Moving sands
One of the most persistent cliches about the Middle East is that it's a swamp (or rather, a desert of moving sands) where, the more you try to get out, the more stuck you get. This notion may be buzzing inside the head of president Obama too, and giving sleepless nights to his retinue of advisors and smart-heads at the White House, now that the US has started gathering a Coalition of the Willing again, and bracing themselves for another military adventure in Iraq's sands.
We all know what has brought things to this. The many various groups from the Syrian civil war that were so erratically and arbitrarily funded in the name of deposing bad Assad in the last three years, have gradually mutated into this ISIL monster. The beheadings of Western journalists have predictably sent the wheel of war going once more, although the local people have been experiencing that sort of draconian terror on a daily basis for decades - but apparently those don't matter that much, since they're brown people who talk funny and live thousands of miles away from the safety of our comfy ketchup-stained armchairs.
In order to defeat ISIL, the first and foremost thing that's needed is political legitimacy and a viable ideological alternative that could be offered to the local Sunni people in Syria and Iraq, who've felt marginalized and oppressed by the Shia governments in Damascus and Baghdad for years. Hence the US idea of calling the Arab governments (plus Turkey) for help. The Kurds weren't bypassed either - after all, they're the only ones who've managed to deliver a defeat to ISIL up to this point (with the help of Iran, granted). Except, all these players have interests so divergent that they've practically been waging a war between themselves, mostly through proxies, and mostly in Syria, up until now. So let's not fool ourselves. The "sustained anti-terrorist effort" (read: war) against ISIL will emphasize these divisions, and this will inevitably change the fragile balance in the Middle East in the long run.
The first group to successfully counter ISIL's advancement in Iraq were the Kurds. Their badass armed forces, the Peshmerga ("those who face death") have managed not only to hold their positions in the Kurdish autonomous region in North Iraq, but they even expanded their territory into some towns and cities, including Kirkuk. And all of this happened as early as July, i.e. long before the US had even begun contemplating armed intervention in the conflict.
Then the Iranians came to the rescue. They quickly sent military advisors and directed armed Shia groups to aid the Kurds, which helped liberate some key towns like Amirli, whose siege was broken by Kurdish, Iranian and Iraqi Shias earleir this month - a victory that's being considered a turning point in the battle against ISIL. "The Iraqi Kurds will never forget Iran's help, which came at a critical moment and exceeded our expectations", the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani said.
Now a bit late, the US is also trying to jump in. The Kurdish forces are better equipped and better trained than before, and they'll be getting even more help from Western trainers, and more guns and ammo. Although this could prove difficult, since, despite the almost decade-old autonomous self-rule of the Iraqi Kurds, they still don't have institutionalized armed forces. The bulk of the Peshmerga are ordinary members of the two major political parties in the autonomy, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who've been purchasing their arms at the free market, and then join the fight to defend their territory.
But on paper, both KDP and PUK are considered terrorist organizations, at least by the US definition. The reason is the Patriotic Act, which defines any armed group fighting against its government as a terrorist organization, regardless of the root cause of that struggle. At the time that bill was being shaped up, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, and he was pursuing a program of systematic extermination of the Kurds. What these same Kurds are thinking of the US definition of their defense forces became evident back in February, when president Barzani canceled a visit to DC.
The Kurds in Iraq are also unhappy with the lack of support from Turkey, which in recent years has been building very close political and economic relations with them in attempt to create a friend for itself that would counter the warlike PKK that's still active on Turkish territory. The Iraqi Kurds must've expected some sort of support, but after the kidnapping of the Turkish diplomats in Mosul, Turkey declared that they couldn't help. Officially, Turkey keeps silent on the ISIL issue, because the group holds 49 Turkish diplomats and their families hostage. The concern for their safety is quite valid, what with all the recent beheadings that were declared a direct act of retaliation to the support of the US and UK government for the struggle against ISIL. But actually that's not the only obstacle to a full Turkish commitment to the international anti-jihadist coalition.
