By Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege, US Army, Retired
September 1, 2014
On “Ridding the World” of “The Islamic State” (IS, ISIS, ISIL Or Whatever It Is Called Tomorrow)
Calls to denounce The Islamic State (IS) group, a movement led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi that has become the scourge of Iraq and Syria, are coming from all quarters, including from the Pope in the Vatican[1], the Grand Mufti of Sunni Islam in Egypt[2], the US Media[3], the US Secretary of Defense[4], and the US President. So far the US has restricted its operations to defensive and humanitarian actions in Iraq. They would all like to rid the world of this “cancer,” as the President referred to it after the beheading of journalist James Foley. The question is by what conceptual strategy of ends ways and means? And, particularly, how can the moral forces at work in the global Sunni Muslim community be harnessed in support of this aim? [5] My purpose here is to outline the logic for a strategy to remove the IS regime from Syria and Iraq and to replace it with an interim regime that can evolve in several directions depending on a broader strategy beyond Iraq and Syria. This new logic avoids the conceptual faults of the long, costly and mostly indecisive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Any limited, and convenient, effort against IS may satisfy immediate political pressures, but could only make matters worse. It might be better to do nothing beyond the defensive and humanitarian efforts of the present. Consider what happened in Libya with a limited intervention there. Is America safer with Qadafi gone?
Ridding the world of this scourge will require more than the wishful thinking and half-measures that took America to War in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will require deep commitment not only by Americans (and therefore a congressional vote of confidence), but it will also require the commitment of a broad coalition to share the burdens and carry it out. Most of all, it will require clear and realistic thinking about warfare in the modern age.
I think it is important to consider strategies for accomplishing the task at the heart of the crisis first, then to consider strategies beyond that to support the core strategy, and finally to consider future strategies that can be enabled by the previous ones.
What To Do About IS: A Core Strategy
If anything will be done about IS, an American led coalition will do it, and Iraq and Syria must be seen as one theater of war[6]. It will take capable and reliable ground troops as well as air power.[7] And the strategy has to be more than “degrading” al-Baghdadi’s “terrorist Army” whether by a bombing campaign or by that and some friendly Arabs on the ground. Surveillance drones, spy planes, and spy satellites in space orbit may provide imagery and other data to support a broad bombing campaign against weapons, hardware, and fixed facilities but, after 12 years of unfettered overflying and aerial spying the 2003 Iraq invasion encountered many unpleasant surprises, such as the role, large size, and dispositions of the defensive forces Saddam Hussein trusted most, the paramilitary Saddam Fedayeen. And after the 77th day of bombing and over flight in the Kosovo Air War, the NATO side was surprised to see that most of the Serbian tank forces emerged unharmed from hiding and withdrew in orderly columns.[8] If this is the way we plan to approach the IS problem we have learned little about strategy from past wars,.
An exclusive focus on the opening battle against the military arm of IS resembles the faulty military strategies for Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The thinking of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks approached military strategy the wrong way, and also suffered from faulty thinking about military power. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, an opening “shock and awe” battle-winning strategy was not followed with a well-thought-through war-winning one. Good things do not necessarily follow the removal of a “bad” regime. As a result, interventions expected by their designers to be short became very long instead. In this case, there is no reason to believe that destroying IS weapons, hardware, and fixed facilities would bring about IS regime collapse. This strategy will be costly, indecisive, and may bring more recruits and support to IS. It will also kill and maim many people who are not supporters but victims of IS tyranny.
Expectations for the viability of such strategies are shaped by still-dominant theories about offensive military power that require revision. They are mostly attempts to breathe new life into outdated theories of offensive war with modern weaponry. Military minds are still in the grip of an age-old theory of offensive war. This theory holds that the destructive military instrument operates on the state of mind of leaders, followers, and supporters, causing them to give up fighting and accept the will of their enemy. It applies mostly to winning battles and firefights with people who are not fanatics. It is a very insufficient theory for winning wars. Such thinking today allots undeserved causal power to the “shock and awe” of modern air and naval weaponry over the decisions of hostile governments and other relevant human actors. It skews the cost-benefit calculus of choosing war by minimizing the costs of success and exaggerating the efficacy of its methods. Worse still, it ignores an important scientific finding by Canadian Psychologist J. T. McCurdy about the 1940 London “Blitz” that has not been proven wrong since its publication in 1943-the inevitable hardening of will beyond the immediate deadly and traumatizing range of bombs and missiles.[9] Regardless of what happens to the networks, heavy weapons, supply depots and infrastructures of the Islamic State’s “terrorist army,” when the towns and villages now occupied by IS are bombed and strafed based on this theory, IS leaders, cadres and the people who support them will decide to continue resistance. And enraged civilian victims will join them. Events will have gained them recruits and solidified their collective resolve more than reduced their numbers and cowed them.
