The US has invited everybody to join the coalition against the Islamic State, except for those willing to fight the terrorists on the ground
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons,” said Winston Churchill in 1941, defending his decision to regard Stalin as an ally after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. If the brutal fanatics of the Islamic State in parts of Iraq and Syria were really an existential threat to the US, then President Barack Obama, using the same logic, would now be treating the Governments of Syria and Iran as allies. But he isn’t.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has just ended a recruiting tour of West Asia, signing up Arab states and Turkey for a new coalition that will allegedly “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terror group. Moreover, it must do so without ever requiring US “boots on the ground”; the American public would not stand for any more of that.
The US will happily provide air strikes if others will do the dying on the ground, of course, and the Iraqi Government will go along with that deal since it has just lost a third of its national territory to the Islamic State. But it will take a long time to rebuild the Iraqi Army after its recent collapse — and the only other US allies willing to die to stop the Islamic State are the Kurds.
Jordan will supply intelligence services. Turkey will make it harder for would-be jihadis to cross its borders with Syria and Iraq (the route by which most of the Islamic State’s foreign recruits have traveled), but it will not let the US use Turkish air bases for military operations. Egypt murmurs words of encouragement but makes no specific commitments.
Almost all the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait included, have promised to stop the large flow of donations from wealthy individuals to various jihadi outfits in Syria (including, at least until recently, the Islamic State). The United Arab Emirates reportedly even offered to carry out air strikes against the Islamic State. But it’s hardly a mass mobilisation, and it doesn’t involve any “boots on the ground”.
There are plenty of boots available, if Washington, DC, wants them, but they are on the wrong feet. The Syrian Army has been fighting the jihadis for almost three years, and after its initial losses it has held its own against them everywhere, except in eastern Syria. Elsewhere, it has actually been gaining back ground for more than a year now.
Then there is Iran, a big, industrialised country whose Armed Forces do know how to fight. Iran provided the key support for the local Shia militias that stopped the Islamic State from sweeping into Baghdad last summer, and it has been providing indispensable support to the Syrian Government for years.
Finally, there are the ‘wrong’ Kurds. The Kurds of Iraq can be part of the coalition, because they have their own self-governing region and are legitimate recipients of American military aid. But the Kurdish nationalist forces of north-eastern Syria and south-eastern Turkey, who have lots of combat experience and have been holding their own against the Islamic State, are classed as ‘terrorists’ by Washington, and so, cannot be part of the gang.
But Washington has not asked these major players to join its new coalition. Indeed, it has invited everybody in West Asia to join, except those who are actually willing to fight the Islamic State on the ground. How peculiar.
There are reasons for this odd behaviour. The obsessive American mistrust of Iran goes back to the hostage crisis of the late 1970s, and is reinforced by Israel’s paranoia about Iran. Turkey would go ballistic if the US started arming members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, popularly known as the PKK, who have fought a long and brutal war against the Turkish state. And it’s just too abrupt a U-turn for President Obama to start doing business with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, whom he was getting ready to bomb just one year ago.
Maybe a rebuilt Iraqi Army can drive the Islamic State out of Iraq eventually. But where does Mr Obama think the troops will come from to drive the the group back in its Syrian heartlandIJ His only answer is to build a new ‘Free Syrian Army’ composed of ‘moderates’ who will fight on two fronts, defeating the Islamic State while also overthrowing the Assad regime. But that’s ridiculous, since the old FSA has almost all been absorbed into the various jihadi groups in Syria. There is nothing left to build on.
For added comic effect, this new Free Syrian Army will be trained in Saudi Arabia, the principal supporter and paymaster of the jihadis.