THE NEW CALIPHATE AND THE CRISIS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140909/jsp/opinion/story_18777536.jsp#.VA5XvvmSxqo

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

An anachronistic new political entity has risen over the horizon in West Asia or the Middle East. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, (the region comprising parts of modern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon) or ISIL, also known as ISIS, the acronym derived from its Arabic name, Ad-Dawla Al-Islamiyya fil Iraq wa as-Sham, announced its arrival in June this year. The self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate, in parts of eastern Syria and the western part of Iraq, soon changed its name to simply the Islamic State. The jihadist leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has declared himself to be the new Caliph and assumed the title of the Commander of the Faithful Caliph Ibrahim (Amir al-Muamineen al-Khalifah Ibrahim).

In its message to the world, the new Caliphate has claimed religious authority over all Muslims worldwide. The Caliphate aspires to unite all Muslims and bring Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its direct political control. To start with, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and parts of southern Turkey will be brought into the Caliphate. For ideological jihadists, the Caliphate is the ultimate goal and IS has come closest to reviving that vision. The problem is that over one-fifth of Muslims in the world, the Shias, are ideologically opposed to the Caliphate, which is seen as a Sunni enterprise. There exists a certain amount of nostalgia for the Caliphate. Muslims regard the first four Caliphs, Al Rashidun or the Rightly Guided, all companions or relatives of Prophet Muhammad, with considerable pride since it was during their reign that Islam achieved its apogee in terms of territorial expansion and conversion of the conquered people to build the Islamic Ummah. The great schism in Islam, the Sunni-Shia cleavage, occurred over the issue of succession after the fourth Caliph.

The Caliphate in the Islamic world has a long history. A Caliph is a person who, theoretically, is the political and spiritual leader of all Muslims. The last Caliphate was claimed by the Ottoman rulers of Turkey since the 15th century CE. They gradually came to be viewed as the de facto leaders of the Islamic world. By the eve of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was the largest and most powerful independent Islamic political entity. The Ottoman sultan also enjoyed some authority beyond the borders of his shrinking empire as Caliph of Muslims in Egypt, India and Central Asia. Mughal emperors also claimed the title, along with various other states, such as the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa. Thus, assumption of the title of Caliph became a ritual, indulged in by Muslim rulers, more to inflate their egos by sycophantic courtiers and such claims were never taken seriously. By adopting the title of Caliph, always contested by rivals, no ruler in Islamic history has been able to command sole spiritual and political power over all Muslims and it does not guarantee the survival of any Muslim ruler. Indeed, the announcement of the Caliphate has been met with derision everywhere except in jihadicircles. No Caliphate in Islamic history has succeeded in uniting all Muslims or created a political entity for the Islamic Ummah as a whole.

In 1924, the first president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, abolished the institution of the Caliphate as part of Turkey’s republican constitutional reforms. Its powers within Turkey were transferred to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Sharif Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca, a British stooge and so-called leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, assumed the role of the Caliph, but he was driven out of Arabia by Abdul Aziz bin Saud and his kingdom vanished with the establishment of Saudi Arabia in 1925. His progeny ruled pre-revolution Iraq and today rules Jordan, another artificial State created by the British imperialists, alongside the Mandate of Palestine, in the post-World-War-I era. A summit was convened at Cairo in 1926 to discuss the revival of the Caliphate, but most Muslim countries did not participate and no action was taken to implement the summit’s resolutions. The Caliphate disappeared into the dustbin of history.

In the 1920s, the Khilafat Movement to defend the Ottoman Caliphate spread throughout the British colonial territories and was particularly strong in British India. It became a rallying point for some Indian Muslims as one of many anti-British Indian political movements. Its leaders included Maulana Mohammad Ali, his brother Shawkat Ali, Abul Kalam Azad, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, and Barrister Muhammad Jan Abbasi. The Khilafat movement was supported by M.K. Gandhi, who was a member of the Central Khilafat Committee in his attempt to show solidarity with the Muslims, though many felt it was a retrograde movement. Gandhi wanted to channelize its energy into an anti-British direction. The movement fizzled out after the arrest or flight of its leaders, leaving remnants splintered off the main organization. Both the King of Morocco and Mullah Mohammed Omar, former head of the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, adopted the title,Ameer al-Muamineen, though neither claimed any legal standing or authority over Muslims outside the borders of their respective countries.

