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The IS or Islamic State (also known as ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/ ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or Da’esh) is the latest shockwave entry in to the global media terror radar. The terrorist group has become notorious in the last few months for their extreme brutality carried out with such callosity that even the grand daddy of all terrorist organizations, the Al-Qaeda has disavowed them.

Here’s a quick summary of the scenario of what has happened and what is currently going on in the Middle East,

ISIS is fighting against a combined might of a US led coalition of global allies from some 40 countries, local forces that constitute the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Iraqi Shi’ite rebel militias and the Syrian government forces. Until some time ago, they were also battling the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda, until the group was driven out from ISIS controlled areas. Ever since the US air strikes in Iraq and Syria, there have been reports of both these terrorist groups joining hands together to fight against a common enemy, the West.

At the onset of the Syrian civil war however, ISIS fighters along with fighters from the Al-Nusra Front and the US backed Syrian rebels and the Kurdish fighters were all fighting against another common enemy, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces.

During the Iraq War, members of ISIS were fighting the NATO forces!

Even as I write this article, a fierce battle has just recently concluded between the US backed Kurdish fighters and ISIS extremists in Kobane, a town lying on the border of northern Syria and Turkey. The Kurds, along with heavy aerial strikes by the Americans, seemed to have outgunned the jihadists in a hard fought battle.

Your mind can be easily confused if you try connecting the dots in order to make any sense out of this conflict and its causes.

What is ISIS and how did it come in to such rapid existence? Is it Al-Qaeda with a different name? Who is the US fighting against, the Assad regime or ISIS?

Like all things related in Al-Qaeda’s version of Jihad, this one too began with a ‘noble’ cause of ousting the foreign occupation of Iraqi lands during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. While I personally believe US had no right to go meddling in other people’s affairs, Al-Qaeda seemed to be downright offended with the Iraq invasion! But before we get in to further details of ISIS’s origins, I’ll try to look at the events in a chapter wise manner to get an understanding of the circumstances that has lead to the current crisis in Iraq.

Chapter 1: The Nightmare in Iraq

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An American Tale of Invasion

Perhaps the US government’s biggest folly, that will continue to haunt the Americans for a very long time was, engaging Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq in a military conflict based on their false notion of a WMD threat. George W. Bush Jr., the President of USA at that time seemed to have carried great contempt for Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, and wanted to dethrone him by any means. It seemed to be a classic case of ego clash which was perhaps a result of the remnants of the 1991 Gulf War memories. Bush Sr. was the President of the US during the Gulf War and had planned on overthrowing Saddam’s government in Iraq, but had failed to do so.

An interesting point to note, the US didn’t always consider Saddam Hussein as their enemy. In fact, in the 1980’s during the deadly Iran-Iraq War, US had granted their full-scale support to Saddam’s regime in Iraq. They had supported Saddam with money and weapons, to limit Iran’s influence in the Middle East. Surprisingly, the US had even actively supported the Iraqi military in the procurement of materials and development of chemical weapons. Saddam had actually used chemical weapons against the Iranians on a massive scale to limit their advancement during the war and it became a part of their key military tactics that his forces used to avoid defeat at the hands of Iran. Saddam had ordered use of the chemical weapons again during the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq to kill thousands of Kurds and brutally put down their rebellion. I implore you to read more about the war when you have time.

I guess making foes out of friends is an old foreign policy of the US.

Back in the Iraq War of 2003, the US government had taken it upon themselves to help the poor people of Iraq escape the oppression under Saddam’s rule. Their offer to the Iraqis was the route to Democracy, while they vowed to destroy the WMD program that Saddam had allegedly planned to use against the US and her allies. Ironic, much!?

The US and the NATO allies played the United Nations card and passed a resolution to inspect Iraq’s weapons production facilities. The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) were tasked with the job to inspect and report on the extent of the danger. But, in a sudden twist of fate, the UNMOVIC team expressed doubts on the WMD concerns of US. They also remarked that the Iraqi government had been quite cooperative with the weapons inspection process and they hadn’t found any reliable evidence of a serious WMD threat from Saddam’s Iraq.

