The Road Back to Baghdad Part 3: The Reckoning

Early this morning US time, two 500-pound, laser-guided bombs were dropped by US forces on Islamic State (IS) targets outside of Erbil, Iraq. Overnight, the Obama administration shifted its policy of non-military intervention in the ever-expanding conflict with the Islamic State, citing both humanitarian and strategic concerns. Since June 2014, Islamic State has made several alarming advances in Iraq and Syria, claiming major cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul, and re-engaging Syrian government and rebel forces across the border.

Islamic State positions. Courtesy NY Times.

The capture of key territory in both countries has reinforced the extremist group’s financial and military resources, and in IS strongholds, a strict form of Islamic law is being enforced. The US airstrikes come on the heels of the displacement of tens of thousands of Yazidi Iraqis, whose religion has been deemed “devil worship” by IS and who were warned to “convert or die.” In his statement last night, US Pres. Barack Obama indicated that the decision to expand humanitarian and military aid was based on fears that “acts of genocide” may soon be carried out against Iraqi Yazidis, approximately 40,000 of whom are trapped without food or water on Sinjar Mountain in Kurdish Iraq.

Part 2: From Anbar to Aleppo and Back Again

The most recent violence in Iraq did not appear suddenly, as if from nowhere. It’s been brewing since the US troop withdrawal in 2011, and was established during the US occupation, as discussed in Part I of this essay series. The insurgency’s fires have been flamed by the civil war that has been raging in Syria for roughly the same period of time. The conflict’s regional extension is the topic of Part 2 of my essay series on the increasingly likely Iraqi civil war.

Part 2: From Anbar to Aleppo and Back Again

ISIS may have been born in Iraq, but it came of age in Syria. Founded in 2003 as a branch of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) dedicated to combatting the US occupation of Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq was one of many AQI-led terrorist groups that carried out attacks against both foreign forces and the newly elected Iraqi government of Nouri Al-Maliki during the civil war of 2006-2007. The group has long operated out of Al-Anbar province, while receiving aid and fighters from Syrian provinces across the border, where tribal connections run deeper than national boundaries. Despite a lull in attacks during the US surge, ISI operations began to ramp up as troop withdrawals began in 2009. The civilian death toll in Iraq has only continued to climb and each year reaches new, morbid heights:

And then came Syria. Already the launching ground and regrouping point for ISI attacks in Iraq, the rapid disintegration of government power in Syria provided the perfect vacuum for the group to step in and claim to join those fighting for freedom. At the same time as the final US troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Syria was descending into a civil war that would eventually act as a magnet for extremist groups including ISI, all of whom wanted a piece of the post-war spoils. The Islamic State in Iraq quickly transformed into the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (or “and Syria,” or “and the Levant”) to denote its expanded mission, and has now declared its name as simply “Islamic State,” indicating its goal of creating a caliphate that spans the Muslim world. In July 2012, ISI declared the “Breaking of the Walls” campaign, which culminated with over 500 militants freed in a prison break from the infamous Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad in July 2013. It broke off from Al Qaeda in January 2014, when arguments among the leadership over tactics and strategy apparently caused an irreparable rift.

Bread over Bombs: Why the US Should Not Strike Syria

Over the last week, The Global Atlas’s metaphorical lights have been off as the three lead contributors were either out of town, dealing with Allston Christmas, and starting the new school year and the flood of students and work that comes with it. In that week, Pres. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have raised the decibel level on the rhetoric surrounding the Syria crisis. Both have confirmed their belief that a chemical attack took place in late August, possibly followed by another; both have pointed the finger at Syrian President Bashar al-Asad; and both have hinted that military strikes will begin soon, but only with congressional approval. The likelihood of a strike increased this morning with the State Dept. ordering all of its non-emergency personnel out of Beirut, and issuing travel warnings for Turkey and Lebanon.

I’ve been pretty vocal in my criticism of the handling of the Syrian crisis, and I’m not about to change now: bombing Asad’s forces would be a huge mistake. It could have the allegedly unintended effect of toppling Asad; it could also very well prevent the use of chemical weapons by either side or others in the future, which of course is a desirable outcome. Yet its other effects would be so negative and detrimental to finding a sustainable peace in Syria that they would vastly outweigh any positives that could result from such a strike. As I have written before, the time for a military intervention has long passed, and toppling Asad without a negotiated settlement in place leaves us with unsavory choices for his replacement.

