Monthly Archives: November 2015

Should the world fear the Trump ascendancy?

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/should-the-world-fear-the-trump-ascendancy

The Donald Trump phenomenon has persisted so long, and beaten back so many challenges, that it can no longer be regarded as an amusing aberration. Instead, the Trump candidacy for the Republican nomination in the US presidential election – and what it reveals about the current state of American political culture – has to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the implications are all negative, and in many cases profoundly alarming.

Mr Trump has led the Republican field for many months, despite having no political experience or qualifications whatsoever.

But he is an established reality TV star and a “good product”. This explains why he performed far better than most people expected. But it is no longer enough to account for the persistence of his front-runner status so far into the season, long after fringe candidates and anti-politicians should have been safely dispatched.

Four years ago, Republican primary voters toyed with a long list of comparable “outsider” candidates who traded places near the top of the field before they finally held their noses and selected the uninspiring but plausible Mitt Romney. None had the persistent front-runner status of Mr Trump and there is no equivalent of Mr Romney at present, although mainstream hopes are now pinned on Senator Marco Rubio.

Elements of the American public have always been attracted to brash tycoons, confusing wealth with merit that implies competence – even if, as with Mr Trump, it is built on a large inheritance – and crude arrogance for admirable self-confidence. Many cling to a deep-seated, but groundless, myth of America as a land where anyone who really tries can become very rich. If you’re not, it’s probably your own fault.

Ironically, the overwhelming majority of Mr Trump’s supporters are angry and alienated Americans without any higher education – the very people he relishes dismissing as “losers”. Yet they identify more with him than each other. Many feel profoundly aggrieved at the social and economic changes, which they tend to blame on immigration, a favourite topic of his wrath, and minorities, rather than tycoons like Mr Trump.

He represents how they imagine they would behave if they had his money, prominence and prestige. His obvious narcissistic personality disorder thus seems admirable rather than objectionable.

The Republican establishment has been waiting for Mr Trump to “cross the line” and say something so outrageous that it scuttles his campaign. That hasn’t happened, despite a series of almost comically offensive outbursts.

He has been aggressively racist against Mexicans, calling them “rapists”. He has made a series of deeply Islamophobic remarks, calling for databases of Muslims, espionage in mosques and restrictions on Muslim immigrants. He has made profoundly sexist comments. He mocked the disability of a reporter for The New York Times who he falsely tried to cite in defence of his repeated lies about witnessing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the September 11, 2001 attacks.

None of this has come close to disrupting, let alone sinking, his campaign. Mr Trump cannot “cross the line” because such line-crossing is precisely his appeal.

If Mr Trump seems like a cartoon character, that’s because his candidacy really is a caricature. He has taken some essential features of most politicians – pandering, cynicism, narcissism, nativism and combativeness – and exaggerated them to the point of absurdity. The appeal of such a persona can only be based on public contempt for the established authorities and delight at a figure who is reducing the process to a travesty. There’s no discernible difference between a standard Trump event and his recent appearance on the TV comedy programme, Saturday Night Live, because he is already satirising himself.

Most of Mr Trump’s supporters probably understand this, and realise he’s unlikely to be the nominee, let alone the president. But supporting him sends an unmistakable message. If – and probably when – Mr Trump falters it will not be because of his outrageous comments. These have only helped him. It will be because there is ultimately a limit to the appeal of a candidacy whose sole intelligible message basically amounts to thumbing his nose at the political establishment.

The dangers posed by what the Trump phenomenon represents among a significant subset of the American population can’t be underestimated. His constituency is expressing what are, in recent history at least, quite unprecedented levels of anger and alienation, and a growing fury among white Americans about the cultural, demographic and economic transformation of society.

This rage won’t simply go away, even if Mr Trump the candidate does. How such widespread and smouldering resentment might express itself next, and how it can be healed, will be major long-term challenges for both the Republican Party and the US as a whole.

Saudi Arabia and ISIL: A False Equation but Troubling Echoes

http://www.agsiw.org/saudi-arabia-and-isil-a-false-equation-but-troubling-echoes/

A growing trope in mainstream Western analysis, which is also present in some parts of Arab and Muslim discourse, casts the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the political and moral equivalent of the terrorist group ISIL (also known as ISIS, the “Islamic State,” and Daesh). This conflation is wrong regarding most aspects of conduct and policy, especially relations to the international and regional order. But it does evoke some troubling echoes and influences that must be of concern even to those who see the problems with this equation. The comparison does not arise within a total void. Although the analogy is unjustified, it does raise serious concerns that need to be addressed by mainstream Saudi society and its government.

The American “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, has been at the forefront of publicizing the notion that “ISIL equals Saudi Arabia” in recent weeks. A September 2 article by Times columnist Thomas Friedman promoted this metaphor. In “Our Radical Islamic BFF, Saudi Arabia,” Friedman opines that “several thousand Saudis have joined the Islamic State or that Arab Gulf charities have sent ISIS donations” because “all these Sunni jihadist groups — ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front — are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.”

This explicit cause-and-effect theory about the relationship between the mainstream civic, political, and religious culture in a society and the attraction to such terrorist groups in its population doesn’t scan well. Among the largest number, up to 3,000, of ISIL recruits have been from Tunisia. The Tunisian ISIL recruit rate is generally thought to be the highest of all, more than the Saudi estimate that tops off at about 2,000 – 2,500.

