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The Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham’s (ISIS) represents a complicated problem. Because complicated problems generally require multi-faceted solutions, U.S. President Obama appears quite justified in his attempts to forge a broad coalition to counter and hopefully eliminate ISIS. As Chatham House’s Fadi Hakura observes, Mr. Obama unfortunately seems to have “a coalition of the unwilling and apathetic” on his hands.
First and foremost amongst the unwilling and apathetic stands Turkey. While ten Arab states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, recently signed a declaration in Jedda committing them to action against ISIS, Ankara refused to sign the document. Turkey did not come to the aid of the Iraqi Kurds in early August when ISIS forces were advancing on Erbil. Recent reports indicate that Turkish nationals constitute the largest pool of foreign fighters going to join ISIS, and ample evidence of fairly open fund raising and recruitment in Turkey has emerged. Although Ankara denies the reports, American officials claim ISIS sells its black market oil in Turkey with little difficulty. ISIS fighters receive treatment in Turkish hospitals and have long traveled to Syria via Turkey (some Turkish camping and outdoor gear stores near the border apparently do a brisk business with a regular stream of bearded “outdoor enthusiasts”). The 49 Turkish hostages ISIS holds do not seem to be enough to justify the full extent of Turkey’s reluctance to act against the group. Many suspect that Turkey’s reluctance stems from three additional factors: Ankara’s desire to have ISIS weaken the Syrian Kurds (who are aligned with the PKK), Mr. Erdogan’s determination to see Syrian President Assad overthrown, and President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu’s Sunni Muslim identity politics. Weighing against these factors are American, NATO and Iraqi Kurdish requests as well as a fear that ISIS gets more out of control.
The United Kingdom and Germany, meanwhile, just announced that they will not participate in any air strikes against ISIS. Few Western allies of the United States appear ready to contribute military assets of any sort.
The Arab states that signed on to the “anti-ISIS coalition” also made clear that they are only on board (however reluctantly) as long as Iran is not part of the group. Iranian leaders meanwhile dismissed American suggestions that they might cooperate with Washington against ISIS, at the same time that the head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, Ammar al-Hakim, declared that excluding Iran from the anti-ISIS coalition was a “big mistake.” New Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi opined that U.S. ground forces are “not welcome in Iraq” just as an American general was saying they might be needed at some point. For good measure Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr and a few others said they would fight the Americans if they ever came back to Iraq.
Syrian President Assad insisted his government should be part of the coalition at the same time that Americans and Sunni Arab states declared they would arm Sunni “moderate” rebels in Syria and maybe bomb there too, to which Russia responded with dire warnings. American congressmen asked to vote on assistance to Syrian “moderate” rebels grilled U.S. officials about how they would know who was moderate, how they could be sure the assisted rebels wouldn’t go after Assad first and ISIS later (if at all) and how they might make any difference. At no point did any of the Americans appear to contemplate even opening up a dialogue with the secular Syrian Kurdish forces fighting ISIS quite effectively and sheltering large numbers of minority groups, a move which would likely upset the Turks as they sit on their hands.
As if all this were not enough, rumors surfaced that the Iraqi government was trying to convince Arab tribesmen in Diyala province to fight the Peshmerga at the same time that they fight ISIS. This would be in order to prevent the Kurds from recapturing disputed territories in Iraq. This comes at the same time that Baghdad continues to deny Kurdistan its share of the national budget and closely monitors any weapon deliveries to the Kurds in order to make sure they do not receive anything too good.
Perhaps the only good news is that the Kurds, along with a few of the more capable Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias, do indeed seem to be capturing territory back from ISIS and killing large numbers of the terrorists. At least someone is doing something other than arguing.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 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 Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
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