Transforming An Intolerable Status Quo Into An Acceptable One
Though history may not repeat, it can educate. Changing an intolerable status quo, such as the existence of the Islamic State militant group appears to be, into an acceptable one is a very ambitious aim. Reversing an insurgency in full bloom is even more ambitious. And this situation demands a strategy that combines the logic of both.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, destroying the armed forces of an intolerable regime was simple enough, and in those cases that accomplishment led to the collapse of the established regimes there. Establishing a stable and tolerable peace in the aftermath of initial “shock and awe” battles was the far greater challenge, and one that wasn’t sufficiently addressed in either concept or detailed planning. In the IS case, the challenge of the “shock and awe” aftermath will be as difficult. That aftermath will require not only hard fighting and policing, but also hard organizing, resourcing, and developing if the end of the core Anti-IS strategy is stable, functioning, and extremist resistant indigenous communities under a political regime they consider legitimate. [10]
Defeating the Islamic State group requires a strategy designed around three major lines of effort. The first of these is the struggle over the legitimacy to govern, make laws, and enforce them between IS and the alternative indigenous regime that will follow. The second is defending the occupied populations in Syria and Iraq from the “armed propaganda” of the violent ISIS militants during the fighting for each community and afterwards. The third is the offensive effort to defeat the militant group and its agencies town-by-town and village-by-village. The power of this trinity derives from synergy among the three major lines of effort, but a weakness in one cannot be compensated in another.
Winning The Legitimacy To Govern
Winning the legitimacy to govern the territory occupied by IS requires separating the IS from the support of the people in that territory and transferring their support to an alternative they accept as legitimate. ISIS relies on the people where they live and operate for protection, intelligence, supplies, funds, and recruits. Their support is mostly coerced through conquest by military power.
In Afghanistan and Iraq we saw how quickly the relief of liberation from one oppressive regime can turn into dissatisfaction with the regime of a foreign liberator. Initially the object is to have the people of the occupied region see IS and its fighters as the violent outlaws they are. As IS is removed from power in any portion of their territory the object becomes winning the support of the people for whatever new regime is established in its place. And the strategy for achieving this aim requires much forethought, planning and preparation.
IS sees, and markets itself, as honorable and legitimate. They derive moral authority from being regarded the warriors of a legitimate Muslim Caliphate. The countering message is this. While the conduct of allied fighters is regulated by international law, that of IS fighters is not. When they bear arms and use them, they become common criminals, not even “war criminals.” When they are captured, they are arrested, tried by legitimate authorities, and punished for their crimes according to the laws of the country where they committed them. The allied side must not label them as “enemy combatants” as Al Qaeda fighters were mistakenly called in order to legitimate a special legal process for captives. Doing this created more problems for the American side in the previous wars than it solved — including the ineffective embarrassment of the Guantanamo prison and the military tribunal system that is largely seen as illegitimate in the Muslim world and much of the West as well. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan did not consider legitimate the prison system for enemy captives that foreigners set up in their countries. Legitimate international authorities, and the people who have been oppressed by IS, must together judge the prisons and courts legitimate.
An effective interim replacement regime must be organized town-by-town and village-by- village before the fighting begins. It must be operational immediately in the aftermath. There is no such thing as “ungoverned space” except when it is unpopulated. Some form of governance takes shape organically in a vacuum, and violent groups like ISIS will either impose their form of order, or influence the existing one to their advantage. There is no useful objective standard for governance, only a relative one. The governance of the replacement regime and its agencies must be better in the eyes of the people than the alternative. People will favor indigenous governors over foreign ones. This is why foreigners have such difficulty with winning the struggle for the legitimacy to govern. To the extent ISIS is seen as foreign, and the replacement regime as indigenous, the better the result. As IS is removed from one community or neighborhood the allied fighting force moves to the next fight and an interim political and security regime takes its place to organize, resource, and develop a functioning community under an acceptable and permanent indigenous governance.
