The Far Enemy Attacks ISIS Bases in Northern Syria: Don't Expect Anything to Change Much

With the U.S. bombing Islamic State's stronghold in northern Syria, it is important to read the story by David Kirkpatrick and Omar al-Jawoshy that accompanies it on the front page. 

"Weeks of U.S. Strikes Fail to Dislodge ISIS in Iraq" confirms the pessimistic assessment provided yesterday on Counterpunch by veteran Middle East reporter Patrick Cockburn, "The Absurdity of U.S. Policy in Syria":

Likewise in Iraq, air strikes can only do so much. The government in Baghdad and the Iraqi army are still Shia-dominated and, however much the Sunni in Iraq dislike IS, they are even more frightened of its opponents. The US will try to split Sunni tribes and neighbourhoods away from the fundamentalists as it did in 2007, but there were then 150,000 US troops in the country and al-Qa’ida in Iraq was much weaker than IS. At the same time, it will find it difficult to advance further because, aside from Baghdad, it has already seized the areas where live the 20 per cent of Iraqis who are Sunni Arab. In Syria at least 60 per cent of the population are Sunni Arabs, meaning that IS’s natural constituency is much bigger.

Kirkpatrick and Jawoshy outline the problems the U.S. is having in kick-starting the Sunni Awakening:

The Sunni tribes of Anbar and other areas drove Qaeda-linked militants out of the area seven years ago with American military help, in what became known as the Sunni Awakening. But the tribes’ alienation from the subsequent authoritarian and Shiite-led government in Baghdad opened the door for the extremists of the Islamic State to return this year.

The foundation of the Obama administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is the installation of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a more responsive government and rebuild Sunni support. But, though at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the army in places like Haditha, influential Sunni sheikhs who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.

Myriad local Sunni sheikhs are reading from the playbook written in Riyadh (or Langley -- who can tell anymore?):

“The Sunnis in Anbar and other provinces are facing oppression and discrimination by the government,” said Mohamed el-Bajjari, a sheikh in Anbar who is a spokesman for a coalition of tribes. “This government must be changed to form a technocratic government of nonsectarian secular people, or the battles and the anger of the Sunni people will continue.” 

Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by Mr. Abadi, whom Mr. Obama has hailed as the face of a more inclusive government. They said the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State. (An American official involved in the effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity according to diplomatic protocol, said some governors had asked for renewed airstrikes to stop new Islamic State advances.)

Bear in mind this is the same line used by USG to pressure Malaki to step down. The Sunni sheikhs are now using it against Abadi. Kirkpatrick and Jawoshy leave the reader with the impression that ISIS still has a tremendous amount of support among Iraq's Sunni sheikhs:

In Dhuluiya, a town famous here as where the mostly Sunni Jabouri tribe has held out during a three-month siege by the Islamic State’s forces, local fighters said their Sunni neighbors had abandoned them. 

“The Sunni tribes’ role here is almost nonexistent,” said Ali al-Jabouri, a local fighter. “There are many tribes in the villages near here, but they were not serious about joining us to combat the Islamic State, and until now none of them have joined us.” 

In some places, the Iraqi Army has turned over captured territory to the police, who quickly lose control back to the Islamic State. Other Sunni leaders, however, insisted that things would improve. 

Wasfi al-Aasi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader who leads a pro-government council of sheikhs in Baghdad, said the biggest tribes had signaled their support against the Islamic State and were establishing “national guard” units in six provinces. “The next few days will bring good news,” he said. 

He said the tribal leaders who expressed disappointment in the government were “all with the Islamic State.”

The story ends with ISIS tallying a significant victory in Anbar by overrunning Camp Saqlawiya north of Falluja and slaughtering the Iraqi troops inside:

A week ago, for example, a force of about 800 soldiers found themselves stranded at Camp Saqlawiya in Anbar, cut off from the rest of the army behind Islamic State lines without food, water, fuel or, eventually, ammunition, according to soldiers who escaped. Finally, on Sunday, an army tank unit based in Ramadi, outside Anbar, made its way through a road mined with explosives to within 500 yards of the base, said a soldier in the group who gave his name as Abu Moussa. 

Seeing the rescuers, the soldiers inside opened the gates and ran out, he said. But groups of Islamic State fighters suddenly poured out of neighboring buildings and surged forward in armored vehicles with heavy-weapon mounts. At least two armed vehicles rigged with bombs made it into the base and exploded. 

The tanks retreated, Abu Moussa said, crushing bodies of dead soldiers underneath them. “I have not seen such fire and blood for 10 years” in the military, he said. “It is a disaster.”

So yesterday when I said that the caliphate had been successfully stymied by American air power, I was not being accurate. ISIS always reaches for the long-hanging fruit; it is a fighting force that is always on the offensive. In addition to the victory at Camp Saqlawiya, ISIS also sent over one-hundred thousand Syrian Kurds across the border into Turkey when it attacked the Kurdish enclave of Kobani. Ben Hubbard, Alan Cowell and Helene Cooper report in "U.S. and Allies Strike ISIS Targets in Syria" that:

On Syria’s northern border, meanwhile, more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled into Turkey to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters. The humanitarian catastrophe could worsen within days. the United Nations relief agency in Geneva said on Tuesday that it was making contingency plans for all 400,000 inhabitants of a Syrian Kurdish border town to try to flee into Turkey.

The story's celebration of the power of the U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS camps in northern Syria (". . . a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering their forces and damaging the network of facilities . . . .") gives way to a more pessimistic evaluation:

Some of Syria’s allies have suggested that the government in Damascus would benefit from strikes, although analysts question whether the Syrian military has the forces it would need to do so. 

Syria also has hundreds of rebels groups, many of which hate the Islamic State, and the United States has been working with allies to build up a small number groups deemed moderate. But these forces remain relatively small and are far from the Islamic State’s locations, so there is little chance that they will soon be able to seize control of any areas vacated by the Islamic State.

Now comes the part where Islamic State will pivot to the "Far Enemy." threatening attacks on the Western coalition of nations that is attacking it:

Reuters quoted an unidentified ISIS fighter as saying “these attacks will be answered.” The militants have already released videos showing the beheadings of two American hostages and of one British captive, and have threatened a fourth hostage, a Briton, with the same fate. 

Additionally, an Algerian group linked to Islamic State has claimed to have kidnapped a French citizen. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told French radio that there would be “no discussion, no negotiation and we will never give in to blackmail” about the hostage’s fate.

We'll see if ISIS sticks to its strategy of plucking the low-hanging fruit. Jordan was part of the coalition of Sunni sheikhs (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain were the others) that participated in the airstrikes on northern Syria. If I were al-Baghdadi I would think Jordan is the juiciest piece of fruit hanging lowest off the branch. But if the caliphate is centrally controlled from the House of Saud, no such attacks will be in the offing. There will be more decapitations of Western aid workers and journalists and maybe some subway bombs in Europe.