Metastasis of the Islamic State

VIJAY PRASHAD

The myopia over Syria’s future prevents Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia from creating a united front with Iran, Iraq and Syria to tackle the Islamic State — a problem for the entire region

Comfortable in its bastions along the Euphrates river in Syria and Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State (IS) has struck at its two ends — in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and Iraq’s Jabal Sinjar. Barred from entry into Baghdad and from making a dash to Damascus, the IS has moved with dramatic ferocity into Iraq’s northwest and into the breadbasket of Lebanon. A resolute Lebanese Army response in Arsal stopped the IS advance down the Bekaa toward Beirut. A delegation from the Muslim Scholars Association helped the IS and Lebanon’s government broker an agreement for the withdrawal of the fighters over the mountains into Syria. Consistent aerial bombardment by the Syrian government moved the IS and its sometimes ally, Jabhat al-Nusra, back north toward the city of Raqqa. Quiet reigns for now in Lebanon. But not so in Iraq.

Superiority and fearlessness

After regular shelling and threats of extermination, the Islamic State finally left Mosul for the towns of Sinjar and Qaraqosh. The Kurdish fighting force, the legendary Peshmerga (“those who confront death”), could not hold their defensive lines. The Kurdish authority had been derisive when the Iraqi forces abandoned Mosul on June 10. They have had to come to terms with the tactical superiority of the Islamic State — and its fearlessness. People in the Kurdish government admit privately that the Peshmerga has been poorly armed and badly paid. As recently as May this year, a Peshmerga division blocked the Duhok-Akre road with the complaint that they had not been paid in two months. Irbil, their capital, was not happy with this public complaint. Morale has been low among the soldiers, who could not withstand the firepower and braggadocio of the jihadi army. The Islamic State was, therefore, able to seize Iraq’s largest power and water source — as the Peshmerga fled from the Mosul Dam. Each victory makes the IS more powerful — they get arms, they get new infrastructure, and they get momentum.

Sinjar, Qaraqosh, Tal Kayf, Bartella, Karamlesh, Nahum — these are towns with ancient lineages, home to communities with the most fascinating lineages. It is here that the Islamic State has now arrived with a demand to the Yazidis, Chaldean Christians, Syrian Christians and others that they must either submit to the faith of the IS or die. Most people have fled, tens of thousands according to the United Nations. Towns that are not yet in the Islamic State hands are being emptied as people lose faith in the ability of the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army to act. Forty thousand Yazidis took refuge in their holy mountain, cut off for several days from any humanitarian aid. Marzio Babille, UNICEF’s Iraq chief, said that children were “dying on the mountain, on the roads. There is no water. There is no vegetation. They are completely cut off and surrounded by the Islamic State. It is a disaster. A total disaster.” Over the first two days of their flight, Mr. Babille said, 40 children had died. Four days later, Iraqi helicopters finally dropped water and food to the refugees. A slow transit has begun to Syria, without any proper humanitarian corridor established.

The Yazidis

Joseph Thomas, Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah, confirmed that the Christian towns in the region had been “emptied of their original population and are now under the control of the militants.” Destruction of religious shrines and murder of the men in these towns — the pattern that IS follows — has already begun. Christian and Shabak Shiite fighters in these towns could not hold a defensive perimeter — they fled as soon as the fighting began.

The geography of Iraq’s northwestern highlands provided isolated valleys that shelters heterodox ethnic and religious communities. They drew from a variety of traditions and languages to create their own unique worlds. The Yazidis, who are Kurds, took their inspiration from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Fiercely protective of their culture and independence, the Yazidis fought off the attempt by the Ottomans, the British and the Iraqi state to integrate them into the country’s institutions — formal religion and the military. During the 1930s, the Yazidis refused to be conscripted into the Iraqi army, so their chief Dawud al-Dawud walked with his followers to Jabal al-Akrad, near Latakia on the coastline of Syria. Many would return in the following decades. The Yazidi refusal to submit to the Islamic State, and their migration to Syria now follows an old pattern. It is unlikely that they will make it to Jabal al-Akrad — where the fighting in that civil war continues to rage. They will likely find refuge among the Syrian Kurds. A year ago, 30,000 Syrian Kurds fled into Iraq over a weekend. These migrations reverse the trend, saying a great deal about the pendulum effect of this war and the trials it has inflicted upon civilians.

Stopping the horde

Alignment among the countries of West Asia to tackle the Islamic State is meagre. Suspicion between the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army prevent these natural allies from proper coordination. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised to send his air force to assist the Peshmerga. But the question is: what air force? When the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi state in 2003, it was slow to allow the military to be rebuilt and rearmed so that it could operate independently of U.S. air cover and heavy weaponry. Iraq’s army, like Afghanistan’s army formed under U.S. tutelage, was to operate as the front-line forces for U.S. operations. It is simply not able to fight the Islamic State on its own — which is why it consistently asks the U.S. for aerial support, a dependent mentality that reproduces the idea that only the U.S. is capable of being the world policeman. 

None of the regional states has come to terms with the reality that the Syrian civil war is no longer going to end with the overthrow of the Damascus government. The myopia over Syria’s future prevents Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (the anti-Assad powers) from creating a united front with Iran, Iraq and Syria to tackle the Islamic State — a problem for the entire region. This political refusal means that there is no coordination among the powers. Suspicion that this or that power continues to finance and train the IS remains — this is why Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutog˘lu felt impelled to dismiss all talk that Turkey supports the Islamic State (those who say so, he said, “are blind or without a conscience. If someone from Turkey says this, he is traitor”).

The Saudis are not convinced that the Islamic State poses a threat to the region — although under immense pressure the King said he was unhappy that “a handful of terrorists” took it upon themselves to “terrify Muslims.” One would have thought that when the IS’ al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself the Caliph, he had declared war directly against the Saudi King, who is the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. That should have forced Saudi Arabia to rethink its regional strategy. But there was no policy direction, no demand that Gulf Arabs cease their private support for the group, and no recognition that a regional solution (that includes Syria) is needed to stem the tide of the IS. The Saudi Kingdom shares with the IS its antipathy to Iran and to Shiism, and the Kingdom seems willing to allow IS to run riot through Iraq’s diversity to suit Saudi Arabia’s regional ambitions.

Flight is the current strategy for minorities in the flight path of the Islamic State. They have no other choice.

(Vijay Prashad is the author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South,LeftWord, 2013).

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/metastasis-of-the-islamic-state/article6301567.ece?homepage=true