Unwavering from their conviction though, the US government insisted that they somehow ‘sensed’ that Saddam had tried to procure uranium fissile materials to make an atom bomb and still had a hidden cache of chemical and biological weapons stashed away, presumably from the Iraq-Iran war era. Since the memories of 9/11 were still fresh on people’s minds, they also accused Saddam of being the ultimate anathema of Americans for harboring secret links with the Al Qaeda. Moreover, the Bush administration reminded to its people and the world time and again that the Iraqi civilians were under oppression and needed American assistance to escape the tyranny of Saddam’s rule.

‘Murica’ had voted and the invasion of Iraq by US forces in order to preserve world peace and liberate the Iraqis was inevitable!

The Divided Muslim Brotherhood – Shias and Sunnis

Anybody who has followed Middle East’s history would know there is little love lost between the Shia and the Sunni Muslims. In a gist, Sunnis are the majority of the Muslim population in the world, constituting almost 90% world-wide. They believe that prophet Mohammad was the last prophet of all the Muslims.

The Shias, constituting the remaining 10% of the global Muslim population, on the other hand believe Ali, who was the son in-law of Mohammad, was the successor of the prophet. Although, Shias may appear to be numerically much inferior to Sunnis in the overall picture, when you consider their population concentrated in the Middle East, they constitute almost 40%, or more than one-third of the Muslim population there! In fact, the Shias are a majority in Iraq, Iran and a few other countries in the Middle East.

Saddam Hussein and his party members were from the Sunni minority, ruling the Shi’ite majority population. This is a significant point to remember in our discourse as I’ll keep referring to it.

To cut the long story short, US invaded Iraq, defeated Saddam’s largely Sunni force, captured him, tried him in court, found him guilty of committing crimes against humanity and finally, hanged him! The Sunnis, especially the ones who worked for Saddam and were fiercely loyal to him, obviously didn’t forget the unceremonious treatment meted out to their leader and their ilk. The deep rooted sectarian hatred between both the Shias and the Sunnis began to surface post Saddam’s end. It ultimately resulted in a culmination of large scale sectarian violence that the US had never anticipated. The US forces were caught in the cross fires of a fierce struggle between both the communities.

The Iraqi Shiites realized, with the Sunni leader and their tormentor, Saddam Hussein finally gone, there existed a glorious opportunity to fill up the political vacuum in Iraq by a representative from their side. Eventually, clashes broke out between the Sunni and Shi’ite militias, each vying for power to form a government in Iraq, which resulted in a lot of casualties on both sides. The situation had not turned out as favorably as the US would have preferred and the NATO forces had to step up their efforts to control the state of affairs in Iraq. However, the US still believed that the post Saddam Iraq was more conducive to conduct democratic elections, so that people could choose their own leaders.

The elections were largely dominated by the Shias due to their sheer numerical superiority in the region, and as a result, most of the leaders were elected from their community while the Sunnis felt pushed in to a corner. Each community wanted to fulfill their new political ambitions of being represented by members of their respective sects for creating the new government in Iraq but the Sunnis were at a distinct disadvantage. Their allegiance to Saddam during his rule was still fresh upon the minds of the Shias. As a result, there was a simmering resentment and distrust between both the sects, even though the US had brought in a democratic set up.

From a Jihad perspective, Iraq had developed in to a hot-bed for mujaheddin recruitment. It was a classic case in point, for the largely Sunni dominated Al-Qaeda, to step up their action in Iraq in order to liberate the region from foreign occupation forces and the Shiites, whom they considered as apostates. During the war, many Muslim foreign fighters had answered Al-Qaeda’s call for jihad and formed various militia groups.One of the most significant of them was the “Al-Qaeda in Iraq”.

These were the seminal roots of the Islamic State aka ISIS aka ISIL aka Da’esh.

Towards the end of 2011, the US troops had completely withdrawn from Iraq. They had displaced Saddam and replaced him with a democratically elected Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a hard-line Shi’ite. Later on, Maliki became infamous for his brutal and violent crackdowns to suppress Sunni protests against his government. Democracy seemed to have just reversed the situation in Iraq where the Shias were meting out the same treatment to the Sunnis that they had faced under Saddam.

The current result: A bad situation in Iraq has now turned in to the worst possible nightmare for the Iraqis, their neighbors and the rest of the world as well.

