The Coming War with the Caliphate
The Coming War with the Caliphate
Gary Anderson
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his vision of an Islamic caliphate transcending traditional international borders is becoming a reality in the form of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIS has transformed itself from a terror group into a viable proto-state with a civil governance arm and a regular army capable of taking and holding cities and defeating the conventional armies of established nation-states. Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi has declared ISIS a Caliphate with himself as Caliph. This new proto-nation is every bit as dangerous to United States security as was the original al Qaeda infestation in Afghanistan. It now has a former Iraqi chemical weapons production facility and a number of fighters who have U.S. passports. We will have to fight them eventually. That war will not come under this administration, and if it does, any action taken will likely be some feckless combination of airstrikes and halfhearted aid to the Iraqi government; that would be throwing good money after bad at this point.
When that war comes it should not be a counterinsurgency or a series of pinprick counterterrorist strikes merely designed to take out the leadership of ISIS. The capabilities of the new Caliphate have gone far beyond mere insurgency or terrorism. If the Caliphate is to be defeated, it will require a series of ground actions using large combined arms forces to destroy the conventional military forces in the areas where they have gained control. I am not suggesting a refight of the ground war in Iraq. This is not about helping Maliki who has made his own bed, nor is it about helping either the Syrian rebels or the Assad regime in Syria. Those are other sets of issues. The coming war will be about naked U.S. self- interest and eliminating a threat before it coalesces enough to attack us in our homeland. If we buy the Iraqis time to get their act together or help the Syrian moderate rebels by eliminating extremists in the Syrian anti-Assad ranks, it would be icing on the cake, but destroying ISIS' conventional military capability would be the primary objective.
Why are ground forces needed? Although the armed forces of the new born Caliphate are experienced regulars, they are largely composed of light infantry that can easily blend into the Sunni population. Al Baghdadi knows that tanks and armored vehicles are easy targets for U.S. airpower and will largely eschew them. Armored vehicles are also hard to maintain; at this stage in its development ISIS forces don't need them. It will take boots on the ground to root out the foreign fighters from the civilian population; an indiscriminant air bombing campaign would make permanent enemies of the Sunni populations of Iraq and Syria that the Islamist forces of the caliphate have infested.
What would such a campaign look like? Each fight would resemble the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, but with one major difference. Once the areas where the conventional military power of the Caliphate are eliminated; we leave. The Syrians and Iraqis will have to sort out the aftermath. We tried nation building and it didn't work. Once the Caliphate's conventional military capability to project power and governance institutions have been eliminated, the organization formally known as ISIS will revert back to the status of a non-state terrorist organization.
When will such a campaign be feasible? Probably not under this administration unless Baghdadi and his minions do something so egregious that even Barak Obama cannot ignore it; and even then his administration's response would probably be ineffectual if past performance, or lack thereof, in any indication. It would be better if action is postponed until an administration with some concept of how to effectively employ military strategy comes along. In this, time is on our side for two reasons. First, jihadist movements tend to turn inward on themselves over time and fight over the spoils once there are spoils worth coveting. Al Qaeda central has already disowned al Baghdadi and the nationalist fissures among the fighters who make up the Caliphate's military arm have agendas of their own will eventually become restless as will the Sunni populations that have welcomed them as liberators from Shiite dominated governments in Damascus and Baghdad.
A second Caliphate vulnerability that can be exploited is now that they have taken territory the Jihadists have to govern. This means fixed governance and security sites that become fixed targets. Time will also sour the subject Sunnis on the strict imposition of Sharia law. Military theorist William Lind has long advocated letting insurgents win and govern for a while. His theory is that, at least we'll know where they are.
Balkanization of Syria and Iraq will probably happen, and I doubt any form of true stability can come to that region until it does. A Sunni state or states would form if that happens, but to call such a state a “Caliphate” as a pejorative term is not warranted.
The most likely thing that would occur within such a “Caliphate” would be an immediate internal insurgency as potentially dozens of disparate actors turn from their common foes to compete with each other for supremacy and key terrain.
