The agony of Aleppo
Russia is enabling and aiding a world-historic humanitarian disaster and war crime. Why?
What’s The Strategy in Russia’s Aleppo Insanity?
Tag Archives: syria
Refugees: What Didn’t Come Up
Human beings
Among many other things, this election reintroduced and normalized the American tendency to see everyone else as less than human.
Aleppo and The Impossibility of Scorched Earth
Aleppo. Image from al-Jazeera
The latest assault on reason and humanity is almost designed to ensure that there can never be any actual reconciliation.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, and The Hajj: The Middle East’s Overwhelming Power Struggle and the US Election
I’m not saying that to be a successful President you have to understand what this map means. But you actually kind of do… (Image from Vox.com)
In which the ludicrous complexity of a region in historic transformation is nearly impossible to understand.
Syria’s Drought: All Tomorrow’s Wars
The ruins of Aleppo. This was caused, in part, by poor well management.
A story of good intentions, flawed execution, solutions that make problems worse, tyranny, corruption, climate change, mass urbanization, unemployment, frustration, and slaughter. In other words, the daily news.
Does Syrian Sovereignty Exist?
August 12th map, from Wikipedia, most recent I can find. How is a state supposed to come back from this?
BBC: Syrian rebels, backed by the Turkish military and US air cover, say they have taken the town of Jarablus from jihadists of so-called Islamic State.
The assault began at dawn when Turkish warplanes, tanks and special forces personnel crossed the nearby border.
Reuters: Turkey sent more tanks into northern Syria on Thursday and demanded Kurdish militia fighters retreat within a week as it seeks to secure the border region and drive back Islamic State with its first major incursion into its neighbor.
There is a lot– a lot– to unpack here. Obviously, Turkey is interested in stopping ISIS, but more so, as the Soufan Group points out, in making sure that the Kurdish Syrian rebels don’t have a swatch of territory that is contiguous with Turkey, for fear of linkage with Turkey’s own Kurdish population.
The Turkish incursion is a significant event in the conflict, as it highlights the lengths that Turkey will go to prevent an autonomous Kurdish region along its southern border. Perhaps more significantly, the assault also made clear the limits of U.S. support for the Kurdish rebel forces that have been the most effective ground troops in the fight against the Islamic State. Calling the operation to retake Jarablus ‘Euphrates Shield,’ Turkey’s stated goal was to push back the Islamic State as well as the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD); Ankara views the latter, along with Turkish Kurdish groups, as a far greater threat than the Islamic State.
So, then: Turkey has sent troops and tanks and planes into Syria in order to dictate the future of the local Kurdish population in a post-ISIS region, which puts it in conflict with US designs, all of which will complicate Iraq (and its Kurds). Meanwhile, Turkey is playing around with Russia, which had been bombing Syria from Iran until that relationship went pear-shaped.
All of this is to ask a question this blog has been asking all year: what is Syria, anymore? Does it actually exist, or is it just a name on a map, lines that we all know so we still vaguely recognize? Does it actually have any sovereignty, and if so, who is in stewardship of that sovereignty? Is it Asad? That seems unlikely. Is it any of the rebel groups, including ISIS? What does it mean to own territory? What, ultimately, does it mean to be a nation when the nation has fallen apart, been vivisected, torn up, divided? And what does that mean for the future of the nation, and of the region?
I don’t have answers to these, but they are what we need to explore. As we’ve argued here before, the map is being rearranged. I don’t think there will be a recognizable “Syria” coming out of this in five, ten years. It’s the end of a long historical process starting with the fall of the Ottoman Empire (or at least the end of this phase, if there is one thing history teaches us, it is that eras never truly definitively end, and it is foolish to make predictions). I don’t think we’re really reckoning with what is going to come next, and what a possibly stateless future means. But as Turkey shows, there are many games being played here with future borders and future ideas of sovereignty, whether it is a UN-recognized map or the Iraq-like de facto states of ferocious Kurdish independence. I feel that until we come to terms with the sure and certain knowledge that what comes next is going to be very different than what came before, we won’t be able to encourage even least-bad outcomes.
Tomorrow’s Jihad: How Foreign Fighters Can Reshape The World
Where you going next?