The effectiveness of this line of effort of the core strategy not only enhances the effectiveness of the others but, by winning the support of a broader Sunni Muslim audience, it sets the stage for a wider application of this strategy against all Al Qaeda affiliates globally.
Defending The Population From “Armed Propaganda”
The second struggle of this trinity-defending the population from the “armed propaganda” of violent IS extremists-is crucial to being able to govern legitimately. Violent movements like IS extort intelligence, recruits, support, and compliance through fear, threat and cruel example – for example the numerous public beheadings that have been reported under IS rule. Without these enablers, violent movements wither.
Once elements of the IS “terrorist army” are driven out of the communities they occupy, they will attempt to leave covert cells behind, or re-infiltrate then later. The proverbial “three men, a knife, and an idea” in an otherwise uncontested community can control the people. A fearful and exposed population is lost to whoever attempts to govern next.
The antidote is around-the-clock security, which is costly and difficult to emplace from the outside and is best done from inside out and bottom up, with motivated and trusted self-defense forces. It will be the primary task of the interim political and security regime to provide immediate security, discover and arrest covert indigenous IS cells, and recruit and train a competent and trustworthy indigenous self-defense force. The model for such forces exists already in the Iraqi Sunni tribal communities under current IS rule – the “Sunni Awakening” of several years ago – if the new project avoids the mistakes of the old one.
When American and allied forces first invaded Iraq in 2003, they arrived with a ground force far too small to defend the population from the “armed propaganda” of violent groups of various kinds who took advantage of the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Baathists security forces throughout the country. Soon Al Qaeda infiltrators formed covert cells throughout the Sunni population, especially in Anbar province. (And Shia militias formed in Shia majority areas.) The American and allied forces were spread far too thin across Iraq’s vast territory and numerous populated communities to prevent these scattered Al Qaeda cells from becoming an established and potent force in the Sunni-majority areas of the country by 2005. This Al Qaeda extremist intrusion within the Sunni tribes of Anbar province became a potent political and military force there. This caused some concerned tribal leaders to approach local American commanders wanting to ally with them to protect their communities. Higher American authorities were skeptical because their political guidance was to ignore traditional tribal structures in the belief that a new regime for Iraq could not be built on old-fashioned social and political structures. And the Shia majority government of Iraq resisted the formation of a “Sunni Army.” The American forces, nonetheless, encouraged the movement over the objections of the Iraqi administration and paid the fighters until 2008. By then this force of close to 100,000 lightly armed tribal fighters contributed greatly to the security of the country.
This accidental after-thought ended badly for several reasons. First, it was an after thought, and not an idea integrated into the original strategy. The interim political and security regime should plan ahead to form this local force from whatever local resources are available, tailoring it to the needs of the security situation. Second, rather that forming a community based security force beholden only to the political leaders at that level, it became a large organization called the “Sons of Iraq” unified under the “National Council for the Salvation of Iraq.” I envision the indigenous regime that finally replaces IS to emerge from the bottom up, as communities are “liberated.” If so then this local security force is automatically subordinated to whatever indigenous governmental structures evolve from the bottom up. Third, because the “Sons of Iraq” became a political force at the national level, and threatened the legitimacy of the Iraqi government in the Sunni parts of the country, it never became an effective part of the over-all system of security for the country. In the end, many of its spurned fighters joined IS. This may cause people to reject this proposal, but there really isn’t an alternative because the task of defending the population from the “armed propaganda” of violent IS extremists is an around-the-clock mission, costly in manpower, difficult to perform from the outside of a community by strangers, and can only be done by motivated and trusted self-defense forces who know the people they are securing.
This line of effort among the trinity is also the most expensive in terms of trained and armed manpower. Some studies based on rare historical successes have judged the price to be no less than 20 security personnel per 1,000 citizens. (See James T. Quinlivin, “Force Requirements in Stability Operations,” Parameters, Winter 1996-96. Also see Huba Wass de Czege, “Policing The Frontiers of Freedom,” Army, July 2006.) I have not done the math for the communities that IS now occupies, but removing IS without immediately securing the aftermath is a wasted effort because the “cancer” will return.