Syria’s Chemical War

The videos are heart-wrenching to watch: a young boy, screaming and crying with other children in the street while bodies lie around them. A young man convulses uncontrollably, while others are sprawled in the halls of what appears to be an overwhelmed medical clinic; some still shake and show signs of life, others are clearly dead. In what has become a hallmark of videos of massacres in Syria, makeshift morgues lined with scores of corpses leave no doubt that a massive attack has taken place. The surviving victims display many of the hallmark symptoms of sarin gas exposure: convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and dilated pupils, and the scale of the casualties only add weight to this conjecture.

Videos of the attack today in the Ghouta region east of Damascus killing hundreds of civilians will test the United States’ ability to stay out of the two-year-old civil war in Syria. Opposition leaders have already pointed their fingers at beleaguered president and war criminal Bashar al-Asad. US Pres. Barack Obama has previously listed chemical attacks as a “red line” that, if crossed, would automatically trigger American intervention. Yet despite confirming that it had “conclusive evidence” of such an attack in June, the government has yet to deliver the promised military aid to rebel groups. The amount of footage from today’s alleged attack makes it difficult to dispute that something horrific has taken place in Ghouta, yet there is little reason to believe a Western response will go much further than rhetoric and promises of aid.

The Asad regime denies that such an attack took place – and if it did, the government insists that it was at the hands of the opposition. There is, for once, good reason to be suspicious of the attack: it took place just a few miles from where the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team is staying in Damascus, after having arrived in Syria on Sunday. It seems counterintuitive that Asad would order an attack on a location that can be so easily and immediately accessed by UN inspectors, especially so soon after their arrival. The Asad regime has also been winning important battles using conventional methods, and there seems to be no good strategic reason that it would shift tactics now. In the chemical weapons attacks earlier this summer, evidence pointed not only to the regime’s use of sarin, but also to likely rebel use against government forces. Both groups claim the other is trying to frame them, and both may be right. If this is the case in Ghouta, then rebel groups murdered hundreds of their own supporters in order to gain Western support in the seemingly never-ending war against Asad, an unthinkable action.

A man lays an infant to rest among scores of victims. Courtesy AP.

Then again, the Asad regime could be growing increasingly confident that even if the UN team confirms the use of sarin, Western governments will still stay out of the Syrian civil war. Asad is many things, but an idiot isn’t one of them; he can sense as well as anyone else American and European reluctance to get involved in what would be a messy intervention, at a cost of billions of dollars to their already unbalanced budgets, not to mention on the side of rebels who may or may not end up supporting Western interests if they were to gain power. After all, the “conclusive evidence” of the sarin attacks earlier this summer cited by the American government has failed to provoke even the delivery of military aid, let alone boots on the ground.

The UN teams must answer questions of who is culpable for the attacks swiftly if there is to be hope of outside intervention. The conflict has already caused human suffering at a pace and scale that is unprecedented in regional history: over 100,000 have died in the civil war, and more than half of Syria’s population has been displaced both internally and abroad. The addition of chemical weapons will devastate an already shattered country, and lessen the likelihood of a peaceful transition when the dust clears. In the worst case scenario, chemical weapons alongside conventional warfare will render the country Syria a barren failed state, with stronghold controlled by warlords where massacres and human rights violations regularly take place. In the best, a timely intervention by outside forces to establish No-Fly Zones and safe havens for civilians while assisting the rebels to win militarily or force the regime to the negotiating table would at least leave Syria intact as a country. At this point in the conflict, that’s the best we can hope for, and that is nearly as depressing as the West’s lack of intervention for the last two years.

Why the World Needs a Bully: Syria and the Hegemonic Stability Theory

By Guest-Writer Paul Mitchell

Like it or not, the United Nations and the “international community” which it purportedly represents, is allowing the death of a country and endangering the stability – if we can call it that – of the entire Middle East.  Whether you want to call the situation in Syria a mere crisis, a revolution, a revolt, or a rebellion, a reported death toll of over 70,000 people can be called nothing other than an atrocity.  The brutality is magnified by the fact that one side is using military aircraft, armor, and weaponry, and is fighting a civilian force that had been largely disarmed over years of oppressive rule.  With recent reports that chemical weapons have been used, and with a US President that had implicitly drawn a line in the sand regarding the use of such weapons, something has to be done, right?  Unfortunately, with a US President who, like former President Bill Clinton, believes whole-heartedly in the merits and capabilities of the United Nations, the answer is no.

Where have all the good guys gone? How the West lost Syria

Events have not been kind to the Syrian rebels of late. Bashar al-Asad’s* victories in Damascus and its environs and suspected use of chemical weapons were the first blows. The arms shipment from Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah declaring outright military assistance to the regime, and the continued refusal of the West to provide meaningful aid have almost certainly spelled an end to the rebels’ hopes of military victory. Even the lifting of an E.U. embargo on arms to Syria does not mean that the arms will be forthcoming any time soon. The looming question remains: even if we wanted to support the rebellion with arms, who exactly would we give them to?