Yet, Tunisia is the most secular and least fundamentalist of all Arab societies, with the possible exception of Lebanon. This undermines Friedman’s claim that cultural and religious extremism in a given society, in this case the Saudi one, especially as promoted by culturally hegemonic national institutions, provides a strong correlation to participation in radical movements. The problem might be correctly seen, as he also suggests, in a global Islamic context, with Saudi and other promotion of intolerance and extremism as an important historical factor in creating the current wave of violent radicalism. But if ISIL recruitment draws most heavily on Tunisia, closely followed by Saudi Arabia — two countries in most ways on the opposite ends of the Arab cultural and political spectrum — that strongly suggests that there are broader explanations than a specific national cultural and religious atmosphere for the appeal of terrorism.

Another New York Times article from November 20 made the case even more explicitly. Algerian writer Kamel Daoud suggested that Saudi Arabia is simply “better dressed and neater but does the same things” as ISIL. The author sneaks in a criticism of the United States, which goes all but unnoticed by most readers, suggesting, “Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex.” In other words, the United States bears half the responsibility for the ISIL phenomenon (naturally, given Orientalist discourse, the penetrating, male half of this unholy coupling), while Saudi Arabia must accept the other half (the nurturing, gestating female role, the mother of all badness).

Many other authors have made similar claims, although few as eloquently and incisively as Daoud. However, in almost all political or strategic contexts, Saudi Arabia is simply not comparable to, let alone the equivalent of, ISIL. Saudi Arabia is, and has been ever since the establishment of the modern state following the First World War, staunchly a status quo power. It has been strongly aligned with the regional and global order, and with the maintenance in the Middle East and around the world of things as they are. It is one of the strongest defenders in the Middle East of the state system that Europeans imposed on the Middle East through the colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. And its foreign policy has been, until very recently, characterized almost entirely by caution, and deference to the global system as a guarantor of its interests and local and regional stability. It’s also been a steadfast ally of the West, in particular the United States.

In the international context, Saudi Arabia could not possibly be further away from ISIL’s perspectives and policies. ISIL is undoubtedly far more hostile to the Westphalian international order (the system of sovereign states that accept the legitimacy of each other’s authority within their own recognized territory, without intervention except in the most extreme circumstances) than even the most extreme right- or left-wing countries, and major political groups, of the 20th century. ISIL utterly rejects the international state system. Its apocalyptic ideology, which it seems to actually believe, makes it the only even somewhat significant international actor in living memory to reject every single aspect of the state system, not to mention the regional order in the Middle East. Most maverick states and movements have sought to join (if even on their own extremist terms), not to obliterate, the international system. ISIL defines itself in the strictest opposition to this system.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, found even the quasi-socialist, Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser to be intolerably threatening and revolutionary. It has also viewed the rise of ultra-right pseudo-theological extremism of al-Qaeda with increasing horror over the past two decades. These two very different regional political phenomena, among many others, were identified as threatening by Riyadh because they challenged core beliefs and policies of the Saudi state, most importantly its commitment to the existing regional and international order and the status quo generally. ISIL’s international policies and practices thus could not be further from those of Saudi Arabia. The former seeks to destroy the regional, and ultimately international, state system in all its aspects. The latter is committed to preserving them as its main foreign policy goal, at virtually all costs.

Moreover, the moral equivalency between ISIL and Saudi Arabia suggested by both Friedman and Daoud, and the many other writers in the West and the Arab world who have made similar points, is unconvincing. It’s simply not true that Saudi Arabia behaves like ISIL. Saudi Arabia does not traffic in sex slaves or advocate and practice the reestablishment of slavery. Saudi Arabia does not massacre Shia Muslims and other religious minorities. Saudi Arabia does not flood the internet with snuff videos or set fire to captured soldiers. Saudi Arabia does not operate a giant, international program of kidnapping, extortion, and hostage ransoming, with execution as the only alternative to payment. Saudi Arabia does not send its key operatives to massacre civilians in Paris or Beirut, or plant bombs in airplanes. And on and on.

Any comparison that doesn’t acknowledge these and countless other obvious distinctions between the ideology and conduct of ISIL and Saudi Arabia is cherry-picking the crucial facts. It fails to acknowledge key differences where it identifies some troubling similarities (more on this below). This trivializes the horrors inflicted by ISIL and exaggerates legitimate concerns about some Saudi policies and practices. Thereby, it dilutes the uniqueness of ISIL’s truly extraordinary moral transgressions, which has very few, if any, genuine historical analogies in the recent past. By doing so, it undermines purposeful criticism of those aspects of Saudi policy, culture, and officially sanctioned religious practices and discourse by caricaturing a serious critique.

The death sentence on charges of “apostasy” recently handed out to the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh — a lifelong resident of Saudi Arabia who has been a major and highly constructive player in the Saudi cultural and arts scene — is only the latest example of indefensibly harsh conduct by the Saudi judicial system towards what, in most societies, would be seen as at worst minor transgressions, and in many cases perfectly legitimate conduct.

