End Is Near For Islamic State's State
A major geopolitical goal is now in sight, and should arrive within months if not weeks. The Islamic State is about to become stateless. They are about to lose the last shreds of territory they still control in Iraq and Syria, forcing their transformation into a stateless terrorist network (like Al Qaeda) or even their total collapse. Because their self-proclaimed "caliphate" is about to disappear.
In their heyday, the Islamic State controlled territory from the outskirts of Baghdad all the way to the Turkish border with Syria. They held oil fields that financed their operation to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and they ruled a large territory they had taken in blitzkrieg fashion. But their expansion finally came to a halt, and they started a long losing streak to multiple other armed forces. This losing streak continues uninterrupted, and is now almost complete. Since early 2015, the Islamic State has steadily been losing territory and has only managed to regain a town once (soon to lose it again), when they fought with the Syrian army over Palmyra. Other than that short-termed success, the Islamic State has lost almost everything it once held.
As you can currently see on the war maps for Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State (in black, on the maps), now only holds a short stretch of two rivers. Their territory straddles the Iraq/Syria border, but they're being pushed back from all sides. The final battles against the group will likely take place close to the border.
The final push began by kicking the Islamic State out of Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria. The fight for Raqqa is not complete, as there is still a small section of town held by Islamic State forces, but the outcome is not in question. In Syria, the Kurdish forces and the Syrian army has held a fragile truce over fighting between each other, while the battle against the Islamic State continues. The Kurds still hold Tabqa and Manbij, but once the Islamic State is dealt with the government forces may try to push the Kurds out. But no matter what happens afterward, the Kurds from the north of the Euphrates River and the government forces to the south have been steadily pushing down the river valley. Currently, the town of Deir ez-Zor is the main battle, but both the Kurds and the Syrians have also continued to retake towns past the main fight. On the tributary Nahr al Khabur, the Kurds had been dug in with the Islamic State just outside Al Fadghami for years, but have recently been on the move southward. The Kurds will likely take all the land north of the confluence of the two rivers (north of Al Busayrah), leaving the rest for the government forces to take. Other than a few tiny pockets elsewhere in Syria, the Islamic State's last stand will likely happen in one of the towns close to the Iraqi border, perhaps Abu Kamal.
In Iraq, the rout of the Islamic State has been even more impressive. Mosul was a long bloody fight, but was finally retaken after months of battle. Since that time, three of the four remaining Islamic State areas have been cleared out by the Iraqi armed forces: Tal Afar, Hawija, and the towns south of the road through Sinjar. Other than the deep desert (where the Islamic State may continue to hang on, even after their total defeat elsewhere), this leaves only a short stretch of the Euphrates River valley ending at the Syrian border. Iraqi forces have moved out from Haditha and have already taken Anah, in a slow push north. However, government forces just finished cleaning out all the towns surrounding Hawija (further east), meaning they will now be free to move to the final battle to push the Islamic State out of Iraq.
The only real question for the near future is whether Iraq or Syria will accomplish the complete rout of the Islamic State on their territory first. Iraq seems most likely, at this point, but the Syrian fighting has been moving pretty quickly, too.
Of course, even evicting the Islamic State from all its territory in Iraq and Syria doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Islamic State organization. But they will be denied safe haven, and they will be denied the vast majority of their former income. They will be diminished, even if they don't completely disappear. And since a major draw for the group was that they were the only ones bold enough to proclaim a new caliphate and try to take and hold as much territory as they could, it remains to be seen whether they'll continue to entice new recruits now that this experiment has utterly failed. Or maybe they'll just change their name to something less ambitious than the "Islamic State."
Geographic victory over the Islamic State isn't going to end conflicts on both sides of the border, either. It's anyone's guess what will happen next in Iraq. If the central government does not attempt to bridge the Sunni/Shi'ite divide, then sectarian violence of one sort or another is almost guaranteed for the future. Iraq's Kurds have now voted to secede from Iraq, which might spark a civil war of another sort immediately after the Islamic State is vanquished. And, as you can easily see from the number of colors required on that Syrian war map, removing one army from the field isn't going to end the war, it will merely rearrange the other forces temporarily.
