According to RIA sources, the US has increased its spending on the counter-IS operations by 700 000 US Dollars a day, bringing the daily bill to 8.3 ml USD. The coalition has been launching airstrikes on the IS targets in Syria and Iraq, yet, stopping short of getting involved on the ground. Yet, according to Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency, despite U.S.-led air strikes Islamic State militants in Iraq will be able to mount operations "for the foreseeable future"
Now Obama administration has come under fire for what critics tend to describe as "half-hearted," "Goldilocks" approach in countering the IS in Syria. The editorial in the Washington Post said "The United States will have to broaden its aims and increase its military commitment if the terrorists are to be defeated”. Earlier the US officials described the IS as an unparalleled – and unexpected – global threat which they had failed to foresee….
Says Heiko Wimmen, researcher with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs:
The IS has obviously not emerged from a void. Those radical Islamist and Wahhabi currents have been around for two-three decades. At times they have been fostered by the allies of the US, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. And they have been active in Syria for quite a while. I mean, even with the names like Jabhad al-Nusra and others – they emerge, they evolve, they separate, they acquire new names, they are defeated at some point and then pop up in another. The idea that you could defeat those organizations once and for all, I think, has been proven wrong over and over again.
The current panic about the IS basically stems from the fact that they have made these quite dramatic advances over the summer of this year, which is largely the result of the weakness of everybody else around. It is the result of their appallingly effective media propaganda work. If you look at their materials, they are extremely well edited and prepared. And all of this has attracted a lot of attention to something that has been around for years and years.
And I don’t really think that the intelligence community has not seen that, but it might well be that they underestimated its potential, like they have done on many occasions before. I mean, it is a common fallacy. You look at the situation, you look for what you know and you think you know what it is. And then, you don’t really look at it again for a while, and all of a sudden it has morphed into something not completely different, but something that is more dangerous and more deadly than you’ve expected. And then, you have these media reactions to it.
People in Syria are complaining that the airstrikes are not actually destroying the IS targets, but they are destroying the infrastructure.
Heiko Wimmen: Well, I think this is the problem that you have all the time, when you are trying to wage a war from the air alone against an enemy who doesn’t have a complex and elaborate military infrastructure that you can destroy. You don’t have targets and what you have as the targets, are the structures or the institutions that serve the local population, as well as the unit that you are trying to defeat.
If you attack a grain storage, that serves the IS and the local population. If you attack refineries and other installations, electricity – all of that serve the local population and it serves the IS as well. But I think the IS can sustain itself without those infrastructures much better, than the local population can. And there are no military headquarters, there are no command and control centers, where you could actually achieve the major damage that could degrade the organization.
So, you always have that problem.
President Obama has been criticized for – like they’ve put it – a “goldilocks” approach, meaning that, presumably, he is not too decisive in countering the ISIS.
Heiko Wimmen: The question in the current situation is whether you can expect a quick and decisive victory against an organization like the IS with the means at hand. If you don’t have anybody who is ready to actually invade Iraq and Syria – the areas in question – with the foreign troops and occupy these areas, and fight the organization on the ground, then I can’t really see how you could really eradicate the IS and roll it back to a point where this is no danger in the short run.
It appears that none of the regional and international actors, who supposedly are lining up to fight this organization, want to do that – want to put boots on the ground. And in the region itself, the military forces that are available, are certainly not sufficient to achieve that aim. So, the question is: what is Obama supposed to do, if he cannot send 200 000 or even 20 000 American troops to Syria, to Iraq to actually do that job. Neither Congress, nor anybody else in America is going to support such a move. So, I think the options are very limited.
Manuel Ochsenreiter, investigative journalist and Editor in Chief of German monthly newsmagazine ZUERST!:
This so-called international operation against the terrorist group, the IS, doesn’t aim in reality at the IS. It aims right now, and we know this very well, at the infrastructure in Syria. It aims at the gas pipelines and all kinds of civil infrastructures, of course, because that operation in reality is not directed against the terrorism, it is directed against Syria.
And when we take a closer look at that so-called coalition, we see that all the countries which are participating in this coalition, are those countries which made terrorism in Syria, as well as first in Iraq, very strong. We have countries like, for example, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Gulf Emirates which were funding and financing, supporting, training terrorists that are now active for the IS. We have the US which is leading that operation, which was funding and financing, training terrorists in the past when they were called the moderate rebels in Syria.