Fighting and Defeating IS
Keeping people safe and getting them on the side of peace under a legitimate government is not enough. IS itself must be fought and defeated with a focused and discriminating force. This force must do three things well. It must destroy the IS “terrorist army” and its weapons in place. It must prevent the escape of its members to organize anew elsewhere. And it must also preserve the lives and property of the people IS has enslaved and impoverished. Retaining the moral high ground and legitimacy is crucial to success.
Accomplishing these three tasks will depend on knowing the enemy very well, having very good intelligence, and being more creative and strategically savvy than the enemy. It will depend on skilled surgery to excise the militant group and its agents town-by-town and village-by-village. And destroying the IS “terrorist Army” in place, and preventing the escape of its members, will require a two-armed offensive campaign strategy through out.
One arm unifies physical and psychological pressure to affect the choices of IS leaders, followers, and supporters; and the other arm takes away their best options one by one, and relentlessly. Just as any use of force to change an intolerable status quo, it is not sufficient to rely on military operations that merely generate losses among enemy leaders and followers. As in the London Blitz, the “remote misses” become more, not less, motivated to continue fighting, while the casualties are replaced with new recruits at the bottom and upward mobility at the top.
This places a greater burden on the enforcing offensive arm of counter IS campaign strategy-taking away the IS leaderships options other than capitulation, one by one. This option-eliminating and constricting arm includes systematic encirclement of separate communities to reduce them piecemeal, simultaneous attacks from multiple directions to divide IS fighting efforts, closing borders to escaping or reinforcing IS fighters and leaders, relentless pursuit into sanctuaries to eliminate safe havens, and constricting, and then stopping, all forms of support (that is, the means of a movement-money, arms, food, supplies, information and, most of all, recruits).
IS will use brutal tactics and, like Hamas in Gaza, will shield itself among innocent civilians. It will starve the population to remain well fed. IS will fight fanatically.
There are three currently serving US Army Generals I would nominate to design and lead this allied and all services campaign – General David Perkins, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, and Lieutenant General Sean McFarland. All three demonstrated their understanding of the IS area of operations and the ability to win in complex and dangerous situations early in their careers. As a Colonel in 2003, David Perkins led his brigade into the heart of a strongly defended Baghdad and precipitated the fall of the Baathist regime. As Colonels in 2005, H.R. McMaster and Sean McFarland both demonstrated their early mastery of complex urban fighting in the part of Iraq ISIS now controls.
These enforcement challenges can be overcome only when the other two elements of the trinity- defending the population from armed propaganda and winning the population to the side of peace under better governance-function well.
Other Strategic Considerations To Enable the Core Strategy
While lawmakers are talking about whether the President needs Congressional approval before he begins attacking ISIS targets in Syria, and whether fighting against ISIS in Syria necessarily puts us on the “same side” with the Assad regime, there are other strategic considerations and options to review. For instance, any strategy must address how to ally with or confront the other parties to the war in Syria, and what roles the Iraqi Sunni Tribal Militias, the Kurdish Pesh Merga, the Kurdish PKK fighters from Turkey, and the Shia led Iraqi Armed Forces will play in the war on the Islamic State group. And, can a unified Syria, tolerant of all sects but without Assad, emerge from this intervention against ISIS with the help of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran?
If this shapes the immediate theater of war, strategy must also recognize a broader theater. This includes Libya where NATO Air and Naval forces helped remove an intolerable regime and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE are now quietly helping a renegade general’s campaign to restore stability. It also includes Iran who influences the Iraqi government and has ties of support to Assad’s regime and its ally, Lebanese Hezbollah. It also includes Lebanon, Israel, Hamas in Gaza and The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Then there is the even broader theater of play. This would naturally include all the outside powers allied with this effort and against it. And then, it would be foolish not to consider the “global public square” in which the moral forces of Sunni Islam clerics and public opinion influence the decisions of leaders, and individuals, to act in ways that also will determine outcomes.