I suspect the Saudis and others are betting on it. The same thing happened within a young United States upon securing our liberation from Great Britain. The insurgent becomes the counterinsurgent. This is the normal cycle.
But it will not be the United States’ problem to fix, and should be of minimum disruption to our truly vital national interests. And that is far different and far better than our current problem with the “made in America” Iraq that exists today.
Wow, this demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature and importance of the Caliphate, particularly the idea of the U.S. going in and wiping it out by name and leaving the local Muslims to clean up the mess. This is backwards at best. The only way to destroy this Caliphate is for a Muslim force to do it. Any “infidel” intervention will certainly be viewed by about half of the Muslim population world wide to feel like we destroyed the hopes and dreams of all of Islam. Not really the way to make friends and influence people. When ISIS is confronted, it needs to be by a Muslim force with the backing of a prominent Imam. Otherwise you will be doing more to further OBL’s dream of a worldwide Jihad than simply allowing the new Caliphate to disintegrate of its own internal fights.
Mr. Anderson is right in his essential point, these guys are double dangerous and we will have to do something about them, ie kill them, before they get strong enough to come after us in a big way. Which they will as soon as they can.
This will not be an easy thing. Even Mr. Anderson believes they will trip over themselves and weaken as time passes. Others, some quite well known, think that as time passes they will rule in such a manner as to make themselves unpopular and therefore become more vulnerable. I think these beliefs are wishful thinking and do not take cognizance of the history of hard ideologies enforced by hard men in the 20th Century. The Bolsheviks and the Red Chinese both weren’t especially popular as evidenced by the multitudes they killed. But kill them they did and they ruled whether the ruled liked it or not. The men running IS are just as hard as any Red Chinese cadre who clubbed somebody to death with a shovel or any Chekist who helped starve millions of Ukrainians. And they are just as smart and just as resilient or they could not have lasted as long as they have or grown as they have in the face of persistent pressure.
We underestimate IS at our peril.
I can’t comment on the politics on the ground, but I would imagine that at least in Iraq Sunni areas allegiance to Islam will override any tribalism.
The light infantry is indeed sufficient for the time being to deal with the poorly trained and poorly motivated forces of the Iraqi army. Also it is apparent that Shiia militia is not match to IS forces.
IS ability to wage war and make strategic moves will depend on the long term development of their armed forces. Even an embryonic air defense system may impair the attacker’s air superiority. The other measures that may be employed are deception and masking as the Serbs did during Kosovo war.
While any future armoured forces may not be match to the US armour, they may inflict the damage on the attacker in combination with other anti armour units.
It is all about building deterrent to make any incursion costly for the aggressor.
Wow, talk about a hammer seeing everything as a nail.
‘ISIS has transformed itself from a terror group into a viable proto-state with a civil governance arm and a regular army capable of taking and holding cities and defeating the conventional armies of established nation-states.’
A Regiment-sized force of mascara-wearing death-squads lurching around town in clapped out pickups, HMGs mounted on tripods spot-welded to the tray, glass-eyed and stoned to a man and yelling Allah Akbar every time they see a women’s hair or drive over a pot-hole.
The political ideology to justify the Crusade Mk III:
‘The capabilities of the new Caliphate have gone far beyond mere insurgency or terrorism.’
And just in case you didn’t get the memo on leadership:
‘Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi has declared ISIS a Caliphate with himself as Caliph.’
IMO it is long past the time when we stop being played by the fruitcake element that the KSA and others have a nasty habit of conjuring up every time they feel their vested interests threatened and ‘forget’ to tell us what they’re doing about it.
There was a time when I believed we could get away with such little basic understanding of the causal drivers of the conflict owing to the massive disparity in our resources, our good intentions and our mickey-mouse RMA hardware. But I should have known better – the Mark-One eyeball is still the master of understanding the battle ecosystem. Or put another way – take your iPhone and shove it.
I would have thought the one lesson the last 13 years has taught us is that you will get nowhere if you go around offending the cultural beliefs of 99.9% of the HN in particular and 99.9% of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims in general.
