Syria: A fractured state

Venture into the unfamiliar

 

Islamic State Takes Offensive

 

The Islamic State (IS) went on the offensive in Syria and Iraq in 2014. I like the definition of the IS used by Rand Corp: 

 

“The IS is a Sunni jihadist group with a particularly violent ideology that calls itself a caliphate and claims religious authority over all Muslims.”

 

Iraq’s population is about 30% Sunni and 60% Shi’a Muslims. Syria’s is about 70% Sunni and 3% Shi’a. I do not want to get into religion, but the difference between the two countries is worth mentioning because of the impact of sectarian conflict. Looking broadly, Sunni Muslims find great favor in Saudi Arabia, while Shi’a Muslims find that in Iran. 

 

Iran’s population is about 90 percent or more Shi’a. Iran is the fly in the ointment in Syria. Sunni vs. Shi’a is a historic divide. The two sides have struggled for centuries. I will address Iran more later, but it is mightily involved in Syria, and its Shi’a fighters, along with Iraqi Shi’a fighters, cause significant turbulence and violence in Syria.

 

In Iraq, IS forces captured the cities of Fallujah and Heet in central Iraq in January 2014. In June 2014, it took over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its international airport, as well as Baiji and Tikrit along the Tigris River Valley. IS forces even approached Baghdad.

 

In Syria, IS fighters struck against Syrian military forces and Syrian rebels across northern Syria, honing in on military bases from Aleppo in the northwest to Al-Tabqa and Raqqa, the Euphrates River Valley, and the Khabur River Valley in the northeast. They also attacked the Kobani Canton in northern Syria, on the border with Turkey, capturing some 350 Kurdish villages and Kobani city in 2014. Furthermore, it took control of the territory between Raqqa, the Deir Ezzour oilfields, and al Bukamal in the southern Euphrates River Valley.

 

Remember the area circled in red. It highlights the Euphrates River Valley and the Khabour River area, where much of Syria’s oil and gas resources are located. IS controlled these through its 2014 offensives.

 

One wonders how the IS could accomplish this. They launched their offensive in a Syrian state mired in civil war. IS was not a trivial outfit. It employed over 20,000 fighters, possibly as many as 32,000, many of whom fought in the Iraq War. It gained access to Syria’s oil fields and the cash they produced. It received cash through all sorts of criminal and illegal activities, such as extortion and smuggling, and taxed the people living in the areas it controlled.

 

Secretary of Defense Charles T. Hagel commented that IS was “beyond a terrorist group … it posed an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else.” President Obama mistakenly described the IS as a “junior varsity.” Hagel said it was “beyond anything we have seen.” He said, “It grew in Syria. What happened was we were aware of ISIS, we were aware of al-Nusra, we were aware of,  certainly Al Qaeda in Syria and other places … We had intelligence — it wasn’t that we were blind in that area. We had drones, we had satellites, we had intelligence in Syria monitoring these groups.” With all that, many experts misjudged the scope of the IS threat and the fact that the IS ideology was shared by so many.

 

This following remark by Secretary Hegel sort of “dots the i’s and crosses the t’s: 

 

“We had an out-of-control country that wasn’t even a country in Syria.”

 

Estimates were that IS controlled 35% of Syrian territory by the end of 2014, shown in red hashes on the map. Before IS emerged, al-Nusrah had been the dominant military challenge to Assad. The IS mounted a significant challenge to both al-Nusrah and the Assad regime. The main difference between al-Nusrah and IS is that al-Nusrah was beholden to al-Qaeda, and IS was not. Both were anti-Assad.

 

The world was puzzled by the IS conquests in Iraq and Syria. On the one hand, one might argue it was a local thing in Iraq and Syria. On the other hand, the IS looked to be an international threat. Hasan Abu Hanieh and Dr. Mohammad Abu Rumman wrote, 

 

“This new entity nonetheless continues to be surrounded by an ‘aura’ of ambiguity, casting a spell of confusion and puzzlement on popular, and perhaps elitist, analyses and explanations about it.”

 

To be sure, the Syrian government in Damascus was quickly losing its control over the country and its borders. Kheder Khaddour and Armenak Tokmajyan commented, "Parts of Syria potentially face internal implosion, impacting outside actors.”

 

The IS had taken advantage of the chaos of Syria’s civil war to conduct a land grab of much of the country, thirty-five percent by one account highlighted earlier. The forecasts were that IS influence was spreading like wildfire. Thus far, its territorial holdings were in Syria and Iraq. The question was whether it would make inroads in Jordan, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

 

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