Few conflicts offer the moral and strategic clarity that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) now provides. Polarized camps can and do endlessly argue in support of Israeli or Palestinian viewpoints, resulting in a lot of international chatter but little of substance. Ukraine remains a mess, with few people sure of what to do or when to do it. Syria gave the West the unenviable choice of either the Assad devil or the Jihadi demons, with decision makers in Washington and elsewhere appearing paralyzed by their lack of options. Sub-Saharan African conflicts appeared so chaotic and far away they never made it onto the strategic radar screen, although the world still feels guilty (when it remembers) for inaction in places like Rwanda, Darfur and the Congo.
In contrast to other international problems, the ISIS villain offers the world, and the United States in particular, a refreshingly unambiguous imperative. Thanks to the statements and on-line videos that ISIS terrorists post themselves, no one doubts what they are about: Executing captives and unarmed civilians, including children; beheading those whose religious beliefs differ from their nihilistic Salafi extremism; raping women taken as booty; random drive by shootings of civilians; pedophilia (I am not sure how else to describe the forcible marriage of captured underage girls); blowing up the religious shrines and ancient cultural heritage of others; suicide bombings targeting random innocents; destabilizing the region and replacing existing states with an Islamic Caliphate, starting with Syria and Iraq but now moving onto Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza and soon the rest; expanding the “struggle” to encompass as much of the world as possible.
As if all this were not enough, ISIS butchers now bring the threat of genocide to the devastated cityscapes and barren countrysides they stalk. I do not mean this in the tripe way the word has been thrown about so often, every time a few hundred innocents of the same group get killed -- but rather in the very real sense of the physical extermination of an entire people, with their survivors scattered. Mosul’s Christian population is no more, ethnically cleansed in June from a city they inhabited for almost 2000 years. Since ISIS overran the nearby city of Shangal a few days ago, the Yezidi population has been looking at the threat of genocide as well. Some half of the world’s 400,000 Yezidis, an old religion that predates Christianity and Islam, are now displaced and on the run from ISIS. As I write this, some ten thousand Yezidi civilians are trapped on a mountain top in 45 degree heat, with their old and young expiring first as ISIS terrorists surround the base. The last big Christian town in Iraq, Qaraqosh, may have just fallen to ISIS as I write this.
In short, ISIS makes al-Qaeda look like a bunch of boy scouts, which probably explains why al-Qaeda disowned them. But whereas al-Qaeda was more of an idea and a loose franchise of like-minded, disparate Jihadis, ISIS is much more than that. The militants of the Islamic State (as they now call themselves) are organized into an almost regular army, with a state that incorporates a good deal of Syria and Iraq. They are flush with cash and now American weapons captured from the fleeing Iraqi army. The group’s recent and lightning-quick series of military conquests is convincing Arab Sunnis with few other options that ISIS is a viable, serious player, and no one in this region wants to stand with the wrong team. Analysts who watch these things are calling ISIS’ advance “a calamity hitherto unimaginable.” It is likely today’s most serious threat to the entire region.
Despite the rare confluence of moral and strategic imperatives to respond, the United States, Europe and other countries appear almost blasé about the whole thing. It does not even make the front page of major newspapers. U.S. President Obama last made a public statement about Iraq on June 19th, despite being the leader of a state with both a strong interest and moral obligation to respond to ISIS’ actions in Iraq.
Those analysts, journalists and academics looking at the issue appear to have reached a very rare consensus on what needs to be done: Arm and support the secular, pro-Western Kurds currently standing up to ISIS. With their budget cut off by Baghdad since January and no military resupply to speak of, the Iraqi Kurds are outgunned by the new American hardware and supplies ISIS captured in June. Syrian Kurds have moved to help them confront the ISIS advance, but they have received even less support than the Kurds in Iraq (if that is possible) and have been fighting ISIS in Syria for two years.
Yet somehow President Obama cannot be moved to say anything or do anything. His Republican rivals seem little better, either not comprehending what is happening or not wishing to remind anyone about their 2003 invasion. Mr. Obama’s avoidance and neglect of pressing issues in Iraq, a headache he never wanted to deal with, has left policy to bureaucratic apparachniks in the State Department. Their priority appears to be insisting that they were not wrong for unconditionally backing Nuri al-Maliki all these years. Instead of confronting genocide and a mortal threat to just about everyone, they prioritize maintaining the “territorial integrity” of a state that now exists in name only. They claim to be “monitoring events closely” and they insist that all military and financial aid to the Kurds must go through Baghdad, knowing full well that this really means doing nothing.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since August 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of the forthcoming Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
