accomplish in Syria? Are its goals achievable with current strategies? Join our panelists as they discuss how we reached this point, and the extent to which the U.S. should or should not be involved in the ongoing conflict. Featuring Emma Ashford, Visiting Fellow, Defense and Foreign Policy, Cato Institute; Erica Borghard, Assistant Professor, U.S. Military Academy (West Point); and Nicholas Heras, Research Associate, Middle East Security Program, Center for a New American Security; moderated by Justin Logan, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
- Grassroots Governing: A Talk with Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun| Thursday, April 30th | 12:00-1:30 PM| Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Vera Baboun, the first democratically elected female mayor of Bethlehem, for a discussion about the challenges of leading the Bethlehem Municipality in the face of Israeli settlement construction, severe risks in public security, and persistent economic constraints. Mayor Baboun’s presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with Palestinian youth activists from Bethlehem, examining the role of municipal government and the civic engagement of youth in the West Bank today. Speakers include: Amb. Wendy Chamberlin, President, Middle East Institute, Lana Abu-Hijleh Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, Global Communities, Betty Ba’baish Member, Bethlehem Youth Council Jacob Qara’a President, Bethlehem Youth Council Muna Shikaki, Correspondent, Al-Arabiya News Channel
- The Kurds’ New Clout in U.S. Ties with Turkey and Iraq | Friday, May 1st | 12:00-1:30 PM | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The rise of the Kurds as a key player in the fight against the Islamic State has put U.S. relations with the governments in Baghdad and Ankara to the test. If the U.S. collaborates with the Kurds with greater intensity and in broader areas of policy in the coming years, how will this affect U.S.-Turkish and U.S.-Iraqi relations? What will the implications be for the Kurdistan Regional Government? Panelists: Mohammed Shareef Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society and Lecturer, University of Sulaimani in Iraqi Kurdistan and University of Exeter in the United Kingdom Denise Natali Senior Research Fellow, National Defense University Gonul Tol Director, Center for Turkish Studies, Middle East Institute Daniel Serwer, Senior Research Professor of Conflict Management, SAIS, and MEI Scholar
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
May their memory be a blessing
The confirmed killing of two aid workers in a January US drone strike in Pakistan is big news in Washington this morning. Warren Weinstein, 73, lived in this area. Giovanni Lo Porto, 39, was Italian.
Both had been doing the kinds of work many of my students at SAIS aspire to. Weinstein, a former political science professor, was working for a USAID contractor on rural development projects. Lo Porto, who studied peace and conflict issues at London Metropolitan University, was working for a German non-governmental organization on restoring drinking water in a flooded rural area. Experienced operators, they both nevertheless fell victim to kidnappings and ended up in Al Qaeda hands. Weinstein was taken in August 2011 in Lahore. Lo Porto in January 2012.
There was a time when aid workers of this sort might have been left alone by belligerents. No longer. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in particular, but also other “jihadi” groups, have made a thriving business of kidnap and ransom. The Italian government is widely believed to be prepared to deal, even paying substantial ransoms. The American government would like it believed it does not deal and in particular does not pay ransoms. Neither approach yielded the desired result in these two cases.
Kidnapping is not only a business. Increasingly, jihadi groups see aid workers as helping their enemies to establish legitimacy by providing services to the poor. The good works Weinstein and Lo Porto were undertaking might be welcome to the villages where they were undertaken, but not to those who want to undermine and destroy the Pakistani state. Many aid organizations are concerned about this and try to keep all belligerents at more or less equal arm’s length, but that is hard to do when it comes to belligerents who don’t acknowledge anyone as “neutral” or “humanitarian.”
The jihadi presence has caused a vast increase in the protection required to conduct humanitarian operations in today’s war zones, which in turn reduces the credibility of the humanitarian claim and raises your value as a target. If your warehouses, homes and offices all have to be protected 24/7 by armed guards, you start looking like just one more belligerent, or like one more extension of state power. As a non-governmental civilian, this makes me generally more comfortable in a conflict zone outside the envelope of visible security than inside it. Moving from one zone to the other–through checkpoints–is often your most dangerous moment.
Weinstein was reportedly taken in Lahore after his residential guards accepted an offer of a free meal. The circumstances of Lo Porto’s kidnapping are unclear to me. But the point is this: it could happen to any tens of thousands of aid workers in dozens of fragile states around the world. Few nongovernmental organizations can provide a level of physical protection to individuals that will foil a concerted kidnapping attempt by half a dozen toughs. Once taken, a victim in at least a dozen of these countries can be sold on quickly to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
The best defense is simply not to be at an expected place at the expected time. But strict adherence to that approach would make work on many development issues impossible. Everyone is working remotely to a greater extent than ever before, but it just isn’t possible to do a good job supervising or implementing aid projects, training people and providing advice without seeing the projects first hand and talking directly with the local implementers and beneficiaries.
