Tag: ISIS

Bombing Isis: why am I so uncomfortable?

Paddy Ashdown says it’s OK. I supported the Nato intervention in Libya. As British MPs meet to consider whether the country should actively join the US and other nations in bombing the outfit that calls itself “The Islamic State”, and which I still refer to as “Isis”, this should be quite straightforward. But I have deep misgivings.

There are enough reasons why such action should be supported. Firstly Isis are evil. They represent a particular sort of totalitarianism that I detest, casually terminating the lives of anybody that gets in its way. Its attempt to appropriate the religion of Islam is as contemptible as the Ku Klux Klan’s similar appropriation of Christianity.

Secondly the action is legal under international law, provided that it stays within the boundaries of the Iraqi state, since the Iraqi government has requested it. Having said that I set less store by the norms of international law in such matters than many. It concedes too much power to sovereignty of national governments, and to the veto of UN Security Council members.

Thirdly, there is some level of direct threat. Isis has said that it wants to carry its crazy war into developed nations, including ours, through random acts of violence. It will kill any of our non-Muslim citizens that it can lay its hands on. Having said which it has not put much organisational effort into intervention in Western countries – being more interested in carving out its own statelet in Greater Syria.

I place some weight to showing solidarity with the USA. The Western powers are stronger if they act together, and we do have a very strong common interest. Still, the world view of many American politicians is ignorant nonsense, and we should not be too tied to them.

I find that my unease reflects a rather similar attitude with many on the political right to domestic politics. Actions driven by a  bleeding heart or anger can so often lead to the opposite of what we intend.

The first problem is dependency. The interventions by the USA and its allies in Iraq have led to an expectation that the Western powers will intervene to sort out any nasty problem in any neighbourhood (outside Russia, China or India, anyway). So the locals lose any incentive to sort out problems for themselves. We have seen this with Afghan government of Hamid Khazai. We have seen it with post Saddam governments in Iraq. They use the US security umbrella to carve out their own corrupt polities without any regard to their country’s long term future. They governments don’t even act as loyal allies.

The whole Isis mess was created by the failure of two governments: those of Syria and Iraq, drawing on the support of Iran and the Lebanese faction of Hezbollah. Their ineptitude created a political vacuum which Isis has exploited. They have shown themselves incapable and unfit to rule the areas that Isis now controls. But we have no other party to back, beyond the nascent Kurdish state. The US has wrought concessions from the Iraqi state, but I can’t see how these will be enough to regain the trust of the Sunni tribes. Past experience shows that as soon as US pressure is withdrawn, the Iraqi government reverts to type.

A further problem is lack of proximity. I firmly believe that the closer we as a country are to another, the more prepared we should be to intervene in its affairs. This is not just a matter of physical proximity, but also cultural. The Falkland Islands were (and are) close to Britain in that sense. Iraq and Syria are a long way off. I feel happier about our country intervening in Kosovo and Bosnia and, perhaps, Sierra Leone. If Turkey, which is on the edge of being a European nation, and is part of Nato, had chosen to involve itself in this affair, then perhaps we could make a case for helping its defence. But Turkey is staying firmly neutral.

I am not persuaded that this country’s participation in the 2003 gives us any obligation to help sort the mess out. I think responsibility for the mess lies with the Iraqi and Syrian governments. Neither is the presence of British volunteers amongst Isis’s ranks – though we should takes steps to reduce the flow of such people. However, I do think that our past involvement points towards humanitarian and economic assistance now.

And another thing. I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that air power (including the use of drones) is some kind of morally clean way of involving ourselves in a conflict. It may put fewer of our servicemen’s lives at risk, but the death and destruction that they deal out is as real as anything that an infantryman does. And it leaves unanswered the question of who controls the ground after Isis has been beaten.