Other instances include a long list of draconian arrests, prosecutions and sentences against poets and bloggers — often on charges of “apostasy,” which are strictly incompatible with basic international norms regarding freedom of speech, religion, and conscience. Other cases have involved those accused of “sorcery,” or possession of alcohol or drugs, or other offenses that normative international standards holds to be legitimate behavior; moderately transgressive conduct not warranting capital punishment or anything similar; or criminal charges that appear, even to most other Muslim and Arab judicial systems, strikingly pre-modern in their essential categories (such as witchcraft). Capital charges and death penalties have also been issued against Shia activists from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province that many observers have suggested were motivated by political animus, sectarian bias, or both.

Amnesty International reports that 151 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia in 2015, the highest number since 1995. “So far in 2015, on average, one person has been executed every other day,” Amnesty says. The fact that the United States joins Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China as countries in which capital punishment is most frequently practiced, and in which juveniles can be sentenced to death in some circumstances, doesn’t go very far in mitigating the impact this record is having on Saudi Arabia’s international reputation.

ISIL has gone to great lengths to make itself synonymous with draconian punishments and strict adherence to a radically repressive and brutal interpretation of Sharia law. Its extreme policies and practices are unrecognizable to most Muslims, both in terms of present-day standards and in the conceptualization of the Islamic past. The problem for Saudi Arabia is that were one to scan the Muslim world for analogies to ISIL’s beliefs and conduct, one of the most obvious comparisons must be with the official and quasi-official interpretations of Islam that have been enacted, and, indeed, promoted by Saudi Arabia. On this point, both Friedman and Daoud are irrefutably correct. Saudi Arabia has embraced and powerfully promoted a “Wahhabi” model of Islamic governance, jurisprudence, and social order that is both the closest thing to ISIL’s misrule, and undoubtedly the primary source for some of the core ideas that ISIL is implementing in the areas that have the misfortune to fall under their control.

Of course this doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia equals ISIL, for the numerous, substantial and serious reasons explained above. But it would be dishonest and pointless to deny that a disquietingly significant portion of the interpretation of Islam that ISIL is enacting can, in their origins, indeed be traced to Saudi preachers, theologians, thinkers, and even official agencies. Friedman and Daoud are also both correct to point to the highly negative influence that official and quasi-official Saudi agencies have had in spreading intolerant and extreme interpretations of Islam throughout the Muslim world, from Arab countries to Pakistan to Indonesia. This has inadvertently helped prime angry young men for ISIL or al-Qaeda recruitment and proven a profound problem for not just Saudi Arabia and its allies, but for the whole world. Until Saudi Arabia truly reverses these policies and begins to address the problems they have exacerbated, the kingdom is open to legitimate criticism regarding the origins and spread of extremist views among Muslim radicals throughout the world.

But that actually may indeed be happening. In the November 25 edition of the New York Times, Friedman has a follow-up article describing his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, which apparently forced him to reconsider some of his earlier assertions. Friedman says he “ran into something I didn’t know: Something is stirring in this society. This is not your grandfather’s Saudi Arabia.” As he describes the changes he found “stirring” in Saudi society, Friedman concludes, “There are still dark corners here exporting intolerant ideas. But they seem to now have real competition from both the grassroots and a leadership looking to build its legitimacy around performance, not just piety or family name.” None of this, he hastens to add, negates the damage done both internally and throughout the Arab world by the spread of intolerant ideas from Saudi Arabia in past decades, or the fact that some aspects of this continue. Saudi Arabia is changing, but it isn’t unrecognizable or completely transformed. But Friedman has significantly pulled back from the perspective expressed in his September column that was not only almost entirely negative but also really did equate Saudi Arabia with ISIL. Clearly this comparison couldn’t survive an honest assessment of the recent visit to the kingdom, because it’s such a stretch.

The fashionable equation of Saudi Arabia and ISIL, particularly post-Paris, is powerfully provocative. But on most basic and political grounds it’s deeply misleading. This discourse is likely to continue, and may well gain strength despite its weaknesses, as long as Saudi judicial authorities continue to behave towards certain categories of accused “criminals” with the severity and heavy handedness they have been imposing of late, and, in many ways, since the founding of the modern kingdom. This is particularly problematic for Saudi Arabia with regard to accused who are charged with what are perceived by most outsiders, including much of the Arab and Islamic worlds, to be political and cultural activities and expression that should be protected rather than prosecuted, or relatively minor offenses that can and should be dealt with far from the executioner’s block or the flogging post.

Yemen situation will still need a political solution

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/yemen-situation-will-still-need-a-political-solution#full

From the outset, sceptical voices, especially in the West, rushed to deem the Arab intervention in Yemen – led by Saudi Arabia with support from the UAE – a “quagmire”. While this is indeed a danger, Yemen has proved neither a quagmire nor a lost cause.

On balance, the Arab states and their Yemeni government allies are moving towards their goals. Yet the conflict will ultimately not be resolved on the battlefield. It will instead require finding a workable political solution that can restore stability.

One of the main long-term dangers that cannot be underestimated is the creeping introduction of ISIL into the conflict, along with the persistence of the local Al Qaeda franchise, AQAP. This was underscored by a deadly ISILattack on government troops in Hadramawt on Friday.

