Arab Spring: from hope to despair

S P SETH

With the Arab world plunged in an orgy of mindless violence, the hopeful Arab Spring of, what looks like only yesterday, is now a distant memory. That inspirational people’s revolution, which brought down tyrants and dictators like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, has turned into a nightmare. Its transformation in Syria from an uprising against the Assad regime is now a hodge-podge of terrorist groups, with the so-called Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant) declared as a caliphate. While Tunisia remains relatively stable with its secular and Islamic components trying out an unsteady coexistence, Libya is tearing itself apart into warring militias with no one in charge of the country. In Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country and, in some ways, its cultural centre, it looks like the Mubarak era is reborn with another military dictator in a civilian garb taking charge of the country. Its new President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood, having overthrown President Morsi and throwing its leadership and a good number of its supporters into jail, sentenced to death or to serve long  sentences. They are now a banned terrorist organization. At the same time, the government has demolished 800 houses along its border with Gaza to create a buffer zone to prevent infiltration of militants from across the border after a suicide bomber killed 30 soldiers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

It obviously raises questions about how the Arab Spring changed from hope into a recurring nightmare? In all such cases of social and political turmoil, there are no definite answers but researchers and analysts are all the time grappling to make some sense out of it. The first question to ask is how did the people’s revolution start in a region that had been the plaything of dictators? And the answer to this is the first extensive use of social media to mobilize people and thereby largely bypass the vast reach of the dreaded intelligence and security agencies.  The resultant popular protests and demonstrations at Tahrir Square in Cairo and elsewhere tended to create a sense of camaraderie among the crowds gathered there. It also created a sense of security in numbers when faced with early police repression.  

Another factor cited by some analysts is the rising proportion of youthful population of the Arab world, where in some countries the median age is said to be twenty-four. The use of social media, combined with rising level of education among youth, had a radicalizing effect making them the frontline of the revolution. At another level, many of the young and even older people had come to believe that, after the long torpor and repression of the likes of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi, a new popular revolution might be the only way to create a new social, economic and political order. And the hope for a new future didn’t seem all that illusory when almost all strata of society, including the Muslim Brotherhood, secular and liberal youth, Christians and many others joined together in what looked like a common cause to overthrow the repressive regimes. And in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood undertook not to contest the presidency, which turned out to be false, it seemed that for the first time Islamic ideology was not being pushed as the only or dominant foundation of a new society. There were variations of this theme in other countries experiencing Arab Spring but the general trend seemed, to start with, one of accommodation between Islamic, liberal and secular elements. Syria (and now Iraq) remains in a class by itself where Islamic State jihadists have hijacked the project, for the present at least.

But the signs of a new beginning in the new decade turned into a comprehensive disaster. In Egypt, the coalition of Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal/secular pioneers of the revolution started to fray when the former decided to contest the presidency bringing back fears of a revivalist Islamist agenda. And that seemed validated after the Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi was elected the country’s president pushing forward a new constitution with Islamist overtones against considerable opposition from secular/liberal elements. The Brotherhood even sought to use emergency powers and their governance of the country increasingly started to resemble more and more like Hosni Mubarak’s regime by jailing dissidents and journalists. Which ruptured the national coalition and broad consensus forged during the successful revolution to overthrow Mubarak. Who would have thought that so soon after Mubarak’s overthrow, in which the army sought to play a neutral but essentially supportive role, crowds would again throng Tahrir Square and in much larger numbers supporting and urging the army to get rid of President Morsi and the Brotherhood! Many of the youthful secular/liberal pioneers of the anti-Mubarak revolution made a common cause with the army, not realizing that the same army junta, now under former General (turned-president) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, would turn on them as well. In other words, Egypt has turned full circle from the army-backed Mubarak dictatorship, punctuated with an interlude of Brotherhood rule, to revived military-backed dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as if the Arab Spring had just passed by without creating the bloom that was highly anticipated and expected.

