ISIS
A video circulated by ISIS radicals last week purportedly showed kidnapped American war correspondent James Foley being beheaded by his captors. This video has shocked the world. As terror tactics go, onscreen beheading is something sure to stir up fear and anger, and as a propaganda device, it can’t be beat. Given that subtlety is clearly not ISIS’ strong point, the message being conveyed by ISIS in the harrowing clip is, “Mess with us, and you’ll get your head chopped off.”
Yet, one can’t help but think that the guerrilla army that swept across northern Iraq earlierthis summer isn’t protesting just a tad too much. The gory demonstration of the ISIS power comes just as it is likely to be destroyed by the combined might of nearly every military actor and political power in the region. As such, one should actually take the beheading — which now appears to have been staged, with the actual beheading having taken place offscreen — as a demonstration not of the militant group’s strength and ruthlessness, but its weakness and vulnerability.
Recall that the beheading came after the initiation of full-scale bombing of the group by U.S. military airpower. While often belittled by those not subject to it and by counterinsurgency experts keen to point out that bombers are useless against guerrillas hiding among the population one is trying to control, U.S. airpower is devastating in the open field. This is especially the case when U.S. opponents mass in easily identified mobile columns and mass formations with little in the way of air defenses or early warning capabilities. To put it plainly: Operating in such a way with U.S. aircraft nearby is an invitation to be quickly and summarily incinerated.
Given that ISIS had adopted exactly those kinds of tactics in order to conquer much of non-Kurdish northern Iraq, it should come as no surprise that their forces are paying heavily. Indeed, much as the Taliban of 2001 found that their pick-up truck armadas of jerry-rigged Toyotas were no match for precision-guided munitions and high-altitude bombing, ISIS is learning that operating in the open in a similar manner when U.S. air power is around is a quick way to die. What’s more, Washington’s local allies on the ground, people who are no doubt working closely with U.S. forward air controllers — the guys on the ground who call down U.S. airstrikes, are emboldened by the strikes.
Such a combination of unrelenting aerial bombardment with local proxy troops proved incredibly deadly in Afghanistan in 2001, and there is no reason why a similar combination should not work well enough again to clear the ground for the advance of our Kurdish and Shiite Iraqi allies. Stiffened by Uncle Sam’s god-like ability to rain down fire from above, one can expect that ISIS’ open stay in and control of northern Iraq will be ending soon. Indeed, all allied ground forces have to do is, in theory, walk in and take territory — and they are starting to do exactly that.
Ground troops: A step in the wrong direction
While this should be no problem in the open no-man’s-land presently separating the ISIS from its foes on the ground, when it comes to advancing on Sunni Iraq’s cities, theory and practice get a bit more muddled and it will require a bit more than just bombing and proxy infantry to prevail. No amount of military force can keep the restive region quiet without political buy-in from Sunni Iraq’s local tribal powerbrokers. Indeed, so powerful are they that Gen. David Petraeus famously bribed them — via the Sons of Iraq program and promises of inclusion in future national decision-making — to turn on the al Qaida-inspired elements that had previously embedded themselves within the Sunni population. Unfortunately, as the U.S. withdrew from Iraq, the government in Baghdad made the fatal mistake of reneging on promises made or implied by Washington to the Sunni groups, thereby allowing them to once again make overtures toward Islamist radicals.
Yet, even now the political impasse between Sunni Iraq and the Baghdad government that led the Sunni population to shift its support to ISIS over the past several months may be on the verge of resolving itself. The increasingly authoritarian Nouri al-Maliki has been ousted from his position as Iraq’s prime minister and a new coalition, led by Haider al-Abadi, is taking up governance of the rump Iraqi state. If, as seems likely, Abadi will make moves to be more inclusive of Iraqi Sunni interests then that in combination with bribe money — whether sourced from Iraq, the United States or Iran — and U.S. airpower will assuredly tip the balance of incentives faced by the Sunnis away from the beheading maniacs of ISIS and toward a Sunni-Shiite accommodation.
Once inked, such a deal will see ISIS rebels not only pushed back into northern Iraq’s Sunni population centers but also, importantly, stripped of popular support just at a time when they need it most. If all this comes to pass, then ISIS rebels will be scuttling back to war-torn Syria as quickly as their feet — for their Toyotas would have been turned into burned-out cinders by U.S. war planes by then — will carry them. Even then, there might be no safe place to stay, as Assad, despite recent setbacks, may yet strike a deal with Washington to allow U.S. aircraft to attack ISIS within Syria itself.
So, despite all the ISIS head-chopping, the prospects for the group going forward are decidedly grim. The powers that be seem set on annihilating them, and while it may take some time, the end point — mass numbers of dead ISIS jihadists strewn all over northern Iraq — is all but certain. Their utility, most especially to the Iraqi Sunni leaders who called them in to make the point to Baghdad that it controls northern Iraq only through their sufferance, has been maximized. Point being made, the radicals — who, regardless of their accomplishments, are nonetheless very small in number — can nicely be done away with as the props and bargaining chips they were always meant to be.
Unless, that is, the U.S. snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by sending a large number of ground troops to do the fighting, occupying, and pacifying that the Iraqi government and its Iranian and Syrian allies should be doing on their own. Contrary to the opinion of U.S. hawks who seem to have learned nothing from our sorry, sordid history in this region, the sending of large contingents of U.S. forces to Iraq will merely allow the Iraqi Shiite and Kurds to sit back on their haunches and let Uncle Sam do all the heavy lifting. Even worse, it will allow our allies to renege on any deals that may have been struck with the Sunni tribal powers since the fall of al-Maliki, while simultaneously also further alienating the Sunnis — potentially enough to have them call the ISIS radicals, or somebody like them, back in.
Take heart, though: The odds of continued ISIS success going forward are getting very long and their inevitable defeat seems all but certain. But the question now is: Once the radicals are sent to their reward, will Iraq’s squabbling ethnic groups reach an agreement to share power and resources and so keep the country united and functioning? It’s an open question, of course, and as the civil war next door in Syria demonstrates, such squabbling could turn into an unending civil war rather quickly.
However, sending even more U.S. troops to Iraq beyond what is necessary to rain death from the skies and onto ISIS fighters would do little to help induce — and likely much to hurt — just such a political resolution. America’s hawks might not like it, but a limited war with limited aims that puts most of the burden of ground fighting onto the backs of our proxies in Baghdad and Erbil is the only real option we have, barring a full pullout.