It takes real courage and conviction to do what Weinstein and Lo Porto were doing. It should never be confused with careless adventure-seeking by those with no serious business in conflict zones. Nor should we blame for their deaths the drone operators and intelligence analysts who take on the enormous responsibility of trying to prevent collateral damage. It is the kidnappers who were responsible for Weinstein and Lo Porto being in the wrong place at the wrong time, no one else.
The people who do aid work in conflict zones merit our appreciation and support as much as those who serve in uniform. The risks they run and the sacrifices they make are far greater than they should be.
Zichronam Livracha
May their memory be a blessing.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
This war isn’t over yet
The big news from Iraq today is the alleged death in Tikrit of “King of Clubs” IzzatIbrahim al-Douri, who is believed to have led the Ba’athistNaqshbandi Army. He was a key figure in the alliance of the Ba’athists with the Islamic State. It’s anyone’s guess how his death will affect that alliance. It is even possible he is not yet dead. It wouldn’t be the first false report of its type.
If he is dead, it is reasonable to hope that tension will grow between two groups with different goals: the Ba’athists aim to restore dictatorship in Iraq, while the Islamic State aims to destroy Iraq and install on the territory it takes there and elsewhere an Islamic caliphate. Those goals may overlap for a time, but ultimately they are incompatible. Rumors of tension were already rife. Might al-Douri’s death aggravate the friction between the two groups?
It’s possible, but rarely has the disappearance of one leader or another in the recent Middle East wars meant a decisive turn. The Islamic State (then in Iraq) survived the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 and eventually revived. The later years of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship had already seen a good deal of Islamicization. The Islamic State long ago adopted Saddam’s “Republic of Fear” strategies: killing, often without reason, to cow the general population into submission.
It is also possible that the Ba’athists and Islamic State will recognize the threat that disunity poses, reconsolidate their alliance and reconfigure their forces to defend better the territory they still control. ISIS forces are even advancing on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and an important outpost still under Baghdad’s control. Whether they succeed in that effort or not, the Islamic State and its Ba’athist allies are still far from defeat.
The center of gravity in this war is still the Sunni population. ISIS and Ba’athist success would not have been possible without both passive and active support from Sunnis in Ninewa, Anbar and Salahuddin provinces. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi in Washington this week has done his best to reassure the Obama Administration that he understands that, but he also remains heavily dependent on Shia “popular mobilization” forces, who fight harder and better than the Iraqi Army and are linked to political parties that support Abadi’s coalition government. But using Shia forces in predominantly Sunni Anbar and mixed Ninewa will push Sunnis there in the direction of ISIS and the Ba’athists.
This war isn’t over yet.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
It isn’t enough to be right
Yesterday’s contretemps between Iraq’s Prime Minister Abadi and the Saudi Ambassador will blow over quickly in the American press even if it made headlines today. But the issues involved are serious ones.
What Abadi said (according to the New York Times) was this:
There is no logic to the operation at all in the first place. Mainly, the problem of Yemen is within Yemen.
He apparently added that the Obama Administration
want[s] to stop this conflict as soon as possible. What I understand from the Administration, the Saudis are not helpful on this. They don’t want a cease-fire now.
And he also said:
The dangerous thing is we don’t know what the Saudis want to do after this. Is Iraq within their radar? That’s very, very dangerous. The idea that you intervene in another state unprovoked just for regional ambition is wrong. Saddam has done it before. See what it has done to the country.
The Saudis responded that there was “no logic” in what Abadi said.
But of course there is.
Let’s look at Yemen first. Its many conflicts undoubtedly originated within Yemen, though they all have international echoes. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran have been involved in Yemen for a long time. It is arguable that the Saudi Arabian involvement, including the widely supported Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-arranged transition from former President Saleh to President Hadi, was far deeper.
It should not be surprising that the Iranians took advantage of the opportunity the (sort of) Shia Houthis gave them when they chased GCC-supported Hadi from Sanaa. Tehran shipped arms and money to the Houthis, which in turn provoked the Saudi escalation. That’s the short version of how an intra-Yemeni fight has become a regional one, with sectarian overtones.
It is not at all clear that escalation is producing a result anyone can call positive. Today the UN mediator, who had been successful until the Houthis rained on his parade, resigned. Now Yemen is a basket case. Only when Saudi Arabia and Iran come to terms and agree on a political outcome is the fighting likely to stop. In the meanwhile, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is presumably taking advantage of the American withdrawal to enjoy the respite and expand its operations.
