Understanding ISIS and the long war ahead
In a breach of all diplomatic practice, the head of the Pentagon in Washington, Ashton Carter, this week criticized publicly one of the U.S.’s allies in arms.
The Iraq army, declared Carter, “has no will to fight.” He was of course referring to last week’s abandonment of the important town of Ramadi by its Iraqi defenders even though far fewer fighters from the Islamic State were involved in the attack.
Moreover, these Iraqi soldiers were repeating the performance of their colleagues who last summer similarly fled from the general advance ISIS was then making, and left behind much of their own weaponry, most of it of American origin.
President Barack Obama’s strategy of relying on an aerial bombardment, (to which Canada is contributing) to “degrade and destroy” ISIS now looks to be highly problematic. A highly regarded retired British general, Richard Dannatt has just declared that it may be necessary to “think the unthinkable,” that is to send in large numbers of western troops.
In fact, that’s not going to happen. In this instance, the lack of will can be found in the U.S. and Britain and Canada and other coalition members such as Saudi Arabia and even the Kurds, so far the most successful, if as yet only within their own territory.
For ISIS, the reverse is true. After its initial astounding successes it experienced a series of defeats. At the same time, the coalition’s air attacks did impose severe costs.
Today, ISIS’s capture of Ramadi combined with some smaller victories gives it control of more than half of the territory of Syria. The town itself is only 120 kilometres from Iraq’s capital of Baghdad.
This doesn’t mean defeat. It does mean a long, difficult war. The more we know about this strange and frightening force that’s going to threaten our peace for years to come, the better.
To anyone interested in this gloomy topic I would recommend strongly the lengthy analysis of ISIS published last March in the Washington-based magazine The Atlantic.
The magazine’s editor, Graeme Wood, compares ISIS to the extraordinary 1978 event when religious leader Jim Jones convinced 900 of his followers in Guyana to commit suicide by taking cyanide. The difference being that ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, rules over 8 million people and fully intends to execute millions of “apostate,” or heretical, Muslims.
Baghdadi will do this by re-creating the historic “caliphate” or the system of absolute adherence to the literal original instructions of Muhammed as contained in the Koran and of which sharia law is the most important.
Some of the sharia rules are unimaginably harsh. These legitimize not just the banning of alcohol and drugs and of shaving one’s beard, but they also endorse slavery (especially of women), beheadings and crucifixions.
If hard on others, Baghdadi and his followers are as hard on themselves. Ahead of them, they accept, will come the Apocalypse, or The End of Days. In Woods’ words, the members of ISIS are “ready to cheer its own near-obliteration” because they are confident “it will receive divine succour if it stays true to the Prophetic model.”
As well, as is well-known, almost all who join the caliphate do so in joyful expectation that they will die from a bullet or a belt of explosives or perhaps a bomb, and so become martyrs.
ISIS’s great flaw, Wood believes, is that while its theological debates “hum with energy, even creativity” everything else in its territory is dull and arid — “obedience, order, destiny.” As word of the misery of actually living in a caliphate gets out, fewer true believers will join it.
He ends: “The war may be a long one, even if it doesn’t last until The End of Time”
Richard Gwynâs column usually appears every other Tuesday. gwynr@sympatico.ca
