Terrorism 2014: Ten Questions about Daesh The presidents recent speech and decision to resume bombing in Iraq has caused many of my friends to ask me good questions about the terrorism threat we now face, questions that I have also been asking myself. Here is a sample of their questions and my understanding of the answers. 1. Why is there a panic now to do something about ISIS or ISIL or whatever they are called? I am going to call them what the Arabs call them, Daesh. It is s transliterated acronym, but it also has a derogatory connotation, so that is what I will call them. The panic is occasioned by two things. First, they overran the Iraqi Army and took a lot of territory quickly in August, including the large city of Mosul. Second, they have been adept at media manipulation and have broadcast gruesome videos, including two that showed beheadings of Americans. The truth is that Daesh have been growing in strength for some time. Washington policy makers and the media are just now noticing. 2. Who are these guys? They were originally called al Qaeda in Iraq or al Qaeda in the land between the two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates). They were a regional affiliate of al Qaeda, like the ones in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa. The members were largely Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Saudi. Initially, they fought the US in Iraq. Then, driven out by the US and local Sunnis, they shifted their attention to Syria and became the largest of the groups fighting the Assad government. Now, in 2014, they have focused on Iraq again, while still fighting in Syria. They called themselves al Qaeda at a time when it was popular among some Arab groups to be associated with bin Ladin. As his star dimmed, they grew more independent. After he died, the regional groups paid less attention to al Qaeda Central, which was telling them to be less violent to fellow Muslims. Eventually, they renamed themselves to show their independence of al Qaeda. Disaffected youths seeking a combat experience somewhere increasingly went to Daesh. It was easy to get to them from Turkey or Lebanon or Kuwait. They were welcoming to any Arab Sunni, regardless of nationality. Their excesses and aggressiveness in fighting in Syria, along with their media savvy, made them attractive to young people out to change the world, out to set up a Caliphate in which there would be true Islam, justice, and prosperity. Their recent fighting in Iraq has been done in conjunction with the not very religious ex-Army Sunnis who were thrown out of the Army after the US invasion. Most of this group were previously pro-Saddam Hussein Baathists. In addition, some local Sunni groups in Iraq have worked with Daesh out of frustration with the anti-Sunni measures taken by the Baghdad government, particularly after the US pulled out 3. Why should the US care about what group is predominant in Syria or Iraq? For a long time, we did not really care who ran Syria or Iraq. After 9-11, however, we looked back on how al Qaeda had been able to grow so strong. Part of the reason was that they had a sanctuary nation, Afghanistan, a country where they could do what they wanted. In Afghanistan, they trained thousands of terrorists from scores of countries. They then sent some of those coverts back to their home countries to conduct terrorist attacks. So, one of our post 9-11 lessons was do not allow failed states where terrorist can set up pseudo-governments and create sanctuaries. The truth is, however, that al Qaeda did not need a big, nation sized, sanctuary to conduct the 9-11 attacks. Most of the attackers met up and plotted in Germany. Nonetheless, allowing terrorists to run a country is not a good idea because eventually they will get around to trying to spread their control and ideology elsewhere, breeding international instability. 4. Are they going to attack in the US? Homeland Security and FBI say they have no evidence of an active plot by Daesh to attack in the US. Of course, the FBI said that prior to 9-11 too. Deash does talk about attacking the US in its propaganda and there is no reason to doubt that they would like to do so. We may not know enough about them to identify a cell in the US until it acts. Many of the Daesh recruits are from countries from which citizens can come to the US without a travel visa. Many may be clean skins, the term used by FBI to describe terrorists whose names we do not know and who, therefore, could get by our Do Not Fly and Do Not Enter lists. Attacking the US in a big way would increase the attractiveness and popularity of Daesh among the anti-American strands of the Islamic world. A big attack would probably lead to more recruits and more financial donations. 5. Will bombing them in Iraq and/or Syria stop them from attacking in the US? No, bombing them will not stop them from being able to attack in the US. Eliminating the organization will remove them as a threat, but will take more than just bombing, more than just military measures. Functioning governments in Syria and Iraq are also needed and creating such governments is a long way off. It will also require creating an Islamic, ideological counter-weight. There is little sign of that emerging, although some Muslim governments have begun to use their media to discredit Daesh. 6. Do these guys want us to attack them? If so, should we do what they want? Yes, they do want us to attack them. Fighting the US gets them more recruits and more money. They want to depict themselves as fighting the non-Islamic Americans, rather than just fellow Muslims who believe things that are different than what Daesh preaches. It is tempting to think that if they want us to fight them, maybe we should ignore them. The problem is that they will keep escalating their attacks on the US, from beheading American citizens to blowing up US embassies, to attacking anything American in the Middle East to here in the US. We can, however, try to avoid giving them what they want (a US-Daesh War) by making sure that Muslims are in the fight against the, beginning with Iraqis and Syrians, as well as the other nations they threaten next: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, the UAE. 7, Can we beat them without US boots on the ground? No, but maybe we can defeat them without American ground combat units going back in to Iraq or entering into the Syrian war. The Iraqis, the Syrian Army and other Syrian rebel groups, Iran, Egypt, the Saudi, and others could all put boots on the ground. The US should try to limit its ground presence to trainers, advisors, and troops guarding US facilities. It may be necessary, from time to time, to do a raid involving US Special Forces, to rescue hostages or capture Daesh leaders. If the Arabs who are threatened by Daesh think we will do the fighting for them they will gladly let us. If we refuse to be the ground combat force, they may step up and do what is necessary. If they do not, then we have a bigger problem and one that can not be solved by any number of US ground forces. If the Arabs do not effectively fight Daesh with our help (air power, intelligence, etc), then we will need to rethink our strategy for and presence in the region. So far, there are good signs that many Arab nations will oppose Daesh. 