Even having said all of that, though, making the Islamic State stateless is a big achievement. It may not solve any of the struggles that will continue in both Iraq and Syria, but it will have removed a particularly lethal player from the field in both. In various places, this has been achieved by the United States, the Iraqi government, the Syrian (Assad) government, Russia, the Kurds, Iranian-backed militia forces, and Syrian freedom fighters. That's a strange collection of allies, to be sure, but it's not like they were fighting shoulder-to-shoulder on any one battlefield. Each decided, for its own reasons, that taking out the Islamic State was a higher priority than their other military troubles, which brought a unique focus to the fight.
That fight is almost over. It has been a huge success, measured in ground taken and the Islamic State's statehood denied. Proclaiming the end of the Islamic State will likely be premature, but denying them all of their safe haven is enough of an accomplishment for now. Whether it takes weeks or a few more months, though, that end is now clearly in sight.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
I agree with most of the factual narrative in this column, but less so with the ultimate conclusion. There is no end in sight. That is not how the Middle East works, and it's not really how history works anywhere. Driving the Islamic State franchise from the field has subdued a violent flare up, but has not cured the chronic, endemic, regional disease, which is tribalism badly adjusted to facts on the ground. There will be more flareups in future.
I don't much like the term blitzkrieg, which is not a German military term, but rather a British press invention roughly characterizing a combined arms style of warfare that focuses on achieving local superiority, breakthroughs and the bypassing of enemy strong points to achieve rapid advances with the goal isolating and demolish large enemy formations. As far as I can tell, the Islamic State did nothing of the sort, their early success was a series of local, but coordinated insurrections in ethnically Sunni dominated regions of Iraq and later in Syria. Outside money played a big role in getting things off the ground. The Islamic State did not advance, it grew in place. The Islamic State never had much success in Shiite dominated parts of Iraq or Syria.
Arab armies are tribal armies, not national armies in the Western sense. It's hard to get the tribal parts organized into big, coordinated formations and hard to keep them in the field for long periods. T.E. Lawrence understood this, the Israeli's get this. The American Public (excepting maybe Ken Burns Inc.)have trouble wrapping their heads around this concept nuance. The US military is doing rather better at understanding the problem than the Public, the Congress or the Doofus in Chief.
What's the US long term regional plan? Does it match the problem of terrorism in the US and Europe? Or, are we fighting for something else? Or just to fight?
TheStig [1]
"What's the US long term regional plan? Does it match the problem of terrorism in the US and Europe? Or, are we fighting for something else? Or just to fight?"
The biggest, most cohesive, and successful tribes in the region are the Turks, the Persians, and the Kurds. (Other than the Israelis and the Egyptians.) They are also the ones with the most cultural influence and nation state capabilities historically. (They are also oddly enough the ones less ideologically opposed to Israel in a knee jerk fashion.) Should we just concentrate on a relationship with one or more of them?
The hallmark of tribal societies always has been and likely always will be, perpetual inter-tribal war. Puts me in mind of the story about an American GI asking a man he met in an Afghan village, "Why does your tribe hate the neighbor tribe so much?" The man replied, "One of their guys killed one of our guys." "When was that?",the GI asked. "1276", the Afghan says.
TheStig
Not sure who invented the term "Blitzkrieg", but it's pretty hard to argue with the fact that "Blitz" is German for "lightening', and "Krieg" is German for 'war'.
The ISIS diaspora. That's what they'll be blaming when, long after the caliphate in the Levant has turned to dust, terrorism of all sorts begins to happen on a more regular basis in the West in the near future.
It's already been discussed that, of the tens of thousands of Isis supporters from the West who have chosen to flee home rather than remain in Iraq and Syria for the fierce and inevitable final fight, there are many thousands who will slip past intelligence services and who could put those IED and bomb-making skills they learned on the battlefield to use in Western societies. Many others will just start shooting shit up. This too, is practically inevitable.
We may end up longing for the 'good old days' when ISIS fighters gathered together in Iraqi towns and wore black so that we would know which team they were on.
John M - 2
There is no universally accepted definition of "tribe" but I'm using it in the sense of "a semi-autonomous social group with close ties of kinship and land and recognized as distinct by other tribes they interact with." Turks, Kurds, Persians and Egyptian societies are tribal - hundreds of tribes. Modern Israel is not fundamentally tribal - too many recent immigrants from too many places. Something in common with the USA.
