from the March 16, 2015 eNews issue
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The War on Terror

After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush declared a War on Terror. Many within the U.S. national security establishment worried that, following decades of preparation for confronting conventional enemies, Washington was unready for the challenge posed by an unconventional adversary such as Al-Qaeda. They believed in the old dictum, “A country is always prepared to fight the last war.”

To counteract this perceived weakness, the United States built an elaborate

bureaucracy over the next decade to fight terrorists, adapting its military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to the tasks of counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency.

Then came ISIS.

What is ISIS?

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or Syria (ISIS), which also calls itself the Islamic State, has supplanted al-Qaeda as the jihadist threat of greatest concern. ISIS’ ideology, rhetoric, and long-term goals are similar to al-Qaeda’s and the two groups were once formally allied. So many observers believed that ISIS was just another flavor of terrorism and adjusted their considerable counter-terrorism apparatus accordingly.

But ISIS is not al-Qaeda. It is not an outgrowth or a part of the older radical Islamist organization, nor does it represent the next phase in its evolution. (ISIS was found to be so brutal that even al-Qaeda disavowed their relationship with them.)

Although al-Qaeda remains dangerous—especially its affiliates in North Africa and Yemen—ISIS is its successor. ISIS represents the post–al-Qaeda jihadist threat.

In a nationally televised speech last September explaining his plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, U.S. President Barack Obama drew a straight line between the group and al-Qaeda and claimed that ISIS is “a terrorist organization, pure and simple.”

This is wrong. ISIS hardly fits the profile of what is commonly considered a “terrorist” organization. While it uses terrorism as a tactic, it is not really a terrorist organization at all.

What is a Terrorist?

Terrorist networks, such as al-Qaeda, generally have only dozens or hundreds of members, attack civilians, do not hold territory, and cannot directly confront military forces. ISIS, on the other hand, boasts some 30,000 fighters, holds territory in both Iraq and Syria, maintains extensive military capabilities, controls lines of communication, commands infrastructure, funds itself, and engages in sophisticated military operations.

If ISIS is anything, it is a pseudo-state led by a conventional army. And that is why the counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies that greatly diminished the threat from al-Qaeda will not work against ISIS.

Washington has been slow to recognize this fact and has so far not been up to the challenge of terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. In fact, last August, the President referred to ISIS as a “JV team”. Later White House protestations aside, the Washington Post rated their denials “Four Pinocchio’s”.

In Syria, U.S. counterterrorism has mostly prioritized the bombing of al-Qaeda affiliates, which has given an edge to ISIS and has also provided the Assad regime with the opportunity to crush U.S.-allied “moderate” Syrian rebels. In Iraq, Washington continues to rely on a form of counterinsurgency, depending on the central government in Baghdad to regain its lost legitimacy, unite the country, and build indigenous forces to defeat ISIS.

These approaches were developed to meet a different threat, and they have been overtaken by events. What’s needed now is a strategy of “offensive containment”: a combination of limited military tactics and a broad diplomatic strategy to halt ISIS’ expansion, isolate the group, and degrade its capabilities.

Diverse Roots

The differences between al-Qaeda and ISIS are partly rooted in their histories.

Al-Qaeda came into being in the aftermath of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Its leaders’ worldviews and strategic thinking were shaped by the ten-year war against Soviet occupation, when thousands of Muslim militants, including Osama bin Laden, converged on the country. As the organization coalesced, it took the form of a global network focused on carrying out spectacular attacks against Western or Western-allied targets, with the goal of rallying Muslims to join a global confrontation with secular powers near and far.

The United States inadvertently aided in the rise of ISIS with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

At first, it was just one of a number of Sunni extremist groups fighting U.S. forces and attacking Shiite civilians in an attempt to foment a sectarian civil war. At that time, it was called al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. air strike in 2006, and soon after, AQI was nearly wiped out when Sunni tribes decided to partner with the Americans to confront the jihadists.

But the defeat was temporary.

AQI renewed itself inside U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, where insurgents and terrorist operatives connected and formed networks—and where the group’s current chief and self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, first distinguished himself as a leader.