What about Abadi’s fear of Saudi intervention in Iraq? He is not wrong to recall Saddam Hussein, who went to war against both Iran and Kuwait “for regional ambition.” But he might have turned his warning against not only Saudi Arabia but also against Iran, whose regional ambitions are no less grand. After all, Iranian forces are already fighting not only in Iraq, where Abadi welcomes their support against the Islamic State, but also in Syria where a president who has lost legitimacy is doing precious little against the Islamic State.
Abadi’s blindness to Iranian trouble-making is regrettable. He owes them, but not enough to ignore their misbehavior in Syria or to disrupt the slow rapprochement Iraq has been enjoying with Saudi Arabia. He could have said nothing about future Saudi behavior. It isn’t enough to be right. You also have to be judicious.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stabilizing Syria
Fred Hof, Bassma Kodmani and Jeff White want to set the stage for peace in Syria by creating a 50,000-strong Syrian National Stabilization Force (SNSF). Ideas of this sort have been bandied about for years, but this is a more in-depth look than I have seen elsewhere.
Objective
Its objective would be a political one: to establish legitimate state authority, which has collapsed in the current multi-party civil war, on Syria’s entire territory. Ten times the size of the force supposedly being trained yearly by the US and other countries, Hof, Kodmani and White expect the SNSF to be able to confront both the Islamic State and the rump regime of Bashar al Asad as well as protect Syrian civilians, starting in protected areas but eventually expanding to the whole country.
So far, so good, in theory. Military experts will have to judge whether a force of the size, training and equipment they propose will be sufficient to the task. My own guess is that even at these expanded dimensions, the SNSF would find the fight the expanded mission a difficult one, but the authors think it might be sufficient to induce the regime to come to the negotiating table and cut a deal. The SNSF would then be able to expand further as the army of a new Syria and focus its full attention against the Islamic State and other extremist forces.
Will it fight extremists?
Therein lies one problem. It is not clear that Syria’s more moderate rebel forces are prepared to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), which many Syrians dislike but still regard as vital to the fight against the Asad regime. Civil war favors radicalization. Syrians are not immune. Moderates tend to leave. Extremists stay to fight. The Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al Nusra (JN), appears to have a good deal of support among Sunnis inside Syria. Its personnel is largely Syrian, it has a reputation for honesty, and it fights regime forces with vigor.
Command and control
Another problem with the SNSF is command and control. The US and other countries have recognized the Syrian National Coalition (aka Etilaf or SNC) as the legitimate political representative of the Syrian people, but the authors of this report accept the US Government assessment that it is too fragmented and disconnected from realities inside Syria to function effectively as a command and control authority.
So in its stead they propose formation of an ad hoc advisory group. This is awkward. How do you accept the SNC as the sole political representative of the Syrian people, then deny it authority over the military forces expected to win back the country in their name? How do you get away with picking your own favorites to form the advisory group? SNC itself is the product of US-led diplomacy, which may be a source of its problems. What makes us think another iteration will improve Syrian cohesion or representativeness?
Washington issues
Perhaps the biggest problem with this SNSF proposal lies in Washington DC, not in Syria. It would require expansion of the US mission in Syria beyond countering terrorist groups like the ISIS and JN as well as commitment to combat support, as the authors discuss extensively. The Obama Administration has been reluctant to go down that road. Congress is not pressing in that direction. Reluctance to get involved in trying to fix yet one more Middle Eastern country is palpable.
I suppose there is someone in the bowels of the Pentagon and perhaps the State Department who is hoping that the precedent of US/Iran parallel efforts against the Islamic State set in Iraq can be repeated in Syria, where Hizbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards are now a mainstay of the Asad regime, even if claims of Iranian “occupation” of Syria seem to me hyperbolic. Restoration of autocracy is working in Egypt, some may think, why shouldn’t it also work in Syria? If we can fight on the same side against the Islamic State in Iraq, why not also in Syria?
The short answer is that the government in Iraq is a legitimate one that represents the will of its people. Syria’s government is not, despite Asad’s pretend “election” last year. SNSF has virtues, if only because it would end such daydreaming by positioning the US unequivocally in opposition to the Asad regime. Protection of civilians in a few liberated areas, in the north along the Turkish border and in the south along the Jordanian border, would itself be a great virtue and give Iran, Russia and the regime pause. Neither Russia nor Iran is likely to stick with Bashar al Asad until the bitter end, if only to protect their equities in what comes next.
Bottom line
To make a long story short: SNSF is not likely to march triumphantly into Damascus any time soon. But committing to something like it would allow the US to engage in Syria more effectively than it has done so far.
RSS - Posts
