ISIS
Is Not the Main Problem in the Middle East
by Jonathan Spyer
PJ Media
January 19, 2016
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Originally published under the title "We've Got It Wrong:
ISIS Is Not the Main Problem in the Middle East."
On a recent reporting trip to Iraq and northern Syria, two things were
made apparent to me -- one of them relatively encouraging, the other far
less so. The encouraging news is that ISIS is currently in a state of
retreat. Not headlong rout, but contraction.
The bad news? Our single-minded focus on ISIS as if it were the main
or sole source of regional dysfunction is the result of faulty analysis,
which in turn is producing flawed policy.
Regarding the first issue, 2015 was not a particularly good year for
ISIS. In the course of it, the jihadis lost Kobani and then a large area
to its east, bringing the Syrian Kurdish fighters of the YPG and their
allies to within 30 km of the Caliphate's "capital" in Raqqa
city.
In late December, the jihadis lost the last bridge over the Euphrates
that they controlled, at the Tishreen Dam. This matters because it
isolates Raqqa, making it difficult for the Islamic State to rush
reinforcements from Aleppo province to the city in the event of an
attack. Similarly, the Kurdish YPG advanced south of the town of al-Hawl
to Raqqa's east.
ISIS is not the sole, or even the
main, source of Middle East dysfunction.
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In Iraq, the Iraqi Shia militias and government forces have now
recaptured Ramadi city (lost earlier in 2015) following the expulsion of
ISIS from Tikrit and Baiji. The Kurdish Pesh Merga, meanwhile, have
revenged the humiliation they suffered at the hands of ISIS in the summer
of 2014. The Kurds have now driven the jihadis back across the plain
between Erbil and Mosul, bringing them to the banks of the Tigris river.
They have also liberated the town of Sinjar.
The city of Mosul nestles on the western side of the river. It remains
ISIS's most substantial conquest. Its recapture does not appear
immediately imminent, yet the general trend has been clear. The main
slogan of ISIS is "Baqiya wa'tatamaddad,"
"Remaining and Expanding." At the present time, however, the
Islamic State may be said to be remaining, but retreating.
This situation is reflected in the confidence of the fighters facing
ISIS along the long front line. In interviews as I traversed the lines, I
heard the same details again and again regarding changing ISIS tactics,
all clearly designed to preserve manpower.
This stalling of the Islamic State is the background to its turn
towards international terror, which was also a notable element of the
latter half of 2015. The downing of the Russian airliner in October, the
events in Paris in November, and the series of suicide bombings in Turkey
since July attest to a need that the Islamic State has for achievement
and for action. They need to keep the flow of recruits coming and to
maintain the image of victory essential to it.
Regarding the second issue: seen from close up, the Islamic State is
very obviously only a part, and not necessarily the main part, of a much
larger problem. When talking both with those fighting with ISIS and with
those who sympathize with it in the region, this observation stands out
as a stark difference in perception between the Middle Eastern view of
ISIS and the view of it presented in Western media. The latter tends to
present ISIS as a strange and unique development, a dreadfully evil
organization of unclear origins, which is the natural enemy of all
mainstream forces in the Middle East.
ISIS has the same ideological
roots and similar practices as other Salafi jihadi groups in Syria.
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From closer up, the situation looks rather different.
ISIS has the same ideological roots and similar practices as other
Salafi jihadi organizations active in the Syrian arena. ISIS treats
non-Muslims brutally in the areas it controls, and adheres to a rigid and
fanatical ideology based on a literalist interpretation and application
of religious texts. But this description also applies to Jabhat al-Nusra,
the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria.
Nusra opposes ISIS, and is part of a rebel alliance supported by Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. In March 2015, when Nusra captured Idleb City
in northern Syria, the city's 150 Christian families were forced to flee
to Turkey. Nusra has also forcibly converted a small Druze community in
Idleb. The alliance Nusra was a part of also included Muslim
Brotherhood-oriented groups, such as the Faylaq al-Sham militia, which
apparently had no problem operating alongside the jihadis.
ISIS is not a unique organization; rather, it exists at one of the
most extreme points along a continuum of movements committed to Sunni
political Islam.
Meanwhile, the inchoate mass of Sunni Islamist groups -- of which ISIS
constitutes a single component -- is engaged in a region-wide struggle
with a much more centralized bloc of states and movements organized
around the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is committed to a Shia version
of political Islam.
The Middle East -- in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent
Lebanon, all along the sectarian faultline of the region -- is witnessing
a clash between rival models of political Islam, of which ISIS is but a
single manifestation.
The local players find sponsorship and support from powerful regional
states, themselves committed to various different versions of political
Islam: Iran for the Shias; Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Muslim
Brotherhood-supporting Qatar for the Sunnis.
The long awakening of political Islam as the dominant form of popular
politics in the Middle East started decades ago. But the eclipse of the
political order in the region, and of the nationalist dictatorships in
Iraq, Syria, Egypt (temporarily), Tunisia, and Yemen in recent years, has
brought it to a new level of intensity.
States, indifferent to any norms and rules, using terror and
subversion to advance their interests, jihadi armed groups, and the
refugee crises and disorder that result from all this are the practical
manifestations of it.
This, and not the fate of a single, fairly ramshackle jihadi entity in
the badlands of eastern Syria and western Iraq, is the matter at hand in
the Middle East.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the
Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
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