The worry in Moscow is that the Pentagon and Nato will also hit 'other targets' in Syria, writes Nekrassov [Reuters]
A joke making the rounds among Russian officials and hacks who take a keen interest in what is going on in the Middle East these days goes something like this: How will the Yanks deal with the Islamic State group? They will create "Islamic State 2", a bigger and better armed group, and let it deal with the original Islamic State group. And what happens when "Islamic State 2" turns against them as it happened with the original Islamic State? They will create "Islamic State 3", and so on. But seriously, the rise and spread of the Islamic State group is no laughing matter. Now that the US and its allies have finally woken up to the dangers of the spread of the extremist group, the worry in Moscow is that the hotheads in the Pentagon and at Nato headquarters in Brussels will decide to start hitting Islamic State positions in Syria along with "other targets" there as well - for instance, Syrian army positions. US President Barack Obama has already announced his plan to deal with the group, promising to lead a "broad coalition" that will "roll back this terrorist threat". In Moscow, the fear is that the US will seize this opportunity to intervene in Syria. The Libyan scenario According to Valeriy Fenenko from the Moscow Centre for International Security, the US can actually use the presence of the Islamic State group in Syria as a pretext to implement the "Libyan scenario". "The Americans are bound to try to compensate for their failure last fall," he says. "At first, it will be air strikes against terrorists and then, in parallel, it may amount to helping the moderate opposition. The US may start a creeping interference, like it happened in Bosnia," he said.
The feeling in Moscow is that the recent Nato summit in Newport in Wales missed out on a great opportunity to involve Russia in finding a solution to the spread of the Islamic State group and other militant groups associated with it across Iraq and the Middle East generally.
In any event, Russian diplomatic efforts are in full swing. According to one Russian source, Moscow is trying to prevent possible air strikes in Syria by the US, UK and others, in the same way it did last year when the danger of air strikes was growing by the day. "Our people in Arab and European capitals were desperately trying to find some sort of solution last year," he said. "The threat of a regional war that could escalate into a world war was taken very seriously by the Kremlin. And this scenario is in the cards again." The feeling in Moscow is that the recent Nato summit in Newport, Wales, missed out on a great opportunity to involve Russia in finding a solution to the spread of the Islamic State group and other militant groups associated with it across Iraq and the Middle East generally. Not to mention, the very real threat of these violent men entering European countries, and even reaching the US. "The Russians have been warning the Americans ever since the civil war broke out in Syria that it was very dangerous to arm the opposition there," one former Russian general who was in charge of anti-terrorist operation told me. "There was no chance that the arms destined for the so-called moderate opposition would not end up with the likes of the Islamic State. Not to mention that lots of it was coming as well from 'liberated' Libya." The same bandits What worries Russian officials is the stubborn refusal of the Obama administration to talk to President Bashar al-Assad's government about a possible joint effort in defeating the Islamic State group in Syria. As Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said recently, it doesn't make sense for the West to help the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State group but deny cooperation to Assad who is fighting "the same bandits". Some Russian analysts are saying that the bigger problem of the current crisis is that the Islamic State group runs its recruitment campaigns not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well. Different figures are cited over the number of Europeans who have joined the ranks of the group in the past several months, but if you consider that the number of fighters has risen - according to Russian estimates, from about 6,000 in June to over 30,000 at present - it can be assumed that we are talking about thousands of young Muslims travelling from Europe to fight in what they believe is a holy war. The senseless war in Gaza has probably indirectly boosted the Islamic State group's recruitment campaign, making it easier to claim that the West and Israel are hellbent on wiping out the Muslims in the Middle East. It remains unclear as to why Israel's armed forces attacked Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and conducted blanket air strikes that were bound to take a heavy toll on the civilian population. In the opinion of Russian experts, this looked more like a smokescreen for US failures in Iraq and Libya rather than an attempt to wipe out Hamas' arsenal and top commanders. From a military point of view, Benjamin Netanyahu's war achieved absolutely nothing, except perhaps giving Hamas a boost in popularity. The danger for Russia from the Islamic State group is that some of its members come from Chechnya and Dagestan, the two Muslim republics in the south of Russia, and there is a risk that the group can find sympathisers and supporters there and even start to build a network across the Caucasus. That is why Moscow is now calling on all parties to make a joint effort to destroy the Islamic State group before it becomes truly international. However, as the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems Konstantin Sivkov points out, the military option is only part of the solution in tackling the Islamic State group. He says that air strikes would not be enough and that it's crucial to also fight its ideology and cut off its finances that are now flowing through perfectly legal banking channels. The war against the Islamic State group is fraught with dangers. It might get out of control and drag the whole region into a much wider conflict. Alexander Nekrassov is a former Kremlin and government adviser. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/09/russia-warned-yanks-about-islam-201491165841895365.html
White House Has No International Legal Justification for Hitting ISIS in Syria
President Obama is pretty sure he has the domestic legal authority to strike Syria. But he has no explanation yet for why such a strike would comport with international law.
