That would be a miracle!! This coalition which is being cobbled together by the U.S. for that worthy cause is "a collection" of States. As is customary during church services, a basket is passed around to collect from the faithful financial donations for the poor. Some of the congregants drop money in the basket; others pass it down the pew while kneeling at worship.
Let us see what the Obama administration has garnered in its basket for the purpose of "degrading and defeating" ISIS -which British Prime Minister Cameron has aptly called "pure evil." From Saudi Arabia, we got funding and training of carefully selected Syrian opposition elements. Please underline the words "carefully selected," because nobody knows for certain the good guys from the bad guys. ISIS itself, though born in Iraq (2003-2010) matured in the Syrian civil war as of 2011.
OK!! Back to the Obama/Kerry/Hagel/basket of collected donations to defeat ISIS. Oh yes, here is the Jordanian donation: intelligence!! Good!! No troops? No!! Now here is the United Arab Emirates -ready for bombing ISIS from the air!! Hmm!! But who will coordinate these aerial missions? And don't we already have the U.S. doing this in Iraq, and now extending these assaults to Syria?
How about the Turkish donation? None!! Turkey has a long porous border with Syria, and has just been worried sick by ISIS holding captive around 50 Turkish consular officials trapped in Mosul. Remember that Mosul was an integral part of the Ottan Empire until its defeat in World War I. This resulted in Mosul's detachment from the Turks, making it a part of a new Iraq. The Emperial British plan for the re-conquered Middle East included ruling the newly minted Iraq, not from Baghdad, but from New Delhi, India.
Turkey is now jubilant, as it should be, for its success in getting its citizens released from the murderous ISIS grip. How? They negotiated, and ISIS released. From ISIS perspective, these were Muslims whose country refused to join the coalition, except for a promise (seemingly illusory) to tighten border controls over ISIS sympathizers crossing from Turkey into Syria, and thence, into Iraq. But wait a minute!! Negotiating with terrorists? Yep!!
The rules for freeing hostages are non-written; and this was the largest consular detainee contingent since 1979 when the Iranians held 59 U.S. consular officials for 444 days. The U.S., under Carter, tried force but failed (remember the special forces helicopters rescue operation which was obliterated by a desert storm). Reagan came along, bargained through Colonel North an Iran-Contra arms deal, and the U.S. hostages were flown home.
Where the U.N. Convention on "Protected Persons" (meaning those covered by diplomatic or consular immunities) of the 1960's failed, dealing through quid pro quo with the devil succeeded. There is a need for new international rules to regulate the unregulated: the age of the non-State actor!! Don't you wish that poor Jim Foley, Sotloff (of the U.S.) or Haines (of the U.K.) had been given, through some flexibility, the chance to survive the butcher's knife?! As they met that horrible end of life, they took also with them what they might have been useful as intelligence about ISIS.
Back to the collection basket!! How about Egypt's contribution to the coalition? Notice that all the nonsense about Egypt under El-Sisi becoming a military dictatorship -a fabrication by U.S. decision-makers, pundits, and neo-conservatives -has suddenly vanished. Of course Cairo is still smarting from such interventionary attacks, including the withholding of $250 million in aid mandated by the Egypt/Israel Peace Treaty of 1979. There are now some friendly U.S. noises about releasing those blocked funds as well as sanctioned military hardware.
Yet even with these palliative inducements, Egypt is emerging as a non-beast of burden, Mubarak era styles, for automatic support of continuously fluctuating American policies. Some of the U.S. friendly approaches to the now banned Muslim Brotherhood have left a bad taste in Egypt's mouth. Through the rise of ISIS, they have also been proven to be foolish. You don't force on historically-secular Egypt a stupid Brotherhoodization agenda for the sake of conforming to American expectations of an Egyptian opposition at all costs.
Aside from these considerations about Egypt and the anti-ISIS coalition, Cairo has its own absorbing campaign inside Sinai. It is a relentless struggle against other terror franchises, like "The Friends of Jerusalem" (Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis). Thus Egypt is a front in the anti-ISIS campaign, a front covering the sands at Sinai, not the sands of Anbar, Iraq.