So, these are the same people they claim they fight now. And we can say that the fire-starters are now acting like the firefighters, but they don’t really do something, because we see that the IS doesn’t seem to be very much bothered by those international actions right now.
After the Ottawa shootings Canadian PM was very quick to point at the IS connection or a bit broader – at Islamic terrorists – without even waiting for investigation results…
Manuel Ochsenreiter: Ottawa is a very good example, because there is a history of such examples. Sometimes it seems like those things happen like ordered. We have to see that in Canada the Government was already planning the measures like the US’s Homeland Security law for the observation and a very intense security network in Canada itself. On the other side, we have to see that the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was always pushing for Canada participating in those Western military operations.
So, of course, this has certain logic and this logic needs such incidents, as the Ottawa shootings. We had this, by the way, also in Spain in the past when the Spanish Government was about to think how to get out of…I think it was Afghanistan or Iraq, I'm not sure right now, but one of those operations, when their terrorist acts happened and it turned the opinion of the Government there not to leave but to stay.
So, these things, they fit together, of course. We have the examples in Germany. For example, in the past we had a group which was called the Saarland group – an Islamist group which reportedly planned to build super-explosive bombs to do terrorist acts. Later, it was a big PR scene when they were arrested in a holiday house somewhere in Saarland in the West Germany. Later on, during the trial it came out that all these guys had connections to certain Western intelligence agencies. And these are not conspiracy theories, by the way. This is all proved and there is all the evidence, because this came out during the trial.
So, we use that strategy of tension not only in foreign countries like Syria, like Iraq, like Afghanistan or in any other foreign country, but also use the strategy of tension inside the West to show this so-called terrorist threat to the people, to justify the international operations as internal security measures, which would never be accepted if the people wouldn’t be afraid enough. Fright or angst (angst is a German word which is very international in the meanwhile), angst is the currency of those politics.
And what is the ultimate goal? I mean, why would our governments be so interested in stirring up uneasiness, tension and fear in our societies?
Manuel Ochsenreiter: It has two major goals. One goal, of course, is that you can control the society in a better way, you can push down the real opposition, you can always blame someone who is criticizing, for example, the Western military interventions; you can always criticize him and blame him for being on the side of terrorists.
This is what happens nonstop in the West. This is what happens even to people who have nothing to do with Islam, with terrorism and have no sympathy for the Arabic states, but who simply criticize those measures and those military operations, that they are blamed to be friends or supporters of terrorism. So, you can make a society more obedient by those measures.
But on the other side, of course, we shouldn’t underestimate the big benefit certain industries, certain economic circles have by those measures, because when we see what happens in foreign countries and when we just take a look at the so-called countries of the Arabic Spring which started with Libya… Libya used to be a functioning nation state which is now completely disintegrated. It is governed by warlords, by different terrorist groups who are fighting each other. And there is no hope that Libya will ever develop into a stable nation state again within the next ten or twenty years.
But this makes it very cheap to make business, to get raw materials like oil or other raw materials. It makes it easier to control those landscapes, those regions where you want to export or you want to exploit – this is a much better word – the raw materials.
When we see what is going on in Iraq and Syria, we see that the terrorist groups like the IS, but also other terrorist groups… we are just speaking of the IS, but there are many other terrorist groups which did a lot of efforts within the last years to control the oil sources, the oil plants, but also the gas fields. And, of course, they sell their stuff, they sell it especially to Turkey. Turkey is playing a very important role as a sort of illegal market for the stolen goods from the countries like Syria and Iraq. And from Turkey it gets other documents, it is legalized and so it can be exported.
So, we see that certain circles have a lot of benefit. The point is that this doesn’t happen in the interest of the West. We cannot say that the population in the West has any benefit by this. These are the smaller economic and business circles which get all the benefit. Most probably, also the circles which are in the weaponry business, because you can export, at the same time, your arms, your guns, your rifles, your bombs.
So, they are doing the benefit. The people, who suffer, on the one side, are the people in those regions where the military disintegration takes place. We have a lot of civilian victims in Syria, as well as in Iraq, but also, for example, in Libya. And on the other side, the victims are also the populations of the West, because they have to stand the pressure, they have to send the soldiers to those regions. These are not the business circles who are fighting, they use or abuse the armies, or militias, or terrorist groups to do the fight on the ground for them. And they have the benefit, but the people on the both sides of the conflict have to carry the cost.
