Have The Islamist Militants Overreached In Iraq And Syria?
Have The Islamist Militants Overreached In Iraq And Syria? By Deborah Amos, NPR
The Islamist radicals who have declared an Islamic caliphate on land they control straddling Iraq and Syria are waging an audacious publicity stunt, according to some analysts.
While it may bring them even greater attention, it's also likely to be an overreach that will open riffs with its current partners, the Sunni Muslims in Iraq who welcomed the militant group in early June. They all share the goal of overthrowing Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his sectarian rule, but the more secular parts of the Sunni coalition didn't sign up for an Islamic state.
"By announcing the caliphate, they are picking a fight with everybody," says David Kilcullen, a guerrilla warfare expert and former chief counter-terrorism strategist for the U.S. State Department.
The militants were known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. But in announcing a caliphate, which is a single, unified Islamic state, they are now simply calling themselves the Islamic State…
These ISIS guys captured cities with the acquiescence of local leaders, looking to deal themselves a better hand than that previously dealt by al-Maliki and his Shi´ite revanchists. Otherwise this caliphate is subsumes desert land and ISIS has a long a supply line to support. Look for the Iraqi Sunnis to use Awakening tactics to reject the virus in their local organism. That means re-framing this caliphate of terror as a mere crime to be eradicated with an albeit crude form of community policing. As that occurs, the Kurds will seek to consolidate control over the rest of Mosul and, then, the fun really begins.
Most people at the time perhaps thought the Bolsheviks would not be able to pull it off but they did. The Red Chinese were on the ropes a time or two and they pulled it off too. There are numerous other examples. IS has proved so far to be very smart and very resilient. They can go a long way with those two qualities.
The Sunnis got into bed with the devil once before and they were unable to get out of that bed without the help of the US military. They were too weak on their own. The US military isn’t there to back them up now if they decide they want to rid themselves of the IS. They will be on their own. They may not be able to do it. That would be bad for them and very bad for the world.