War without end?

THE forces arrayed against ISIS in Iraq seem to have such a decisive advantage in number and armament that the outcome of their offensive to retake Mosul seems hardly to be in doubt. After that, the entire ISIS position in northern Iraq should crumble, and then it could not be long before operations aimed at destroying ISIS in Syria culminate in the capture of Raqqa. Possibly.

The problem is that all parties to the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are well able to look beyond ISIS and imagine how what they do in the near future will shape their own prospects vis-a-vis one another if ISIS ceased to exist, and so cooperating against it may well not be their priority. This could yet prolong the life of a brutal terrorist group, which would never have established its sway over a significant territory in the Middle East if pre-existing rivalries had not provided it with an opening.

The Iraqi and Syrian governments are both primarily concerned with asserting their authority over the whole of their national territories, but without undertaking reforms to create more open societies in which citizenship counts for more than national or religious affiliation. The conflict with ISIS is subordinate to this preoccupation. In Iraq, there are no other effective opposition forces in the predominantly Sunni Arab north, and so the government and Shi'ite militias concentrate against ISIS by necessity as well as choice.

In Syria, by contrast, there is a myriad of rebel forces, secular, Islamist and with no dominant ideology: the Free Syrian Army and Fateh al-Sham (the former Al-Qaeda affiliate known as Jabhat al-Nusra) are only the most well-known abroad. Many are hostile towards one another as well as the government. Since 2011, the government and these rebels have focused on fighting one another, despite the rise of ISIS. From the outside, it seems irrational that they should not find some way to unite against ISIS as a deadly common enemy, but that is not the case. For the rebels, losses suffered fighting against ISIS would simply weaken their capacity to take on the Syrian government. Likewise, the Syrian government sees no reason to put a concerted effort into fighting ISIS if that allows other opponents to gain ground at its expense; moreover, it calculates that, if it can defeat the other rebel forces and reduce the main conflict in Syria to one between ISIS and itself, most of the rest of the world would rather that it prevailed over ISIS than vice versa.

The Kurdish factor is important in both countries. The fighters of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq and of the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria have been the most effective forces fighting against ISIS - disciplined, well-organised and possessing strong morale. Their main interest is in controlling and protecting predominantly Kurdish areas, though their military effectiveness has enabled them to win control of mixed areas, including some with an Arab majority. In Iraq, the legitimacy of the regional government is recognised by the Baghdad government, but the borders of the autonomous area are in dispute. The expansion of Kurdish control closer to Mosul may exacerbate this situation. In Syria, Kurdish-controlled areas are under an administration that is not recognised by the central government or anyone else, and when the Assad regime talks of extending its authority throughout Syria, it plainly does not exclude Syrian Kurdistan. The YPG are unlikely to want to fight their way into the heart of ISIS-controlled territory only to face attack from Syrian government forces.

It would be tragic if, after they'd borne the brunt of the fight against ISIS, the Kurds were left facing another war with the central governments in Syria and Iraq, but that is a real danger, and their present military and political policies can be seen as precautionary measures against just such a threat.

FOREIGN INTERVENTION

Foreign intervention has not made things any less complicated. The most powerful neighbour of Syria and Iraq is Turkey. Foreign recruits used to cross Turkey to join ISIS with relative ease until ISIS carried out suicide bombings within Turkey. Recip Erdogan's government calls for the overthrow of the Assad regime and supports rebels fighting against it. Yet, its main concern is probably to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state anywhere in the area, for fear that it would encourage secessionism among Turkey's own substantial Kurdish minority. In 2015, it coupled a decision to step up its participation in efforts to counter ISIS with the resumption of military operations against Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK) guerrillas after the breakdown of the 2013 ceasefire. Turkey has managed to build a cooperative relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan on the basis of it remaining an autonomous region of Iraq and not supporting the PKK, but it accuses the YPG and Syrian Kurdish leadership of being allies of the PKK, which has been at war with Turkish governments for most of the years since 1984. The Turkish army's intervention in northern Syria in August and September in the Jarabalus and Dabiq campaign, ostensibly to support the Free Syrian Army against ISIS, was at least as much about preventing Kurdish control from being extended across the entire northern Syrian border with Turkey as it was about rolling back ISIS.

Iran maintains a friendship with the Syrian government that stretches all the way back to the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution, and also supports the Iraqi government, with its sectarian Shi'ite basis, which has led to the peculiar situation of it being a de facto US ally in Iraq and a US enemy in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states focus their intervention on financing and arming Syrian Sunni Islamist anti-government rebels against what they see as a Shi'ite regime, despite its official secular identity. None prioritise the defeat of ISIS. Israel would prefer any outcome to the Syrian conflict other than the survival of the Assad regime and some in its leadership see a permanent state of civil war or a victory for ISIS as advantageous: Education Minister Naftali Bennet argued at the Herzliya security conference in 2015 that the latter would provide a good opportunity to press other countries to recognise Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan Heights, as no one would blame it for wanting a buffer against ISIS.

Western governments have been unable to make up their minds firmly whether their priority is the defeat of ISIS, the overthrow of the Assad regime, or the containment of Russian influence, while Russia's goal is clearly to sustain a friendly government in Damascus and retain base facilities in the Syrian port of Lattakia. Since neither the US nor Russia have thus far been willing or able to commit sufficient resources to allow their chosen side to win the civil war outright, the net effect of their bombing campaigns and other military assistance has been to prolong the agony of Syria's civilians, with no end yet in sight.

This morass of divided interests and cross purposes, along with the resistance of the regimes in Baghdad and Damascus to reform, allowed ISIS to grow and has permitted it to eke out its existence thus far, despite its brutality, economic incompetence and distorted fundamentalist values. They may allow it to do so for some time yet.

The fundamental problems of Iraq and Syria are unlikely to be resolved until they do become states of all their citizens, with representative governments that do not follow "winner takes all" sectarian policies. This was the hope of the democratic elements of the Arab Spring in 2011. It seems further than ever from realisation, and yet all the more necessary and desirable.