Some analysts have argued that the expectations about the Arab Spring were highly exaggerated, if not unfounded. According to Robert F. Worth, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars who is working on a book on the 2011 Arab uprisings, “The broader point is this: the educated youth who kicked off the revolutions of 2011 are not necessarily the vanguard of a new and more secular Middle East. They are one party in a bitter conflict over fundamental issues of identity and social order, a conflict whose outcome is far from certain.” He doesn’t believe that the Arab youth are necessarily progressive in the sense we in the west understand and expect them to be. As he puts it in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, “Many of the young Gulf Arabs I know view the uprisings of 2011 with horror, and have become more convinced in their belief that the region is not ready for democracy anytime soon.” Furthermore: “Many of them are also just as passionately sectarian as their parents.” If that is true, and the ISIL crusade against Shias and other minorities, now joined passionately by many Sunni Muslim youth, would seem to give it some credence, the so-called Arab Spring that we witnessed briefly was a false dawn.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au       

Israel has the veto on US policy

Israel has the veto on US policy

S P SETH

Having recently pounded and pulverized Gaza in their military operations, killing more than 2100 Palestinians, and with no visible progress to lift blockade of the Gaza Strip after the ceasefire, Israel is now turning elsewhere to annex more of Palestinian territory. This time it is the proposed construction of 2610 homes in east Jerusalem, part of the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and consequent eviction of more Palestinians. The capacity of the Israeli state to ignore all the relevant UN resolutions and the general world opinion, which regards Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal, is astounding believing that Israel is a special case over and above international law and conventions. Even its closest ally that underwrites its security and provides all the military and economic aid shows at times frustration with its wayward behavior and defiance of the Obama administration. The new tranche of settlement activity in east Jerusalem has drawn sharper criticism from the US than is usually the case. According to Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman of the US state department, “This development [of more Israeli settlements] will only draw condemnation from the international community, distance Israel from even its closest allies, poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations, and call into question Israel’s commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with Palestinians.”

It is rather surprising that after the collapse of the marathon peace initiative by John Kerry, US secretary of state, the US still somehow wants to believe that Israel might have some residual commitment to a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question. It doesn’t. Kerry expressed his despondency and frustration at the time, to the great irritation and anger of the Netanyahu government, when he said that Israel would soon face the choice between “either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens--- or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish [majority] state.” Philip Gordon, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, recently said that, “How will it [Israel] have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity?” And he added, “It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Most of all, as President Obama reportedly said that Israel’s decades’ long occupation of Palestine is simply “unsustainable”.

But despite strong reservations of the Obama administration about the efficacy and humanity of Israeli occupation, it still stands by Israel and tries to make excuses for it time and again. It has to stop making excuses and do something concrete to make Israel see some sense that its obduracy on Palestine is neither good for its own security and stability but also puts US relations with the Middle East in a state of continuous acrimony, if not crisis. The US, therefore, needs to approach the Palestinian question with great urgency because it alone has the necessary leverage and capacity to make Israel see sense as its chief patron and security guarantor.

But as we have seen in the last several decades that this is unlikely to happen any time soon, principally because of the enormous clout of the Zionist lobby in the United States. And its chief vehicle is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). A long article titled, Friends of Israel, by Connie Bruck in a recent issue of the New Yorker, has some interesting information about the AIPAC and its modus operandi to tilt the US political system in Israel’s favour. And for this it has a wide network at its disposal. For instance: “AIPAC has more than a hundred thousand members, a network of seventeen regional offices, and a vast pool of donors.” How does it work? Well, an important mechanism is funding the election of its chosen Congress members who are given a clear brief of what they are expected to say and how to vote on issues affecting the state of Israel. As Bruck says in her article, “AIPAC’s hold on Congress has become institutionalized.” It is difficult, if not impossible, to run for Congress without “hearing from AIPAC.” According to Brian Baird, a Congress member, “ And they [AIPAC] see us, members of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.” In their book, The Israeli Lobby and the U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, created quite a storm by their searing critique of AIPAC. But, by and large, the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel when it comes to the crunch. As a result, there is no need for Israel to change or adjust its position on the Palestinian question.

