Redrawing the map is the best way to fight Islamic State

Ii January 4, 2016
Tom Switzer
Could the creation of independent states for Kurds and Sunnis be the answer to the turmoil in Syria and Iraq?

Iraqi troops face booby trap peril in Ramadi
Iraqi forces attempt to find and destroy Islamic State explosive traps and pockets of resistance, after recapturing the city of Ramadi from the insurgents.
Statecraft is simple, as long as the appearance of success matters more than results. Such a world view appeared to be the price of victory at the United Nations in December. No, I'm not harping on about the Paris global gabfest that reached a (non-binding, non-enforceable and non-verifiable) pact to reduce emissions. I'm referring to the unanimous Security Council resolution to end Syria's five-year civil war, which has claimed 250,000 lives.
The contradictions in the UN peace plan are overwhelming. Both Russia and the US are looking for a way to cease the escalation of the conflict between the Alawite/Shiite-aligned regime and the Sunni rebels, without giving up their radically different positions.

Iraq and Syria are artificial states and ethnically divided societies created out of the ruins of the OttoMan Empire.
Washington – backed by its Sunni allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia – would like to see the end of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who has slaughtered his own (Sunni) people and starved recalcitrant (Sunni) cities and regions into submission. Moscow – supported by Iran and its Shiite proxies in Iraq and Lebanon – insists the Assad regime is necessary to defeat Islamic State, the Sunni terrorist group now occupying large stretches of Syria and Iraq.
Complicating matters further, the opposition with which the UN wants Damascus to reach a negotiated political settlement is far from united. Islamic State is one of an almost uncountable melange of anti-Assad rebel groups with competing ambitions and interests. Welcome to the mess-in-potamia!


Since 2011, the Obama administration has wobbled between pity for the (mainly Sunni) victims of a brutal civil war and fear of plunging the US into a conflict it neither understands nor can resolve. Under relentless pressure to "do something" in 2013, the US President wanted to launch air strikes against the Assad regime. But opposition from both Republican and Democrat legislators led to second thoughts about the wisdom of regime change. With the support of Australia, Washington changed tact in 2015 and launched strikes against some of the jihadists fighting Assad.

Enter the UN's political road map for Syria: a ceasefire, political settlement, democratic elections, non-sectarian governance and a new constitution – all by next year without resolving the fate of Assad. Like the voice in that awful movie Field of Dreams: this has a sort of "Build it and they will come" approach to the Middle East. But peace, as Winston Churchill observed, is not a policy.

Meanwhile, last week's liberation of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province, has dealt a setback to IS and a much-needed confidence boost to the widely maligned Iraqi army. In Ramadi, unlike the campaigns against IS in other Iraqi towns Tikrit and Sinjar in 2015, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia did not participate for fear it could exacerbate tensions with the predominantly Sunni locals, while the US-trained Iraqi army, backed with US air strikes, did the hard work. Encouraging signs.

But, as Henry Kissinger once observed: "Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem." Or, as London-based academic Fawaz Gerges​ recently told the Washington Post: "There is very little thought being given to the morning after, and the morning after is going to be as bloody, as chaotic, and as destabilising as the situation we are seeing now."

The problem boils down to this: Iraq and Syria as we have known them are gone. Iraq is not one people, but rather three peoples: Kurds, (minority) Sunnis, and (majority) Shiites. Syria is also three peoples: Kurds, (majority) Sunnis, and (minority) Alawites/Shiites, who protect the Christians and other religious minorities.

None of this should surprise any student of modern history. Both Iraq and Syria are artificial states and ethnically divided societies created out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. What the US-led invasion in 2003 and the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 did was to unleash age-old sectarian animosities that are eroding political structures and borders that have more or less prevailed since the end of the World War I.

What to do? John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN and senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, has a good idea: create independent states for the Kurds and Sunnis after the defeat of IS. A "Sunni-stan", he argues, could be a bulwark against the Iran-backed regimes in Damascus and Baghdad.

The cold hard reality is that many Sunnis today support or tolerate IS because they are more afraid of the Iranian-backed regimes in Damascus and Baghdad and the Shiite militias. Telling these Sunni people that their reward for rising against IS in Syria and Iraq will be to put them back in thrall to the Assad regime, or the Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime, will intensify sympathy or tolerance for IS or other Sunni jihadists. Bolton's warning is worth heeding.

A new Sunni state that comprises north-eastern Syria and western Iraq would not be a Jeffersonian democracy. It might even contain remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime. But this is a region, as if we need reminding, where alternatives to secular military or semi-authoritarian regimes are scarce. A "Sunni-stan" would help obliterate IS by giving disillusioned Sunnis a state of their own to strive for, while keeping in check Iran's regional ambitions. Not perfect, but better than meaningless UN resolutions about states that no longer exist.

Tom Switzer is a research associate at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre and host of Between the Lines on the ABC's Radio National.





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