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Contents:
The U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State Must be Retooled. Here’s How.: Max Boot, Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2014— President Obama’s strategy in Syria and Iraq is not working.
In Iraq and Syria, It's Too Little, Too Late: Terry Glavin, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 14, 2014— “It was seven o’clock in the morning when they came to Tel Azir, my village. They killed seven men and captured 24 women, so we ran to the mountains. We escaped to the mountains.”
The Beltway’s Syria Fairy Tales: Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, Nov. 11, 2014 — The November 18th murder of five people at Kehilat Yaakov Synagogue in Jerusalem has shocked the world.
With Incentives and Brute Force, IS Subdues Tribes: Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2014— The Obama administration will never abandon its courtship of Iran.
ISIS Says its Flag Will Wave Over Jerusalem, Even if the Jews Don't Like it: Yasser Okbi & Maariv Hashavua, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 26, 2014
Obama May See Assad's Removal as Necessary to Defeat ISIS: Jerusalem Post, Nov. 26, 2014
More Than 100 Canadians Have Offered to Join Kurds in Fight Against ISIS: Stewart Bell, National Post, Nov. 25, 2014
U.S. Adds Planes to Bolster Drive to Wipe Out ISIS: Eric Schmitt, New York Times, Nov. 26, 2014
THE U.S. STRATEGY AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE
Max Boot
Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2014
President Obama’s strategy in Syria and Iraq is not working. The president is hoping that limited airstrikes, combined with U.S. support for local proxies, will “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. But while U.S. actions may have blunted the Islamic State’s expansion, they have not shaken the terrorist group’s control of an area the size of Britain. If the president is serious about dealing with the Islamic State, he will need to increase America’s commitment well beyond his recent decision to deploy 1,500 more advisers. What will it take to achieve the president’s objective?
Intensify airstrikes. When the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan between Oct. 7, 2001, and Dec. 23, 2001 — a period of 75 days — U.S. aircraft flew 6,500 strike sorties and dropped 17,500 munitions. By contrast, between Aug. 8, 2014, and Oct. 23, 2014 — 76 days — the United States conducted only 632 airstrikes and dropped only 1,700 munitions in Iraq and Syria. Such desultory bombing will not stop such a determined force as the Islamic State.
Lift the prohibition on U.S. “boots on the ground.” Obama has not allowed U.S. Special Forces and forward air controllers to embed themselves at the company level and go into combat as they did with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001. This lack of eyes on the ground makes it harder to call in airstrikes and to improve the combat capacity of U.S. allies. Advisers fighting alongside indigenous troops are far more effective than trainers confined to big bases.
Increase the size of the U.S. force. The current force, even with the recent authorization to expand to 3,000 personnel, is still inadequate to counter the 20,000-plus fighters of the Islamic State. Credible estimates of the necessary troop strength range from 10,000 personnel (retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni) to 25,000 (analysts Kim and Fred Kagan).
Send in the Joint Special Operations Command. Between 2003 and 2010, JSOC — composed of units such as SEAL Team Six and Delta Force — became skilled at targeting the networks of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its success was due to its ability to gather intelligence by interrogating prisoners and scooping up computers and documents — something that bombing alone cannot accomplish. JSOC squadrons should once again be moved to the region (they could be stationed in Iraq proper, the Kurdish region or Jordan) to target Islamic State organizers.
Do more to mobilize Sunni tribes. Given Shiite militia infiltration, working exclusively through the Iraqi Security Forces would risk empowering the Shiite sectarians whose attacks on Sunnis are the Islamic State’s best recruiter. The United States should directly assist Sunni tribes by expanding the newly established U.S. outpost at al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province, and also increase support for and coordination with the Free Syrian Army and Sunni tribes in Syria. Current plans to train only 5,000 Syrian fighters next year need to be beefed up.
Impose a no-fly zone over part or all of Syria. Even though U.S. aircraft are overflying Syria, they are not stopping dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces from bombing rebel-held areas. This has led to a widespread suspicion among Sunnis that the United States is willing to keep Assad in power — a suspicion fueled by news that Obama sent a letter to Assad’s backers in Tehran proposing cooperation. Sunnis are not going to fight the Islamic State if the alternative is Iranian domination. A no-fly zone over part or all of Syria would save lives while rallying Sunnis to the anti-Islamic State cause, allowing the Free Syrian Army to expand, and possibly paving the way for greater Turkish involvement.