Despite the solid US support for Israel, there still is a view in Israel and among its supporters in the US that it is precisely the US meddling and periodic peace initiatives that are at the core of the problem. It is argued that such initiatives stand in the way of other, less ambitious, approaches to the Palestinian issue. In his article, “Israel and the US: The Delusions of Our Diplomacy”, Nathan Thrall explores this in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books. He argues that Israel’s supporters have some difference of opinion as to how best Israel’s interests might be served but they all back “the Israeli demand to place severe restrictions on the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state, with limits on Palestinian armament, border control, and airspace, as well as the presence in the Palestinian state of international security forces, Israeli early-warning stations, routes for Israeli emergency deployments, and a continued presence for some considerable period of Israeli troops.” Which, in effect, means institutionalizing Israeli occupation and give it a legal cover with the US promoting its international acceptance.

On the other hand, the US advocacy of a peace process where Palestine might have attributes of a sovereign state, in Thrall’s view and many other Israeli supporters, is problematic. Because: “It deprives any other third party--- whether European or Arab [and religious Zionists and ultra-orthodox Jews]--- of a meaningful part in the peace process.” He believes that, “… most Israeli voters, and many among the Palestinian elite, are quite at ease with existing conditions…” And his advice to the US government is that it should better leave the Palestinian issue alone because: “The potential benefits of creating a small, poor, and strategically inconsequential Palestinian state are tiny when compared to the costs of heavily pressuring a close ally wielding significant regional and US domestic power.” With views like this seemingly vetoing US policy on the Palestinian issue, it is no wonder that it will remain a festering sore in an already volatile Middle Eastern region.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

IS: it will be a long war

S P SETH

The world is everyday learning the scope and complexity of the situation in Iraq and Syria where Islamic State militants are apparently not deterred by the air strikes launched by the United States and its allies. While they have been contained in some places in Iraq, they have made advances in some parts of Syria, threatening the Kurdish town of Kobani starting an exodus of an estimated 200,000 Kurds across the border into Turkey. Indeed, the IS’ sudden emergence as a significant force, posing serious threat to regional stability and becoming a magnet for international jihadists, has taken much of the world by surprise, causing trepidation. In a recent television interview, President Obama admitted that the US intelligence agencies had under-estimated IS. On the other side of the equation, they had over-estimated the Iraqi army and state as capable of dealing with terrorism in all its forms. The ease with which the IS forces were able to occupy Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city with the Iraqi army making a run for their lives and abandoning the US-gifted arsenal for the IS, proves the point.

To quote Obama from his interview: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned [ISIL was] able to reconstitute themselves [from the shattered al Qaeda outfit it was] and take advantage of that chaos.” And: “This became ground zero for jihadists around the world”. They advanced so fast that even Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, seemed within their reach, only saved by US aerial intervention. While the IS is consolidating and even, at places, strengthening its hold in Iraq, the situation in Syria is even more dire. It is a witches’ brew of terrorist activity with the IS clearly the dominant jihadi group. The US aerial bombing there seems to have, for the time being, brought together the feuding terrorist groups behind IS.

And then there are the so-called moderate rebels that are preferred US choice to fight both IS and the Assad regime on the ground. They were supposed to be vetted by the US intelligence to qualify for US military assistance because of the fear that military weapons and equipment for them might fall into militant hands. But they reportedly would now receive an estimated $500 million worth of weaponry to confront apparently both the IS and the Assad regime. This looks like US policy on the run because nothing has really changed to ensure that they would be an effective force or, for that matter, their weapons wouldn’t fall into the militants’ hands. To further add to the confusion, there is the Assad regime, which the US is committed to overthrow with the help of the secular/moderate rebels.

In the present circumstances, the Assad regime would be a natural ally of the US against Islamic State. But such tactical arrangement against IS is virtually vetoed by the US’ Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia. This is because of the larger Sunni-Shia sectarian divide in which the Syrian regime of the Alawite (Shia) sect is regarded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchs as the Iranian dagger pointing into the heart of Sunni Arab lands. This larger sectarian power play led Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies into funneling funds and weapons into the hands of militant groups of which Islamic State has now grown into a monster threatening both Sunni and Shia regimes alike. And this is also preventing the US and Iran from cooperating fully against the common threat of Islamic State. Therefore, despite the US success in creating a broad international front against IS, including some Arab kingdoms, it is not making things any easier. Which brings home the bitter truth that air strikes by itself won’t stop IS, suggesting that combat troops would need to be deployed sooner, rather than later.