8. So by fighting these guys are we helping Assad, the President of Syria who we said must go and helping the Iranians? Yes. Daesh is fighting to overthrow Assad and the US has said it would like to see him overthrown because of his gross human rights abuses of the Sunni majority in his country. Iran is helping prop up Assad. Iran is also supporting the Iraqi government that Daesh is seeking to overthrow. Iran is a majority Shia Islamic nation and they support Shia groups elsewhere, including in Syria (where the government of Assad is run by people who are an off shoot of Shia) and Iraq (where the majority is Shia and the government in Baghdad is mainly Shia). The Daesh are all Sunnis are consider the Shia to be apostate, not true Muslims. We do not have to work directly with the Assad government or the Iranians, but we do now share a desired outcome, the end of Daesh. At the same time, or after the end of Daesh, the US will continue to support the goal of a new government in Syria that includes the majority Sunni. The US will also seek to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq and elsewhere, but for now we and Tehran are both pursuing the same outcome when it comes to Daesh. If we succeed in defeating Daesh, we will have to renew our efforts to contain Iran so that all of our work against Daesh did not just do Irans job for it, opening new opportunities for them. That will require skillful diplomacy, intelligence operations, and focus from Washington. 9. How long will our fight against Daesh go on and what are our chances of winning? Years. The first phase is to remove Daeshs military capability and its control of cities. It may be possible to eject them from Iraqi cities in the next two years, but the key to that will be whether Iraqi Sunnis will join in the effort. The Iraqi Sunnis feel that the US used them to fight al Qaeda in Iraq during our occupation, then we abandoned them to the Shia government in Baghdad that abused them. They are, of course, right in believing that. It will, therefore, be hard to bring them around to fighting al Qaeda again. They will need more than promises. The US idea of an Iraqi National Guard made up of local personnel is really a way of giving the Iraqi Sunnis their own army to use against Daesh and then to use to protect themselves from the Baghdad government. The Iraqi National Guard does not yet exist. Kicking Daesh out of cities in Syria will be harder because there is no realistic prospect of a fighting force capable of doing that in the foreseeable future. The Assad government forces have made some progress, but they are weakened by years of war. The moderate Syrian opposition is small in numbers and capabilities. Iran has introduced small numbers of its own military and moved in Hizballah fighters from Lebanon,, but probably not in sufficient numbers to hold on to the territory they have and evict Daesh from cities like Raqqa. Its possible that three or five years from now Daesh will still have control of some swarth of Syria and Iraq, but the more likely scenario is that they will have reverted to more of a traditional terrorist group, running covert cells in cities nominally controlled by a central government. What they represent, however, disaffected Sunnis who resent the rest of the world, who distort Islam, who use violence, that is a phenomenon likely to continue for much of this century. Demographics and economic projections in many Sunni nations are not encouraging that the conditions that spawn this disaffection will pass away any time soon. 10. This is becoming something of a partisan issue in the US. Some on the right are saying the Obama administration let this go on too long and its new strategy is insufficient. Some on the left are saying that we should stay out. Who is correct? There is a little truth in what both sides say, but they do not seem to be offering realistic alternatives. It is true that the Obama administration let Daesh grow without taking steps against it for too long. They did, it seems, take their eye off the ball for a bit. Wanting to pivot to Asia and do nation building in the US, they were reluctant to conduct counter-terrorism operations in Iraq or Syria. The Administration did not want to help the Damascus government of Assad or the Baghdad government of Maliki, for different reasons, and thus the US did not act in either Syria or Iraq against al Qaeda/Daesh there. The result was a sanctuary in which they could grow. In Yemen and Somalia, the US used military, intelligence, and other means against al Qaeda, but not in Iraq (after US troops left) or in Syria. The Administration looked at what was going on in Syria as an issue of dealing with Assad. They saw events in Iraq as an issue of dealing with Malaki, then the prime minister. There was no one in a senior policy position who looked across those countries from a strategic counter-terrorism perspective, no one with a political military perspective. Now, the president has brought back General John Allen from retirement to provide that strategic counter-terrorism, political military expertise. Those on the right who say that what the president has proposed to do is insufficient have not detailed what they would do, but they imply that they would put US ground combat units back in to Iraq and maybe even into Syria. How anyone can think of doing that again after the costly American experience in Iraq is beyond me. Another US invasion would play right into the hands of al Qaeda or Deash and, it would not work. Those on the left who think we can ignore the situation in Iraq and Syria are also engaging in wishful thinking. Yes, we created much of this mess by invading Iraq in 2003. Yes, there is no military solution to the problem of Daesh, but a military component is necessary, necessary but insufficient. The unfortunate truth is that the forces in the Middle East who share our values still need our help. Right now, they can not defeat the forces of human oppression without us.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 13:54:57 +0000
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