Prepare now for nation-building. The United States should lay the groundwork for a post-conflict settlement in both Iraq and Syria that does not necessarily require keeping both political entities intact. In the Iraqi context, this means offering greater autonomy to the Sunnis (they should be promised Kurd-like autonomy) and guaranteeing the Kurds that their hard-won gains will not be jeopardized. The United States should offer to station troops for the long term in the Kurdish area and possibly Anbar, too. Social fragmentation in Syria will make reconstruction there harder. The U.S. goal should simply be to ensure that Syrian territory is not controlled by Shiite or Sunni extremists. The postwar settlement in the former Yugoslavia, which involved the dispatch of international peacekeepers and administrators under United Nations, European Union and NATO mandates, could be a model. This is admittedly an ambitious, long-term goal, but if no such plans are in place, as in Libya in 2011 or Iraq in 2003, failure is guaranteed.
Critics will call this strategy too costly, alleging that it will push the United States down a “slippery slope” into another ground war. But while this approach will undoubtedly incur greater financial cost and higher risk of casualties, the present minimalist strategy has scant chance of success and risks backfiring — the Islamic State’s prestige will be enhanced if it withstands half-hearted U.S. airstrikes. Left unchecked, the Islamic State could expand into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey or Saudi Arabia, making a major ground war involving U.S. troops more likely. By contrast, this strategy would enhance the odds that the group could be defeated before Obama leaves office.
IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, IT'S TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
Terry Glavin
Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 14, 2014
“It was seven o’clock in the morning when they came to Tel Azir, my village. They killed seven men and captured 24 women, so we ran to the mountains. We escaped to the mountains.” This is how 24-year-old Amira Jamil begins her story about the Yazidi pogrom – the singular event in a three-year chain reaction of atrocities that led to the American-brokered coalition campaign of airstrikes on jihadist targets now underway across Iraq and Syria. It was Aug. 3. Heavily-armed marauders from the al-Qaida offshoot known as the Islamic State (also called ISIL, ISIS, and in the Arabic pejorative, Da’ash) swept in from the south and surrounded Jamil’s village, in the Shingal Mountains of northern Iraq. They’d come to commit a genocide explicitly ordered by their caliph, the fanatical Sunni cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a fatwa. The Yazidis are “mushrikin,” devil-worshippers. Plunder their homelands. Slaughter the men who refuse to submit to Islam. Capture the Yazidi women and the girls. Everything is permitted. Rape, mass murder, slavery, extortion, pillage.
Al-Baghdadi had announced the establishment of his caliphate in June, declaring himself the leader of all the world’s Muslims. All summer his shock troops had been pouring into Iraq from the smoking ruins of Syria. Iraqi troops abandoned their posts, one after the other. At Tikrit, at least 700 Iraqi soldiers who’d surrendered were slaughtered en masse. Al-Baghdadi’s fighters easily overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. By July they were in control of a swathe of territory the size of Great Britain, from Raqqa in Syria to Fallujah on the outskirts of Baghdad. Christians were crucified, Muslim apostates were lined up in front of firing squads. Captured women were traded around like livestock. Captured soldiers were forced to dig their own mass graves. When al-Baghdadi’s forces came roaring towards the Shingal Mountains they were loaded down with weapons they’d looted from Camp Speicher, the former American military base at Tikrit. They moved in convoys of tanks and hundreds of armoured Humvees.