Chapter 2: The Crisis in Syria

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The Fruits of the Arab Spring

Towards the end of 2010, Tunisia paved the way in the Arab world for what famously came to be known as, the “Arab Spring”. Almost instantly, the movement spread like wild fire to the neighboring countries of Libya, Algeria, and Egypt and later to almost all the Arab countries. One after the other, largely autocratic governments and leaders who had ruled these countries as dictators succumbed to public wrath and fervor. Within a year, most of the leaders were either thrown out, killed in armed conflict or forced to make concessions with the public.

At present, only a handful of governments remain that haven’t completely buckled under the pressure and still continue to resist the wave of revolt in their countries. The Syrian government, headed by the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is one of them. Syria has been a powder keg for the past three years now and the Syrian government is engaged in a bloody conflict against armed rebel groups that want nothing more than a total dismantling of the present government.

The protests against Assad’s rule started peacefully, but the response of his government was hard and brutal. Violent crackdowns have resulted in widespread criticism of the Assad administration’s techniques in handling the situation. It soon escalated in to a serious conflict where the protesters, backed by Western governments, took up arms against the Syrian government regime forces. The US and its allies, not surprisingly, were itching to intervene and overthrow Assad’s regime, much like they did in Iraq.

Assad had never been too fond of the West and had largely shunned the US from any diplomatic engagement, relying mostly on Russia and China for support. This used to irk the US administration as they feared that their regional allies in the Middle East might follow Assad’s steps and join hands with the communist Russia and China. Therefore, in order to exert direct influence in the anti- Assad regime protest, the US tried using the same old trick of trying to pass a UN Security Council resolution to impose targeted sanctions against Syria. It was however, vetoed by both Russia and China.

In fact, the Russian President Vladimir Putin was so determined in not letting US commit the same rash mistake in Syria as they did in Iraq, that he penned his thoughts in a historic New York Times op-ed article “to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders.” The irony of the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine by Russia under Putin’s explicit approval, almost a year later, is not easily lost though.

The political situation in Syria was similar to what it was like in Iraq during Saddam’s reign. Only the sides had interchanged. In Syria, the Sunni majority population was being ruled by leaders belonging to the Alawite sect, which is closely related to Shias.

Old wine, new bottle!

The President King – Bashar al-Assad

Image Credit: The New York Times

The Assad family has been particularly active in taking up leadership roles in Syria. In fact, before Bashar, his father, Hafez al-Assad had led Syria for 30 long years, before handing over the reins to him in early 2000. A single family that ruled unopposed, contiguously for more than 4 decades, points to a shrewd and strategic long term planning by those in positions of power to enable them to continue wielding it.

Hafez al-Assad, before rising up the power chain, was a member of the Syrian armed forces and had successfully staged a military coup to become the President of Syria. Hafez seemed to be aware of the fact that he, being an Alawite, leading a population that was mostly Sunni, could be exploited by his political opponents to overthrow him in the future. Hence, as soon as he assumed the official power as President, he declared Syria to be in a state of emergency, thus limiting the political participation in the country. In addition to this, his own experience of gaining political power because of the coup made him realize that in order to maintain his leadership in Syria, a strong and loyal support base of the military was crucial. Thus, to truly consolidate his power, he began integrating the military into the government and established a network of loyal Alawites around him by installing them in to key posts.

Once he inherited the post of Presidency, Bashar too, continued to build the Assad regime stronger by following his father’s steps. The seeds that were sown seemed to have served him well during the 2011 Syrian Civil War. Despite all the odds, including political isolation, mounting international pressure and defections within his military, Bashar al-Assad’s security establishment has defended him and his government against the US backed armed rebels and Sunni Islamic jihadists.

Despite being demonized by the Western media as a brutal and autocratic ruler who is against the Sunni majority in Syria, Assad still maintains that his government is a secular one. He has stressed the point that even in the current scenario he does not want to give the conflict a sectarian blend in spite of the “external forces” trying to prove otherwise. One of the main reasons given by both Al-Qaeda and ISIS, both Sunni terrorist groups, while fighting against Assad’s regime is to ‘protect’ the Sunnis in Syria. Not to be outdone, many Shia militias have pledged their support to the Assad regime. Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militant group in Lebanon, has taken a pro-Assad stand and has fought alongside the Syrian army, against the rebels and Sunni extremists. Iran, the influential Shia majority country in the Middle East and a strategic ally of Syria too, has helped the Syrian government with financial, technical and military support in the ongoing civil war.

