Islamic State Riding High

The U.S. behemoth, ever ready to display its full-spectrum dominance on any battlefield no matter how remote, is doing all it can to keep from locking horns with Islamic State. What makes this so bizarre is that a greater villain, a more evil "evil doer," could not be found if you called central casting at a major Hollywood studio. ISIS rapes and murders and crucifies and steals and plunders according to the Wahhabi view of the world, brought to you thanks to the petroleum wealth of Al Saud. One would think that U.S. Special Forces, supposedly the greatest fighters on the planet, would be quickly deployed to prevent the genocide of religious minorities. I mean, really, it is all too perfect. For a nation that lives and dies by the movies -- or at least used to -- this is America's righteous moment.

But all Obama committed to in his announcement last night from the White House was air support for the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar by marauding jihadis, as well as air power protection of Kurdistan's capital city of Erbil and the Iraqi capital Baghdad. According to Helene Cooper, Mark Landler and Alissa Rubin in "Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS":

While Mr. Obama has authorized airstrikes, American officials said there had not yet been any as of late Thursday. In addition to protecting Americans in Erbil and Baghdad, the president said he had authorized airstrikes, if necessary, to break the siege on Mount Sinjar, where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a religious minority group closely allied with the Kurds, have sought refuge.

There is some mystery as to who hit ISIS with airstrikes in two towns near Erbil, whether it was the U.S., as Iraqi and Kurdish officials originally announced, or Iraq flying the few planes at its disposal:

The [senior Obama administration] official said that as conditions in Iraq deteriorated in recent days, the United States had worked with Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters to coordinate the response to militant advances. The official said the cooperation had included airstrikes by Iraqi forces against militant targets in the north. 

Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes were carried out Thursday night on two towns in northern Iraq seized by ISIS — Gwer and Mahmour, near Erbil. Earlier on Thursday, The New York Times quoted Kurdish and Iraqi officials as saying that the strikes were carried out by American planes.

The conventional wisdom regarding Obama's reticence to beat down ISIS has to do with domestic politics. Obama doesn't want to do an about-face on one of his defining presidential achievements, bringing the troops home from Iraq:

“The White House is going to recognize that the need to commit air power to Iraq, even for a purely humanitarian mission, is going to open them up to greater criticism for their disengagement from Iraq,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So they will do their damnedest not to get further involved in Iraq because that would just further validate those criticisms.”

I think there is some truth to this. But the real reason, what few people seem to be talking about in the comments section appended to this story, is that the U.S. has some sort of secret arrangement with the regional powers -- Saudi Arabia and Israel -- to let Islamic State reorder the Middle East along conservative sectarian lines in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Both the Saudis and Israelis were incensed with Obama that he cut loose Mubarak in Egypt, paving the way for the Muslim Brothers to come to power. The House of Saud was downright apoplectic that Obama didn't bomb the Assad government to kingdom come last year. Pretty much from that moment on ISIS has grown all out of any organic proportion ever heard of for a grassroots guerrilla movement, which it is obviously not.

Obama was put on notice that his school-boy fantasy of democracy for the Middle East was kaput. The neocons teeming throughout the deep U.S. national security state lined up behind the Saudi solution of a caliphate. The Israelis liked the idea because it spelled doom for their bete noire, Iran.

But ISIS, always on the lookout for low-hanging fruit, decided to go after the Kurds instead of driving immediately to Baghdad. This, I am assuming, was not part of the agreement since there was ample evidence of collusion between the Salafis and the Kurds back in June when Mosul fell to the ISIS blitz and the Kurds promptly took Kirkuk. Rod Nordland, the Gray Lady's reporter on the ground, noted that the pesh merga and the jihadis assiduously avoided one another then.

Tim Arango has an excellent story, "Jihadists Rout Kurds in North and Seize Strategic Iraqi Dam." Arango makes three things clear:

1) Maliki is history. Right now he is holding out for an immunity agreement:

As Iraqi leaders, the country’s top religious authorities and top Iranian officials, who wield considerable power within Iraq, pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, he was refusing to step aside Thursday night. Even those within his own State of Law bloc were demanding that he leave. 

“Everyone is saying no to Maliki now,” said a member of Parliament from State of Law, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the discussions. “He’s rejected by all parties.” 

If he were to step down, Mr. Maliki has reportedly demanded immunity from prosecution for himself, his family and his inner circle, and a massive security detail, paid for by the state.

2) The martial prowess of the Kurdish pesh merga is a CIA-promoted fiction:

Kurdish fighters have a long history of resistance to central governments in Iraq and Turkey, and among Kurds, a storied reputation as mountain fighters. But since the end of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, after which they received years of air cover from the West in their enclave in northern Iraq, they have transitioned from resistance to standing security forces. 

Kurdish forces have proven adept at providing local security in the Kurdish autonomous zones, but less capable at independent military operations. Their successes have often included Western support, including from the C.I.A. and the American Special Forces. But they are not trained, equipped or organized for large-scale independent operations, for integrating fire support into their ground operations, or for countering aggressive insurgent bombing campaigns.

Those deficiencies were apparent in fighting in recent days, as ISIS captured several towns over the weekend and continued its march north.

3) Control of Mosul Dam is a huge victory for ISIS:

The dam, on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large area. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam and spent nearly $30 million on repairs, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water would be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq. 

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the former special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who oversaw the 2007 report on the dam, said ISIS could certainly use the dam as a weapon of war, but that it could also use it as a means of finance, by extorting money in exchange for water or electricity. 

ISIS has already used Iraq’s water supply as a weapon. Earlier this year it seized control of the Falluja Dam, in Anbar Province, and flooded a vast area that sent thousands of refugees fleeing, submerged hundreds of homes and several schools and interrupted the water supply to southern Iraq.

Ammar Jassim, a 35-year-old resident of Falluja, fled the city earlier this year not because of the fighting but because of the flooding. “We lost everything,” he said. “It was a water invasion.” 

If the Mosul Dam were to be damaged, “it would be like a tsunami coming down the Tigris,” said Azzam Alwash, a prominent environmentalist and engineer and the founder of Nature Iraq, a nonprofit group. 

ISIS is also battling for control of the Haditha Dam, Iraq’s second largest, which is also in Anbar Province. As of Thursday, the dam was still under the control of the Iraqi security forces and allied tribal fighters.

Given Obama's weakness and reluctance I think it is safe to say that ISIS will keep pressing its advantage.