Defeating Isis in Syria is essential to prevent catastrophe

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/isis-syria-catastrophe-islamic-state-assad

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Islamic State (Isis) is the catastrophic consequence of political illegitimacy in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, created a governance vacuum. With the unflagging support of Iran, he disenfranchised and alienated Sunni Arabs through narrow, partisan and utterly sectarian policies. In Syria the vacuum’s creator is Bashar al-Assad – with the enthusiastic backing of Iran, he pursues a political survival strategy of collective punishment, featuring mass homicide focused on civilians. Legitimate governance in both places may be a long way off. But keeping Isis from sinking roots in Syria is an urgent priority, which, if unmet, will enable this criminal band to sustain its combat operations in Iraq from a secure rear area where it will also menace Turkey and Jordan.

Related: Taliban condemns ‘brutal’ Isis video of Afghan prisoners being murdered

Political legitimacy – a condition in which the citizenry agrees on the rules of the political game – is a tall order for the two countries in question. Can Iraq survive as a state, even as a confederation? Is there a future for Syria within borders drawn during the colonial era? Surely a stable, peaceful and confederated Iraq is not right around the corner. And for Syria, reconstruction, reform, and reconciliation may be generational undertakings.

No doubt the process of overcoming the conditions that made large swaths of Iraq and Syria safe for Isis will be a long one. The hardships associated with this process will be borne in large measure by Syrians and Iraqis. Yet to admit that the struggle for political legitimacy will be extended is not to say that the battle against Isis must be a multi-year engagement. Indeed, in Syria it must not be, as this deadly combination of al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein loyalists seeks to establish itself in a country where it has no natural constituency.

In Iraq Isis has the advantage of local allies: Sunni Arabs disenfranchised by Maliki and his Iranian backers. In Syria Isis lacks a popular base, and its principal enabler has been the Assad regime. Unless Isis sees something it wants that Assad has – an oil field, a weapons-rich military base, or a town filled with priceless antiquities – it and the regime pursue a live-and-let-live arrangement. Each tries instead to eliminate alternatives to itself and the other. Each, for its own reasons, wishes to be one of the two last political entities standing in Syria. For Assad, facing Isis alone could be his ticket back to polite society: an enemy so loathsome as to be able to appear worse than him. For “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, facing Assad alone – especially if the regime and the west make common cause – would be a recruiting bonanza.

Assad is the cause of Syria’s legitimacy crisis. Isis, aside from the humanitarian catastrophe spawned by Assad, is the principal effect. Assad’s barrel bombs and starvation sieges are gifts of incalculable value to Isis. And Isis’s subjugation of eastern Syria is essential to sustain the group’s military operations in Iraq.

As the anti-Isis coalition struggles to strangle the organisation in Syria, the Assad regime pumps oxygen into its lungs

Washington, London and Paris have found sorting this out to be difficult. They know that it is the Assad regime’s malfeasance that has made eastern Syria safe for Isis. And yet the regime has been given a bye. It was Iran’s dual role as the Isis-abetting facilitator of Assad-regime atrocities and as an interlocutor in nuclear talks – a role Tehran handled with ease – that caused the west to freeze. Should it demand that Iran gets its Syrian client out of the business of mass homicide? Throw sand in the gears of the Assad regime’s barrel-bombing campaign? What? Risk tempting Iran’s supreme leader to walk away from the nuclear talks (and hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief and investment)? The Assad regime was left free to do its worst.

The result has been a recruiting lifeline to Isis, one offset only in part by an anti-Isis air campaign and a Kurdish militia ground-combat component. As the anti-Isis coalition struggles to strangle the organisation in Syria, the Assad regime pumps oxygen into the caliph’s lungs.

An agreed strategy for Syria in which western and regional oarsmen all pull in the same direction is long overdue. Key near-term aims could be to introduce regional ground forces into eastern Syria to rout Isis and stand up a new Syrian government, while stopping Assad regime barrel bombs and strikes on residential areas in western Syria. If the desired end in Syria is a negotiated political solution, Isis must be beaten militarily and the regime atrocities stopped. Otherwise there is no basis for talks.

Legitimate governance for all of Syria – and for that matter all of Iraq – is a long way off. Defeating Isis in Syria – where its lack of a popular base makes it most vulnerable – is the essential first step. Time is of the essence. The Assad-abetted Isis malignancy makes time the enemy.