In 2011, as a revolt against the Assad regime in Syria expanded into a full-blown civil war, the group took advantage of the chaos, seizing territory in Syria’s northeast, establishing a base of operations, and rebranding itself as ISIS. In Iraq, the group continued to capitalize on the weakness of the central state and to exploit the country’s sectarian strife, which intensified after U.S. combat forces withdrew.

With the Americans gone, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pursued a hardline pro-Shiite agenda, further alienating Sunni Arabs throughout the country. ISIS now counts among its members Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders, former anti-U.S. insurgents, and even secular former Iraqi military officers who seek to regain the power and security they enjoyed during the Saddam Hussein era.

A Lightning War

ISIS’ territorial conquest in Iraq came as a shock, almost a blitzkrieg. When ISIS captured Fallujah and Ramadi in January 2014, most analysts predicted that the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces would contain the threat. But in June, amid mass desertions from the Iraqi army, ISIS moved toward Baghdad, capturing Mosul, Tikrit, al-Qaim, and numerous other Iraqi towns. By the end of the month, ISIS had renamed itself the Islamic State and had proclaimed the territory under its control to be a new caliphate.

Meanwhile, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, some 15,000 foreign fighters from 80 countries flocked to the region to join ISIS, at the rate of around 1,000 per month. Although most of these recruits came from Muslim-majority countries, such as Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, some also hailed from Australia, China, Russia, and western European countries. ISIS has even managed to attract some American teenagers, boys and girls alike, from ordinary middle-class homes in Denver, Minneapolis, and the suburbs of Chicago.

As ISIS has grown, its goals and intentions have become clearer. Al-Qaeda conceived of itself as the vanguard of a global insurgency mobilizing Muslim communities against secular rule. ISIS, in contrast, seeks to control territory and create a “pure” Sunni Islamist state governed by a brutal interpretation of sharia; to immediately obliterate the political borders of the Middle East that were created by Western powers in the twentieth century; and to position itself as the sole political, religious, and military authority over all of the world’s Muslims.

Not Your Average Terrorist

Since ISIS’ origins and goals differ markedly from al-Qaeda’s, the two groups operate in completely different ways. That is why a U.S. counterterrorism strategy custom-made to fight al-Qaeda does not fit the struggle against ISIS.

According to a 2010 investigation by The Washington Post, some 263 U.S. government organizations were created or reorganized in response to the 9/11 attacks, including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Transportation Security Administration. (This author witnessed the growth of these agencies and the turf wars that went along with them.)

Each year, U.S. intelligence agencies produce some 50,000 reports on terrorism. Fifty-one U.S. federal organizations and military commands track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. This structure has helped make terrorist attacks on U.S. soil exceedingly rare. In that sense, the system has worked. But it is not well suited for dealing with ISIS, which presents a different sort of challenge.

The Oil Connection

ISIS also poses a daunting challenge to traditional U.S. counterterrorism tactics that take aim at jihadist financing, propaganda, and recruitment. Cutting off al-Qaeda’s funding has been one of U.S. counterterrorism’s most impressive success stories. The United States has cut deeply into al-Qaeda’s ability to profit from money laundering and receive funds under the cover of charitable giving. The result has been a serious squeeze on al-Qaeda’s financing; by 2011, the Treasury Department reported that al-Qaeda was “struggling to secure steady financing to plan and execute terrorist attacks.”

ISIS, however, doesn’t need to beg for financing.

Holding territory has allowed the group to build a self-sustaining financial model unthinkable for most terrorist groups. Beginning in 2012, ISIS gradually took over key oil assets in eastern Syria; it now controls an estimated 60 percent of the country’s oil production capacity. Meanwhile, during its push into Iraq last summer, ISIS also seized seven oil-producing operations in that country. The group manages to sell some of this oil on the black market in Iraq and Syria—including, according to some reports, to the Assad regime itself.

ISIS also smuggles oil out of Iraq and Syria into Jordan and Turkey, where it finds plenty of buyers happy to pay below-market prices for illicit crude. All told, ISIS’ revenue from oil is estimated to be between $1 million and $3 million per day.