In the late 50s and early 60s, there was a TV show called Have Gun, Will Travel. I’ll be honest: I don’t know if I ever have seen a single episode. Maybe on Channel 50 when I was a kid, on a TV that still had a dial, but there are no clear memories. Still, the name always stuck out. In my imagination, it captured a desolate and sad American west, where if you were a violent man, or at least someone willing to do violence, you could travel the vast landscape and keep order. Or at least someone’s version of order. Whether lawman or outlaw, and the two sides could shift back and forth, if you had a gun, you were always needed somewhere.
That might seem a flippant way to talk about the next stage of jihadism, but that is the spirit. Because the next stage is going to be the vast spread of foreign fighters, stateless men who have been trained in war, that will come when ISIS crumbles or partially crumbles in Iraq and Syria. Yesterday, in a speech overshadowed by Trump and the convention, FBI director James Comey laid it out: we’re going to see “a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before.” But what does that mean? Who are they?
While for years, the massive impact of suicide attacks, whether in Beirut or Tel Aviv or New York, dominated the news. That was our idea of jihad. And to be sure, it was terrifying, terrorism in the true sense. But with some exceptions, it was also always the short game. Suicide bombers were, by definition, expendable, regardless of their courage or conviction. The real force of jihad was the battle-tested soldiers who might not have been afraid to die, but who were more useful alive. These were men who were comfortable with violence, and with gun, traveled.
Jabhat al-Nusra and Post-ISIS “Syria”
Meet the new boss- not quite the same as the old boss.
Syria and The Success of Smarter Militants
Interesting WaPo article by David Ignatius about Jabhat al-Nusra, the Qaeda affiliate in Syria. They’ve bascially bided their time during the rise of ISIS, gaining reputations as good fighters and building alliance with relatively more-moderate groups, and they seem poised to emerge successful out of the wreckage when the more apocalyptic jihadist group enters its post-Caliphate stage (which could be loosely described as “A caliphate of the mind”).
Jabhat al-Nusra has played a clever waiting game over the past four years, embedding itself with more moderate opposition factions and championing Sunni resistance to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group has mostly avoided foreign terrorist operations and has largely escaped targeting by U.S. forces. Meanwhile, it has developed close links with rebel organizations such as Ahrar al-Sham that are backed by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
But the global jihadist ambitions of Osama bin Laden remain part of Jabhat al-Nusra’s DNA. U.S. officials report increasing evidence that the group is plotting external operations against Europe and the United States. Its operatives are said to have tried recently to infiltrate Syrian refugee communities in Europe.
A stark warning of the danger ahead comes from the Institute for the Study of War, which closely follows events in Syria. In a forthcoming forecast, the institute argues that by January 2017, “Jabhat al-Nusra will have created an Islamic emirate in northwestern Syria in all but name” and will merge with the supposedly more moderate Ahrar al-Sham.
And that’s the smart way to do it. It’s one of the reasons why AQAP in Yemen has been so successful for so long, even so far resisting an ISIS takeover (more on that coming soon). There are certain organizations which are “lessons learned” oriented, who can take the success and mistakes of the past and integrate them into the local situation from which they are emerging. They don’t try to jam a rigid system into a fluid situation. You can have short-term success doing that, but it is far more difficult to maintain, as ISIS is finding out.
(That said, of course, ISIS isn’t halfway out the door. I am as guilty as this as anyone: because the outline of the end, or at least the end of this phase, can be roughly seen, it shouldn’t be assumed that it will play out the way we imagine, and shouldn’t be so quick to act like we are already in the next phase. Analysts and bloggers are, I think, more guilty of that than actual military people, so I’m not too worried.)
This is part of the mutation of the jihadist threat, and why it needs to be treated as a generational problem, one that requires supple and strategic thinking, on all levels, and not be treated as a eopochal failure when it isn’t met with “unconditional victory” during, say, a Presidential term.
It’s almost inevitable that, if not al-Nusra, another AQ or ISIS-like group emerges in whatever comes out of Syria, whatever post-state shape it is in. That isn’t a clarion call to give up, but more that we have to be realistic about what can be accomplished, and to me, that means not trying to force Syria back together again.
