World cannot remain mute spectator anymore
As the savagery of the Islamic State continues unabated, it is clear that the world can no longer remain a mute spectator to the developments in Iraq and Syria. On Thursday, two days after the IS released a bloodcurdling video of one of its members beheading American journalist James Foley and threatening to kill another, both US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey agreed that the group posed an imminent threat. They also said that all options to defeat the IS remained on the table. It is, of course, still too early to judge if the Obama Administration is preparing the ground for a full scale military operation against the terror outfit, which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, or if it is merely turning up the heat on the rhetoric in response to the killing of James Foley. But it is clear that the US will at least continue with its targeted air strikes that began on August 8 after the Islamic State attacked Iraq's minority Yazidi community. Fearing persecution, thousands of Yazidis fled to the mountains earlier this month where they were then besieged by the militants who blocked all supply routes. American airstrikes have since pushed back the militants — this has brought some relief to Yazidis and also helped, for example, Kurdish fighters take back the Mosul dam. But the current American campaign is only an exercise to contain the IS and even that will work only in the short term. As lessons learnt while fighting the Islamic State's parent group, Al Qaeda, in Afghanistan, show, the militants will eventually re-group and hit back. Already, the IS has a fluid command and control structure, making it easier for the group to rejuvenate itself. More importantly, it has a huge base in Syria which remains untouched by American forces. Beyond a point, going after the IS only in Iraq will be meaningless as the militants will just run across the border, which doesn't really exist anymore, and take refuge in Syria, as Gen Dempsey rightly noted on Thursday. Bombing Syria, of course, is an all different ballgame, as last year's heated debate over airstrikes against the Assad regime showed. Air strikes, be they in Iraq or Syria or both, have only limited utility. They will bring early gains, but in the long run, an insurgent movement like the IS can only be defeated by putting boots on the ground — and the Obama Administration is nowhere close to doing that. The costs are too high, especially given that the IS is not quite at America's doorstep yet.
Moreover, even if a full-scale military campaign is undertaken, it will still not eradicate the plague that is the Islamic State. For that, a political solution is necessary, and it can only come from the folks in Baghdad and Damascus and perhaps their friends and allies in the region. After all, while the US's military misadventure in Iraq created the breeding ground that spawned the IS, the Arab world too must take responsibility for the mess.