It is difficult not to believe that the Syrian civil war has, in effect, become another “Sunni v/s Shia” proxy war in the Middle East. What is shocking though is that amidst all of the fighting, the death toll in this conflict has reached almost 200,000 in Syria alone!

Chapter 3: Kurds and the Fight for Kurdistan

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The Kurdish Resistance – A Force to Reckon

Kurds, who speak the Kurdish language, are an ethnic minority group that originated mainly from Iran, and are now distributed across the Middle Eastern countries. They have got a sizable population in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous region in Northern Iraq that is home for most of the Kurdish refugees. Although largely autonomous and having a parliamentary democracy with their own president, the Iraqi Kurdistan still remains a federal entity of Iraq, and thus, does not enjoy total sovereignty.

Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims while a few follow Yazidism, Christianity, and Judaism as well. Despite the usual fundamentalism associated with Sunni Islam, Kurds are known for their liberal outlook and for being among the most secular Islamic groups in the region who have lived peacefully with other Kurdish groups belonging to different faiths. They are however, fiercely nationalistic and extremely proud of their distinct Kurdish culture, which is different from that of the Arabs and Turks.

They fought against the Iraqi government first to form the Iraqi Kurdistan. In Turkey, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant organization has fought the Turkish state for many years and has been responsible for many terrorist attacks in Turkey, over their demands for a Turkish Kurdistan. In Iran, they fought for an autonomous region for the Iranian Kurds. Lastly, in the recent civil war in Syria, where the government had subjugated their human rights and treated the Kurds as second class citizens, they have fought back and managed to take control of towns and cities that they now refer to as the Syrian Kurdistan.

If there is one group that can come close to matching the ideological fanaticism of the ISIS fighters with an equal nationalistic fervor to defend their territory and culture, it is the Kurds, who are fighting for their very survival. Since the Kurds do not have a standing army of their own, each and every member of the community is willing to act as a soldier during any kind of armed conflict. They have a clear nationalistic objective, to preserve their Kurdish identity in face of any adversity that tries to destroy it. This remarkable attribute can be seen in the current conflict as well, where the Kurdish fighters have strongly resisted ISIS’ attempts to infiltrate in to Kurdish controlled territories, despite both groups comprising mainly of Sunni Muslims.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Kurdish Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan along with the Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have tasted success in hard fought battles against the ISIS terrorists, where others like the Free Syrian Army or the Iraqi Army has fled or lost. It was the PKK, declared as a terrorist group by the NATO alliance, which ultimately saved the Yazidis, who were trapped in Mount Sinjar and at the mercy of the ISIS terrorists, from a massacre.

The latest battle in Kobane between the ISIS militants and the Kurds also has gone in favor of the Kurds. The Kobane Kurds have vowed to either defeat the terrorists or die trying. You should especially remember the name of Mayssa Abdo, the Peshmerga Princess also known as Narin Afrin. She’s the commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga troops currently defending the besieged Syrian town of Kobane.

Chapter 4: Turkey’s Headaches

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Playing the Waiting Game

ISIS fighters have besieged the towns and cities neighboring the borders of Iraq and Syria. The latest region that has come under their attack is the city of Kobane, a small city lying on the border between Syria and Turkey. And, despite having the enemy at their gates, the Turkish government has appeared strangely reluctant to offer a strong show of support for her NATO allies in opposing the ISIS threat.

The leaders of the current government of Turkey, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, do have some genuine concerns regarding getting deeply involved in “someone else’s fight”. Their two main concerns are internal to Turkey’s state of domestic affairs, as well, as external in relation to the change of regime in neighboring Syria.

Internally, the Turkish government has faced a lot of backlash, at the hands of their Kurdish minority population, who are furious at their government for not doing enough in terms of logistical support and sending Turkish troops to help defend the city of Kobane, which consists mainly of Kurds. This hatred, as has been explained in Chapter 3 dedicated to the Kurds, is not newfound though.

For the last three decades, the Kurds, who constitute almost 20% of the population in Turkey, have been at the forefront of a Kurdish insurgency to create a separate state of Turkish Kurdistan in the areas lying towards the eastern border of Turkey. The long drawn and bloody movement led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has led to heavy casualties among Turkish civilians and military personnel and thus, a mutual distrust and hatred runs deep between the Turks and the Kurds.