The Yazidis’ arsenals consisted mainly of bird guns, rusty AK-47s and antique Lee Enfield rifles. A minority within a minority, the Yazidis follow a pre-Abrahamic faith with a peacock-angel for a deity, and they are found only among the Kurds – a stateless people whose homelands straddle the mountainous frontiers of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. By Aug. 3, the Yazidis had no one to defend them but the ragged guerrillas from Turkey’s outlawed PKK (the Kurdish Workers’ Party) and the Kurdish YPG (Local Defence Forces) from the rebel zones of northern Syria. Under a guerrilla escort, the Yazidi exodus began. “We were in the mountains for seven days, and then we started walking,” Jamil told me. “We couldn’t even get water for our babies. If our children die, we must save ourselves. Just throw them away, leave them by the side of the road.” I met Jamil at a makeshift refugee camp that had sprung up at a football field and picnic ground near the town of Sukurlu, about eight hours’ drive from the Iraqi border and a half-hour’s drive from Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey. Nearly 5,000 Yazidis were living there in shelters built from tarpaulins, plastic equipment sheds, bedsheets and carpets. As I travelled south from Diyarbakir into Iraq, and then across the Tigris River into Syria, the scale of the Yazidi pogrom became clearer in accounts I heard at the half-dozen makeshift camps I visited. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other agencies are just beginning to tabulate the enormity of the catastrophe. It was only when thousands of Yazidis found themselves encircled and trapped on the barren massif of Mount Sinjar, dying by the dozen from exposure and thirst, that the outside world took notice. It was at Mount Sinjar that the curtain was raised on the United States’ disastrous foreign-policy incoherence in the Middle East, and on the NATO capitals’ indifference.
By those early days of August, the contradictory and waffling half-measures that U.S. President Barack Obama had pursued in Syria and Iraq had cost him the confidence of almost all his senior advisers, along with a majority of American opinion-poll respondents. With the American public riveted to the horror unfolding on Mount Sinjar, he finally decided it was time to act. On Aug. 7, Obama announced that American fighter jets would bomb Islamic State convoys advancing across the Nineveh Plain towards Irbil, the capital city of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. “American personnel” were at risk there. In tandem, the U.S. air force was to begin humanitarian airdrops to the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. “When we face a situation like we do on that mountain … then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye,” Obama declared. “We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”…
Within days, Canada, France and Germany were airlifting arms to the faltering peshmerga (“those who face death”) of the Kurdish Regional Government, and ramping up humanitarian aid. When his Arab League allies would only strike Islamic State targets in Syria, Obama enlisted a coalition of mostly NATO countries, including Canada, to target al-Baghdadi’s forces in Iraq. The U.S.-led intervention came about only after the deaths of 26,000 people in Iraq and 200,000 in Syria, and after more than 13 million people had been rendered either refugees or “internally displaced persons” in both countries. The carnage had been unfolding since 2011, and even now it shows no sign of abating. Syrian President Bashar Assad has ramped up his own air war threefold, most notoriously in the crude barrel bombs that he has used to kill thousands of Syrian civilians and to destroy so many Syrian cities and towns over the past three years…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE BELTWAY’S SYRIA FAIRY TALES
Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review, Nov. 11, 2014
Since the outbreak of the latest Middle East war a few years back, we have been chronicling the Washington political class’s Syria Fairy Tales. In particular, there is the story line that Syria is really teeming with secular democrats and authentic moderate Muslims who would have combined forces to both overthrow Assad and fight off the jihadists if only President Obama had helped them. But his failure to act created a “vacuum” that was tragically filled by Islamist militants and gave rise to ISIS. At this point in the story, you are supposed to stay politely mum and not ask whether it makes any sense that real democrats and actual moderates would agree to be led by head-chopping, mass-murdering, freedom-stifling sharia terrorists.
In point of fact, there simply have never been enough pro-Western elements in Syria to win, no matter how much help came their way. There was never going to be a moderate, democratic Syrian state without a U.S. invasion and occupation for a decade or more, an enterprise that would be politically untenable — and, as the Iraq enterprise shows, unlikely to succeed. The “moderate rebels” had no chance against Assad unless they colluded with the Islamist militants, who are vastly superior and more numerous fighters. And they would have even less chance of both knocking off Assad and staving off the jihadists.
The Obama administration and the Beltway commentariat have done their best to obscure these brute facts. Their main tactic is to exploit the American public’s unfamiliarity with the makeup of Syria. Obama Democrats and much of the Beltway GOP continue to invoke the “moderate Syrian rebels” while steadfastly refusing to identify just who those purported “moderates” are. They hope you won’t realize that, because of the dearth of actual moderate Muslims and freedom fighters, they must count among their “moderate rebels” both the Muslim Brotherhood (which should be designated as a terrorist organization) and various other Islamist factions, including . . . wait for it . . . parts of al-Nusra — i.e., al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise.
