ISIS, Kohrasan, and America's Begrudging March Towards War

It's been a long week.

I wrote two weeks ago about President Obama's new foray into intervention in Iraq, using airstrikes to weaken ISIS strongholds throughout the country. Vicky followed up with an excellent piece arguing that intervention was nothing new for Obama, and perhaps she's right. However, these airstrikes were arguably a bold move for a President more accustomed to surreptitious drone strikes and more covert action as opposed to this new, more broadened campaign. Surely Obama is beginning to step out of his comfort zone.

The past two weeks have seen ISIS continue to use their disturbingly impressive PR prowess to dominate headlines both in the U.S. and abroad. Many continued the dialogue of exactly how much of a threat ISIS was, but most everyone agreed that they did pose a significant threat to the Western world. The Congress and Senate gave approval for the U.S. to begin deploying arms and military advisors to Syria in an attempt to equip and train the floundering rebel movement that has been fighting President Asad's troops, among others, for two years now. This was a striking decision - and not because of the complexity of equipping and training rebel militants in the worst warzone in the world. This decision was striking because of what it meant domestically: after an arduous few years of being deadlocked with the Republican-controlled House, President Obama was somehow able to get Congress to pass a bill, and rather quickly. The fear that ISIS has brought to America's doorstep has lead to lawmakers and the American people alike to rally behind Obama, and support him in his efforts to combat these Islamic radicals. As a recent Pew Research poll noted, the majority of Americans now think that President Obama must be "tougher" in his foreign policy - a figure that would have been impossible to believe as he assumed the Presidency in 2008.

Early this week, President Obama took one step further outside of his comfort zone with similar airstrikes targeting ISIS territory in Syria, as well as renewed strikes in Iraq. This came after reports about some new, even scarier terrorist organization hiding out in Syria, that posed an even graver threat to American interests: Khorasan. Somehow able to have remained incognito until now, Khorasan is a group of former al Qaeda members that, like al Qaeda, have specific interest in attacks against America and Western Europe. As many experts have noted, unlike al Qaeda, ISIS is interested primarily in carving out their own territory and establishing a theocracy in which they can subject their people to strict Sharia law. Sure, disruptions to this plan such as American airstrikes will draw ire and could present ugly repercussions for America, but they are no al Qaeda in the sense that they exist solely to promulgate anti-American ideology and harm as many Westerners as possible in frightening, grandiose attacks. President Obama's airstrikes in Syria were a direct response to Khorasan, and it was reported shortly after the strikes began that the U.S. had thwarted an "imminent" plot to harm Americans.

Interestingly, the strikes came as Obama took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly this week, where on Wednesday he talked about the threat terrorist organizations like ISIS and Khorasan pose not just to the West, but to the entire world. He made a point of emphasizing the coalition of Middle Eastern countries he had rapidly assembled to carry out the strikes in Syria, and called on an even broader coalition to support even broader efforts to deter these groups in the future. Notably, when President Obama took the stage at the General Assembly last year this time, it was following his decision not to call for airstrikes in Syria, despite President Asad having crossed Obama's "red line" and using chemical weapons on his people. The changes from Obama's candor then and today is truly striking.

What comes next is anyone's guess. ISIS has shown no signs of slowing down, despite increased airstrikes today and new targets of oil fields they control, which keep them flush with cash. The Iraqi Prime Minister alluded to plotted attacks on American and European subway systems by terrorists in his speech before the General Assembly today, causing an immediate panic despite the fact that his words were difficult to immediately corroborate. And many analysts have expressed skepticism of the broad airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, as this can potentially strengthen Asad's army and terrorist groups such as Khorasan, who along with fighting the rebels, have also opposed ISIS' rise. For now, the strikes will continue, and it appears Obama has substantial support in his efforts.

Let's just hope next week isn't as crazy.

This Means War?

A pro-Russian separatists looks at the crash site.
Courtesy Reuters/Maxim Zmeyev.

When I looked at my computer yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought something had gone terribly wrong with the BBC’s servers, or I was suffering from some serious déjà vu, because there was no way another Malaysia Airlines plane had crashed. There was definitely no way that it crashed over the Ukraine, or that it had been deliberately shot down. But as the afternoon wore on, it became apparent that the nightmare was, in fact, reality: a plane flying from a NATO member country to Malaysia had been downed with what looked like a surface-to-air missile strike, killing the almost 300 people on board and setting the stage for World War III.

Tensions are high, but rhetoric (with the exception of good old Uncle Joe) has remained relatively low-key as countries wait to find out who launched the attack. Calls for investigations by an international body, or by the Ukrainian government, have come from every corner. The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss how the international community can move forward. Yet for a few hours yesterday, it looked, and felt, like NATO was about to go into Ukraine, and Russia would inevitably follow, and the world would be left to watch in horror as another global war broke out.

That the missile used to strike the plane was likely Russian-made is the one of the most dangerous aspects of this latest crisis. The Ukrainian government has been accusing Russia of supplying the rebel separatists in the east with advanced weaponry, including antiaircraft missiles, for weeks, and has been met with staunch Russian denials. Despite the accusations that the rebels or the Russians shot down the plane, representatives of the People’s Republic of Donetsk deny they can shoot down planes over 10,000 feet, and the Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down from 32,000. The rebels (and Pres. Putin) have accused the Ukrainian government itself of shooting down the plane, in an effort to earn the separatists international condemnation.

