Fallujah, 2007. Flickr/ Arlo Ringsmuth. Some rights reserved.The British Prime Minister presented his case in parliament today
(26 November, 2015) for launching attacks against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Islamic State
in Syria. Two years ago, a similar request was unexpectedly defeated in the
House of Commons and David Cameron has said he will not put it to a vote again
unless he is ‘confident of enough votes to win’.
The 36-page memorandum which outlines the Prime Minister’s
case for war starts by acknowledging that the decision to use force is “not to
be taken lightly” and is “one of the most significant decisions that any
government takes”. Many pages are then devoted to the threat posed by ISIL and
the need to defeat it. Yet nowhere does it explain how dropping more bombs on
them will lessen or eliminate this threat. In fact, Cameron himself freely
admits in the conclusion of the memorandum that “air strikes alone cannot
defeat ISIL”. In purely military terms, the only way to uproot ISIL from its
strongholds in Syria is by chasing them out with ground forces, and David
Cameron knows that very well.
This is where the miraculous 70,000 “fighters who do not
belong to extremist groups” comes into the picture. Many Syrian analysts have
expressed surprise and even astonishment at this number, since most assume the
‘moderate’ military opposition to Assad is much smaller as well as divided against
itself and largely ineffectual except in a few small areas currently under
their control.
Among the 70,000 are presumably the Kurdish fighters, who
are not only fighting Assad and ISIL but also Turkey, one of our allies currently
crowding the skies over Syria with their military aircraft. Also within that
number are presumably the Turkmen fighters, who are not only fighting Assad and
ISIL but also those same Kurdish fighters – and, as we saw just a couple of days ago,
the Russians, another of our allies dropping bombs on Syria. In other words, ISIL is not
likely to be pushed out of Raqqa or anywhere else in Syria until there is a
political settlement in Syria which allows a national Syrian army (comprising
Sunni Arabs) to retake control of areas like Raqqa from ISIL.
Also among this range of armed groups are clearly some who
have not only been fighting each other but also selling weapons and/or buying
oil from ISIL. It is well known that many of the groups opposing Assad and previously
being armed by the US and other outside parties have ended up joining forces
with ISIL, adding significantly to ISIL’s growing inventory of US-made weapons.
But the most crucial point about defeating ISIL is made
right at the end of the dossier itself, even though it is flatly contradicted
by Cameron’s opening statement. The dossier ends by asserting that, “only
moderate Sunni Arabs can retake traditionally Sunni Arab areas such as Raqqa”
and “without transition [to a post-Assad government] it will continue to be
difficult to generate a Sunni force able to fight ISIL and hold ground in
Eastern Syria”.
In other words, ISIL is not likely to be pushed out of Raqqa
or anywhere else in Syria until there is a political settlement in Syria which
allows a national Syrian army (comprising Sunni Arabs) to retake control of
areas like Raqqa from ISIL. That is the conclusion of the dossier itself, and
yet at the beginning, Cameron starts out by saying we cannot wait for a
political settlement, we must take action now, because “we do not have the
luxury of being able to wait until the Syrian conflict is resolved before
tackling ISIL”.
This is nonsensical. The reality is that we do not have the
luxury of rushing into attacking ISIL now when we know it cannot be defeated
militarily unless and until there is a political solution to the Syrian
conflict.
The Prime Minister claims that in addition to bombing, he
will put his “full diplomatic weight” behind the Vienna talks aimed at reaching
a political solution to the Syrian conflict. But he fails to explain how more
bombing will contribute to ensuring that those talks are successful.
Indeed, as we have already seen with the shooting down of a
Russian fighter jet by Turkey, the more parties that are engaged in bombing
Syria, the more difficult a political solution could become.
Either we, as the
UK and other parties to the ‘coalition’, can stop arming and funding the Syrian
opposition so that Assad can deal with ISIL or
we can help hammer out a peace agreement between Assad and the Syrian
opposition so that they can deal with ISIL together.
Russia is opposed to ISIL but it has also made no secret of
the fact that it is flying over Syria at the request of the Assad regime with
the aim of strengthening the Assad regime vis-à-vis all the military forces arrayed against it. Since in the northwest
that includes Turkmen forces who are directly supported by Turkey, that puts
Russia and Turkey on a collision course with each other. Turkey, meanwhile, is
fighting its own internal war against the Kurdish fighters and is therefore
certainly not assisting those same fighters across the border in Syria. Russia
is also undoubtedly attacking other forces in Syria which the Prime Minister is
currently counting as being among the 70,000 ‘moderates’ upon whom he is
pinning all his hopes.
However brutal and repressive Bashar al-Assad may be, he is
currently the leader of a sovereign state which is still recognised as
legitimate by most other countries in the world. And despite a civil war that
has been raging for over four years, the opposition groups supported by a range
of other Middle Eastern countries as well as by the USA have singularly failed
to dislodge him. While David Cameron calls Assad “one of ISIL’s greatest
recruiting sergeants”, the indisputable fact is that ISIL stepped into the
vacuum created by the civil war itself.
It is an open secret that the USA, mainly through the CIA,
has been funding, arming and supporting the Syrian opposition from the outset.
Undeterred by the disastrous results of ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya, the
US, UK and other western powers have been determined to see regime change in
Syria and have been trying for four years to help that along by supporting the
Free Syrian Army and other military groups trying to oust Assad.
David Cameron insists that, unlike in 2013, British military
involvement in Syria now would be solely aimed at ISIL and not at the Assad regime. In fact he says that the aim of British
involvement is to “enable a ceasefire to be established between the regime and
the opposition”.
But herein lies the whole paradox of the Syrian situation.
The only military force on the ground capable of beating back ISIL and
re-gaining control of Raqqa and other territory lost to ISIL are the armed forces
of the government of Syria. Either
we, as the UK and other parties to the ‘coalition’, can stop arming and funding
the Syrian opposition so that Assad can deal with ISIL or we can help hammer out a peace agreement between Assad and the
Syrian opposition so that they can deal with ISIL together. Ironically, adding
to the mayhem that is over Syria right now with more bombers targeting ISIL is
more likely to result in the military victory of Assad over the more ‘moderate’
opposition forces rather than the reverse.
The Prime Minister says several times in his dossier that we
must “learn the lessons from previous conflicts”, and yet the only lesson that
he mentions is the need to plan better for the aftermath. The real lesson of
the Iraq War appears to have been overlooked: bombing, invading and occupying
other countries is not a twenty-first century way to win friends and influence
people. It is more likely to create more enemies and more recruits for
extremist groups like ISIL.
The Prime Minister’s dossier claims that Britain’s current
military efforts against ISIL in Iraq have “suppressed their ability to conduct
external attacks”. If that is the case, then how does he explain the recent
murders in Paris and Beirut, not to mention the many other terrorist attacks
that he himself lists.
Bombing Syria and Iraq has increased terrorist activities around the world and increased the numbers of people joining
ISIL rather than the reverse. Why would more of the same be expected to achieve
anything different?