Mona Alami

The international coalition against ISIS has yielded contentious results. While ISIS control over large swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq may have sparked international outrage, the conflicting agendas of countries in the region with regard to Syria and Iraq have greatly complicated the anti-ISIS campaign. Three years into the Syrian war, which has resulted in the death of over 200,000 people, chemical weapon strikes and the indiscriminate use of “barrel bombings,” an international coalition was put in place only when an ISIS surge from Syria led to the takeover of Mosul and pushed too close to Iraq’s Kurdish areas. These areas produce about 10 percent of Iraqi oil and are home to a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency base. 

The international response to the repercussions from the Syrian war was both late and hesitant. This hesitancy was the consequence of the dangerous and ambiguous game being played by regional and international actors toward ISIS, now the largest and wealthiest terrorist organization in the world. 

Illustrating this is Turkey’s murky relationship with ISIS. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Turkey’s primary goal has been to overthrow President Bashar Assad. When this failed to happen, Ankara provided free passage to jihadis. A large number of the estimated 12,000 foreign militants fighting in Syria and Iraq have crossed from Turkey. Turkey’s painful history with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has shaped its tentative approach in dealing with the situation in Ain al-Arab, or Kobani, which is still facing an onslaught by ISIS. 

Turkey is not alone in its adoption of an ambivalent policy toward ISIS and other radical groups. In August a German Cabinet minister accused Qatar of financing ISIS militants. Qatar’s search for international recognition accounts for the shadowy relations between the Gulf state and radical organizations such as ISIS and the Nusra Front. The U.S. Treasury Department has said that Tunisian Tariq al-Harzi, a senior ISIS member in charge of suicide bombers, had raised $2 million from a Qatari financier for “military operations.”

The Treasury has also designated another Qatari, Abd al-Rahman bin Umayr al-Nuaymi, as a terrorism financer and facilitator. Nuaymi was until recently an adviser to the Qatari government and has been accused by Washington of transferring $2 million a month to Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, as well as financing extremist groups in Syria, Somalia and Yemen. 

The war against ISIS has been used as justification for the current American policy toward Syria. In recent months, there have been calls in some quarters to treat the Assad regime as an ally in the fight against the terror organization. 

Such calls seem to fit in with President Barack Obama’s broader view of the Syrian crisis, and his ambivalent commitment on the side of anti-Assad forces. But while Obama has mulled strengthening the moderate Syrian opposition, the moderates have lost considerable ground to extremists throughout Syria. Their fate also remains uncertain in the embattled city of Aleppo, where they are stuck between ISIS and regime forces. 

In this context, there are those who argue that the survival of the Assad regime has become a matter of necessity, so that it can act as a counterweight to ISIS. A convenient enemy in ISIS has justified a failed Western policy toward Syria, in what may be the most brutal conflict this decade. While ISIS is being slowly “degraded,” Assad will remain, unfortunately, the lesser of two evils to the West, which will also turn a blind eye to the abuses of Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria.

Hezbollah has also repeatedly justified its involvement in Syria as a war against “takfiris.” This narrative only allows Iran to pursue a strategy of regional expansion. For the past decade Iran has sought to enlarge its sphere of influence in the Arab world, from Lebanon to Iraq. Shiite militant groups, whether Lebanese, Syrian or Iraqi, are being positioned as tools to defeat ISIS. 

This vision may have garnered some support within many Western political circles, but it remains self defeating in the long run. Thinking that Shiite militants adhering to extreme views can successfully fight a radical Sunni organization, or that an authoritarian regime built on sectarianism can bring peace to a country divided along religious lines, is absurd. Only moderates can fight and win the battle against ISIS. 

As long as no real effort is made toward empowering moderate Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis, the “war on terror” will remain a convenient excuse to avoid addressing the essential questions in Iraq and Syria and to pursue controversial policies against an organization fueling the fires engulfing the Middle East.