The growth of terrorist groups in Yemen is one of the gravest long-term problems that the government and allied Arab states will have to resolve to restore long-term stability to this long-suffering country. Ending the civil war won’t be enough if two major terrorist organisations have been able to set up shop in Yemen by taking advantage of the conflict.

A brighter note is the return to the country – although only to the southern city of Aden – of Yemeni president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi from Saudi Arabia. Days before, the country’s prime minister, Khaled Bahah, announced the return of his government to Yemen, also to be based in Aden.

It would have been preferable if the internationally recognised government of Yemen had been able to return to the capital of Sanaa. However, the government and Arab forces have wisely decided to not yet attempt to retake Sanaa from the Houthi rebels and their Yemeni militia allies loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Such a battle would, unlike the largely accomplished and relatively much more straightforward struggle to remove these groups from the south, involve fighting in areas in which the rebels have significant support. While the coalition and government forces have been advancing towards the capital from two directions, retaking Sanaa would probably involve exceptionally difficult fighting, perhaps including house-to-house combat.

Last week, the UN reported that 5,700 people have died in Yemen since the Arab intervention began in March, including 830 women and children. Perhaps even more alarmingly, it added that 82 per cent of the 24.4 million people in Yemen are dependent on some form of humanitarian aid. All aspects of Yemeni society have been deeply damaged by decades of misrule and strife.

Observers have acknowledged that, inevitably, all sides in the conflict – including AQAP and ISIL – have been responsible in some measure for civilian deaths and suffering. But the Arab states are the internationally recognised and responsible parties involved who have a level of accountability and responsibility that the Houthis – let alone the terrorist groups – simply don’t have.

An all-out assault on key areas of the north, especially Sanaa, is therefore a very dangerous proposition for government and allied forces on two counts. It would be much more difficult to prevail under the current circumstances, and the civilian costs would be very high. The Yemeni and international political price of such an assault would probably be seen as prohibitive.

The key to a Yemeni conflict remains, as it has been from the beginning, a political solution. And the crucial factor in achieving that remains breaking the decisive Houthi-Saleh alliance.

The biggest setback of the intervention thus far has been an inability to achieve this all-important goal. It is almost certainly going to require a bitter pill: giving Mr Saleh’s camp some rewards most observers legitimately believe they don’t deserve given their conduct, but without which they might not be induced to break with the Houthis. If that happened, the Houthis would almost certainly have to focus on consolidating their interests in their own areas and abandon their ambitions of ruling other parts of Yemen. A deal would then really be possible.

But this would probably involve painful concessions about the future political role of Mr Saleh’s family, especially his son Ahmed. Former UN special envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar – whose successor, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, last week went to Iran to discuss the situation with the Houthis’ main backers – said in 2013 that Mr Saleh and his son would have the right to run in future elections. This suggests that international mediators have long believed that an accommodation of their political future is the key to some kind of conciliation.

Meanwhile, the conflict presses on, with the coalition and government forces poised to try to retake the strategic southwestern city of Taez, and set up a restored national government in Aden. Despite international scepticism, the intervention is indeed making progress. But the solution will have to involve more than incremental military gains. It will almost certainly require finally finding a political formula for breaking the Saleh-Houthi alliance as the essential prelude to a broader agreement.

After Paris, Will ISIL Now Become a Global Priority?

The appalling terrorist attacks in Paris by ISIL that killed at least 120 people have drawn strong condemnation from the international community as a whole, including the Arab Gulf states and their leaders. But it’s unclear as to whether the attacks will prove to be a game changer in the international or regional response to the threat posed by the extremist organization.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said “I wanted to express our condolences to the government and people of France for the heinous terrorist attacks that took place yesterday, which are in violation and contravention of all ethics, morals and religions.” UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed sent a telegram of condolence to the French people and pledging support for France. Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah noted that “these criminal acts of terrorism… run counter to all teachings of holy faith and humanitarian values.” He deemed the attack “a brutal and inhuman deed that represents extremism and terrorism at their very worst.” The Qatari foreign ministry condemned the “armed attacks and bombings,” declaring that they “contradict all moral and humanitarian principles and values.”

Gulf civil society and media have also been outspoken and unanimous in their condemnation of the attacks. The Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia said, “Terrorists are not sanctioned by Islam and these acts are contrary to values of mercy it brought to the world.” But reaction in the Gulf and the rest of the Arab world did note the distinction between the heavy global attention paid to the carnage in Paris and the relative inattention to a devastating pair of suicide bombings in Beirut shortly before. The UAE’s flagship English-language newspaper, The National, noted, “Just as we have long known the nature of ISIL, so too the nuanced and appropriate response to the events in Paris and Beirut remains unchanged from before. ISIL has to be defeated not just militarily but even more importantly on the ideological battlefield, by offering a compelling counternarrative to the extremist ideology that unfortunately has appeal to disaffected youth across the globe.”

This sentiment and analysis more or less sums up the prevailing reaction among mainstream discourse in the Arab Gulf states, and most of the rest of the Middle East and, indeed, the world at large. However, even with the overwhelming bulk of the human family united in horror and outrage at this spate of attacks, including those in Beirut and culminating in the Paris massacres, there does not yet appear to be a concomitant global or international commitment to adjusting the international approach to dealing with ISIL. It may well be emerging. But if this is, as some have said, a “game changer” for the international community, its response to ISIL remains to be developed.