However, Egypt has in its arsenal against terrorism what others cannot match. It is a veritable arsenal that goes by the name of "Al-Azhar," the citadel of proper Islamic learning, both Sunni and Shii, since 975 AD.
Al-Azhar is a unique combination of mosque, university, market-place of ideas, pan-Islamic, and the first "Tahrir Square" in Egypt, rallying national forces against Napoleon in Egypt (1798-1803), and the British (1882-1954). Al-Azhar even survived the amateurish attempts during the Islamic reign of the Muslim Brotherhood (2012-2013) to co-opt it.
But under the secular Constitution of 2014, the remarkable achievement of the Revolution of June 30, 2013, Al-Azhar's independence was restored; the election of its Rector (the Grand Imam) reverted, not the State, but to its Council of Scholars; its amity with the Coptic church was assured.
Above all, Al-Azhar's Document of August 2011 put truly Islamic fingers in the eyes of jihadi Islam as it declared that "no recognition could be accorded to any State which is solely based on religion." The Muslims are a community (UMMAH), not a State (Dawlah). Sharia is supplemented by legislation. With this type of booming and authentic voice from Egypt, makes the country akin to a Coalition's Department for Public Information." The delegitimation of ISIS is the only credible contribution against that crazy caliphah Al-Baghdadi -a mere street thug from Al-Anbar, Iraq.
Other contributors to the coalition (the number stands now at 40 States) have their roles: Bombing by France; training by the British and Australians; Qatar by arms and funding anti-Assad forces ... etc.
International organizations, like the U.N., have become more factories of statements of denunciation or support -soap bubbles in the wind!!
In that mix, everyone is wondering about the real weapon that has a chance of an immediate effect on containing ISIS: the foot soldier. None from the U.S., except for non-combat advisers whose task is "tactical." President Obama, reflecting national aversion to wars, has ruled it out. In fact, American history has ruled this out too. Since World War II, the mighty U.S. was involved in 5 wars: Korea; Vietnam; Iraq I (1991); Afghanistan; and Iraq II under Bush Junior.
With the exception of Korea, all the other wars were lost. Why? This is the age of asymmetric war, where the individual with an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) is an awesome combatant with neither a uniform, nor a copy of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the protection of civilians at times of war.
The coalition strategy calls for the training and equipping of Iraqi shii troops, Iraqi sunni tribes, kurdish troops, and trustworthy anti-Assad forces inside Syria. The U.S. Congress has, at long last, approved US arming and training "safe" anti-Assad fighters. Even Iran, an Assad supporter, is now tolerated by the U.S. to jump in the fray through Iraq, to combat ISIS. Indeed, wars makes for strange bedfellows!! The enemy of my enemy is a kind of friend.
The one billion riyal question is: Can This Coalition Win This Just War Against ISIS? We should all wonder. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described this phase as "extraordinarily complex." And when it comes to clearing out Iraqi and Syrian cities in the Iraqi north and west, and in the Syrian east, Pentagon officials say: "There is no one in this building who does not know that clearing out the cities will be much harder."
On the eve of the Normandy invasion against Hitler in June 1944, Churchill is quoted as having wondered: "But will the troops fight?" The same question should be asked of the Iraqi amalgam of foot soldiers, but in a different way: "Will the Shii troops turn their guns against the Sunni contingents, and vice-verse, after their U.S. training?" And: "Will the fractious Free Syrian Army, with its various ideological shades, go into combat against BOTH Assad and ISIS with the same goal in sight?" And "Where will Russia and Iran and Hezbollah be if the noose is tightened against Assad, their Damascus Killer-in-Chief, causing another regime change in the Arab world?"
U.S. media have pointed out that "the more the President and his aides have talked, the more confusion they have sown." The Pentagon has not yet given this U.S. mission a formal name.
Said a commentator whom I respect in his column in the New York Times, a few days ago: "For now, we seem to be settling out on an uncertain mission with unclear objectives on an unknown timetable using ambiguous methods with unreliable allies."
The icing was on the cake as Assad expressed his desire to join the anti-ISIS coalition. An Arab adage sums it all up: "Everyone is singing his own love song for his beloved Lailah!!
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