Iraq

Turkey and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) are engaged in a cold war. Although they despise each other, they will avoid direct engagement, for fear of the massive damage that could result. A little known Turkish exclave that lies inside Syria, known as the Tomb of Suleyman Shah and currently under siege by Isis, is a case in point. The Tomb of Suleyman Shah - a 2.47-acre sovereign Turkish district that houses the shrine of an Ottoman patriarch - holds immense emotional value for the Turks. It is the burial place of the grandfather of Osman Bey, who founded the Ottoman Empire, and is guarded by 80 Turkish infantry troops.

Iraq and Syria are lost causes: Western intervention can’t help. Well, at least that was the motion put forward on Wednesday evening at a Spectator debate, in association with Brewin Dolphin, and chaired by Andrew Neil.

Anti-NSA crusader Glenn Greenwald published an article on Wednesday morning where he explained that the recent murder of a Canadian soldier by a radicalised Muslim convert was down to Canadian foreign policy. The important sentence in Greenwald’s piece is this one: ‘A country doesn’t get to run around for years wallowing in war glory, invading, rendering and bombing others, without the risk of having violence brought back to it.’ To put it another way, it was inevitable that the jihadists would come after Canadians, given that Canadians had meted out some fairly ripe treatment to the jihadists – first in Afghanistan and now against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (I’m being generous to Greenwald here, I grant you).

America and Britain are still fumbling for policies to deal with nationals joining the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In Holland, meanwhile, authorities faced a more cheering task: sorting out Dutch motorbikers who've joined the Kurdish Peshmerga against Isis. To accomodate freelance counter-jihadists, the ever-progressive Dutch have amended their rules against joining foreign armies, Agence France-Presse reports. The three Dutch Peshmerga we know of so far belong to a biker club called 'No Surrender',  whose chief concerns were heretofore limited to motorcycling and brawling with Hell's Angels. Speaking of Hell's Angels, Dutch hog-heads aren't the first to take interest in a foreign freedom-fight.

The United States faces a very difficult task in Syria. It is trying to use air raids to contain and weaken ISIl. But, at the same time, it is trying to prevent the Assad regime from turning this intervention to its advantage. However, as the Washington Post reports today, the Assad regime have taken advantage of ISIl being pinned back to turn their fire on the moderate rebels, the very group that the US is trying to help. As the situation in Iraq is demonstrating, air strikes against ISIl can be effective when paired with ground operations. But in Syria, the US has no effective allies on the ground. The Turks could assist. But they are sitting on their hands. They aren’t even coming to the relief of Kobani, which sits on the Syrian Turkish border.

The problem posed by Islamic State will, sadly, not be dealt with quickly. The New York Times reports that John R. Allen, the retired US general coordinating the international coalition against IS, has warned that it will take up to a year before Iraqi forces are ready to try and re-take Mosul.   Given that IS is more firmly entrenched in Syria than Iraq, this suggests that defeating it there will take even longer. Indeed, the Syrian problem is compounded by the fact that there are not credible ground forces there to take the fight to IS.   Air strikes against IS are aimed more at disrupting its momentum and containing it than eliminating it.