Sen. John McCain pays a surprise visit to Syrian rebels this week. Too bad for them he didn't bring any guns.

Certainly not Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate that has emerged as a power player on the rebel side. Despite their odious ideology, the Nusra Front has proved a great asset to the rebels, assisting greatly in the battle for Aleppo. Any rebel victory would mean that the group would have a say in Syria’s future, and if their positions thus far give any indication, most Syrians – who have traditionally been one of the most secular societies in the Middle East – would not like it. Aside from Jabhat Al-Nusra, a proliferation of other extremist Islamist groups have taken control of towns throughout Syria, as indicated in this Crisis Group report. They, too, have had enough military successes now that the Islamist share in a new government would be quite large.

What about the Syrian opposition’s leader, Gen. Salim Idris? Could we funnel the weapons through him? This, too, proves a challenging proposition. The West would have no way of knowing who the weapons were going to, especially given the shifting loyalties of rebel fighters on the ground to one faction or another. As the bloody conflict drags on, more and more fighters are being radicalized or simply want to join the strongest side, and that has been the Islamist groups. As discussed above, these groups are also intrinsically linked to the rest of the Free Syrian Army. If the West were to provide arms to the Free Syrian Army, it would have to accept that these groups are part and parcel of that movement, and that one day we could regret our decision to arm anti-American militias. Think Afghanistan, but in the dead center of the Middle East, right across the border from Iraq.

If Western leaders find it too risky to provide arms, the only two options left are to intervene with our own militaries, or let the Syrians fight it out and continue attempts to reach a negotiated settlement. The first option is not on the table. In fact, it’s so far off the table it’s down the street hiding in the neighbor’s house hoping to never be brought to the table. The second seems to be the most likely policy pursued by the West, said or unsaid. The rebels have already said they will boycott upcoming peace talks in Geneva, although Asad has committed to attending. It appears that they either still have hope of Western assistance, or the violence has been to such a degree that reaching an agreement with a man who slaughtered thousands of his own people is to onerous to imagine. It is an understandable sentiment, but at the same time a negotiated settlement might be the best option left for the opposition. It would guarantee them a place in a new government, and perhaps even offer the option of an exit by Asad. Otherwise, there is no telling how many more lives will be lost, how many more people will be displaced, and how much of a ruin Syria will be when the dust and blood settle.

The aftermath of a recent government massacre in Bayda. 

The sick irony of Lebanon interfering in Syria’s conflict less than a decade after the Syrian government pulled out of its own thirty-year-long occupation of Lebanon should be lost on no one. Syria is becoming Lebanon circa 1975-1990. This is a good and bad thing: despite a protracted civil conflict that dragged out for decades and spilled over into its neighbors, Lebanon’s civil war did not cause the region to implode. Yet the degree of spillover is might higher in the Syrian conflict. Lebanon’s civil war generated a million refugees in 15 years. Syria reached that number in two. Its potential to ignite a region that has already experienced so many upheavals in the last decade is much greater than that of Lebanon.

As I write this article, I hate the words I have to say. I loathe Bashar al-Asad. Any human being that is capable of the crimes he has committed deserves to be in a very, very small cell for the rest of his days. I wanted the rebels to win militarily from the outset of the conflict. If the West had acted a year ago, six months ago even, that could still be an option. But the hard truth is, there are no more good guys in this conflict. The rebel side has committed atrocities of its own and has increasingly been taken over by radicals and extremists. The “good guys” lost this civil war a long, long time ago. It’s not an answer than anyone wants, but the West and especially the United States chose it. We chose it by not acting. We chose it by not helping. Now we have to live with it; that, and the blood of nearly a hundred thousand Syrian people on our already very unclean hands. Unfortunately, the only outcome of this civil war appears to be the maintenance in power of a dictator, a proliferation of extremism, and millions of Syrians whose lives have unalterably changed for the worse. Faced with these facts, I can’t help but ask, what was it all for?

*Since I’ve been getting a lot of comments on this spelling, I believe I owe the readers an explanation. In Arabic, Assad indicates an actual doubling of the “s” sound, marked by a symbol known as a “shadda.” There is no “shadda” on Asad’s name, meaning that it is pronounced without the doubling of the “s.” Therefore, the proper transliteration is “Asad” with one “s.” BOOM four years of Arabic! Now you can go forth with that knowledge and feel superior about it.