The rise of ISIL in a vast tract of land snaking through northern and eastern Syria and then deep into Iraq itself is a challenge to the entire regional state system and a threat to many countries. As the Paris attacks clearly demonstrate, many Middle Eastern and Western societies, including the Arab Gulf states, are vulnerable to terrorist attacks by extremists inspired by the group, or, worse, who have gone to fight with ISIL in Syria and then return to their home areas imbued with even greater fanaticism and now in possession of battlefield training and experience.

Two weeks ago, British authorities warned of the prospect of mass casualty attacks in the United Kingdom, saying ISIL cadres are known to be trying to plan them. Almost 800 Britons identified as having joined the terrorist group. ISIL is thought to have recruited at least 20,000 foreign fighters from the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia in recent years, making it probably the most successful international volunteer campaign since the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. The terrorist organization is also now on record threatening similar carnage in Washington, DC.

All the major actors in the Middle East in general, and Syria in particular, share a sincere antipathy towards ISIL, which, for its part, has also attacked and denounced all of them. Yet, somehow, this terrorist organization, multinational criminal enterprise and nascent mini-state has thus far been able to survive an open conflict with all other major parties simultaneously. French scholar Olivier Roy notes in the New York Timesas I have on several occasions in the past, that the key to ISIL’s astonishing survival thus far is that all of its antagonists (now with the exception of France) have other priorities which the terrorist group is able to play off against each other, buying space and time. The key factor in the rise of ISIL in Syria has clearly been its politically symbiotic relationship with the Assad dictatorship in Damascus. On paper, these two entities despise each other and could hardly be more ideologically and politically hostile. Yet in practice, they share an overwhelming interest in ensuring that the conflict in Syria is as brutal and sectarian as possible.

The regime’s rhetoric focused from the outset of the 2011 uprising on what was then a fictional invasion by crazed foreign jihadist terrorists. In reality, at the time, the regime was confronting unarmed “Arab Spring” demonstrators demanding reform. But the regime has been able to ensure that this became an intentionally self-fulfilling prophecy. Within a year, Bashar al-Assad’s own extreme brutality and sectarianism began to give rise to a series of increasingly fanatical rebel groups, culminating in ISIL. The regime relies on presenting Syrians, the region, and the world with a false binary choice between itself and one of the most extreme and reprehensible entities in recent history. This narrative has been taken up by Vladimir Putin to rationalize Russia’s intervention on behalf of the Assad regime quite falsely as an international counterterrorism initiative against ISIL. In reality, the overwhelming majority of Russian airstrikes have targeted mainstream rebel groups far from any area of ISIL operation.

Similarly, ISIL relies, for its own appeal to its primary constituency on the ground in Syria – the local Sunni population – on presenting itself as the last and only hope of rescuing the Syrian Sunnis from an existential threat by the sectarian regime and its barrel bombs and chemical weapons. ISIL’s apocalyptic, millennialist, and redemptionist rhetoric is designed to appeal to ISIL’s extremist international foreign fighters and financial backers. But to the population in the areas of Syria they control, they present themselves as providing protection and bringing order, however strict, to otherwise lawless and ungoverned areas. This is the same basic appeal that many other successful extremist movements, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, have deployed in order to gain initial acceptance in areas under their control. Their rise and expansion in Syria craftily focused on taking territories from the rebel groups, not the regime. And Assad, for his part, did not immediately bomb those territories that came under ISIL control, which has been the regime’s primary and preferred response to territorial gains by all other opposition groups.

Having faced the reality that he could not keep control of all of what used to be his country, Assad has chosen carefully, when possible, to try to turn territorial losses into political gains. Strategically ceding what it considers to be remote areas has been a key tactic of the regime. Assad facilitated the rise of Kurdish groups associated with the PKK in northern Syria in order to bedevil Turkey, and in effect encouraged the rise of ISIL in order to discredit the rebel movement and paint the entire opposition as a gang of crazed terrorists. Neither the Kurdish areas in northern Syria nor the territories controlled by ISIL in the east are crucial to the regime’s most elemental interests, once the ambition to retain control of the entire country is accepted to be futile.

While ISIL and the Syrian regime constitute opposite sides of the same coin of vicious and sectarian conflict in Syria, as noted above, all other major actors, and many minor ones, find themselves in direct conflict with ISIL. The reason that this vicious terrorist organization has been able to survive open conflict with virtually all other parties simultaneously is that none of its antagonists prioritize its destruction over all other goals. On the contrary, all major actors in Syria may agree that ISIL is a dangerous menace that needs to be destroyed, but all of them also have other goals that are given much greater priority.

Under such circumstances, it is possible  and all too often a fairly simple matter –  for ISIL to play one enemy off against another, and ensure that these other priorities trump confronting them time and again. Thus, as its mantra boasts, ISIL could very well “continue and expand,” and it’s not clear whether mass casualty attacks in the West are going to change that fundamental equation. These alternative priorities naturally vary from actor to actor. What each group  whether global, regional, and local – engaged in Syria really prioritizes and what they consider to be their minimum political requirements, is at every stage the key to the potential for some sort of political accommodation or any other outcome, including continued, open-ended conflict.

