Nothing has bedeviled U.S. nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq quite like the determination of Sunnis and Shiites to fight each other instead of Islamic jihadists.
Now, Turks and Kurds are fighting each other instead of ISIS, thereby complicating ongoing efforts in Iraq and bedeviling efforts to prevent Syria from becoming the Somalia of the Middle East (i.e. a failed state).
Turkish tanks shelled a Kurdish-held village in northern Syria overnight, wounding at least four fighters, according to Kurdish forces and a monitoring group.
In a statement, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said Turkish tanks hit its positions and those of allied Arab rebels in the village of Zur Maghar in Aleppo province, Syria.
(The Guardian, July 27, 2015)
And:
Turkey began bombing PKK [Kurdish] camps in northern Iraq last Friday in what government officials have said was a response to a series of killings of police officers and soldiers blamed on the Kurdish militant group…
Turkey’s NATO allies have expressed unease about the operations aimed at the PKK, since the Kurds have been a crucial ally in the fight against Isis both in Syria and in Iraq.
(The Guardian, July 29, 2015)
In other words, fighting Islamic jihadists is becoming the military equivalent of building the Tower of Babel. I get why God confounded mankind’s unity of purpose to build a “stairway to heaven.” But I don’t get why He’s confounding our unity of purpose to defeat religious terrorists.
Not that the moderate-Muslim foot soldiers we’re relying on have shown much willingness or ability to fight this good fight, mind you:
An al-Qaida affiliate abducted an American-trained rebel commander and seven of his fighters in northern Syria just days after they deployed in the war-torn country.
The mid-week kidnapping is seen by analysts as a setback to Washington’s effort to shape an insurgent force able to combat Islamic State extremists, and it is likely to complicate plans for a safe zone in northern Syria currently under discussion between U.S. and Turkish officials.
(Voice of America, July 30, 2015)
Honestly, I’m not sure which makes more of a mockery of U.S. efforts: U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian fighters allowing themselves to be kidnapped by al-Qaeda fighters, or U.S.-trained Iraqi and equipped fighters fleeing like cowards from ISIS fighters.
Which obliges me to reprise this instructive take from “Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014.
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I’m on record offering the following at the only strategy to combat Islamic extremists
I’ve been lamenting – in commentaries as far back as “The Shotgun Convention of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to Frame an Iraqi Constitution,” August 22, 2005 and as recently as “Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds Fighting for Control of Iraq. Stay Out, America” June 19, 2014 – the folly of the United States acting as if it can either ‘win’ a war on terrorism or build a Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East:
With respect to the former, I’ve maintained that the best the United States can do is deny terrorists safe havens and disrupt their training and planning with vigilant drone surveillance and targeted preemptive strikes. After all, as it has demonstrated by doing this everywhere from Pakistan to Yemen, the United States does not need a coalition of the willing to do so.
With respect to the latter, I’ve maintained that it’s best to leave warring factions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria to their own devices, sufficing only to warn whichever one emerges as the governing authority that it will suffer a Taliban-like fate too if it harbors terrorists within its borders.
I put forward this strategy because, if the Afghans and Iraqis Americans spent over a decade training to govern themselves, defend themselves, and sustain themselves can’t stand on their own against a rag-tag bunch of Taliban fighters and rampaging ISIS/ISIL terrorists, respectively, then they deserve whatever fate befalls them. To say nothing of the dreadful spectacle of so many of those the U.S. trained either turning their guns directly on U.S. troops – in now notorious ‘green-on-blue’ killings, or using that training to professionalize the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS.
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Frankly, after tragic and costly lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq, one can hardly blame Americans for wanting to have nothing to do with a war on terrorism that seems more like an internecine conflict among Muslims … dating back a thousand years.
This is why the only redeeming feature of America’s feckless efforts in this respect is that Obama has, thus far, resisted goading by warmongering Republicans to deploy U.S. combat troops to Iraq/Syria. Not least because those troops would be as likely to be shot in the back by allied Iraqi and Syrian fighters as taken out by ISIS fighters … using the sophisticated American weapons U.S-trained Iraqi fighters left behind when they hightailed it and ran from the battlefield.
What a godforsaken mess!
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Yemen falls apart too…