War Isn't Winning

By Phyllis Bennis, U.S. News

24 October 17

The Islamic State group lost its capital, but U.S. military action has done more harm than good.

emember when President Barack Obama said there was "no military solution to terrorism?" Despite the expulsion of the Islamic State group from Raqqa, the capital of its self-declared "caliphate" and the last significant population center under its control, it turns out he was right.

What we're seeing is the decline of the Islamic State group as an organization that holds territory and governs people. But the end of the group itself? Not even close. The end of terrorism? An illusion.

Instead, this is simply the group's latest organizational transformation – a shift from a more or less conventional army holding territory as part of an extremist dictatorship, back to its origins as an old-fashioned terrorist organization known for brutal acts of up-close and personal violence.

Even as Islamic State group fighters are driven out, a Pentagon think tank holds the organization responsible for at least 1,500 attacks in 16 towns and cities across Iraq and Syria. That's likely to continue. An escalation of terror attacks further abroad remains a likely result, too – particularly as foreign recruits return to their home countries.

All that's to say: The U.S.-led military assault on Raqqa failed to either destroy the Islamic State group or to end terrorism. Add one more notch to the long list of failures of the now 16-year-old war on terror.

Leaving behind rubble. It's a good thing that millions have been freed from the cruelty and violence imposed by the Islamic State group. But as in Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul and other cities from which the group was previously expelled, we have to ask: At what cost was Raqqa "liberated"?

In the city itself, more than 1,000 civilians were killed by U.S. airstrikes during the months-long assault. The New York Times reports that "much of the city has been devastated by American-led airstrikes," which have displaced some 270,000 residents and destroyed thousands of homes. Photographs show blocks of roofless houses, bullet-pocked buildings with walls blown out and bomb-cratered streets empty of people.

So U.S. force destroyed the city – in order to "save" it?

Such destruction paves the way for deeper political dysfunction, especially when exacerbated by sectarian politics.

Take the case of Fallujah, the first major Iraqi city to fall to the extremists. The Islamic State group lost Fallujah in June of last year, but only after extensive battles involving Iraqi government forces and U.S. troops. And before that, it was the site of heavy fighting between al-Qaida, other Iraqi forces and U.S. Marines in 2004.

Even a year after the Islamic State group fighters were expelled from Fallujah, virtually no reconstruction of the devastated city had even begun, no aid was coming from Baghdad and the government was focusing instead on the need for "more security." Anger towards the Shiite-dominated sectarian government in Bahgdad, especially from Fallujah's majority Sunnis, is on the rise. And not surprisingly, as The New York Times reported earlier this year, Islamic State group-linked insurgents are re-emerging there.

Beyond Fallujah, similar patterns may play out in the devastated Iraqi Sunni-majority cities of Mosul and Ramadi, among others where the Islamic State group was expelled, whole populations displaced and only rubble left behind. On the Syrian side, similarly devastated cities like Raqqa face a deeply uncertain future amid divisions between Kurds and Arabs, and between U.S.-backed forces, other rebel groups and the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government.

Overlapping conflicts. Extremist groups flourish in this sort of chaos. The Islamic State group emerged in direct response to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and was strengthened by the civil war in Syria. Unfortunately, the military expulsion of the group from cities across Iraq and Syria is setting the stage for continuing violence and dysfunction.

The U.S. role in both wars is increasing political and military chaos, even now as Washington uses the defeat of the Islamic State group to consolidate power for itself and its local allies. That effort includes arming many military players across the region, often giving arms to both sides of the numerous conflicts.

Syrian Kurds armed and backed by the U.S. face new challenges as their primacy in Washington's anti-Islamic State group coalition is ending. Tensions between U.S.-backed Iraqi Kurds and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad are rising as ISIS diminishes as a military force. The recent move by Iraqi troops to retake Kirkuk — an oil-rich, mixed city seized by Kurdish fighters early in the anti-ISIS campaign — is just the latest skirmish in which both sides have been armed, trained, and supported by the United States for years.

Meanwhile, the broader proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia continues, with devastating consequences for civilian populations.

As U.S.-backed fighters were cautiously declaring victory over the Islamic State group, Brett McGurk – the head of Washington's "anti-ISIS coalition" – traveled to Raqqa to meet with a council the United States had established to govern the Syrian city after the Islamic State group. In a move guaranteed to further exacerbate regional tensions, he was accompanied by a high-ranking Saudi Arabian official.

The Iranian-backed Syrian authorities, who remain in power in Damascus despite U.S. efforts and despite a legacy of horrific repression, presumably did not authorize entry to the country of a top minister of one of their major regional antagonists in the war — let alone the creation of a local Syrian city government bought and paid for by the United States. The Saudis have played a major role in stoking the conflict and some of its most extreme elements, so any role they play in post-Islamic State group Raqqa will certainly be destabilizing.

Who pays the price. The vast territory the Islamic State group controlled for the last four years is still riven by political and sectarian fault lines. And the conditions that allowed the group to seize power remain largely unchanged.

Iraqi Sunnis blame their sectarian Shiite government – which enjoys the backing of both the U.S. and Iran – for continuing repression against Sunni communities. Those same conditions resulted in many Iraqi Sunnis turning to the Islamic State group or its predecessors, as the lesser evil against the entrenched corruption of the government.

In Syria, the complicated interlocking wars continue, pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia, Turkey against the Kurds, the United States against Russia and Israel against Syria. And that's not to mention the various U.S.-, Saudi-, Turkey-, United Arab Emirates-backed fighters arrayed against the Syrian government, which is in turn backed by Iran and Russia.

The conflicts are complicated, but the results simple: Syrian civilians pay the price.

Like in Iraq, the violent chaos that allowed the Islamic State group to run rampant across Syria continues there despite shifts in the military balance of forces. And as in Iraq, the United States is arming and supporting forces on many different sides – setting the stage for a long-term, potentially permanent military intervention throughout the region.

But the fact that there is no military solution – not to terrorism, not to the Syrian war, not to any of the crises still engulfing Iraq or beyond. Sixteen years of war against terror has failed. Diplomacy is harder, less telegenic, less politically exciting, but it's the only alternative we've got. And way too many lives are at risk not to fight for it.