In the fight against ISIS, the Western powers have started arming the Kurdish fighters of the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) and the Democratic Unity Party (PYD), considered to be the PKK’s Syrian arm, to act as foot soldiers against the IS jihadists in the battle in Kobane. Recently, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu had endorsed and recognized the right of the Kurds to have a State of Kurdistan in Turkey. All of these events seem to have made Turkey very nervous before taking a firm stand against ISIS, without knowing how the events might pan out in the end. After all, Turkey argues, nobody seemed to have noticed or condemned the terrorist activities of the PKK on Turkish civilians for more than 30 years, just because the terror acts weren’t affiliated with ‘Islam’.

An interesting point to be noted here is that ISIS is fighting the Kurdish militias, who the Turks consider their enemies, at the Syrian border, near Turkey. Moreover, the Islamic State is a Sunni led jihadist group while Turkey is a Sunni majority country. Could Turkey’s reluctance to get involved in the fight be a result of a conflict of interest, maybe?

The situation is like a double edged sword for Turkey. If ISIS is defeated by the coalition of the US led forces, with the major ground fighting being credited to the Kurds, it’d have an emboldening effect on the Kurdish separatist movement fighters and their struggle would get an international recognition. Furthermore, if the Kurds are rewarded with a UN resolution that grants an official recognition to the State of Turkish Kurdistan, it’d trigger a chain of events in the entire Middle East that’d ultimately lead to the disintegration of a number of nations, since each ethnic minority would start demanding their own State. Hence, given this backdrop, it is only rational to expect that Erdogan wouldn’t be too eager to help the Kurds in the Syrian region at the moment. The Kurds, led by the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), will have to continue fighting their battles without any overt support from Turkey.

On the other hand, if ISIS triumphs, it can create an extremely chaotic situation for Turkey at her border regions and hurt the tourism dependent economy very badly. Not to mention, a loss of trust with the NATO allies and the EU members states would mean Turkey might find itself without any true friend during a time of crisis.

A second element that is crucial to understand Turkey’s stand point would be their insistence on a change in regime in Syria. Turkey, as mentioned above, is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country and Erdogan himself is a devout Sunni. He has been an opponent of the Alawite (offshoot of Shia) government of Bashar al-Assad ever since the movement of the Arab spring hit Syria. His opposition to the “once friendly” Assad government is largely due to the violent crackdown by the Syrian security forces against the protestors, a majority of whom were Sunni Muslims.

Erdogan’s government has insisted, with the backing of US, to negotiate a “no-fly” zone over Syria, which is being opposed by Russia in the UN. A “no-fly” zone would mean, Assad would not be able to use the air-force against the rebels. Turkey reasons that due to the ability of Assad’s regime to aerially strike at the coalition of anti-regime forces, they are being forced to flee the battlefield. This vacancy on the ground is being filled up by ISIS fighters. Thus, by getting a no-fly zone resolution over Syria, Turkey aims to cut down the Assad regime’s ability to launch aerial attacks. They believe this would raise the morale of the anti-government opposition forces and help them join the fight again. Ultimately, it’d help the coalition forces achieve the dual objectives of reclaiming the lost territory from ISIS and also toppling the Syrian government.

It’d appear that Erdogan seems to be playing a dangerous waiting game. He’s intentionally letting ISIS do the dirty work of fighting Assad’s forces in Syria and simultaneously eliminating the PKK Kurds fighting in Kobane. He certainly would be hoping that ISIS militarily weakens the Kurdish resistance in the areas bordering Turkey. This might work in his favor in the short term, but in the long run of events that are yet to follow, he risks harboring the ISIS terrorists for too long and thus dragging Turkey down the path of extremism and quite possibly, a major sectarian violence.

Chapter 5: The Islamic State – One Group That Binds Them All

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So far we have tried to explore the many important events to understand the complex background to the current situation in Iraq and Syria. With that backdrop in mind, we shall try to understand how the Islamic State fits in to the geopolitical picture of the Middle East and what actions can be expected from the major stakeholders.