The ideological appeal of the Caliphate has helped the IS in recruiting young radicals from all over the globe and elicited some conservative popular support from Muslim countries, including Pakistan. Scores of Muslim youth from the United States, United Kingdom, Egypt, Jordan, Gaza, Indonesia, and perhaps a few from India have been reported to have travelled to Iraq and Syria to take up the IS cause, as well as fight against the Syrian and Iraqi governments. ISIS has gained notoriety for its harsh interpretation of Wahhabi Islam. Inspired by its intensely sectarian beliefs, it has unleashed unspeakable violence, directed mainly at Shia Muslims, Christians and other minorities. It has driven out the ancient Christian community in Mosul by giving them the choice of conversion to Islam or payment of jiziya, the Islamic tax on non-Muslims. It has ordered all women to be fully veiled in public. Its fighters in Iraq have launched several attacks on government and military targets and killed thousands of civilians. The IS has gone about consolidating its hold over the territories it has overrun and is expanding its control over other cities in Iraq, like Sinjar, close to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region whose militia, the Peshmerga, have confronted the IS fighters, after the Iraqi army retreated from the area. The IS militants destroyed a Shiite shrine in Sinjar as soon as they arrived in the city, repeating their destruction of Shia mosques in the territories under their control. There are reports that ISIS had begun executing Yazidis who had remained behind in the town. With its roots in Zoroastrianism, followers of the Yazidi faith have suffered persecution for centuries. Till February 2014, ISIS had close links with al Qaida, but after an eight-month power struggle, al Qaida cut all ties with the group. Apparently, even the al Qaida could not stomach the rigidity and brutality of the ISIS.

ISIS was incubated as an organization by its participation in the Syrian Civil War. The original aim was to establish a Caliphate in the Sunni-majority regions of Iraq. Following its involvement in the Syrian Civil War, this expanded to include control of Sunni-majority areas of Syria and now to other neighbouring countries. The rise of ISIS has led to fears of another Talibanized Afghanistan in the heart of West Asia with its attendant destabilizing consequences. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, successfully exploited economic and political discrimination against Iraqi Sunnis since the fall of Saddam Hussein to gain support. Internal rebellion in Syria fed the appetite for regime change by Western powers, mainly the US and the European Union, drawing inspiration from the earlier Nato intervention in Libya, which led to the ouster and ignominious death of the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, caught graphically by mobile phone cameras and broadcast worldwidevia the internet. Western intervention was aimed, at the initial stage, for regime change in Syria and led the US, its European allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to support and organize the anti-government forces in Syria, with Turkey providing the logistical base for the CIA and allied agencies to arm and train Syrian rebels. Turkey’s regional ambition has grown under its Islamist government and Saudi Arabia, with its regressive society and undemocratic government, interested more in perpetuating the Saud family rule propagating a medieval version of Islam and Sunni supremacy, converged in an anti-Iran alliance with the US to topple the non-Sunni government in Syria, led by President Bashar al-Assad. This misguided policy has dragged the region into a quagmire of instability, driven the two largely secular states, Iraq and Syria, to the brink of disintegration and helped encourage Islamic extremism and sectarian violence. The recent Israeli onslaught against the Hamas government in the Gaza strip has again exposed the deep divisions among Arab countries. Important Arab countries have kept virtually quiet because their interests, ironically, are aligned with that of Israel against Hamas, regarded as a terrorist organization by many countries and shunned by the major Arab states. Iran is the only supporter of Hamas as well as the Hizbollah in Lebanon because both oppose Israel and are willing to take on Israel militarily. This was also a factor for regime change in Syria, an Iranian ally.