The Turkish government could play an important role to thwart IS advances, now that its parliament has approved its participation in the international coalition. But, despite all the international pressure to help the beleaguered Kurds in Kobani, just across the border, it is dragging its feet because it wants the US to undertake to simultaneously overthrow the Assad regime by putting up a no-fly zone in Syria as well as to create a security cordon across the Turkish border for Syrian refugees. At the same time, it worries that the focus on fighting IS might strengthen the Kurdish autonomy movement that Turkey has been trying to suppress over decades.

As pointed out earlier, the aerial war against IS would need to be supplemented with ground warfare. But there is still no consensus about who, among the coalition partners, will contribute the ground troops. The US and its western allies contend that it is the Arab’s fight and that they should be doing the actual fighting on the ground. And indeed the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga are engaged in the operations against IS. But the Iraqi forces, despite all their training by the US over the years and with US-supplied weaponry, have been more adept at fleeing rather than fighting, though there are recent reports that their morale has improved and things might change for the better. This would remain to be seen. The Kurdish Peshmerga, on the other hand, are said to be motivated fighters and have been doing their bit, but they lack high caliber weaponry to confront IS.  In other words, the ground forces that are supposed to take on IS militants are not battle ready yet. That would leave the US and its allies to fill the gap at some point. But President Obama has made it clear that the US wouldn’t put boots on the ground, even though he has already sent 1500 combat ready experts as advisers and trainers.

One just has to wonder what would they do new in terms of training and equipment, which was not done during the time they were in Iraq from 2003 to 2011? Would that mean that the US might, at some point, put its own troops on the ground, as it considers IS a threat to its own security? The IS might even be goading the US in that direction if its recent statement is anything to go by. The statement said in part that, “You will pay the price when your economies collapse. You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill…”

Whether or not the US will put boots on the ground would remain to be seen. One thing though is clear. Which is that it will be a long drawn-out war.

Note: This article was first published in th Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Dealing with Islamic State

S P SETH

The self-proclaimed Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant) has become a living nightmare for much of the Muslim and non-Muslim world. For the Muslim world at large, it has declared war on all and sundry that do not subscribe to their version of Islam, whatever that might be. Which is why there is now growing panic among Arab kingdoms, like Saudi Arabia, that otherwise were supporting these and other militants of varying descriptions. The Shias, of course, are ISIS’s mortal enemies. The rest of the world would also, at some point, need to be subdued to the writ of the new caliphate. Of course, this wouldn’t happen soon, even the diehard among the ISIS must recognize this. But it is important to set a long-term goal of re-establishing the envisioned Islamic glory of the past. And for that it was important to declare an Islamic State with its own territory that would become the magnet for many Sunni Muslims from all over the world that feel disempowered and humiliated with western domination. And this is already clear from the fact that a good number of of ISIS’ hardened fighters are Muslims from foreign countries, feeling empowered with this new Mecca of the Islamic world.

In other words, even though IS is not as powerful as its leaders would make out to be and is highly vulnerable, but the act of its proclamation with its own territorial space stretched over large parts of Iraq and Syria, has created the image of a nest for all Muslims with deep-rooted hatred of the west and their ‘lackeys’ in the Arab world. Viewed against this backdrop there is logic of sorts behind the declaration of the Islamic State. And that would explain why it has, in a sense, supplanted the al Qaeda as a driving force for disempowered Muslims. Interestingly, this has led al Qaeda to re-energize itself by retooling jihad in the sub-continent to include India, Bangladesh, Burma, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are already in different stages of that struggle. While the al Qaeda created enough havoc, largely with its ideological inspiration, it lacked its own territorial space to draw many adherents. As a result, the al Qaeda largely became an ideological brand name for local/regional jihadis in different parts of the world. The IS wants to be a global phenomenon in its own right with its own territorial space, and take it from there.

