Who Is Going To Fight with Islamists?

Everyone can send aircraft; infantry is what needed.

It is impossible to understand the current events in Iraq and Syria without considering such an important factor as Sunni-Shiite confrontation. The continual conflict is almost 1,500 years old, but now it is escalating. Barack Obama was accused of delaying the war against jihadi. Now it is clear that he had his reasons. If he launched the airstrikes right after the Islamic State group had seized Mosul, he would become an object of severe criticism from both American society (“What kind of president is it? One day he withdraws the troops from Iraq, and the next he starts the war again in the same place! Absurd!”) and Sunni extremists’ propaganda (“As soon as their Sunni friends got involved, those enemies of Islam start fighting!”).

And only when the jihadi, having declared caliphate, moved toward Iraqi Kurdistan, did Obama fling the Air Force into the battle: Letting the Islamic State group enslave Kurds — the only reliable U.S. allies in the region — was out of the question. Unwillingly, America has entered a new war: first in Iraq, and then, inevitably, in Syria, where the Islamic State group’s main base is located.

And wars need to be won. Here is Obama’s problem: The Islamic State group has to be destroyed. The organization is the brainchild of bin Laden, who instructed his followers to kill Americans anywhere possible. Airstrikes are effective, but they need to be extremely careful. As soon as images of dead bodies of women and children killed by American bombs appear in the media, jihadi propaganda will make the most out of it: Here are victims of American aggressors who united with Shiites against Islam. Sunni extremists understand Islam as their faith. As for Shiites, for instance, the leader of the group “al-Qaida in Iraq” (the very organization that is now called Islamic State), al-Zarqawi, called Shiites “a formidable obstacle, lurking snake, cunning and malicious scorpion, spying enemy, deep penetrating venom.”*

Al-Zarqawi was killed by an American drone in Iraq, but al-Baghdadi, who replaced him, led the forces which occupied one-third of Iraq and one-fourth of Syria. And, unfortunately, it is clear that the common Sunni people in Arab East do not perceive the Islamic State group as murderers, but as true defenders of Islam.

How to defeat the Islamic State group? Airstrikes are not enough and American people will not let a ground operation happen, so the local — Arab, that is — forces have to be used.

But out of 21 Arab countries, 20 are mostly Sunni. It is unrealistic to expect enthusiasm from Sunni soldiers about a war with Sunni militants. Islamists’ incessant propaganda will be trying to convince Sunnis that a cursed wicked trinity — Americans, Shiites and Zionists — is against them. And many will add Kurds as a fourth element — for centuries the relationship with them has been far from being perfect. It is unrealistic to hope that Arab Sunni infantry will fight on equal terms with fearless fanatics, for whom the greatest happiness is to die for their faith.

Resort to help from Iran? The Iranian army could certainly defeat Islamic State group militants, but that would look exactly like a big Shiite anti-Sunni front, and would again set Arab people against the U.S. and Gulf countries.

And now we need to consider the second element of the whole problem — Syria. The situation there is more complex than in Iraq because those fighting against the Islamic State group also consider Bashar al-Assad’s regime their enemy. But when, despite loud protests, from Russian diplomats as well, the U.S. Air Force launched airstrikes on Syrian territory against Islamic State group objects, this very regime suddenly announced that they “didn’t mind.” A lot of diplomats and journalists were probably confused when Damascus renounced all claims to the very Americans who just a year ago were ready to bomb the positions of government forces because of the chemical weapons situation.

The explanation is simple: Assad understands what could destroy him. If the caliphate strengthens its position and consolidates its forces (more and more volunteer Muslims are coming from all over the world), then, even if the Islamic State group doesn’t move toward Jordan and Saudi Arabia, this faction would not tolerate Alawi (almost Shiite) government in Syria. The capital of the caliphate should definitely be Damascus, like in the old days. And in this case, Gadhafi’s fate awaits Assad.

And what about the Americans? For now, they do not pose real danger for him; they are in discussions with Iran about the nuclear weapons problem. If the negotiations end successfully, the threat of Israeli-Iranian (and therefore American-Iranian) war will disappear and Syrian dictator will be of no interest for Washington. After all, personally Assad didn’t do any harm to the West; there has never been and will not be any hatred toward him in America. He just needed to be removed as an Iran ally.

However, there are also American allies — the great Sunni nations Turkey and Saudi Arabia. For them defeating the Islamic State group (although it’s their enemy as well) is as important as bringing down Shiite government in Damascus. No doubt, if Turkey brought troops to Syria, it would have defeated the Islamic State group, while, on the sly, overturning Assad’s regime. But here we have a parallel with Iran. Besides a 1,000-year-old confrontation between the Arabs and the Persians, bringing troops to Iraq is impossible because of these factors: It would prove Sunni Islamists’ main thesis about creating a Shiite-American anti-Islam front; veterans of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980s are still alive, as well as relatives of hundreds of thousands of the fallen. Persian soldiers on Arab land would have infuriated even Iraqi Shiites. Tehran’s help to the Iraqi government (and consequently, rather ironically, to the Washington-led coalition) consists of undercover operations by an Iranian task force (it is probably already happening). Bringing Turkish troops to Syria would have the same adverse effect: For so many centuries Syria, like other Arab countries, was a province of the Ottoman Empire — and here are the Turks on Arab land again! Which would bring about Arab nationalism, not just religious strife.

As it turns out, Islamist murderers have nothing to fear — which is why they continue beheading absolutely innocent people.

Georgiy Ilyich Mirskiy is a senior research scientist at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.