And finally, it would be very foolish not to frame this struggle with IS within the even broader framework of all Al Qaeda-like groups globally. Can this core strategy against IS be applied against Al Qaeda globally? I anticipate the global pacification struggle with the Al Qaeda-inspired movement will continue into the foreseeable future, and both they and we will keep learning and adapting. American leaders need to admit that our current “counter terrorism” strategy against Al Qaeda of defending the homeland, while waging a one-armed offensive abroad with a mix of drone strikes and Special Operations Forces raids, is a formula for perpetual warfare. We have yet to see the effects of the option-eliminating, constricting, peace-enforcing arm of an offensive strategy anywhere. While the Al Qaeda movement’s “armed propaganda” offensive is mostly failing in the West,[11] it is spreading to more and more places. It gains legitimacy in some areas, while losing in others in which it operates and exposes its harsh methods. What America must learn to do is to shape the global strategy and lead a global effort based on the logic of the “trinity” here outlined. This will mean leading while remaining mostly in the background as the main struggle is fought “by, with, and through” Sunni Moslem allies. And if the trinity of lines of effort defeats IS, then, with global Sunni support, the same logic can be put to work against Al Qaeda-like extremists globally.
Conclusion
This mission will take “boots on the ground” and many of them. It will be difficult to lead and not commit American “boots.” As a former infantry combat commander, I am mindful of the duty leaders have to their soldiers: to think clearly, prepare rigorously, and then to decide boldly. Performing that duty well means having to write far fewer difficult letters to spouses and parents.
Given what it will take to “rid the world of IS” in Syria and Iraq, the decision to take on the task requires careful consideration rather than a knee-jerk reaction to public pressure to “do something.” It is more important to avoid hasty actions beyond the defensive and humanitarian ones that have been taken so far. IS will, without doubt, continue its outrages. But the benefits of taking the time to act deliberately will far exceed the costs — to design a sound core strategy within a longer range strategy, to build a larger consensus to act firmly and together with Sunni allies, to form a full team, and to generate the skilled muscle.
If we get this right, it will be easier to get out of the self perpetuating cycle of violence with Al Qaeda globally. If we gain the support of the Sunni populations in our efforts against IS, we can leverage that reputation and the moral forces at work in the global Sunni Muslim community into a new global strategy in our bigger war against Al Qaeda.
[1] Pope Francis recently called on all Muslim religious leaders to take a “clear and courageous stance” to oppose it and to condemn its “unspeakable criminal acts.”
[2] The Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam called it “an extremist and bloody group” which “poses a danger to Islam and Muslims, tarnishing its image as well as shedding blood and spreading corruption.” He also added that they “give an opportunity for those who seek to harm us, to destroy us and interfere in our affairs with the (pretext of a) call to fight terrorism.” (This, clearly, is not an open invitation for American military intervention.)
[3] For example, according to Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post “Foley’s beheading was a savage act, but the real threat is not to Americans abroad – it’s that the Islamic State , seeking to prove its bona fides , will orchestrate attacks on the homeland. Obama won the election by promising to extricate the US from wars. If instead he leaves office with the country in more danger than it was eight years earlier, the rest of the legacy will be for naught. (Washington Post OP Ed “A Legacy In Question, ruthmarcuswashpost. com 8/26/14)
[4] Defense Secretary Hagel called the group “an imminent threat to every interest we have.”
[5] See the July 1st, 2014 issue of Pew Research Global Attitudes Project which details the steady drop in popularity over the last decade of Isamic Extremism among Moslem populations in the Middle East and elsewhere, especially in areas that have experienced the harsh measures of such groups.
[6] According to AP reporting on 8/26/14, General Martin Dempsey, the chief military advisor to the President as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated the key regional allies Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia must join. He also said that IS cannot be defeated “without addressing the part of the organization residing in Syria.”
[7] It has been variously reported that President Obama has promised not to put American boots on the ground.
[8] On 8/27/14 Associated Press reports say that US officials agree that military surveillance over Syria – using — provide sufficient against the Islamic State militant group. They also say that some other officials worry whether airpower would significantly degrade what some call a “terrorist army.”
[9] J. T. McCurdy, “The Structure of Morale,” cited in Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, New York: Little, Brown & Co., October 2013, pp. 128-135.
[10] As of this writing, no core strategic end of US policy has been stated. But this end is more practical than the one neo-conservatives of the Busch administration wanted to impose and couldn’t.
[11] Al Qaeda leaders can’t help but have noted that their attacks in the West have enraged more than cowed those populations, and the reactions to their attacks have been massive in comparison. In time they will not only be massive, but also more effective.
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