Lina Khatib
Perhaps no
self-designation by an armed group has been more apt in the current context of the Syrian conflict
than the Islamic State’s slogan, “lasting and expanding”. More than four months after the start of
an international airstrikes campaign against the organization, ISIS continues to greatly enlarge the
area under its control. It is reported that since September 2014, when the international coalition
airstrikes against ISIS began, its Syrian territories have doubled in
size.
There are several reasons for this enlargement, which is going beyond
the geographical areas of Syria and Iraq to become a global expansion.
A
basic reason is that, in limiting itself to airstrikes, the anti-ISIS international coalition is not
implementing a military strategy with diversified components such as ground engagement. The
importance of the latter has become clear following the losses incurred by the Islamic State in
areas in which its fighters have faced resistance from the peshmerga. The Kobani battles show that
ISIS struggles when confronted with boots on the ground. Those boots need not be Western; they
can be Middle Eastern. However, the West has been slow in providing adequate military support to the
Syrian opposition, which would have allowed it to stand up to the ISIS expansion more effectively.
Only recently has the United States announced that it is deploying 400 troops to train the Free
Syrian Army. This is a positive step but comes a little too late in the
game.
The coalition’s strikes have also indirectly helped the ISIS
expansion through focusing on Iraq rather than Syria. When ISIS feels stretched following an attempt
to expand into a given territory, it always resorts to retreating from this territory in order to
re-group in core areas, re-strategize, and expand again in directions other than the land originally
targeted. An example of this took place last year, when ISIS attempted to take over Idlib in the
west but failed largely because of the governorate’s separation from Raqqa—the Islamic State’s
headquarters—by Aleppo. After retreating to Raqqa, ISIS turned eastwards and has since been
attempting to take over the governorate of Deir ez-Zor. As the coalition’s campaign is centered on
ISIS in Iraq, the organization has withdrawn from some Iraqi areas to focus its energies on Syria,
where it faces fewer challenges.
The Assad regime’s stance towards ISIS is
one of the factors that have made Syria a relative haven for ISIS, paving the way for the
organization’s control of a third of the country’s territory. A study conducted in late November by
the research organization Jane’s found that until that date, only 6% of the regime’s attacks in 2014
were against ISIS. Despite the regime’s recent strikes in Raqqa, those strikes remain limited in
scope and intensity.
Additionally, neither the regime’s nor the coalition’s
attacks against ISIS have been primarily targeting the organization’s command centers or frontlines.
Instead, they are mainly focused on core urban areas like Raqqa. This has left the command centers
in the desert between Syria and Iraq largely operational, and the borders of areas under the control
of the Islamic State fertile for further outward expansion.
This
outward expansion has been enabled by increased alliances between the Islamic State and local
tribes, especially in north-eastern Syria. The reason behind those new alliances is that many
anti-regime tribes view the West’s intentions in fighting ISIS with suspicion. A number of tribal
members lament that the West did not and still does not interfere to stop the onslaught of the Assad
regime against them, but is only acting against ISIS, which they view as fighting the regime. They
therefore interpret the anti-ISIS coalition as being complacent with the Assad regime. With no
strategy in place to attempt to win over such tribes to the side of the coalition, they remain open
to nurturing the ISIS expansion.
The Syrian opposition, meanwhile, remains
divided. In addition to political divisions, there is little coordination between the northern and
southern fronts among different Free Syrian Army brigades. The north is still largely under the
patronage of Qatar and Turkey, while the south is overseen by Saudi Arabia and its allies,
especially Jordan and UAE. Free Syrian Army generals in the north complain that Jordan does not
grant them access to Syria from the south through its land.
Meanwhile,
attempts by southern brigades to unify the two fronts under a civilian-military administration have
not only been dismissed by the north but have also faced the creation of parallel umbrella
organizations or gatherings by northern and other southern groups.
The lack
of military cooperation between the two fronts has enabled ISIS to start expanding southwards, where
the main challenge it has faced has been limited to the Lebanese Hezbollah in the Qalamoun mountains
bordering Syria and Lebanon. If the northern and southern Free Syrian Army fronts continue to
operate not just independently but in competition with one another, this will pave the way for ISIS
to create its own southern front and link it with its existing territories in the north,
capitalizing on its centralized military command to overcome the fragmented command structure of the
Syrian opposition.
Here the lack of a political plan for Syria comes back
to the fore. From the beginning, it was apparent that airstrikes alone would not be sufficient to
eradicate ISIS or even to reduce the scope of its area control. And yet the international anti-ISIS
coalition continues to lack a comprehensive strategy to tackle the organization, which should
include a viable political roadmap to address the wider Syrian conflict. The West has failed in
providing vision in this regard, which has left the road clear for Russia to try to use this vacuum
to its advantage by calling for talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition. US Secretary of
State John Kerry’s remarks in favor of such talks and in support of UN envoy Staffan di Mistura’s
idea to implement local ceasefires in Aleppo speak volumes about Western fatigue, lack of
seriousness about resolving the conflict, and inadequate attention to developments on the ground in
Syria.
In Aleppo, the Free Syrian Army has been squeezed into a territory
that has only one potential narrow passageway out of the governorate. Meanwhile, Jabhat al-Nusra,
ISIS, and the regime are all attempting to take over more districts in the area. Even if the regime
adheres to a ceasefire, it is certain that ISIS would not follow suit and would therefore use this
opportunity to overwhelm the Free Syrian Army. The relative strength of the Syrian regime compared
with the FSA and the regime’s continued profiteering from ISIS mean that the latter would not use
ceasefires to target the Syrian regime.
Ceasefires without a plan to strengthen the Free Syrian Army
would effectively mean handing over the governorate to the regime and ISIS. Meanwhile, Russia can
hardly be a neutral mediator in a conflict in which it is a key supporter of one of the warring
sides. And yet, leaders of the Syrian opposition have been pressured by di Mistura to attend the
talks in Moscow, which indicates that the West is more interested in alleviating its own feelings of
inadequacy than in leading a viable transition process in Syria.
The
political stagnation surrounding the Syrian conflict and the absence of a military strategy by the
international coalition are playing right into the hands of ISIS, and the responsibility for this is
shared by the West and the different factions of the Syrian opposition. The Islamic State’s
successes in Syria are in turn spurring its sympathizers to assert their presence and influence not
just in the Middle East but also globally through various terrorist attacks. This has given the ISIS
slogan another dimension, as geographical expansion in the Middle East is paralleled by symbolic
expansion worldwide.
This article was
originally published in Arabic by Al-Hayat.
Lina Khatib is director of the
Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Previously, she was the co-founding head of the Program on
Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of
Law. |