Yet one of the rebel leaders posted on social media Thursday that they had shot down a Ukrainian military transport, a suspected misidentification due to the similar colors in the Malaysia Airlines logo. Once the news broke that the plane was a passenger jet, the post was removed. The attack also came just one day after the US confirmed that Russia had fired its first missiles into Ukraine, and had imposed further sanctions on Russia as a result.

Given the climate of heavy suspicion against Russia and its separatist proxies in Ukraine, one can understand Putin’s call for peace talks this morning, as well as his direct request to the rebels that they lay down their arms. Yesterday, he had accused the Ukrainian government of the attack; today, he appears to have moderated his stance, but “did not address the key question of whether Russia gave the rebels such a powerful missile.”

Buk missile system, the suspected culprit.

One guess is, as has happened many times before in the US-Russia geopolitical struggle, Russia simply didn’t consider the consequences of arming a proxy war. Rebels often go against the wishes of their supposed masters, and it is difficult to control what inexperienced separatists will do with advanced weaponry once it has been given to them. It appears at this point that if the rebels did shoot down the plane, they did so believing that it was a Ukrainian military transport, of which they’ve already shot down two in recent weeks.

What is certain is that determining responsibility, while the first item on the international community’s agenda, will be difficult given the lack of access to the area. AP reports that to get to the crash site from rebel-held Donetsk, one must pass through five checkpoints with document checks at each. The confusion of the rebels who are currently grappling with an international incident with very little, if any, experience doing so, is apparent in the differing statements given by their representatives. While one reported this morning that no black box had been found, another said that eight of twelve recording devices from the plane had been recovered.

Compounding the tragedy are the three hundred lives that were senselessly lost in a conflict that most, if not all, had nothing to do with. More than collateral damage, their deaths represent the danger of arming proxy groups with such advanced and dangerous weapons, only to let them loose in another country. The victims included a large contingent of high-level AIDS researchers en route to an AIDS conference in Kuala Lumpur, and their deaths have caused an torrent of grief in the scientific community.

Whoever is responsible, the greatest danger now is that miscommunication or the lack of communication between the US and Russia will allow this international incident to spiral into regional armed conflict, one that would likely include Russia and NATO forces. Yet if Russia disavows the rebels, coaxes them into a cease-fire or peace deal, or even helps Ukraine to suppress them, this could be an opportunity to improve frosty US-Russian relations. If cooler heads are allowed to prevail, and a solution for the situation in the Ukraine can be found out of this tragedy, then the 300 lives lost will not have been completely in vain.

The Ones the World Forgot: The Syrian Refugee Crisis

The following is an adaptation of a presentation I gave on April 12, 2014 at the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies conference:

Since last writing on this topic in February, the news emanating from the Syrian refugee crisis has only gotten worse. There are now close to 2.7 million refugees who have fled the Syrian conflict, the majority of whom have settled in Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. There are almost 14 million people who are in need of aid in the region as a result of the conflict, and funds from the international community have hardly been forthcoming: the UNHCR’s appeal for 4.2 billion dollars is only 14% funded, while UNICEF’s 222 million dollar appeal is less than 12% funded. Without these desperately needed resources, UN agencies as well as over one hundred other humanitarian agencies can do little to mitigate the devastating effects of the Syrian conflict on the region.

The effects of the crisis on Syria’s neighbors are becoming more acute, and more violent. In Lebanon, clashes not only in the north of the country but also in Beirut have led to scores of casualties and deaths. A Syrian refugee mother recently set herself on fire in front of a UN building in Tripoli because she was unable to feed her four children on the small amount that aid agencies and the government are currently struggling to provide. Lebanon also passed the “devastating milestone” of one million Syrian refugees this month, and refugees now make up a quarter of the population, the largest per capita concentration of refugees in the world.

War without End in the Congo

It is a civil war (or rather a series of them) that has led to the deaths of 5.4 million people since 1998. More than 2.6 million people are displaced within the country, and after nearly two decades the conflict is heating up, not abating. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo captures few headlines and elicits only low-level diplomatic attention. In one of the world’s only failed states, more than 30 armed groups murder and rape thousands every year, including the March 23 Movement (M23) that is leading the largest offensive against the central government in Kinshasa and is widely believed to be funded and organized by the Rwandan government. The Congolese government itself knows it is involved in a shadow war with neighboring Rwanda, and the extreme levels of sexual violence and the exploitation of conflict minerals are its result.

As was pointed out by Jason Stearns in a recent Foreign Affairs article, outside observers have done little to address the conflict’s roots, instead fueling the fires by providing “over 40 percent of the budgets of Congo and Rwanda.” While conflicts in high-interest areas such as the Middle East (I am of course referring to Syria) are at least paid commensurate high-level diplomatic attention, the conflict in the DRC is swept under the rug and ignored to the degree possible by the international community. This isn’t the first time since 1998 that the rest of the world’s response – or rather lack thereof – has failed the DRC. It should thus come as no surprise to anyone that one of the world’s oldest civil wars has not been halted by multiple peace agreements and elections of 2006.

An M23 rebel displays his munitions. Reuters.