Caliphate Rising with Tacit U.S. Approval

In addition to yesterday's Cantor bombshell there was the far larger bombshell of the successful offensive against the Iraqi city of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIS is now on the march to Baghad; in addition to controlling Mosul, ISIS controls Saddam Hussein's birthplace, Tikrit; the home of the largest oil refinery in Iraq, Baiji; it threatens Samarra, home to the Shiite Al-Askari Mosque, the 2006 demolition of which kicked off the Sunni-Shiite civil war allowing the U.S. invasion forces to successfully divide and conquer Iraq. Now, Kurdish troops are reported to have established control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. As Thanassis Cambanis points out in "Sunni Fighters Gain as They Battle 2 Governments, and Other Rebels,"

. . . Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a militant Sunni group whose thousands of fighters have occupied crucial swatches of Syria and have now surged into northern Iraq. The group has vowed to create a caliphate spanning the Sunni-dominated sections of neighboring countries.

In doing so, it is simultaneously battling the Syrian and Iraqi governments and Sunni rebels it considers insufficiently committed to Islam. Having seized vast areas of Iraqi territory and several large and strategic cities, including the country’s second-biggest, Mosul, it controls territory greater than many countries and now rivals, and perhaps overshadows, Al Qaeda as the world’s most powerful and active jihadist group.

Many of us have been transfixed by the relaunching of the Cold War in Ukraine over the last five months, but it is important to remember the operating logic from last year in Syria when ISIS came from out of nowhere to become a dominant belligerent in the jihadi war against Bashar al-Assad's Baathist government: a gain on the battlefield by the Syrian Arab Army was usually followed by an ISIS attack against softer targets in Iraq.

The battlefields of Iraq and Syria are linked. This is why the Obama administration has been unwilling to assist the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki in bombing ISIS staging areas, as Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt report in "U.S. Said to Rebuff Iraqi Request to Strike Militants":

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials. 

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011. 

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

Despite the fact that Al Qaeda groups are purported to be the existential enemy of the U.S., the real enemy for the United States is Iran and the Shia-led nations of Iraq and Syria. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Some experts say that such American military action could be helpful but only if Mr. Maliki takes steps to make his government more inclusive. 

“U.S. military support for Iraq could have a positive effect but only if it is conditioned on Maliki changing his behavior within Iraq’s political system,” Kenneth Pollack [a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution] said. “He has to bring the Sunni community back in, agree to limits on his executive authority and agree to reform Iraqi security forces to make them more professional and competent.”

But so far, the administration has signaled that it is not interested in such a direct American military role. 

“Ultimately, this is for the Iraqi security forces, and the Iraqi government to deal with,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday.

ISIS, risen phoenix-like from the moribund fragments of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), has always been seen as a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) project. Half or more of ISIS fighters are foreigners. ISIS attracts manpower from other jihadi groups because it pays better and is more organized. The caliphate rising in the Levant and Iraq is being carried out with the tacit blessing of the United States.