The United States has maintained from a fairly early period in the Syrian uprising that Assad has “lost all legitimacy” and that he should step aside. But the essential American concern in Syria does not have to do with regime change. Nor does U.S. policy in Syria focus primarily on the struggle to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIL. Instead, driven by lessons drawn primarily from the American experience in Iraq in the past decade, the Obama administration has long prioritized the maintenance of administrative and social institutions in Syria. The most important American priority is avoiding the prospect of a total national meltdown and chaos throughout the country, which has not occurred thus far. Obviously, there is great difficulty in separating such institutions from the government infrastructure which created most and supports all of them. Indeed, under current circumstances, they really can not be separated.

Therefore, an even deeper problem is that these two core positions  that Syria requires a new government because the current one has lost all legitimacy and that the most important thing in Syria is avoiding the collapse of public and administrative institutions  are in strict contradiction with each other. This contradiction produces the kind of policy statement recently expressed by Secretary of State John Kerry, in which he reiterated that “Assad has to go,” but that “it doesn’t have to be on day one or month one or whatever.”

The American position requires a more careful elucidation because it is more nuanced and complex than most. Certainly Russia’s priority is clear: to defend the control of the core areas required to secure its precious warm water port in Tartus and new military bases near Latakia. A secondary Russian ambition is to consolidate a new regional alliance under Moscow’s tutelage, guidance and protection involving Iran, Iraq, Syria (or what is left of it under Assad’s control), Hezbollah, and others.

In this sense, Russia faces an all or nothing gamble in Syria. It stands to either seize the strongest role it has played in the Middle East since the 1970s or lose its last major Arab ally, the current Syrian regime. At any rate, ISIL is at most a wildcard spoiler in these calculations. It is not a central factor in either Russia’s minimal or maximal goals and operates mainly as an excuse for Russian intervention.

Iran and Hezbollah are much more committed to the personal political survival of Assad himself than Russia is, but they broadly share the same aim of consolidating the government’s control in the territory it has managed to preserve. This chunk of Syria runs from the Lebanese border area through Qalamoun, up into Damascus and into the Alawite coastal area and regime stronghold. The preservation of this part of Syria under regime control is sufficient for the essential interests of Iran and Hezbollah. Again, ISIL is not a strong factor. It is unlikely to be able to extend its control into these areas because it faces resistance not only from the regime and its external supporters  Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and even some Iraqi Shia militias  but also from mainstream rebel groups.

The Arab Gulf states and Turkey share the goal of removing Assad and his regime from power. For them, regime change in Damascus is non-negotiable, just as regime survival has been, until now anyway, non-negotiable for Iran and Hezbollah (and probably Russia). Turkey has an additional, and even stronger, priority, which is preventing control by PKK-allied Kurdish militias of the border area in the north. As noted, early on in the conflict Assad ceded control willingly of much of this territory to such Kurdish groups in order to bedevil Ankara. Turkey’s own intervention in Syria earlier this year, much like Russia’s, was presented to the world as an anti-ISIL campaign, but it too focused on very different priorities. Most of the Turkish military engagement has, predictably, focused on battling Kurdish groups and not ISIL.

For their part, the Arab Gulf states have been urging that the battle against the Assad regime and ISIL be pursued in tandem, simultaneously, and given equal weight. But their own policies suggest that their hierarchy of priorities emphasizes regime change over destroying ISIL. Until now, Saudi Arabia and Qatar strongly give the impression of believing that countering Iranian hegemony, most dangerously expressed in the form of the Assad regime, is essential and existential, whereas containing and controlling ISIL is a more manageable threat that can be dealt with in due course.

None of these observations diminish the magnitude of the setbacks ISIL has suffered in recent months due to international pressure. Indeed, the Russian intervention in Syria was prompted by increased Saudi, Qatari, and probably Turkish aid to mainstream rebel groups whose advances came at the expense of the regime and ISIL alike. The loss of the highly strategic town of Sinjar to Kurdish forces and the apparent killing by an American air attack of Mohammed Emwazi – also known as “Jihadi John,” a British extremist who was ISIL’s most prominent executioner – all contributed to the growing impression that ISIL is suffering a grinding series of setbacks that contradict its message of divinely sanctioned victories. Moreover, ISIL’s territorial expansion in both Syria and Iraq seems to be stalled by geography and demographics: the political, cultural, and religious resistance to the group in most areas adjacent to its self-declared “caliphate” in eastern Syria and western Iraq mean that it has few hopes of gaining more ground even as it is being slowly rolled back on the margins of the territories it has occupied.

Sadly, none of this signals the death-knell of ISIL. Its brand remains strong in extremist circles around the Islamic world. But it does help to explain why the group has felt forced to adopt the approach of directly attacking Western targets, a strategy that it openly said it wished to postpone in favor of building a “state.” Indeed, disagreement over this issue was one of the main reasons for ISIL’s break with Al Qaeda over three years ago. It’s not that ISIL has been suddenly won over by Al Qeada’s arguments but rather that the group has run out of options for ways of asserting itself, given the setbacks and difficulties it has faced in its primary mission of acquiring and ruling territory and building its twisted and dystopian “Islamic state.” As I noted elsewhere, however, these developments raise the alarming prospect of a potential rapprochement between the two terrorist groups. Perhaps organizational and personal rivalries will be enough to keep them at loggerheads. But their tactical and even strategic disputes are quickly withering away, making a reunification in the self-described “salafist-jihadist” camp a disturbing possibility.