I think the Kerry plan, which Ignatious describes as a “three-cushion shot”, is a good outline. “Kerry’s plan would include joint U.S.-Russian operations against the group, as well as the Islamic State. Kerry also hopes to reduce Assad’s attacks on moderate rebel forces so that they (rather than Jabhat al-Nusra) can gain ground in a post-Islamic State Syria.” That’s probably the best outcome that can be hoped for: increased moderation, though not perfection, in post-Syria areas. The more we try to maintain a 20th-century fiction, the more other fictions, like that of the glorious caliphate or the purity of fanaticism, will tell the story.
What’s Next For ISIS?
Going my way?
As we talked about last week, ISIS is clearly entering a new phase as they lose territory in the Caliphate. I said that they might transform into a “carnage-based idea”, but of course that is pretty vague, and not really informative. I had meant to bring up this piece in War on the Rocks by Clint Watts, who goes into great detail about the three different types of ISIS affiliates: Statelets (as in Yemen, Libya), Insurgency (like Boko Haram) and Terrorist Organization (Saudi Arabia).
Watts discusses foreign fighters, trained in the caliphate, who will be unable to return to their actual homes after ISIS collapses in Syria and Iraq. They are the ones to watch to see the strength of the movement. “The most indicative data will come from the roughly 15% of Islamic State foreign fighter survivors I estimate will be unable or unwilling to return home. These “floating” fighters lacking roots to a homeland affiliate will be inclined to choose the most promising global affiliates for safe havens.”
I think this is very true. Over the last 25+ years, we’ve seen increasingly-sophisticated foreign fighters find the group that best represents both their ideology, and, more important, the desire for successful jihad. It’s why AQAP was so powerful; it was the most far-reaching and far-sighted AQ affiliate out there. But now we see even AQAP struggling to reach an even newer and less-patient generation, losing fighters to ISIS. As they increasingly clash, though, I’d put my money on AQAP.
And that’s the big question, for me. ISIS was extremely bold in declaring a caliphate, knowing that the aura of success (and their actual battlefield success) would draw in more foreign fighters, and more money. As they begin to lose on that battlefield, will ISIS central still have much control? Will the ISIS brand, to use an awful term, still mean much? That is, when shifting toward affiliate-based statelets and insurgencies, will they still be ISIS in any recongnizeable way, or just groups with a shared heritage but different, more localized goals?
That to me is key. In the same article, Watts mentions how Central Asian fighters might “choose to resettle with an Asian group known for attracting foreign fighters, such as the Khorasan wilayat or possibly more likely the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).” The IMU has been around for a long time. It’s been both a generator and absorber of jihadists. It has long-term and essentially-localized goals. I think that a lot of groups, no matter their worldly ambitions, eventually get settled into what is happening around them. What made ISIS different, even more so than their lust for carnage and media sophistication, is that it pretended otherwise. But even with the spate of attacks, even with the “inspired” killers in cities around the world, they spent far more time fighting the near enemy.
So then, as they change, as lose that idea of the caliphate, will ISIS really mean anything? Or will they be just a blip? An important one, one that changed the game, for sure. But in the end, will it just be a splintered movement, a period of consolidation followed by fracturing, before the next consolidation? I tend to think so. I think their “affiliates” will be even less affiliated than AQ. That might make whatever they are, in however many forms they are, even more dangerous, though, as everyone will have to up their game to get recruits.
Would be interested to know how I am misreading this, of course.
Obama and Radical Islam
The President in winter
Privately, Obama expresses the deepest loathing for ISIS and other radical Islamist groups. ISIS, he has noted, stands for—quite literally—everything he opposes.
Jeffery Goldberg has, somewhat surprisingly, become the great chronicler of Barack Obama’s foreign policy thinking. Goldberg, who has a reputation of being pretty staunchly pro-Israel (a reputation which often unfairly paints him as unthinkingly Likudnik), doesn’t seem like a go-to source for a President who is often painted as anti-Israeli, or at least not reflexively pro-Israeli enough. It makes sense, though: Obama has a far great love of engaging with thoughtful people with whom he has some disagreements than with people automatically on his side. Goldberg fits this, as he’s fair enough to try to understand someone’s thought process even if he isn’t a fan of the final result.
It’s this sort of thoughtfulness on behalf of the President that is a reflection of his relationship with radical Islam. Obama’s critics see him as ruthlessly partisan and completely insulated, which is far from the truth, as his working friendship with Goldberg demonstrates (also, his attempts throughout the entire first term and some of the second to work with Republicans). They also see him as indifferent to radical Islam, as at best uncaring about it, and at worst hoping that it wins. Trump saying this explicitly this week was seen as a scandal; in fact, it was little different than what Republicans have been saying since he took office.