The White House has an answer for critics who want to know how the Obama administration can justify striking ISIS inside Syria under international law: If and when we actually do it, we will come up with a legal justification then.
The Obama administration has explained at length why it believes it has the domestic legal justification for using airstrikes in Syria; they have claimed they don’t need Congressional authorization because the 2001 authorization for the use of military force against the perpetrators of 9/11 and the 2002 authorization to take down Saddam Hussein applies to the ISIS war. The New York Timescalled the explanations “perplexing” and insufficient. (After all, al Qaeda and ISIS have sporadically fought with one another, and the Saddam regime is long gone.)
But the administration has said almost nothing about why airstrikes in Syria would not be a direct violation of the international law of armed conflict and the United Nations charter, as both the Syrians and their Russian allies have claimed.
“Whenever the United States uses force in foreign territories, international legal principles, including respect for sovereignty and the law of armed conflict, impose important constraints on the ability of the United States to act unilaterally—and on the way in which the United States can use force,” National Security Council Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden told The Daily Beast. “With respect to international law, the specific basis will depend on the particular facts and circumstances related to any specific military actions, but we believe that we will have a basis for taking action.”
In the run up to the 2011 war in Libya, the Obama administration worked hard to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing NATO airstrikes against the Qaddafi regime. In 2013 when Obama planned to strike the Assad regime, the administration at least sought international endorsements from foreign parliaments, although the British parliament rejected Obama’s proposed strikes, before Obama pulled the plug on the idea.
In the war against ISIS, a non-state actor operating inside at least two sovereign states, Obama has been relying on the Iraqi government’s invitation as its legal rational for military action. But Baghdad would be hard pressed to extend that invitation to Syria.
The Obama administration is working through several possible legal justifications the administration could try to apply to airstrikes against ISIS inside Syria. But each is problematic and controversial in its own way. Sources close to the administration said the White House and its lawyers were still trying to figure out which justification they want to use. Experts are upset the White House doesn’t seem to be upholding the United States’ long held support for the adherence to international law when dealing with war.
“It’s important that the U.S. be seen as an adherent and supporter of international law and I’m concerned about the direction this is going,”
“I’m disappointed in the level of supporting both domestic and international law in this military campaign. It’s important that the U.S. be seen as an adherent and supporter of international law and I’m concerned about the direction this is going,” said Ken Gude, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank close to the administration that has supported the president’s anti-ISIS campaign in Iraq.
State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf on Sept. 11 rejected Russian and Syrian claims that a U.S. attack inside Syria would constitute a violation of international law and the UN charter. The international pact prohibits a violation of the territorial integrity of a UN member state (in this case, Syria) without that country’s permission or without a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing such use of force.
“I find it interesting that Russia’s suddenly taken an interest in international law, given some of their past behavior,” said Harf, in a not-so-subtle reference to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The President has the authority as Commander-in-Chief under the United States Constitution to take actions to protect our people. And any action we take overseas, of course, we will have an international legal basis for doing so. I don’t have predictions about what that is, given we haven’t announced additional actions yet.”
Harf implied that that the administration might claim the right to strike ISIS in Syria based on the principle of individual self-defense, a clear exception to the need for permission or UN Security Council. Such a rational might be applicable if the American government claims there’s an imminent threat to U.S. personnel in a state that is unwilling or unable to counter that threat. But if administration officials actually try to invoke individual self-defense as a justification, they would likely have to contradict repeated statements by top officials this week claiming ISIS does not present an immediate threat to the U.S. homeland.