 Whether or not IS will make much headway regionally or globally, is another matter. But it certainly has created alarm, particularly in the US, among some NATO countries, in Australia and among its Arab neighbours.  The US is leading the charge against the Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant). The strategy to deal with it is three-fold. The first is to create an inclusive Iraqi government with fair and effective representation of Sunni and Kurd communities. The removal of Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister and his replacement by Haider al-Abidi, who now heads the new government, is an attempt to create national consensus and mobilization against the Islamic State militants. The US considers it as an important step. But the two most important cabinet positions of internal affairs and defense have been left vacant to be filled at a later stage, suggesting serious differences. Therefore, as long as there is such persistent distrust, the idea of national consensus is a bit pre-mature.

At the regional level, countries like Saudi Arabia and Gulf kingdoms that have been funneling aid of all sorts, and through different channels, to Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria will have to seriously reconsider their options. The US is organizing an Arab coalition for effective action against IS. This coalition of Arab countries will take appropriate action against IS, though the specifics of what that action might be are still not clear. These countries are coming to realize that Islamic State is a serious danger to their political stability because, first, their espousal of the so-called caliphate would suggest a dominant political and religious Centre with Baghdadi as the new caliph; and, two, if Saudi Arabia were, for instance, to go on the offensive against IS in some form of collaboration with the US, it might create serious domestic/regional backlash from the sort of extremist constituency that IS represents and Saudi Arabia has been nurturing. Saudi Arabia has generally encouraged Sunni militant orthodoxy, and suddenly to turn against that when these militants of the IS brand feel empowered, is not likely to go well with its sympathizers and adherents in the birthplace of orthodox Islam.

While the US is seeking to represent IS as an enemy of Muslims and non-Muslims alike and rally international and regional forces in a common cause, this has the potential at some point of time of appearing as an anti-Muslim crusade. By rallying Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, the US seeks the legitimacy of the Muslim world against this particular brand of Islamic militancy, learning lessons from former president Bush’s disastrous Iraq war that, at times, appeared like a global crusade against Islam. This time, the US is keen that any expanded military action should have a specific and narrow focus on IS (in Iraq and Syria). And that it has the authorization of Iraq’s new supposedly inclusive government. The whole idea is to make it legitimate at the national, regional and international levels to the extent possible. At home in the US, opinion polls suggest overwhelming support for action, short of, it would seem, combat troops. At national level in Iraq, the Sunnis and Kurds are not satisfied with the composition of the new Shia-dominated government, which looks more like old wine in new bottles. The inclusivity argument is, therefore, is bit of a stretch. As for broad regional support, it is likely to vary with the success or otherwise of the US-led project against IS.

One might ask: what exactly is the objective of the US-led coalition? President Obama has said, “Our objective is clear, and that is to destroy ISIL so it is no longer a threat not just to Iraq but also the region and to the United States.” Apparently, this is the optimum goal, which has no time limit. A more modest goal, as Obama said at another time, is that a coalition force led by the US might “continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities, where it is a manageable problem.”  And that seems to be the guiding principle behind the international and regional coalition that was broadly laid out in his recent speech to the nation. There is, of course, a lot of confusion about dealing with IS. While Obama has ruled out putting combat troops on the ground, Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is of the view that air strikes alone will not do the job.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@aol.com.au

     

Islamic State

Islamic State

S P SETH

In a world plagued with multiple crises, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (of Iraq and Levant) has emerged as another lightening rod for a region that is already facing quite a few fires. Its rapid advance through Mosul and threatening Erbil at one point, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, has sent shock waves bringing the US back into Iraq to contain this new threat. Indeed, the new Islamic army didn’t have to do much by way of fighting to occupy Mosul, because the Iraqi forces simply fled abandoning much of their American weaponry and equipment as a helpful contribution for the ISIL forces. The advancing forces also helped themselves to the vast treasury left behind. And the orgy of killings by the ISIS continued with gruesome pictures of those executed put on social media sites. While the enemy was advancing, the Iraqi political establishment was undecided, at that point of time, about who will govern the country. The elections held on April 30 had returned Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s party as the single largest group but nowhere near a majority to form a government. He will soon be replaced as Prime Minister by Haider al-Abadi.

