Recently, the British parliament voted on whether or not the nation should join the coalition currently bombing Syria. The debate reintroduced a narrative that gets a lot of traction but is ultimately unfeasible. It was evident from the coverage surrounding the vote that a very vocal contingent of citizens wished that the UK’s military would completely abstain from the bombing, and this narrative is one that crops up a good deal here on campus as well. It’s a popular narrative for obvious reasons, as it is much more palatable to the human sensibilities to abstain from such a bombing campaign that will inevitably leave innocent corpses. But the world is faced with a global jihadist insurgency that is inspired and fueled by Islamic extremism, and no amount of bombs can defeat an ideology. However, the coalition of nations that are currently dropping munitions on Daesh territory aren’t aiming for ideological principles, they’re aiming for strategic targets. This bombing campaign is aimed at the very tangible Daesh pseudo-nation that poses a tremendous threat to the peace and security of the world. In this “progressive world” where the West doesn’t dirty its hands with action towards Daesh, we would still have to live with the consequences of leaving an entity founded on Islamic extremism trying to establish itself in the Middle East.
The international fatigue from entanglements in the Middle East that feeds this isolationist narrative was a calculated element of Osama Bin Laden’s strategy. Bin Laden sought to provoke an American overreach and quagmire in the Middle East through acts of terror in order to divide the “far enemy” (what he called the West/America) from the “near enemy” (Arabian countries backed by the West), and to be fair, he certainly succeeded in this regard. Isolationist sentiment surged in the citizenry of the West after watching a colossal waste of lives and money bring no stability to the region. Bin Laden predicted that the international community would abandon the region, and in the resulting vacuum, a jihadist uprising would bring down local Arab leaders and a caliphate would rise in the region. While this is not exactly how that went down, the Middle East has more or less become the region Bin Laden envisioned, and while there are critical lessons to be learned from the West’s missteps in the Middle East it would be a mistake to let Daesh operate uncontested.
A bombing campaign alone is not enough to make significant and sustainable progress towards dismantling Daesh’s ability to project military power over territory. The bulk of any ground force involved in any sort of operation against Daesh should not be Western, as that would only strengthen Daesh’s recruiting ability, which is obviously something the world would like to avoid. That being said, there are already ground forces in the region that are already fighting Daesh with the support of international airpower and they have been enjoying significant successes against the caliphate. Specifically Syrian Kurdish forces (the YPG), Iraqi Kurdish forces (the Peshmerga), and the forces of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (the PKK) have all shown that with air support they can put pressure on Daesh territory. Just last month, the Peshmerga took the strategically critical city of Sinjar, which severed the supply route between the Daesh strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. If the international community can cooperate with Muslim proxy forces to fight the Daesh, it hurt Daesh’s propaganda machine and ideological underpinnings, as they will not be waging jihad against a crusade of Westerners but against other Muslims. Politically, the current leadership in Turkey has some serious issues with the PKK, to put it very lightly, which would be troublesome as Turkey is a NATO member and a key ally in the region for the international coalition and they might have a problem if after removing the Daesh the PKK moves for even more autonomy. Situations requiring political maneuvering aside, these forces have all proved that sustained success is possible against Daesh with international firepower in the skies.
Pretending that Kurdish ground forces alone can defeat Daesh is naïve as the ethnic divides in the region present a unique strategic difficulty in controlling territory. Without getting too into the history of the region, there is only so much that Kurdish forces are willing and able to accomplish as the many of the regions they would have to drive the Daesh out of are predominantly Sunni in ethnic makeup. This is extremely problematic, as the international coalition does not currently have a Sunni proxy force willing or able to take the fight to Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. Even if the international community finds a Sunni proxy force there are a whole can of worms worth of questions revolving around leaving territory for Kurds and Sunnis to carve up even if Daesh loses all of its territory. That being said, a Sunni proxy force is still the crux of any successful mission against Daesh even if it is something that the international community has failed to produce.
This conflict is winnable and major gains can be made in the fight against the modern era’s global jihadist insurgency but if isolationist sentiments spread to more of the Western populace and being to affect policy it will have a chilling effect on global security. There is international support for continued air support as the UN recently passed a resolution urging “UN member states to take all necessary measures to combat Isil/Daesh in Iraq and Syria because of the unprecedented threat it represents to international peace and security.” We can sit comfortably on the moral high ground while we watch Daesh fester in the Middle East or we can make the necessary decisions in order to combat the threat of global Islamic extremism. However, the munitions we drop in the Middle East won’t defeat Islamic extremism intellectually but if we can cripple Daesh’s operational ability enough to make this more of a clash of ideologies than of terror attacks the world will be better for it.