What To Do About ISIS (Josh Marshall)
Thought-provoking.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-to-do-about-isis
<snip>
The real challenge we face - and it's an immense one - is that even if you pulverize the ISIS state you have a continuing structural problem, which is a restive, aggrieved Sunni population which feels, accurately, disenfranchised by non-Sunni governments in Baghdad and Damascus. To achieve even a modicum of a post ISIS solution, that reality has to be addressed. Though I am not proposing we do so, the US and/or NATO could certainly destroy ISIS as a state by invading its territory. But that would only leave us occupying an aggrieved and resentful population where our presence would further intensify the sort of religious/nationalist sentiments which created ISIS in the first place. That is at best only a step in a solution. It is not a solution in itself.
Here's what I see as the real conundrum we currently face. Yes, at a minimum, we popped the cork off this hell storm when we overthrew the Iraqi regime. But saying that doesn't address the immediate situation. We are pressed up against the unresolved and quite possibly unsustainable borders drawn after World War I, based on the wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement. Quite simply, after destroying ISIS, it's not clear to me how the Sunni population in the ISIS zone is going to be governed by a Iran-leaning Shia dominated Iraqi state to the southeast or an Alewite-dominated Shia and Iran-leaning state to the West. Absent some change in that equation, I think the region inevitably slips back into the hands of Sunni militancy - much as it did in the middle years of the US presence in Iraq.
So only destroying ISIS seems unrealistic, unworkable. If there were already strong states in place, it could likely contain these discontents. But you have state collapse in both cases. It's hard for me to see how you can stand up not a democratic or perhaps even a wholesome state structure in that region if it is not independent or at least autonomous from Baghdad and Damascus and run by Sunni Muslims.
Of course, if a new Sunni state emerges in that area, you inevitably reopen the question of Kurdistan - a national entity which cuts across the borders of various states. That threatens the territorial integrity of Syria and Iraq and more importantly Turkey and Iran. That is a tough challenge that I don't have and haven't seen a clear answer to.
....more
= new reply since forum marked as read
