This year has brought unprecedented upheaval to the Mena region, much of it linked, in one way or another, to the astonishing rise of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which announced its presence only last summer and which has effectively declared war on the world. The old order has been turned on its head as enemies become allies to battle this singularly vicious newcomer.
Throughout 2015, Daesh vividly demonstrated that it is no longer simply a regional threat. The year began and ended with massacres in Paris; groups or individuals aligned with Daesh have also claimed the beach massacre of mostly British tourists in Sousse, Tunisia; bombs in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Turkey; the downing of a Russian jet over Sinai, Egypt; and the recent shootings in California, US. In all, Daesh has killed nearly 1,000 people in attacks outside Syria and Iraq.
At the beginning of 2015, the West’s main regional focus was the removal of Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad. By the end of the year, however, the reluctant consensus seems to be that, with the defeat of Daesh now at the top of the agenda, the Syrian regime and its army will likely be part of the solution. This is not the only major sea-change the Daesh crisis has produced.
Sectarianism fuels Daesh ideology and lies at the heart of the Middle East’s ongoing conflicts. The initial alignment of foreign powers on either side of the Shiite-Sunni divide saw Washington solidly behind the Sunni bloc, while Russia and Iran backed the ‘other side’ — Al Assad’s regime in Syria and Al Houthi militants in Yemen.
Throughout 2015, however, Washington’s foreign-policy-makers responded to the rapidly changing situation on the ground by making some dramatic U-turns. Realising that no solution to the Syrian problem (which is becoming synonymous with the Daesh problem) is possible without the participation of Iran, the White House went from banging the drums of war to brokering a nuclear limitation agreement with Tehran, lifting sanctions and cautiously welcoming the Islamic republic back into the international community in October.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin seized the diplomatic initiative and began to shape a collaborative, international response to the Daesh threat in Syria, which included the continued tenure of Al Assad, if only temporarily during a period of ‘transition’. Moscow’s former rivals (including the US and UK) seemingly fell in line and Putin’s plan is the main driver of the ‘Vienna process’, which began in October and which saw Iran at the negotiating table for the first time, at Putin’s insistence. Moscow began its own air strikes in Syria at the end of September, many of them targeting rebels rather than Daesh. There are now fourteen nations bombing Syria and Iraq from the air, but most experts agree that it will take a ground war to defeat the extremists.
Efforts to train an elite combat group from the Iraqi army at the cost of $2 million (Dh7.34 million) per soldier were a complete failure; only five made it onto the battleground and they immediately surrendered. To date, the most effective fighters on the ground, acting in cooperation with the Pentagon, are Kurdish Marxists from the PKK and its Syrian affiliate the YPG — another dazzling U-turn since the former remains on America’s list of ‘terror entities’ and waged a 30-year insurgency against Turkey which cost 40,000 lives.
Coastal stronghold
Meanwhile, Daesh has responded to military challenges by relocating a significant portion of its leadership and brigades away from immediate danger. With Raqqa and Mosul under sustained attack, Daesh has been carving itself a new coastal stronghold in Libya. Paradoxically, by putting pressure on the group in Iraq and Syria, the West has brought the danger closer to its own shores on the other side of the Mediterranean. As in Iraq, where several Daesh leaders are former commanders of Saddam Hussain’s elite brigades, men who honed their battle techniques under Muammar Gaddafi, are keen to offer their services and know-how to the extremists in Libya.
Daesh continues to expand through allegiance and now counts at least 42 other extremist organisations under its umbrella. Just as it adopted a ‘lily pad’ strategy to create contiguous swathes of territory under its control in Iraq and Syria, it appears to be adopting a similar approach throughout the Muslim world, from Malaysia (where the Abu Sayyaf group has sworn allegiance) to Nigeria (where Boko Haram boasts it is part of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s ‘Caliphate’). In addition, the group currently includes at least 30,000 foreign fighters from more than 86 countries and blowback is a major concern. Most of the perpetrators of this year’s actual and thwarted terror attacks in the West had spent time in Syria.
I subtitled my book ‘The Digital Caliphate’ because of the group’s sophisticated and sustained manipulation of technology and social media to keep its gruesome activities in the public eye, to recruit, to inform and to incite. Just as non-state actors have proved the most effective in confronting Daesh on the ground, guerrilla groups such as Hackers Collective Anonymous are taking the extremists on in the farthest reaches of the ‘Dark Web’ and Western intelligence services are actively recruiting hackers for the digital battlefield.
Daesh is the richest terror group in history, largely as a result of the oil it has plundered. The coalition has attempted to stem some of its income flow by bombing oil facilities and transporters; Daesh has responded by seizing even greater oil prizes in Libya.
In mid-December, the US and Russia offered a UN Security Council resolution requiring member nations to “take more assertive steps to cut off the funding of [Daesh]”. Given that the countries where Daesh is most successful have no effective central government or domestic security services and are riddled with crime and corruption, this resolution seems optimistic to say the least.
As time goes on, it is increasingly clear that the Daesh agenda is well-conceived and planned. Its strategy is three-pronged: military, economic (the huge costs of war have collapsed many an empire) and psychological. The group’s extreme and graphic violence has succeeded in weakening its enemies through fear; now, some suggest, it is deliberately fomenting the unbridled Islamophobia that threatens the fabric of Western societies, created through generations of diversity.
So, what can be done? The first step towards defeating Daesh would be to fill the security vacuums that have allowed it to thrive and the international community is now actively seeking to broker governments of national unity in Syria and Libya. It is not without irony that Western meddling brought about the collapse of two of the region’s strongest (albeit autocratic and oppressive) regimes in Iraq and Libya.
It is possible that in-fighting might cause the group to implode or that it might get involved in an all-out war with its closest rival, Al Qaida — but I think this unlikely since Daesh now has so much to lose and may prove more pragmatic than we imagine.
The worst-case scenario, which is not entirely implausible, is that extremist heavyweights — Daesh, Al Qaida and even the Taliban — put their differences behind them and unite in their bid to restore the Caliphate.
One thing we can be sure of is that 2016 is likely to be as turbulent as 2015 because the Daesh problem will not be easily, or quickly, solved.
Abdel Bari Atwan is the editor-in-chief of digital newspaper Rai alYoum. He is the author of The Secret History of Al Qaeda; A Country of Words, his memoirs; and Al Qaeda: The Next Generation.