Once again a ‘Broadway Joe’ has decided we might yet again want to drop 3 trillion dollars and ‘piss off the entire world’ if he and his buddies go on TV, shoot random people in the back of the head and declare God and all good Muslims believe it to be just.
Imagine our reaction if the rest of the world declared the US’s societal problems stemmed from our failure to address the ‘populist’ grievances declared by ‘constitution fundamentalists’ Timothy McVeigh, or ‘care-in-the -community advocate ’ Adam Lanza or ‘educational-reform zealots’ Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold. Needless to say 99.9% of Americans would consider the individuals who espoused such opinion were simply spoiling for a fight.
Furthermore if these foreign ‘friends’ decided to broadcast to the whole world these causal ‘fundamentals’ at the heart of the US’s problems in governance, education and mental-health I dare suggest our disposition would be far from inviting.
If these same ‘friends’ then offered to ‘help’ the US in the same manner framed above as:
‘If the Caliphate is to be defeated, it will require a series of ground actions using large combined arms forces to destroy the conventional military forces in the areas where they have gained control.’
Good luck with that my ‘friend’.
We have created a ‘superpower’ military that doesn’t possess any power. Just like Ike said we would. The military can deliver an insane amount of force but any power to establish a permanent change that benefits ourselves and/or our allies is as elusive as is was shown to be in VN.
Many current and former leaders in the military, government and industry are desperate to prove this isn’t so – with, IMO, very little concern for what benefits the US.
IMO this lack of real power, and our leadership’s refusal to acknowledge the problem, has a destabilizing effect on everything the military encounters – both domestically and across the globe.
Many intelligent folks point out our current Order of Battle is necessary to prevent a surprise attack by The Chinese Armada. Unfortunately that viewpoint renders me extremely stupid and please forgive me for wasting the last few minutes of your time.
Our foreign allies are overwhelmed with expectation when we arrive with so much promise, effort and hardware but are left bewildered and resentful when it amounts to nothing – or worse. Similarly the US taxpayers are equally bewildered by the thousands of schools, hospitals, bridges and tens of thousands of miles of highway, canal and flood-defense that were foregone for nothing – or worse.
The smart money suggests the military can redeem itself in the eyes of our friends, both foreign and domestic, if it adopts a more FID/UW approach. IMO not only has FID/UW a better chance of success but it will cost a fraction of what the US taxpayer is currently forced to shell out.
But leaving that aside, we will get absolutely nowhere if at the get-go we dance to the fiddle of yet another deluded Messianic fruitcake (as we did 9/12)and insist on insulting the fundamental cultural beliefs of 99.9 % of the HN population that want and need our help.
RC
Colonel Anderson makes two points:
[1] that search and destroy missions conducted by troops who haven’t the faintest idea of whom they are actually looking for followed by immediate withdrawal to allow the people who couldn’t deal with the problem in the first place to deal with the first place; and
[2] actually having a target to shoot at is better than not having a target to shoot at.
The first point is patent nonsense – it didn’t work in Vietnam and it isn’t going to work in the Middle East.
The second is sound – but totally trite.
Without attempting to actually sort out what the goals of ISIS are (and those goals are much more murky than the media makes them out to be), the goal of al-Qa’eda was never to “push America out of America” – Osama bin Laden’s clearly stated goal was to push America out of the Middle East so that there could be a Middle East government of the Middle East and for the Middle East.
That establishing such a government would necessitate displacing several US “client” governments and changing the “traditional” boundaries in the Middle East (thereby lessening the ability of the US government to control the actions of those governing the Middle East and also lowering the profits of American companies who benefited from the ability of the US government to control the actions of those governing the Middle East) is an inconvenient truth.
I think preparing a flagged ground operation is not smart at all. This is a quick way to shift the perception of hostility in the wrong direction. The former MI6 head has suggested that global jihad is not the issue right now but rather the consolidation of an Islamic State in lands that have been poorly governed from Damascus to Baghdad. Keep a low profile and tinker with homeland security but do not fall into the “Counter-Insurgency Trap.”