The arrival of a new Caliphate in Iraq and Syria will not fundamentally alter the underlying military or political fault-lines of the conflict that is raging in West Asia. Its spiritual impact will be negligible. While the new Caliphate may win a few battles, it is unlikely to win the war and establish itself as a new state. The new Caliphate may inspire some marginal groups outside the region, including South Asia. The Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan may feel emboldened, taking advantage of the impending US withdrawal from Afghanistan and may attempt to intensify their efforts to undo the Durand Line. Violence against Shias along Iran’s eastern border with Afghanistan has increased and anti-Shia violence is likely to increase inside Pakistan. ISIS PR videos have claimed that it is gathering support inside Pakistan. Al Qaida’s leadership, based in Pakistan, may turn more hardline to contest its ISIS rival. This does not bode well for the security situation in Pakistan and its spillover effect into India. India has already scrambled to rescue its citizens from Syria, Iraq and Libya with many more still to be rescued. India will do well to limit itself to protecting its citizens as there are no simple options in the charged and complex situation in Iraq.

The tragic events in Iraq can be traced directly to President Bush’s misguided Iraq war. The violent conflict between the Shiites and the Sunnis in the region is a result of that senseless decision engineered by the neo-cons in the Bush administration. The leftover neo-cons in the Obama administration are the ones responsible for intervention in Ukraine and provoking Russia to respond in Crimea and Ukraine. The fallout of the Iraq war and President Obama’s failure to reach a security arrangement with Iraq, before the complete withdrawal of American forces and the inability of the outgoing Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to build an inclusive government of reconciliation created the circumstances that enabled the convergence of al Qaida and Islamic jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria, causing tragedy in the region. Shiite-dominated Iran and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, having donned the mantle of leadership of their respective sects, are waging a proxy war in both Syria and Iraq, determined to preserve their hegemony. A coordinated international military response to the ISIS will require great power cooperation, a government of national unity in Iraq that must include the Sunnis and the Kurds and some understanding between Iran and Saudi Arabia, considering that both regard with deep concern the rise of ISIS. The latter has announced that the Saudi monarchy is its next target. For Saudi Arabia, the chickens have come home to roost. This has made it jittery enough to deploy troops along the desert border with Iraq. It has also asked Pakistan and Egypt to deploy their troops to bolster Saudi defences. The cockiness of the Saudis now lie exposed since the Saudi army will be no match for the combat-hardened ISIS fighters whose numbers have now reached around 60,000.

As for Iran, facing Sunni extremists both on its eastern as well as western flanks, the prospects are daunting. This will put more pressure on the government of President Hassan Rouhani. Additionally, Iran has the continuing responsibility of sustaining the Assad regime in Syria and saving Iraq’s Shiite holy sites from an ISIS onslaught. If ISIS succeeds in consolidating its hold over Iraq, Iran will have an extremist Sunni State governed by strict Sharia law next door. If these shared concerns do not bring the two rival countries to a tactical convergence of interest, then nothing else will. The danger posed by groups like ISIS may hasten a rapprochement between the US and Iran, as they share a common enemy.

It is too early to write the obituaries of Iraq and Syria, but the sovereignty of both countries is under challenge. A wary US and its Western allies are responding slowly to appeals by the Iraqi government because the culpability of al-Maliki’s brutal sectarian government is not in doubt. The military success of ISIS owes much to the anger that has exploded in the Sunni provinces of Iraq following al-Maliki’s ruthless suppression, targeting Sunni leaders for assassination and arrests, and the general exclusion of Sunnis from ruling circles. Russia and Iran have responded to appeals for military assistance by the al-Maliki government. While the US has sent a few hundred special forces and advisers to help the Iraqi government, an all-out ground intervention by the US is doubtful. American military intervention, if it happens, will be by air, drone strikes and selective use of US special forces. This may not help in liberating territories controlled by ISIS in Iraq, but will keep them at bay. This would mean a de facto trifurcation of Iraq into Sunni-, Shia- and Kurdish-controlled areas. That will leave ISIS in place and provide a fillip to jihadis worldwide and a springboard for expanding strikes in the region and beyond. Meanwhile, Sunnis and Shias can continue to slaughter each other and keep Muslims busy in internecine warfare. Who knows, this may well be the cynical gameplan of the Western powers.

The author is a former secretary in the ministry of external affairs and has served as a diplomat in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israe