The mess in Mesopotamia

By the time US jets took off from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to bomb Islamist militants in Iraq on August 8, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) --- also called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant -- had captured almost a fourth of the country. For two months, US President Barack Obama sat by and watched ISIS militants advance in North-western Iraq, while in Iraq’s neighbouring country, Syria, the proxy intervention by the US and its Gulf-Atlantic allies had actually helped the ISIS grow.

The US now says it wants to stop further advances of the ISIS. The Sunni terrorist group notorious for its rigid, violent interpretation of Islam has been persecuting non-Sunni Muslims and minorities in areas where it is strong. They now control a third of Syria and a fourth of Iraq, which, put together, covers an area larger than Great Britain and is inhabited by at least 6 million people. While the US continues its bombing in Iraq, at least two questions need to be thoroughly analysed.

What finally made Obama return to a war he had given up three years ago? And, will his Iraq policy help stop the ISIS?

The official explanation is that Obama authorised air strikes in Iraq to protect American personnel stationed in Erbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, and prevent a “potential genocide” of Iraqi religious minorities by Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his ISIS men.

It seems a logical explanation because thousands of Americans live in Erbil where a full-fledged US consulate operates. And the US attacks come after the ISIS captured Sinjar, a town near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, and started slaughtering the Yazidis, a religious minority following a 4,000-year old faith. Thousands of Yazidis are stranded in Mount Sinjar, surrounded by the ISIS, which threatens to kill them all unless they convert to Islam.

Still, there are gaps in the US version of the story. If the issue was protecting the Americans in Erbil, the US could have taken them home and avoided military intervention. Similarly, it is difficult to believe that the plight of Yazidis forced the US military into action in Iraq because the US doesn’t always to resort to a military option when there’s a refugee crisis.

For instance, Obama did nothing when more than 100,000 people were forced out of their homes in Gaza by Israel.

A more believable explanation is that the US wanted to keep the status quo in Iraqi Kurdistan. It doesn’t want to shut down its consulate, and pull out its citizens and the military, because this will affect the US’ energy and strategic interests in the region.

The US’ ties with Kurdistan go back to the Saddam era. The US had armed Kurdish Peshmerga militants before it attacked Iraq in 2003. After the invasion, when the rest of Iraq plunged into chaos and a Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict, Kurdistan remained stable and grew relatively prosperous. Above all, it remained a staunch American ally.

Several American companies are now doing business in Kurdistan. The region has huge oil and gas reserves in which US companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron have made large investments. The strategic potential of Iraqi Kurdistan is immense as the US sees the region as a long-term, non-Russian supplier of oil and gas to Europe. It’s this status quo the US wants to sustain.

The US’ strategy is to stop the ISIS advance into Kurdistan. It is also arming the Peshmerga militants to fight the Caliph’s militia. At the same time Washington hopes a “more inclusive government” in Baghdad under the new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and beefed up with fresh US weapons supplies, could take on the ISIS at the national level. The major downside of this policy is that it fails to see the trans-national presence of the ISIS.

The US and its Western and Gulf allies have to admit that their past mistakes have plunged the region into its current mess.

While George W Bush’s war on Iraq in the name of fighting terrorism has actually led to the emergence of the most dangerous terror outfits in Iraq, the Syrian policy of Obama and his allies has offered these terror groups a wider theatre to regroup themselves and become a potent trans-national force in West Asia.

From day one of the Syrian civil war — when the Sunni opposition was fighting against a president hailing from the minority Alawi community which is close to Shiism — the US and Gulf monarchs were adamant that the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad should go. The civil strife turned into an ugly sectarian conflict with Sunni monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar actively supporting anti-Assad rebels, ranging from moderate Islamists to al-Qaeda. While Jordan set up training camps in its territory, the Saudis and Qataris offered military and financial aid to the rebels.

Turkey, on its part, kept open its 820-km border with Syria, allowing militants to move freely. The ISIS emerged as the most organised Syrian opposition group from this mess, and soon turned its guns on Iraq, where Shia politicians were in power.

All these countries, including the US, were so obsessed with removing Assad that they failed to see the rise of the ISIS. WikiLeaks recently released a US cable that says Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk had promised to cooperate with Washington against terror groups such as al-Qaeda in 2010. But the US ignored this offer and went ahead with its policy of destabilising the Syrian regime instead.

It’s a regional crisis now, and it needs regional solutions, not Iraq-focused stop-gap arrangements. The US cannot have two policies to deal with the same threat in two countries. The ISIS is fighting the Syrian government in Syria and the Iraqi government in Iraq. The US and its allies are against the Syrian regime but are supporting the Iraqi government against the ISIS. This contradictory approach is complicating the crisis. As long as Syria remains destabilised and the Syria-Iraqi border open, any pushback of the militants in Iraq will not be effective as they can retreat into Syria and regroup.

If Obama is serious about stopping the ISIS, he should stop Saudi Arabia from supporting Islamist militants in the region. Other Gulf countries, as well as Turkey, should stop destabilising the Assad regime. Instead, they should build an alliance across sectarian fault-lines against the ISIS. The road to Baghdad goes through Damascus.

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