Arab armies, especially irregulars tend to be organized on tribal lines which tend to subvert formal chain of command. One reason why the Iraqi National Army has performed poorly:slowly against the relatively unified Islamic State.
CRS-3 That joke pretty much captures two essential attribute of a tribe: 1) Knowledge of who belongs to what tribe. 2) Very long memories.
CRS - 4 It's German language but not German WWII military doctrine or terminology.
But of course, the question of the day is -
Who is more certifiable: the Iranians, or Trump?
Or are the real lunatics the Republican establishment, who have willingly handed the keys of this Starship over to a Captain who thinks that Cardassians are cool and Vulcans are evil?
We will ourselves be judged by our willingness to accept or resist this abrogation of responsibility by the once-loyal opposition - the same group of folks, incidentally, that favor loyalty oaths and define marijuana use as a 'national security issue'.
Applauding outliers like Corker and McCain is natural, but misses the point rather dramatically: there is a majority in the Congress right now willing to allow this Madman to dream of having lots and lots of Genesis Devices - the better to remake the world to conform to his own demented vision.
The only thing the GOP could do to redeem themselves in my eyes would be to hastily initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump, but I don't expect the craven tax-cutters and social reformers of that party to do anything of the sort.
So, they've all got to go. We need to defeat every one of them, even the 'good' ones, at the polls, somehow, and to ignore, even counteract inevitable Romulan meddling. The next time some idiot claims that the parties are 'the same', or that it doesn't matter who occupies the oval office, they will receive from me a barrage of Trump quotes, and a reminder that even the fringe has a responsibility in this society not to fuck the whole thing up.
Don Harris [5]
"And the nominees for the new terrorist organization that we need to protect America and apple pie from are...."
From what I heard on one of the political talk shows, I believe that the Trump administration is already hinting at Hezbollah as being the next potential terrorist threat to the West.
TheStig [7]
"Turks, Kurds, Persians and Egyptian societies are tribal - hundreds of tribes." - Ummm, not really. They are actually fairly cohesive. They might actually be thought of more as distinct ethnic national groups. The Kurds are pretty much only split into two factions. The Turks basically divide along lines between Secular and Religious Turks. The Egyptians as a distinct identifiable civilization, have existed for thousands of years in the exact same area, similar to China and Persia. Only the extent or reach of the outer border has fluctuated, not the fact of the core area itself. Poland in Europe would be another example.
The modern state of Turkey is overwhelmingly ethnic Turkish, with the only substantial minority being Kurds. The modern state of Iran is similarly something like 60% ? Persian, though with more minorities, like Kurds, Azeri, Baluchi, and Arabs.
It's only the Arabs who don't have a cohesive national identity. The exception that proves the rule is Egypt. They have a distinct identity as Egyptian first, Arabic second. Saudi Arabia is basically a one tribe family operation. That's why it's called "Saudi" Arabia, and not say, the Democratic United Kingdom of Arabia or something similar. It's also why you see two power centers in Libya, one centered around Tripoli and the other around Benghazi. Or why Iraq makes more sense divided into 3 parts, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shite. There is no "Arab" Iraq. ETC. Syria and Lebanon are hopeless hodgepodges.
TheStig [7]
Modern Israel is not fundamentally tribal - too many recent immigrants from too many places. Something in common with the USA. - Ummm, I'm not so sure about that either. I think a case could be made for thinking of the Jews as one distinct tribe, despite where they originally came from in the diaspora. They have, after all, been able to maintain a distinct identity and set of traditions for thousands of years also, despite all the pressures of assimilation etc. Whether they come from America or Germany or Russia or Iraq, they all still maintain a distinct "Jewish" identity, and that of course is the definition of the modern Israeli state, and the bone of contention that the Palestinians have with it. Is there in fact, an Israeli state, without it also being a "Jewish" Israeli state at its heart? Israel after all, was specifically established as a Jewish homeland, after the Holocaust. It's also the whole point of a "two" state solution. What indeed would be the point if both states ended up being majority population Palestinian? The Jews would then be right back where they were before the Holocaust, simply a minority in someone else's state that they did not control.