Creation of an Islamic Caliphate

In Chapter 1, I had mentioned that the genesis of the Islamic State group was in the Iraq war when it was fighting against the NATO forces as a franchise of Al-Qaida. The group has grown very ambitious ever since, capturing large swathes of areas in Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, where they claim to have established the long cherished, Islamic Caliphate and implemented the Sharia law.

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The group has seen significant growth under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Baghdadi, a former Al-Qaida member, and his fellow associates were successful in stoking the communal flames by invoking sectarian passion among the disgruntled Iraqi Sunnis, post the formation of a Shia led government in Iraq. Then, during the later part of the Syrian Civil War when there seemed to be a stalemate between the regime and the rebel conflict, his group shocked the entire world by their rapid advancement and capture of major cities and towns in Iraq and Syria. By declaring the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate, they had in effect, hijacked the anti-government protest and successfully pushed forward their own extremist ideas.

The group came to international media’s red alert radar in June this year, when it arrived in Mosul, an Iraqi town, and captured the military base that contained US supplied military equipment and installations. Over 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, who were trained by the US military, fled on the arrival of some 800 Islamic State militants. It was a major boost for the group, both in terms of access to resources and from a marketing standpoint.

The Islamic State has grown strong in terms of numbers and resources quite rapidly in the recent months. Intelligence sources in the US indicate the number of fighters in ISIS could be anywhere from 30,000 – 50,000. The group has even managed to attract many foreign fighters and female supporters from across the globe to join their ranks. A major reason for that can be attributed to the fact that the group as a whole, starting from the foot soldiers to the leadership, is bound by a strong ideological belief of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East. Besides that, they are extremely tech savvy and have been quite successful in promoting their propaganda using popular social networking sites like Twitter.

ISIS has managed to capture key areas in both Iraq and Syria, that has given them access to rich crude oil wells and refineries and power generation units. These have been cleverly used as resources to finance their movement. They have also looted the abandoned bank treasuries in Mosul, including the city’s central bank. As a result of these raids, the Islamic State group is touted to have become the richest terrorist organization in the world, with some reports suggesting their assets to be worth almost US$2 billion.

Their fighters, riding high on their seemingly sweeping victories are determined to lay down their lives for a cause which they believe in and thus, seem to appear unstoppable in the face of adversity and battle.

But is it really the case?

Despite the seemingly barbaric nature of the IS militants, including public beheading of their opponents and a strict implementation of Sharia in the areas under their control, there seems to be a well calculated method to their mayhem.

For instance, the battles that the IS has chosen have been carefully picked, which mainly include Sunni majority regions in both, Iraq and Syria. Being a Sunni led group, this gives them an opportunity to exploit the disillusioned Sunnis in these areas. It creates an ideal breeding ground for the group to further their cause and recruit new fighters. Since ISIS claims on creating a new state, it is crucial for them to have a loyal support base in the areas under their control.

At one point of time, ISIL fighters were about an hour away from Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The fall of the city would have meant an end of the Iraqi government establishment and a failure of the American led diplomatic and military assistance in the region. Yet, ISIL never really attempted to take over the city. The fact that Baghdad has a Shia majority population and most of the Iraqi military is condensed in it points to a certain conjecture, that ISIL may not be willing to confront the Iraqi military in a direct combat in Baghdad, yet.

Instead, they might try to use different, but well tested strategies to break Baghdad from within. This includes acts of concentrated violence against Shia targets, including civilian areas and places of worship. With such tactics, ISIS would hope to trigger a backlash from the Shi’ite militant groups against Sunnis in Baghdad. If the chain of events ultimately leads to a Sunni insurgency movement, specifically targeting the Shias in Baghdad while slowly spreading out throughout Iraq, it would play out perfectly for ISIL to execute their plans.

The US and the Iraqi administration seem to understand this ploy and the pressure that was put on the hardliner Shi’ite PM, Nouri al-Maliki to step down from his post emphasizes this. The willingness to draft a strategy to form a more inclusive government cabinet comprising of MPs representing both, the Shias and the Sunnis, is a key move that should help counter the internal threat faced by Baghdad.