Olivier Roy argues in the New York Times that France has now, uniquely, accepted that the battle against ISIL is a paramount priority. This may be true, but until more powerful global players like the United States and Russia, or more immediately engaged regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and the Arab Gulf states, similarly identify defeating and destroying ISIL as the overriding priority in Syria and Iraq, and regionally throughout the Middle East, the terrorist organization is likely to continue to be able to play one side off against the other and at least survive. If these core calculations have changed, there is, as yet, no clear policy expressing that. For the meanwhile, ISIL remains protected by being, at most, the second item on everyone’s hierarchy of priorities.

The downing of the Russian civilian airliner over Sinai, the Beirut suicide bombings, and the Paris massacres, all coming in quick succession, ought to be enough to bring most, if not all, parties together in forming a clear and urgent coordinated international strategy against this extraordinary menace. There are signs that this could well develop in the coming days and weeks, and that for ISIL the “game” has indeed been changed by dint of its own uncontrolled savagery. But as long as it is not a clear international and regional priority, ISIL might well be able to continue the astonishing feat of surviving being at war with everybody else simultaneously.

Paris attacks may mark a shift in ISIL-Al Qaeda relations

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/20151114/paris-attacks-mark-a-shift-in-isil-al-qaeda-relations

At least 128 people have been killed in a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris carried out by ISIL extremists. Francois Hollande, the French president, has called the attacks an “act of war”.

An event of this magnitude undoubtedly took months of planning. This is a far cry from the “lone-wolf” attacks in the West previously attributed to ISIL. The extremist group is thus firmly in the global mass murder business. It is striking not only at regional “enemies” such as Saudi Arabia or Hizbollah-related targets in Lebanon, but now also at the West.

ISIL would have preferred to defer this. Unlike Al Qaeda and other “salafist-jihadist” fanatics, ISIL prioritised seizing and controlling territory, and building its organisational capacity, “state” and “caliphate”.

ISIL rejected Osama bin Laden’s analysis that the “jihadist” movement ought to focus on striking western targets in order to drive the US and European powers out of the Middle East. According to bin Laden, the “far enemy” (the West) needed to be defeated before the “near enemy” (mainstream Arab and Muslim societies and governments) could be conquered.

The war in Afghanistan created an entirely new definition, and one that ironically owed much to Cold War American tutelage, of “jihad” as an individual commitment, and a global anti-colonial uprising (in that case against the “godless” Soviet communists). Indeed, bin Laden and the other “Arab Afghans”, the nucleus of what would later emerge as Al Qaeda, actually believed that they and the local mujahideen had not only chased the Russians out of Afghanistan, but that they had struck the fatal blow that ended up destroying the Soviet Union itself.

During the early and mid-1990s, the “Arab Afghan” veterans of Afghanistan mostly returned to their home countries with the intention of overthrowing local governments. The most far-reaching and ambitious of these campaigns was in Algeria, as that country was plunged into a savage civil war. But the Islamists were eventually crushed and discredited.

In this context, in 1996, bin Laden, soon joined by his Egyptian sidekick Aymen Al Zawahiri, mobilised Al Qaeda with the specific purpose of reorientating salafist-jihadist priorities and emphasising the need to attack western targets in order to drive the US and Europe out of the Middle East, much as Russia had been driven out of Afghanistan.

This logic culminated in the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001. But not only did the 9/11 atrocities bring down the full weight of American and international retaliation, the organisation’s credibility and popular appeal among Arabs and Muslims was also dealt a severe blow. By the time of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Al Qaeda was virtually moribund.

But Iraq provided the movement with a new cause and battleground. The local franchise in Iraq, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, fell under the sway of a particularly bloodthirsty criminal, Abu Musab Zarqawi. His approach emphasised even more intensive sectarianism, especially against Shiites, and spectacles of cruelty, such as beheading videos.

Al Zawahiri famously sent a letter to Zarqawi urging him to stop attacking Shiite mosques and making beheading videos in the name of Al Qaeda. It was completely ignored.

Zarqawi was killed, but not before he laid the groundwork for the emergence of ISIL, with its penchant for spectacular cruelty, its deep ties to former Baathist military and intelligence officials, and its commitment to establishing a “caliphate” rather than attacking the West.

The brutality of the Assad regime in Syria, and the sectarian chauvinism of the Maliki regime in Iraq, combined to create a perfect opportunity for ISIL to claim to have established precisely such a phony “caliphate”.

In the process ISIL broke with Al Qaeda over a range of issues, perhaps most importantly the question of priorities. Al Qaeda argues ISIL foolishly jumped the gun in declaring a “caliphate”, while ISIL maintains that seizing and controlling territory is the most important task.

The attacks in Paris ominously suggest that this argument may now be moot.