Oil is only one element in the group’s financial portfolio. Last June, when ISIS seized control of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, it looted the provincial central bank and other smaller banks and plundered antiquities to sell on the black market. It steals jewelry, cars, machinery, and livestock from conquered residents. The group also controls major transportation arteries in western Iraq, allowing it to tax the movement of goods and charge tolls. It even earns revenue from cotton and wheat grown in Raqqa, the breadbasket of Syria.

ISIS does resemble a terrorist group in that they also take hostages, demanding tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments and take horrific actions against the hostages even after ransom is paid. But more important to the group’s finances is a wide-ranging extortion racket that targets owners and producers in ISIS territory, taxing everything from small family farms to large enterprises such as cell-phone service providers, water delivery companies, and electric utilities. The enterprise is so complex that the U.S. Treasury has declined to estimate ISIS’ total assets and revenues, but ISIS is clearly a highly diversified enterprise whose wealth dwarfs that of any terrorist organization. And there is little evidence that Washington has succeeded in reducing the group’s coffers.

2015 is not 2006

In 2006, as violence peaked in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, U.S. officials concluded that the United States was losing the war. In response, President George W. Bush decided to send an additional 20,000 U.S. troops to Iraq. These troops, along with about 40 Sunni tribes or subtribes who switched sides in the fight and decided to side with the newly augmented U.S. forces against al-Qaida proved effective against the terror onslaught. By the summer of 2008, the number of insurgent attacks had fallen by more than 80 percent.

Looking at the extent of ISIS’ recent gains in Sunni areas of Iraq, which have undone much of the progress made in the surge, some have argued that Washington should respond with a second application of the Iraq war’s counterinsurgency strategy. And the White House seems at least partly persuaded by this line of thinking.

But vast differences exist between the situation today and the one that Washington faced in 2006, and the logic of U.S. counterinsurgency does not suit the struggle against ISIS. The United States cannot win the hearts and minds of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, because the Maliki government has already lost them. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government has so badly undercut its own political legitimacy that it might be impossible to restore it. Moreover, the United States no longer occupies Iraq. Washington can send in more troops, but it cannot lend legitimacy to a government that has lost control.

Furthermore, ISIS is less an insurgent group fighting against an established government than one party in a conventional civil war between a breakaway territory and a weak central state.

A Policy of Containment

The sobering fact is that the United States has no good military options in its fight against ISIS. Neither counterterrorism, nor counterinsurgency, nor conventional warfare is likely to give a clear victory to those battling ISIS.

The best that can be hoped for is a short-term solution: combining a limited military campaign with a major diplomatic and economic effort to weaken ISIS and align the interests of the many countries, both Christian and Muslim which are threatened by the group’s advance.

The larger issue is that ISIS is not merely an American problem. The wars in Iraq and Syria involve not only regional players but also major global actors, such as Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf States.

The allied powers should also expand its assistance to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, which are struggling to contend with the massive flow of refugees from Syria. But putting more troops on the ground would be counterproductive, tying down ground forces in an unwinnable war that could go on for decades.

Also, the United States needs to resist the temptation of nation-building. That mistake was made in Afghanistan; it does not need to be repeated.

The largest issue for the West, particularly the United States, is concerning the primary motivation of ISIS. While politicians and diplomats continue to say ISIS was not a Muslim terror organization ISIS’ actions show that Islam is a large part of their motivation. All of the actions the group has taken, the conquests, the beheadings, the burnings, the kidnappings and rapes have all been done in the name of Allah.

Discounting or ignoring the Islamic aspect to what is happening in the Middle East (and North Africa and Yemen) will frustrate any effective counter-measure against this deadly and truly terrifying threat.

Excerpts used in the article are taken from the book, How Terrorism Ends (see below)

Related Articles

• How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns
  — Audrey Kurth Cronin
• ISIS goes global 
  — CNN
• What ISIS Really Wants 
  — The Atlantic
• ISIS – Trail of Terror
  — ABC News
• ISIS – The Inside Story
  — The Guardian
• Boko Haram swears formal allegiance to ISIS
  — Fox News

Categories: Articole de interes general