Responding to Harf, Gude said the U.S. shouldn’t be gauging its adherence to international law against the adherence of Russia and Syria.
“In the aftermath of Russia’s clear violation of international law in Ukraine, we should be seen as committing further to the adherence of international norms, not undermining it,” he said. “What could happen here is that the norms that govern states’ application of force take a hit and those norms, largely enforced by the U.S. and that work together for the benefit of America and our allies, could be weakened.”
The Bashar al-Assad regime claims that it is willing to work with the American military inside Syria to fight ISIS, although Syrian officials have said in recent days that any U.S. attack inside its borders would be an act of aggression, unless it’s coordinated with the Damascus government. Secretary of State John Kerry ruled out coordinating with Assad inside Syria in a Sunday interview with CBS, although the U.S. will keep the Syrian government informed.
“We’re not going to coordinate with it Syria. We will certainly want to deconflict to make certain that they’re not about to do something that they might regret even more seriously,” Kerry said. “But we’re not going to coordinate. It’s not a cooperative effort. We are going to do what they haven’t done.”
Another possible international legal justification the administration might use is the right of “collective self defense,” under which the U.S. and its allies could claim that strikes inside Syria are part of the effort to defend the country of Iraq from ISIS. That justification would build on Kerry’s contention that the Assad regime is unable to control its own territory and therefore other states have a right to take action.
But this explanation has drawbacks as well. Namely, it would only justify actions to protect Iraq—not “destroy” ISIS, as President Obama has promised in recent days. Iraq would have to formally declare that it was threatened by ISIS forces in Syria, invoke its own right to self-defense, and then ask other states for assistance.
“This theory would limit the scope of action of those helping the Iraqi government: those providing assistance only could do so to the extent necessary to quell ISIS in Iraq and ensure that ISIS was unable to conduct future attacks there. The approach also would be contingent on Iraq’s consent, which it could withdraw,” former State Department lawyer and University of Virginia Law School Professor Ashley Deeks wrote on the Lawfare blog. “As a political matter, it seems doubtful that the United States would find this to be an appealing approach, particularly if it perceives its own national interests to be at stake.”
A third possible international legal justification by the Obama administration could be to invoke the same justification it is now using to explain the ISIS war on domestic legal grounds, the principle that the war against al Qaeda is an ongoing armed conflict and that ISIS is part of al Qaeda. That argument must be reconciled with the fact that ISIS and al Qaeda are publicly at war with each other and fighting on the ground every day in Syria.
Of course, the U.S. could also pursue a UN Security Council resolution during the meeting President Obama will chair in New York next week, a follow on to UNSC Resolution 2170 on ISIS, passed last month, which did not authorize the use of force. But Russia is sure to veto that effort.
To Beat ISIS, the Arab World Must Promote Political and Religious Reforms
If the U.S. does nothing, the Arab world will continue its slide into sectarian bigotry, political repression, and madness. This will come back to haunt the United States.
Last week’s counter-terrorism conference in Jeddah can be summed up in two words: lost opportunity. Why? None of the participants were representative of an independent, democratic or critical voice in the Middle East. Rather, the Muslim scholars who participated were voices of their inept governments, who condemn every dissident voice as a terrorist.
In the backdrop of the conference, President Barack Obama made his case for war against ISIS in Iraq to the American public last week as well. Obama also sent a direct message Muslims around the world that ISIS is not really Islamic and America is not at war with Islam. This message was meant to hit the heart of the Arab Muslim world, but it fell on deaf ears.
Nonetheless, Secretary of State John Kerry is lobbying Arab allies to play a central role to insure the success of the initiative, since ISIS poses a much greater threat to them than it does to the United States. While this is a more responsible strategy on the part of the United States, the truth is that Arab and Muslim states continue to pursue myopic and delusional policies that produce more extremism, rather than countering it.