As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest strength of the Islamic State is their close knit unit of fighters who passionately believe in an Islamic Caliphate. Against such fanaticism and with access to advance artillery, it comes as no surprise that the militants have been so successful in their ground battles. The Free Syrian Army, for example, has been marred with indiscipline and infighting and despite being backed by US, haven’t posed any real threat to the ISIS militants. Likewise, the Mosul takeover was made easy due to the fact that most of the Iraqi soldiers in the Mosul regiment were Sunnis, and hence, reluctant to kill fellow Sunni Muslims in ISIS. Religion and especially the Sunni sectarian version of Islam and Sharia are crucial for the Islamic State to govern and keep its support base strong and steady.

Along with an Islamic framework of governance, ISIL has surprisingly demonstrated shrewd military planning capability as well. The group has used different modes of warfare, based on the kind of enemy they have faced on the battlefield.

Against an organized and trained military like the Assad regime’s forces, ISIL has largely relied on guerrilla warfare tactics, focusing on a war of attrition. Against other resisting forces like the Kurdish Peshmerga, they have used conventional warfare by engaging them in direct combat in the cities. Finally, in order to weaken the State from within and maintain control over areas they had captured, they have resorted to terrorism and engaged in acts of beheading and bombings, targeting mainly the Shia population and anyone who opposes their rule. Herein lies a main difference between Al-Qaeda and ISIS. While Al-Qaeda focuses on causing terror by targeting mainly Western civilians, ISIS sees itself both as a terrorist group as well as an Islamic government body.

My Enemy’s Enemy Remains My Enemy

The US administration has been criticized for not doing enough to stop ISIS when it was still considered a small fish. Perhaps, it had to do with the fact that in a bid for power, ISIS and Al-Qaeda had become rivals and were fighting each other, which directly supported US interests in the region. The other priority was defeating the Assad regime by direct US military intervention, something both Russia and China opposed vehemently in the United Nations Security Council resolution. Thus, in hindsight, it may have been a deliberate move on the part of US to allow the ISIS crisis to get out of hand and in the process, create a vortex to involve the major global powers to unite against a common enemy.

An unexpected twist of the emergence of ISIS has been the complete shift of the focus from the Syrian Civil war to controlling the spread of their menace in the neighboring areas.

With the Iraqi army in disarray and the NATO alliance including Turkey, still not willing to deploy their soldiers in Iraq, it appears there is little resistance to the Islamic State’s onslaught. However, there have been some fighter groups that have tasted success to varying degrees against ISIL in the battlefield. One of them is the coalition of the Kurdish fighters in the Iraqi Kurdistan, known as the Peshmerga, and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syrian Kurdistan. The other is the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime’s security forces.

This makes life difficult for the US in terms of supporting either group with military aid. While it would most definitely not assist the Assad regime, it cannot overtly support the Kurds without upsetting Turkey, its NATO alliance member. As mentioned earlier, the Kurds have been at the forefront of a bloody insurgency movement against the Turkish government to create a Turkish Kurdistan. However, it is quite clear that just like the ISIS militants, the Kurds are a strongly knit unit in their ideological belief in a State of Kurdistan and hence committed to defending their territories. This is why, despite the diplomatic friction it might cause between US and Turkey, the Kurds remain the US administration’s strongest bet in fighting the ISIS threat on the ground.

The Assad regime seems to have got a breather from the civil war in Syria for the time being, although it is using the opportunity to weaken the opposition forces in Syria through its own air strikes at key rebel positions. It will count on Russia, China and Iran for support against ISIS. Iran being a Shia majority, would never allow the Islamic State to establish a Sunni Caliphate in its neighborhood. Thus, the Iranians will be Assad’s most important ally in the Middle East, while Russia and China’s role would be mainly to contain the Western sphere of influence in the region.

The Islamic State’s strategy would be to continue expanding the war geographically. It has two main objectives in doing so.

Firstly, though it may seem counter-productive, they actually want to engage the US militarily in the region. This would set the stage for them to declare a global jihad on the West based on the lines of the supposedly apocalyptic battle that is to occur, as mentioned in the hadith, before the Judgment Day. In this battle between Muslims of the world and the ‘Romans’, symbolically characterized by the Western alliance, the Muslims will triumph. ISIS is already using the hadith where the relevant passage is mentioned as part of their propaganda machine to recruit more fighters.