The world has a problem with failed states and power vacuums. This is what Isis exploited in Syria and Iraq. We also have Somalia, Libya and many other parts of the African continent. Post-imperial occupation by foreign powers has not proved a robust solution. Neither does the projection of Nato military might, outside Europe, anyway.

We need to find a better way. This needs to be led by the local powers, with perhaps further support as required through the UN. In the case of Iraq-Syria these local powers are Turkey, Iran and the Gulf Arab states. These powers somehow need to work out a new political settlement for the region, which, in my view, will require the redrawing of international boundaries. That Iran and Saudi Arabia have behaved in a highly irresponsible manner to date does not mean we can avoid making them part of the solution.

Perhaps President Obama’s coalition will help bring about such a resolution; he at least grasps the limits of military power better then most – though he is buffeted by the winds of US domestic politics. I would need to be convinced that this is so before endorsing any further British military intervention.

Don’t blame Tony Blair for rise of ISIS

The rampages of the ISIS terrorist group (also known as The Islamic State) have taken the lead in our news, pushing Gaza and Ukraine down the agenda. They present a truly chilling spectre as they murder or push out anybody that does not adhere to their religious doctrines from the territory they control. Many thousands of Yazidis and Christians are at risk. And, faced with the horror, people want somebody to blame. The Left want to trace this back to 2003 war in Iraq, started by President George Bush, with our own Tony Blair as his principal cheerleader. That is muddled and unhelpful.

That war was ill-advised, and usually considered to be against international law, which some value more than others. The premise was that Saddam Hussein was a threat to international security, and a brutal dictator; he should be replaced with something more congenial. But the level of threat posed by Saddam was woefully over-estimated, and the western powers had no well grounded plan to replace him, and chaos resulted. ISIS grew out of that chaos. That much I can agree on.

But it is too much to suggest that Messrs Bush and Blair are the main cause of the rise of ISIS. Consider three arguments:

  1. It would have been only a matter of time before Saddam’s regime collapsed. And that would have led to chaos anyway – as the Shias tried to take over, backed by Iran, and the Sunnis fought back. This is what happened in Syria after all, without any helping hand from the western powers.
  2. Indeed the collapse of Syria is what gave ISIS their head start; they used Syrian territory as a base from which to attack Iraq.
  3. When the US withdraw, they had engineered a sufficient reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shias, so that the former were not open to recruitment by ISIS.

In fact if you are looking for blame there are two factions or powers that come further up the list than the western powers.

First there is the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In a bid to consolidate his personal power, he dismantled the Sunni-Shia settlement, and weakened the Iraqi armed forces. Only his personal power base matters to him. He did this in spite of advice to the contrary from the US.

Second there is Saudi Arabia. They have used oil money to promote their intolerant and traditionalist Wahhabi version of the Islamic faith – in opposition to more tolerant forms that had previously prevailed through much of the world outside Arabia. ISIS have simply taken the logic of Wahhabism a few steps further; they are not backed by the Saudi state, but they do attract money from rich Saudi individuals, and those inspired by Wahhabi teaching. While the left rages about how close the US is to Israel, they seem strangely silent about the relationship with Saudi Arabia, a country whose influence on world peace is highly corrosive.

People in the West, especially the left, seem to indulge in a sort of post-colonial arrogance. They assume that everything that happens in the world is the responsibility of the western powers, and if something bad happens, they look for western politicians to blame. But the rest of the world has a life of its own. The peoples of developing world nations should be taken seriously in their own right, and treated as responsible for their own actions. The colonial days are over.

ISIS are one dimension of a world that is taking shape outside the control and influence of the western powers. They are a thoroughly modern movement, in spite of their references to medieval practices, such as beheading opponents and marginalising women. The original Caliphate was much more tolerant – and indeed many of the communities now being liquidated are survivals from that time. But they seem to strike a chord with many angry people across the world. In due course ISIS and movements like it will collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. Personally I find the complete inability of mainstream Arab countries to establish decent, effective state structures a much more worrying phenomenon.