The United States has learned the hard way that it can’t withdraw its involvement in the Middle East. Even local Middle Eastern politics, such as the composition of Iraq’s government, cannot be treated lightly. If they are ignored they can become national security threats. Whenever Sunni minorities, in the case of Iraq, or Sunni majorities, in the case of Syria, are excluded and prosecuted by their governments, it creates the fertile environment in which Sunni jihadists thrive.
Jeddah’s counter-terrorism conference did not address this overarching ill of the Arab world. Look across the region: zero sum politics are the name of the game, and are only fueling the rise of extremism. For example, a win for Shi’ites is considered a defeat for Sunnis, and vice versa. In Iraq, the exclusionary and sectarian policies of Nouri al-Maliki resulted in ISIS becoming an appealing alternative for the majority Sunni population. The transnational jihad narrative became a bond for Sunnis, only after they were treated as outcasts by their government.
The Egyptian government is contributing to this rise in extremism also. Cairo’s policy of crushing the Muslim Brotherhood shows that President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi has not sufficiently appreciated history. His single-minded, iron-fist policy, which brands any opposition a terrorist, serves only to create stronger degrees of radicalization within the movement. Today 20,000 Brotherhood members are rotting away in Egyptian jails, awaiting a death sentences by hanging, often experiencing such horrific torture that they consider those gunned down in the Rabaa massacre to have been lucky. This situation is very similar to the circumstance that produced Al Qaeda’s top leader Ayman Zawhiri in the 1980s.
The truth is that Arab and Muslim states continue to pursue myopic and delusional policies that produce more extremism, rather than countering it.
More than oil, Saudi Arabia’s chief export is Wahhabism, which it has promoted around the world through its embassies and mosques to eventually be cloned by jihadist groups, like ISIS. Wahhabism is the most conservative, oppressive and exclusionary form of Islam, which considers all non-Wahhabists enemies — especially Shi’ites. Osama bin Laden was steeped in Wahhabism, as are many Sunni Jidahists in Iraq and Syria today, such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Glancing at historical facts, the evidence is undoubtedly clear. The fundamental cause of the production of extremism in the Arab world lies in a culture of oppressive political exclusion, coupled with religious bigotry. It is up to the United States to do more to encourage inclusive politics in Arab states, as it recently did in Iraq when it forced Maliki out of the prime minister’s office because of his exclusive and sectarian policies.
The United States must review its policies across the Middle East. Standing by Saudi Arabia and ignoring the oil giant’s double dealing is already proving harmful to American interests in the region. It must take a stand against Riyadh’s promotion of exclusionary Wahhabism.
Likewise, pressure must be placed on Egypt to abandon its witch hunt of the Muslim Brotherhood. In undertaking an effective counter terrorism strategy, the United States must partner with the Arab states to undertake political reforms that ultimately lead to underwriting a social contract in which every group of the population are represented and protected.
The strategy of General David Petraeus in Iraq, and the success of the surge, was based on a political deal, that included Iraqi militia groups (the so-called “Sons of Iraq”) to band together with the Americans to fight al Qaeda. In return, Sunnis became part of the Iraqi central government and were paid almost $40 million. This is a successful example that can be replicated across the region. If the United States and Iraqi government want to defeat ISIS, they must now ensure the inclusion and protection of Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds and Yazidis, along with the majority Shi’ites. Only then will the counter-terrorism effort truly destroy ISIS for good.
Eventually, a process of reconciliation must be initiated between Shi’ites and Sunnis. This centuries-old dispute is played out today in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which has produced a monster that threatens the national security of not only Middle Eastern nations, but also the United States. It must come to an end. The Obama Administration can no longer hide behind the excuse that this is a local issue — it is quite the opposite. Local policy issues in Muslim countries are transforming into US and European national security threats. The Obama Administration must pursue a policy of severe sanctions against any and all countries that finance jihadist — even if they are our own allies.
What will ultimately turn the tide in the Middle East are groups that actively advocate for a democratic culture and its values around the Arab world. A campaign to promote these ideas on every level must begin, as part of the counterterrorism initiative launched by Kerry. Grassroots activism that makes a strong demand for democratic values can work in parallel with counter-terrorism strategies to achieve more concrete results. Moderates can never become mainstream if the leaders the West continually chooses to back are military dictators or internationally politically connected despots — generation after generation.
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