Goldberg’s Atlantic article yesterday, “What Obama Actually Thinks About Radical Islam”, is a deep dive into the President’s relationship with one of the animating forces in global politics, and an area that has consumed much of his Presidency, in a way he was desperately hoping to avoid. He thought that through persuasion and better intentions he could reset the relationship that the US had with the Middle East, and maybe even move toward peace with Israel.
This sounds naive, and maybe it is, but it is worth noting that literally every President in the last 50 years has thought the same thing, albeit with different courses of action. But, much like reaching out to recalcitrant Republicans, this also failed. Goldberg’s discussion of what happened next sort of sums up, for me, Obama’s policy motivations.
He gave the Cairo speech in 2009. By 2012—as the revolutions of the Arab Spring were curdling, and as Libya drifted toward chaos, despite a partial U.S. intervention—Obama developed strong antibodies to what I call the Carly Simon Syndrome, which is an affliction affecting American policymakers so vain that they probably think Islamist extremism, and everything else, is about them. Obama, unlike many American analysts, does not suffer from this delusion. He sees the problems affecting parts of the Muslim world as largely outside American control. At its best, this belief keeps him from rushing into disasters not of America’s making; at its worst, it keeps him from taking steps that stand a chance of making things better.
This is, and always had been, the dichotomy of the Obama Presidency, one rooted in a sort of vicious thoughtfulness: the idea that you can try, and if it doesn’t work, don’t beat your head against the wall. It is one that recognizes the better angels in people, and tries to engage them, but also the worst demons, and tries to step away. It is one that recognizes not just the limitations of American power, but of American influence.
In response to Goldberg’s enormous “The Obama Doctrine”, I labeled it “tragic radicalism“, because it understood that the worst in humans couldn’t really be resolved, at least not easily, and so it was better to step away. Because, while there is no doubt that many problems in the Middle East and broader Muslim world are a reaction to wesern humiliations, especially at the hands of America, it is also true that there is far more going on than that, and that there is little America can do to fix it.
While I fundamentally agree with that, there are also policy missteps that come from such a view. Because while Obama has antibodies to Carly Simon, he also is somewhat vulnerable to it, although not in such a virulent manner. He does recognize that American influence is still a force for good and ill in the world, but in trying to mitigate the ill while still balancing our interests, we do things like intervene in the wrong limited way in Yemen: drones but little political support. There is a certain hand-washing that both downplays the real influence America has, and works to obfuscate the unhelpful foot-stomping going on below.
The more I think about it, the more I think “tragic radicalism” is the wrong phrase, since it seems to place emphasis on the latter, and doesn’t make it clear that “tragic” here is in the dramatic sense of the word. Although not as pithy, “radical sense of the tragic” might be more accurate. It’s an understanding of human motivations that has led to some great things, but also to a sort of sighing away when the worst in us burbles madly to the surface. I do think he is impacted deeply by the horrors on his watch, especially Syria, but that just confirms his view of human nature.
All that said, I’m going to quote a couple paragraphs in full. As you listen to Trump talk about, well, anything, I think it is good to reflect on what a remarkable human being we’ve had in office for the last eight years.
In one conversation, parts of which I’ve previously recounted, Obama talked about the decades-long confrontation between the U.S. and communism, and compared it to the current crisis. “You have some on the Republican side who will insist that what we need is the same moral clarity with respect to radical Islam” that Ronald Reagan had with communism, he said. “Except, of course, communism was not embedded in a whole bunch of cultures, communism wasn’t a millennium-old religion that was embraced by a whole host of good, decent, hard-working people who are our allies. Communism for the most part was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries but wasn’t organic to these cultures.”
He went on to say, “Establishing some moral clarity about what communism was and wasn’t, and being able to say to the people of Latin America or the people of Eastern Europe, ‘There’s a better way for you to achieve your goals,’ that was something that could be useful to do.” But, he said, “to analogize it to one of the world’s foremost religions that is the center of people’s lives all around the world, and to potentially paint that as a broad brush, isn’t providing moral clarity. What it’s doing is alienating a whole host of people who we need to work with us in order to succeed.”
Shooting Irrelevance 