The thing is, Turkey doesn't want to be viewed as a state that fights the Sunni in the region under the command of the US. This matches Erdogan's plan to fortify his country's position of a regional leader, which would've been impossible if everyone viewed Turkey as subordinate to America. The problem is, Turkey has become a passive observer of the events south of its border for quite a while.
Being led by ideology, the Turkish foreign policy has bet on the Islamists ever since the beginning of the Arab Spring. After the tide turned against the Islamists, Turkey didn't show flexibility and continued to back them, thus losing its newly earned influence in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc. The deterioration of Turkey's appeal in the Middle East will now be deepened, since Qatar has expelled the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood from its territory, and Erdogan was the first to invite them to come to Turkey.
Turkey is being pointed out as one of the main factors that allowed ISIL to grow so much and so fast in the first place. Because it remains one of the main sources of foreign jihadists. It's very easy to launch a website in Turkey, and spew support for the extremist group and aid it in recruiting new members. And this, provided that thousands of other websites have been shut down by Erdogan's censors. There are places in Turkey like Ankara's Haci Bayram neighborhood where hundreds of youngsters sign up for "education" in Syria (read: training a the terrorist camps).
Beside manpower, Turkey also provides routes for the main financial and equipment flows for ISIL. The almost 900 km long border with Syria is extremely porous, and there've been signs of tightening it only recently. But the patience of Turkey's partners is not limitless. The WSJ for example has called in an editorial for the US to go find a more reliable regional ally. They even went as far as to put the very existence of the US air base at Incirlik into question, and hinted that it might be moved to another place. All in all, Erdogan is creating the impression that Turkey doesn't want to face this horrible organiaztion, and is tacitly condoning the atrocities that it's been committing.
ISIL is not just a terrorist organization with lots of members and substantial funding. Its success stems from its ideology. It features the most purist interpretation of Islam, Salafism. It views 7th-century lifestyle from the time of Muhammad as the absolute model for society. In this ideological context, it's no surprise that the Sunni are being viewed as the only true Muslims. Everyone else, including all other Islamic factions, are considered new inventions and a deviation from the righteous path, and the only way to get rid of them is through force.
As for ISIL's ideology, its origin can be traced back to Saudi Arabia. The main difference is that the religious scholars that KSA supports are professing that the orders for Jihad should only be coming from the royal family and no one else. Thus, right now KSA is finding itself in the weird position of having to pay for the fight against ISIL, while simultaneously supporting the ideology that defines that group, via various Salafi mosques in Europe, the Arab world and elsewhere in Asia.
For too long has Saudi Arabia supported moderate Islamists in Syria, because the Saudis were blinded by their fear of Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. No one was deemed too radical if they would show willingness to fight Assad, so nearly everyone got arms and money. Now KSA's problem is that ISIL has openly announced its Caliphate, and this way is trying to gain legitimacy among all Muslims, stealing the leadership position from the oil-rich kingdom that still hosts the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The remaining Arab states in the 10-member Middle Eastern anti-jihadist coalition also have their own internal debates about how openly they should be supporting this struggle against fellow Muslims. Jordan, for example, has signed the US memorandum for fighting ISIL, at least on paper, but prime minister Abdullah Ensour has also stated that the tiny kingdom won't be part of any international alliance, and won't participate in military strikes against the terrorists. Things have gone so far that Jordanian MPs have signed a petition warning the government against participating in such confrontation, especially since many in the country either openly or secretly sympathize with ISIL.
All these differences are reinforcing the climate of distrust that permeates the Middle East. And it can't be otherwise, since in recent years Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have practically been waving their dicks against each other's face through various proxies in Syria, where they've supported one or the other side in the conflict, for the sake of their own interests. The ascent of ISIL shows that this has been an extremely destrimental strategy that brings trouble to everybody. It's in America's and particularly in Obama's interests that these players finally reach some sort of consensus for the sake of a greater goal. Otherwise he'll just be yet another president whose good intentions will have sunken in the moving sands of the Middle East, while America will have proven yet again that it has no idea what it's doing over there.