Perhaps ISIL has been forced into engaging mass-casualty terrorism attacks in the West long before it had planned to. But given the scale and sophistication of the Paris atrocities, hasn’t ISIL adopted Al Qaeda’s approach?

Only Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – the organisation’s Yemeni franchise – currently appears capable of launching major international terrorist attacks. But Al Qaeda must view the Paris attacks with approval and even envy.

So, what’s most alarming is not merely the likelihood of more terrorist attacks in major Arab and western cities. It’s the possibility that ISIL and Al Qaeda, for so long divided by both ideas and personalities, might now be able to form a working alliance or even reunify. The rift that began with Zarqawi might soon prove practically irrelevant at the level of strategy and tactics.

If the only thing keeping ISIL and Al Qaeda apart now is personal and organisational rivalry, rather than any substantive disagreement, then surely the potential for reunification and the emergence of a larger, stronger and more coordinated terrorist menace, is the most alarming prospect of all.

The Syrian crisis can’t be solved without Syrians

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-syrian-crisis-cant-be-solved-without-syrians#full

The Vienna talks on Syria predictably didn’t yield any progress towards peace. Most groups involved in the fighting on the ground, whose cooperation would be required to end the conflict, weren’t included.

The logic of Vienna was that their international patrons, who supposedly have diplomatic legitimacy, can speak to and for the Syrian forces, at least enough to secure the international context for ending the carnage.

The strategic and diplomatic landscape regarding Syria can be conceptualised as three concentric circles – like shock waves emanating from the epicentre of an earthquake. The circle farthest from the Syrian epicentre involves the great powers, particularly Russia and the US, and some European countries. Closer in are regional players such as Iran, Hizbollah and Shiite Iraqi militias on the side of the regime, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the side of the rebels. At the centre are the Syrian groups fighting it out on the ground.

ISIL, Kurdish groups and some relatively small militias are all wild cards that, at times, can affect strategic calculations, but are ultimately not part of the basic confrontation between the Syrian government and the mainstream rebel groups.

The farther the players are from the domestic political realities of Syria, the more interested in peace, and flexible on terms, they tend to be. Yet there is a significant asymmetry. Moscow’s commitment to a negotiated arrangement is far weaker than Washington’s. Vladimir Putin correctly calculated that he could get away with a military intervention and thereby strengthen both the regime and Russia’s position.

Washington’s primary response to the Russian intervention was a decision not to cut off all relations with mainstream Syrian rebels, as some administration officials were proposing. Limited American involvement will continue. Russia, by contrast, now has about 4,000 military personnel in Syria.

Even though Russia has undertaken a major military commitment to preserving key aspects of the Syrian status quo, Moscow isn’t particularly committed to Bashar Al Assad.

If Russia could secure its fundamental interests – at a minimum securing the invaluable warm water port at Tartus, and at a maximum solidifying a regional alliance with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hizbollah and others – without Mr Al Assad’s assistance, the Kremlin, which seems to dislike him both personally and politically, would probably jump at the chance.

Despite Russia’s own ambivalence, its policies are a model of clarity and commitment compared with the American position. Washington says Mr Al Assad must go because he has “lost all legitimacy”, though not today but at some unspecified date to be determined by negotiations. The Obama administration frets about the sudden collapse of social and governance institutions, based on the American experience in Iraq.

However, Russia’s main regional partners – Iran and Hizbollah – are committed to Mr Al Assad personally and politically. It’s hard to imagine either of them voluntarily abandoning him. This divergence of interests has been the subject of continuing efforts to undermine the relative unity of the pro-Assad camp, so far without much success.

On the contrary, Washington’s decision to include Iran in the Vienna talks, without Tehran adjusting its policies one jot, represents a major American reversal. Previously, Iran faced clear conditions for being included, especially endorsing the 2012 Geneva communiqué. The US says this calls for Mr Al Assad to step down, while Russia says it does not. But Iran will not endorse it. Washington also appears increasingly amenable to the idea that Mr Al Assad could stay in power during a negotiated “transitional period”.

The global powers are ready for a deal. While Russia might be ready to compromise on some issues, the US appears willing to compromise on about almost everything.

Their regional allies, however, are less interested. Iran was happy to join the talks, but remains committed to preserving the regime. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey remain committed to removing it. At the Vienna talks, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reportedly cited, without any apparent context, the 15 Saudi nationals involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Neither Tehran nor Riyadh appear interested in compromise at present.

Less interested still are the groups fighting on the ground. Neither the regime nor the rebels have an incentive to compromise on a political formula. The regime is bolstered by the Russian intervention, which was prompted by a string of dramatic rebel successes which in some cases seem to actually be continuing.

As it stands, both of the main sides in the conflict believe they can enhance their bargaining position through further fighting, despite being aware that they will ultimately have to settle for whatever they can get on the ground and at the negotiating table. Therefore, neither the global nor the regional patrons of these local forces can force them to make a deal at present.

It’s not hard to see the outlines of an agreed or de facto outcome in Syria based on the formal or informal division of the country into zones of influence, perhaps along Lebanese lines. But before such an endgame can emerge in practice, the main local parties will have to conclude that they have maximised what they can accomplish politically on the battlefield. Until then, the fighting in Syria will, alas, continue.