We’ve also noted that a new wrinkle has recently been added to the Beltway’s Syria Fairy Tales: Obama’s Khorasan Fraud. In a desperate attempt to conceal the falsity of Obama’s boasts about destroying what is actually a resurgent al-Qaeda, the administration claimed that the threat to America that impelled Obama to start bombing Syria was not ISIS (supposedly just a “regional” threat), not al-Qaeda (already defeated, right?), but a hitherto unknown terrorist organization called the “Khorasan group.” To the contrary, the Khorasan group, to the extent it exists at all, has never been a stand-alone terrorist organization. It is an internal component of al-Qaeda — specifically, an advisory board (or, in Islamic terms, a shura council) of al-Qaeda veterans who advise and carry out directives from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s emir. During the fighting in Syria, some of these operatives were sent there by Zawahiri to conduct operations under the auspices of al-Nusra. These operations have included jihadist activity against both the United States and Assad allies, plus negotiations for a rapprochement with the Islamic State (or ISIS). The limited success of those negotiations has led to fighting among the jihadists themselves.
The ball to keep your eye on here is al-Qaeda. The al-Nusra terrorist group is just al-Qaeda in Syria. Even ISIS is just a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda. And the Khorasan group is just a top-tier group of al-Qaeda veterans doing al-Qaeda’s work in conjunction with al Nusra — i.e., al-Qaeda. The Obama administration disingenuously emphasizes these various foreign names to confuse Americans into thinking that there are various factions with diverse agendas in Syria — that al-Qaeda is no longer a problem because Obama has already dealt with it, and what remains are sundry groups of “moderate rebels” that the administration can work with in the effort to vanquish ISIS. Meanwhile, you are supposed to refrain from noticing that Obama’s original Syrian project — remember, he wanted Assad toppled — has given way to fighting ISIS . . . the very Sunni jihadists who were empowered by Obama’s lunatic policies of (a) switching sides in Libya in order to support the jihadists against Qaddafi and (b) abetting and encouraging Sunni Muslim governments in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to arm Sunni militias in the fight against Assad — those militias having all along included al-Qaeda elements, some of which split off to become ISIS and now threaten to bite off the very hands that once fed them.
If you thought the Khorasan fraud was just a passing fad to get Obama through the initial stages of trying to rationalize his incoherent Syria air campaign, think again. You see, Obama continues to have a problem. Everyone knows that ISIS, the main target of U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, cannot be defeated — or even stalled much — by a mere air campaign, which has been half-hearted at best anyway. Ground forces will be needed. So the administration and Washington’s foreign-policy clerisy keep telling Americans: Never fear, there is no need for U.S. ground troops, because we can rely on “moderate rebels” to fight ISIS. But the so-called “moderates” Obama backs have been colluding with al-Qaeda (i.e., al-Nusra) for years — at least when not being routed by al-Qaeda/al-Nusra. Now, the sensible thing at this point would be to concede that there are no viable moderate forces in Syria, and that it would be folly for us to continue pretending those forces either exist or will materialize anytime soon. But no, that would be honest . . . which is not the Obama way — nor, frankly, is it the Washington way — to end our willful blindness to the lack of moderation among Middle Eastern Muslims…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WITH INCENTIVES AND BRUTE FORCE, IS SUBDUES TRIBES
Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2014
The Islamic State group is employing multiple tactics to subdue the Sunni Muslim tribes in Syria and Iraq under its rule, wooing some with gifts — everything from cars to feed for their animals — while brutally suppressing those that resist with mass killings. The result is that the extremists face little immediate threat of an uprising by the tribes, which are traditionally the most powerful social institution in the large areas of eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq controlled by the group. Any U.S. drive to try to turn tribesmen against the militants, as the Americans did with Sunnis during the Iraq war, faces an uphill battle. Some tribes in Syria and Iraq already oppose the Islamic State group. For example, the Shammar tribe, which spans the countries’ border, has fought alongside Kurdish forces against the extremists in Iraq. The U.S. and Iraqi governments have proposed creating a national guard program that would arm and pay tribesmen to fight, though the effort has yet to get off the ground.
But in Syria in particular, tribes have no outside patron to bankroll or arm them to take on IS, leaving them with few options other than to bend to Islamic State domination or flee. “There are people who want to go back and fight them,” said Hassan Hassan, an analyst with the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi. “But the circumstances now mean that you can’t provoke ISIS because the strategy they’ve followed and tactics are to prevent any revolt from inside.” The rulers of the self-styled caliphate have mastered techniques of divide and rule. Tribes are powerful institutions that command the loyalty of their members across the largely desert regions of Syria and Iraq. But they are also far from cohesive. Large tribes are divided up into smaller sub-tribes and clans that can be pitted against each other. Such divisions also emerge on their own, often in connection to control over local resources like oil wells or land.