Why has the Iraqi situation reached this critical point? The starting point, of course, was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which simply opened up a Pandora’s box that refuses to be put together. The situation got even more complicated when the Maliki Government played divisive sectarian and ethnic politics, targeting Sunnis and being distrustful of the Kurds. Even though Maliki had suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein and spent many years in exile in Iran and Syria, as Prime Minister he was largely practicing his former tormentor’s politics of fear and terror against his presumed enemies, the Sunnis. The tribal Sunni coalition forged with American support and involvement against al Qaeda in Iraq, that eventually killed its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and destroyed much of its structure, was allowed to dissipate under Maliki as he didn’t want to share power with the Sunnis. In other words, Maliki was a paranoid leader keen to centralize power under his control and his faction of the Shiite community. However, considering all the fault lines of Iraqi politics of sectarian and regional divisions, it was probably expecting too much of any Iraqi leader to create and lead an inclusive Iraq. Iraq was and remains a fractured state. Maliki simply made an already difficult situation worse.

Will Haider al-Abadi be able to do a better job of uniting Iraq’s fractured politics and society? A hopeful feature in this respect is that his selection was welcomed by both the United States and Iran separately. In the short term, therefore, there is likely to be much talk of a united government with better representation for the Sunnis and Kurds. An ‘inclusive’ government will mean more US military and humanitarian assistance, and greater Iranian support (of all sorts) for the new political order. But, considering the deep-rooted sectarian, regional and ethnic fault-lines, such unity is unlikely to hold for long. The sectarian violence seems to have its own momentum.

A hopeful by-product of ‘inclusive’ politics, if it works, is that it might help to detach Sunni tribes and other Sunni groups from the brutal Islamic State, as happened when they helped the US military to suppress the al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. Whether or not it will happen is a matter of conjecture and hope. But increased American involvement, being canvassed increasingly by powerful figures in the US after the beheading of an American journalist, is likely to contain the threat from the Islamic state. It seems to be already happening in northern Iraq with intense US aerial bombardment. A combination of Kurdish pesh merga (military) forces on the ground, supported by stepped up US aerial strikes, is producing results for the time being at least. They have, for instance, retaken the Mosul dam from the IS forces.

In any case, the potential for the self-proclaimed caliphate is rather limited. There is much talk of great economic resources at its disposal and looted weaponry helping its onward march. But, over an extended period, any state entity would need to create a governing structure with recurring revenues and ability to engage in trade with other countries like, for instance, to sell oil from its captured oil fields and refineries. And that would be quite daunting for the Islamic State under constant attack and international isolation. Which doesn’t mean it will cease to be dangerous. It will certainly continue to be a magnet for jihadists of all sorts within Iraq and Syria as well as radical Muslims from abroad.

An important question is how best to create regional consensus on the issue? For Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, including Turkey, the over-arching regional issue has been and is the sectarian divide between the Sunnis and Shias, the latter identified with Iran’s ambitions to carve out a powerful role. And this has been the driving force behind them helping jihadist groups of all sorts. But with the Islamic State and the caliphate becoming a potent threat, these Gulf kingdoms might have to rethink their entire strategy. A militant expansionist Islamist movement, committed to spreading its own version of Sunni Islam under the overarching umbrella of caliphate, is as much a danger to Shia Iran as it is to Sunni monarchies in the Gulf. The US would very much want the broadest regional consensus and a united front to stem the rising tide of the IS. But will it be possible to bring together Shia Iran and the Sunni Arab states of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf kingdoms to fight this menace? It doesn’t seem likely, considering their history. And it is these contradictions that might give enough political space to the new Islamic State to maneuver.

In the US-led international response to the ISIS militancy, the Kurdish region of Iraq is understandably getting much more attention by way of humanitarian and military assistance. The humanitarian situation of the Yazidi people of the Sinjar region, under siege by the IS forces, seems improved. But other minorities are now being targeted. And the threat to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, appears to have been contained after the US aerial bombing. But such US commitment to Kurdish security is likely to create resentment among the Shias. In the larger regional context, any strengthening of Kurdish autonomy in Iraq will have spill on effects, over time, creating pressure for a regional Kurdish homeland. In other words, there are multilayered fault lines in Iraq and the region.  And this could work to the Islamic State’s advantage.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au