Isis

If you want to know how serious the situation in Iraq with Islamic State is, just look at what the Americans are doing. President Obama, who made his political name by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has now asked Congress to approve sending another 1,500 troops there—taking the total number of US forces in the country to roughly 3,000.   Tellingly, the Washington Post reports that, these troops will now not be based mainly in Baghdad and the Kurdish capital of Irbil as they were previously. Instead, they will have a base in Anbar Province, one of the places where the so-called Islamic State has held territory, and north of Baghdad. They will also be attempting to train nine Iraqi army brigades.

The threat from Daish, the Arabic acronym for the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has gone from a side issue to a central imperative, judging by discussions with Kurdish leaders on my four fact-finding trips to the Kurdistan region in the last year. Last November, I was told how Daish operatives were assiduously measuring building sites in Mosul in an extortion racket. In February, I learned of their external funding and their continuing growth. In June, they captured Mosul with a small force that immediately acquired thousands of adherents, and established a 650-mile border with the Iraqi Kurds. The major shock, though, was how quickly the Iraqi Army had 'disappeared in a puff', as the governor of Kirkuk put it to me in his office in the city.

We Canadians like to think that we are a boring and peaceful nation, that nothing much ever happens here, and everybody likes us. It therefore comes as a shock when we are attacked, as we were this week in Ottawa. Yet terrorism is not a new phenomenon for Canada, as demonstrated by the assassination of one of the fathers of the confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, in 1868; by the murderous behaviour of the Front de Libération de Québec in 1970; and by the destruction of Air India Flight 128 in 1985. Our legislative institutions have been regular targets of attack. A Loyalist mob burned down the Parliament of Lower Canada in Montreal in 1848.

Whatever the Islamic State hopes ultimately to achieve by its current onslaught on all and sundry in the Middle East, Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, would certainly understand why it has been successful (so far); but Hannibal, who came within an ace of conquering Italy, might offer a word of warning. In the ancient world, conquest of territory was the route to enrichment: other people’s resources became yours to use as you wished. By 358 BC Philip had trained up what would turn out to be an almost unbeatable army. Moving south from Macedon, he picked off Greek city-states one by one, until by 338 BC he had gained effective control over all of Greece. He then planned an assault on Persia, but was assassinated in 336 BC. Alexander fulfilled his father’s ambitions.

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.