Also, the Islamic State group itself has roots in the tribes. Though hundreds of foreign fighters have flocked to join the group, most of its leaders and foot soldiers are Iraqis and Syrians — and often belong to tribes. In eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province, for example, the Ogeidat is one of the largest tribes. One of its major clans, the Bu Jamel, has been a staunch opponent of the extremists. Another, the Bakir, long ago allied itself to the group. IS operatives use threats or offers of money or fuel to win public pledges of loyalty from senior tribal sheikhs. The group has also wooed younger tribesmen with economic enticements and promises of positions within IS, undermining the traditional power structure of the tribe. “They offer many sweeteners,” said Abu Ali al-Badie, a tribal leader from the central city of Palmyra in Syria’s Homs province. “They go to the tribes and say, ‘Why are you fighting against Muslims? We’ll give you weapons and cars and guns, and we’ll fight together.’” “They offer diesel and fuel. They bring barley and animal feed from Iraq,” he said. “They build wells at their own expense for the tribes and they say, ‘Others have neglected your needs.’”
In Syria, IS has won the acceptance of many tribesmen in Raqqa and Deir el-Zour provinces by ending chaos that reigned when the areas were controlled by a patchwork of rebel warlords. IS provides services including electricity, fuel, water and telephone lines, as well as flour for bakeries, said Haian Dukhan, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews Center for Syrian Studies. “Things have started to become stable to a degree, and this is something that people were really desperate about,” said Dukhan. The group has “tribal affairs” officials to handle relations with the tribes, calibrating its style to local dynamics. Often they will allow loyal tribesmen to run their communities’ services, said Hassan. The group also has removed its own commanders who caused tension with tribes in their areas. The idea, Hassan said, is “to remove some of the toxins.”
At the same time, the group sends a clear message to those who resist. In August, IS militants shot and beheaded hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria. Activists reported death tolls ranging from 200 to 700. Photographs in the Islamic State’s English-language “Dabiq” magazine showed black-clad fighters shooting prisoners said to be Shueitat, lined up on the sandy ground. In Iraq, IS killed more than 200 men, women and children from the Al Bu Nimr tribe in Anbar province, apparently in revenge for the tribe’s siding with security forces and, in the past, with American troops. It has also shot dead several men from the Al Bu Fahd tribe. “Everyone is hiding or fled. They will chop us in pieces if they see us,” said Sheikh Naim al-Gaoud, a leader in the Al Bu Nimr. “They want us to support them and to join their fight. In return, they say they will let us live in peace.” As a result, Dukhan says there’s little chance for a revolt unless tribes are confident the extremists are losing. “I think that for the time being, seeing a large-scale uprising against IS is just a fantasy.”
ISIS Says its Flag Will Wave Over Jerusalem, Even if the Jews Don't Like it: Yasser Okbi & Maariv Hashavua, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 26, 2014—The Islamic State has threatened to make it all the way to Jerusalem "even if the Jews and Crusaders despise it."
Obama May See Assad's Removal as Necessary to Defeat ISIS: Jerusalem Post, Nov. 13, 2014—President Barack Obama wants his advisers to review the administration's Syria policy after determining it may not be possible to defeat Islamic State militants without removing Syrian President Bashar Assad, CNN reported on Wednesday.
More Than 100 Canadians Have Offered to Join Kurds in Fight Against ISIS: Stewart Bell, National Post, Nov. 25, 2014 —Dozens of Canadians have volunteered to fight ISIS in recent days, the founder of a support group said Monday amid reports that military veterans from several Western countries had travelled to Syria and Iraq to take up arms against the extremists.
U.S. Adds Planes to Bolster Drive to Wipe Out ISIS: Eric Schmitt, New York Times, Nov. 26, 2014 —The United States is shifting more attack and surveillance aircraft from Afghanistan to the air war against the Islamic State, deepening American involvement in the conflict and presenting new challenges for the military planners who work here in central South Carolina, far from the targets they will pick for those aircraft.
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