You cannot separate Iraq from Syria in terms of the mood and sentiments of large swathes of the population supported by private funders and quietly by Arab and Gulf state powers. They are incensed by the complicity from Tehran to Damascus through Baghdad and the logistics pipeline that has enabled the extension of Iranian power through to Lebanon.
The so called “Caliphate” blocks and disrupts this progress made. It takes away resources, time and energy from consolidating an edge for the government in Damascus and presents a natural rebalancing of a whole region that better reflects the self-determination and identity of the people and their interests.
If the goal is to limit Iran, or at least “push back”; not a bad signal for negotiating by the way, then at least listen to the concerns of Kurds, Sunnis and Arab governments. We will need them all over the east. Keep a low profile, work with the Kurds in Erbil and avoid falling prey to the “counterterrorism” narrative trumpeted in Tehran,Damascus and Moscow.
The article is fine in its sort perspective, but every one of the reports I read fails to appreciate the aspect of Islam and the increased likelihood when states reach Muslim majorities or even near majorities more extreme expressions of religiosity in government are to be expected.
Nowhere is this a more critical factor than the nation states of the EU. It had been projected that the rate of immigration and the higher number of children born to Muslim households in France, lead many to assume that by 2050 France would become a Muslim nation. However at that time, late 1990s, the rate of births dropped and it seemed that assimilation possible.
The current rate of immigration has changed the equation yet again and it is now projected many EU states and not only France will become Muslim majorities as early as 2040. The threat it poses to democratic institutions and more stagnant economic and other measures sometimes confused with socialist’s ideals will have moral, economic, and limitations on non-Muslims rights who will then forced over time into submission.
These changes are catastrophes for democratic nations.
Turkey has even been paid tribute by Euro nations to stem the tide of immigrants changing their countries, not assimilating.
Group rapes on the streets of Germany and other outrageous attacks on women by Muslim chauvinists does not even seem to turn heads.
Many Muslim men remain unemployed and even more woman disproportionately and 20-30% of polls show many of those Muslims believe such is their entitlement to be subsidized as guests in non-Muslim states.
It is also outrageous that the figures the White House rejected that falsely claimed immigrants increase the economy are using imaginary money based on citizens paying new taxes to provide transport to the USA and within the USA, housing, clothing and some luxuries. This is considered expanding the economy? Its tax money a burden on tax payers it just makes the USGs budget bigger the notion 200,000 refugees would greatly expand the economy is based on socialist notions of redistributing wealth. Another aspect is that although the advocates of this latest Ponzi scheme claim refugees increase the economy by double digit billions the same amount of money spent on needy Americans is a third to half the cost of tax subsidized refugees. (When capital is distinguished only by the size of governments expenditures we might as well put a casino in every town on the premise they circulate money and its good for the economy, what?)
This does not trouble liberals in the West who remain more offended by Christianity and capitalism disdain genuine protections of individual rights.
I would be interested to know peoples reactions to the Oxford on line dictionaries definition of “Marx and Islam” and the explanation offered to explain how Atheists do not seem to be as easily offended by Islam? Because it is more socialist?
I can follow the arguments about Caliphates, but I believe we are missing bigger threats. One in which Marxist Islamists may achieve their goals from the inside of our democratic institutions. It is this principle the Israelis object to when “The Right of Return” is made issue.
The Republicans in Congress were castigated for suggesting a fair representation of Christians and other non-Muslim by the liberal media and the radical democrats who advocate some 200,000 MUSLIM refugees; of the 11,000 refugees the Obama administration did bring to the USA, only slightly more than 100 were Copts, Yazidis and Iraq or Syrian Christians 20-40% of all refugees and they are even persecuted by Muslims in UN refugee camps. But to challenge socialist pro-Islamists on such obvious discrepancies and what is an obvious shift that enables Islamic supremacists is deemed Islamophobia.
The Islamists seem to grasp Clauswitz principle, war is politics by other means, better than we give them credit for.