The second objective, which is actually more worrisome is, that by spreading in to a number of regions, the Islamic State will keep its ideology alive. That would basically mean that even if ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria, it’d reappear in other parts of the Middle East. The spread of the Islamic State’s ideology has already started. Terrorist organizations such as the Pakistani Taliban have pledged their allegiance to IS. This presents a real danger to countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and even China, which have not directly interfered in the war till now, but might be sucked in due its spread. Contrary to popular belief, the Islamic State is functioning as a proper government in the areas under its control. Besides generating its own revenues from sale of oil and electricity, they have also set up taxes and various administrative bodies to govern. They have started implementing Islamist policies, right from the schools to the government level using Islam as a smokescreen, in order to make sure that the spread of Islamism is absolute and complete.

Therefore, the main challenge for those fighting the Islamic State in the long run is to contain the spread of this ideology. Although it is not officially stated, ISIS has effectively made this war in to a sectarian/religious war, pitting the Sunni Muslims against the Shias, Christians, Jews or any other ‘non-believers’. Israel, though conspicuous by their absence in the war so far, will keenly observe the events that are unfolding in the neighborhood.

A possibility of a worst case scenario where the entire Middle East becomes a battlefield for the proxy wars between the global super powers is quite realistic.

Epilogue

When we try to analyze the situation in the Middle East, it is important to understand the intricacies involved in the socio-economic culture and society of the people as well as its effect on the political environment of that region. Democracy, as a part of the culture does not exist in the Arab society, yet. Instead, Arabs seem to exhibit a mindset that is driven mostly by a tribal/sectarian ideology. In the Western world, democracy came in to being due to the culture and the natural development of the Western society as a whole. The political environment in Middle East, since the founding of Islam, has largely seen the masses being led by a one-leader regime. That is why even till date we see so many kingdoms and autocratic political governments like Saddam or Assad still in existence as the ruling elite.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that despite belonging to a single religion, the followers of Islam are divided in to the Shia/Sunni sects and both share hostility towards each other. Thus, there exists a strong sectarian political outlook that is inherent in the people of Middle East. Once we establish this as a fact, we can understand why the West should be cautious in interpreting the current anti-government protests in Syria against the Assad regime as a push for a democratic political set up. The garbs of democracy can be used merely as a means to reach an end. If the rebels succeed in overthrowing Assad, it is quite possible they’d replace him with an autocratic ruler from their own tribe/sect. We saw the same situation happening in Iraq. In such kind of an environment it is usually difficult for democracy to enjoy a long shelf-life.

All wars are dirty but the war against the Islamic State is dirtier. Human lives appear to be just like commodities that must be dispensed in order to decide a winner in this power struggle. The war is not just between the IS militants and others. There are multiple parties fighting each other with no clear friends or foes, just opportunists who might jump ship in order to maximize their personal gains and control over the territory.

The US may rally as much as it wants to topple the Syrian government and even defeat the Islamic State fighters. However, the US administration needs to realize that they cannot expect the anti-US sentiment to completely vanish in the Arab world no matter how many battles they fight as allies. One single factor that’d always be exploited by the radicals is the existence of Israel in the Middle East and the US’s strong affinity towards it.  Israel is a thorn that continues to hurt the Arab nations in achieving their long cherished dream of a pan-Arab unity and, its implantation by the Western powers will neither be allowed to be forgotten or forgiven. The hardliners will continue to rally the Arab masses under an anti-Israel/US banner. As a political strategy, this alone will keep on sustaining theocratic regimes in the Middle East. Right now though, only one thing is for certain, and that is, each country that is fighting in this Dirty War is a slave of the events that are yet to unfold. Only when the time comes would we really know if this is indeed the latest version of global “War on Terror” or a modern day Crusades.

The US should realize that it may keep winning the battles in the Middle East, but risks losing the war, if not militarily then economically! Therefore, all efforts should be made by all the nations involved to desist from power politics and focus on controlling and stabilizing the situation. The Western powers shouldn’t keep repeating the same mistake of trying to analyze each political problem in the Middle East region simplistically through the lens of democracy and instead, should pay close attention to the ground realities and the influence of domestic socio-economic and religious factors. In the history of both the World Wars, we have seen how diplomatic failures have escalated things much rapidly and led to so much death and destruction. Let us hope we do not reach a stage where isolated events trigger the threat of nuclear weapons or the start of a Third World War.

No matter how it ends though, I have a feeling that the borders of the countries in the Middle East as we know, would most definitely change.