U.S. and the ISIS challenge

THIS is how U.S. vice president Joe Biden last week articulated his country’s resolve to deal with the increasingly vicious fundamentalist, jihadist group of militants known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS: “We came back after 9/11. We dusted ourselves off and we made sure that Osama bin Laden would never, ever again threaten the American people.
We came back Boston strong, blaming no one but resolve to be certain that this didn’t happen again….As a nation, we’re united, and when people harm Americans, we don’t retreat. We don’t forget. They should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside.”
Biden was reacting to the barbaric beheading of two American journalists by ISIS. He was not alone in this resolve to get even with ISIS. There is public indignation and a fairly common agreement that by killing the defenceless journalists and putting their execution on Youtube for all to see, ISIS had overstepped the boundaries of what even their silent supporters would tolerate.
The vice president was not playing to the gallery for indeed the U.S. has the capability to hound ISIS to the gates of hell. The killing of Osama bin Laden appeared to be a mission impossible at some point, but the U.S. Special Forces pulled it off in the end. Last week, al-Shabab felt the razor-sharp reach of the U.S. when its leader, Ahmed Godane, was taken out in an air attack in Somalia. The new al-Shabab leader, Abu Ubeid Ahmed Omar, also knows that his death clock is already ticking.
There is no doubt, therefore, that sooner or later, ISIS will recognize that pursuing it to the gates of hell as proclaimed by Vice President Biden isn’t something to be dismissed as merely imaginary or an empty sound of fury. The problem though is that this time, ISIS might not be an easy opponent. Here is why. Unlike several terrorist organizations all over the globe, ISIS occupies a territory, a land mass appropriated from both Iraq and Syria, hence the organization’s name.
That gives it a base from which to prepare and launch its attacks. The problem which Al-Qaeda faced under Osama bin Laden and now under the leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri, is that it does not control any territory in any meaningful way. I imagine that this is a logistics nightmare for al-Qaeda and similar organizations with the predicament of no territorial occupation.
With a territorial base comes the other significant advantage: a well-trained and fairly well-equipped army with foot soldiers that come from as far as European countries and the United States. The world saw what the ISIS army could do when its soldiers practically overran a lot of territory in Iraq and were matching toward capital city Baghdad.
The forces were reported to have also captured an airport from the Syrian army that had to flee against the onslaught of the ISIS soldiers. It has also been reported that ISIS militia are fighting with weapons captured from the Iraqi army, weapons supplied by the U.S. to fight the al-Qaeda forces.
The third advantage is that ISIS is not a financially poor organization. Not only does it have secret financiers in the Middle East and beyond, the organization controls territory with oil and other resources which it sells to make money. Then, there is the ransom money it collects by kidnapping Western journalists and nationals.
These advantages are further helped by the fact that the U.S. is reluctant to put troops on the ground because the Obama administration does not want to engage the U.S. in another war with severe human and financial consequences. It is true that the current U.S. air strikes on ISIS territory have halted the jihadists’ military victories. But, all experts agree that you cannot win a war without boots on the ground. The U.S. might rule the air, but ISIS is the king on the ground.
Even more complex is that the U.S. finds itself in a fix over allies to do the ground fighting against ISIS. President Obama is expected to address this issue is his speech this week. Putting a coalition together might not be easy since the U.S. is reluctant to partner with Syria against ISIS because of its opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.
Neither will the U.S. send ground troops to Iraq. Besides, ISIS has a great deal of Sunni Moslem sympathizers. Since former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki began persecuting Sunnis in Iraq, any partnership against ISIS might be misconstrued as an anti-Sunni coalition. This, in turn, will help ISIS in its recruitment exercise.
The U.S. has a complex problem over how to deal with the ISIS challenge. There is the fear that as more U.S. citizens join the jihadists, the threat of them returning to the U.S. to spread terror increases.
If ISIS is not contained and immobilized, it might grow into a group that will pose more intractable problems to the U.S. and its Western allies. While driving ISIS to the gates of hell as suggested by Biden might be pleasing to his audience, accomplishing this task may not be as easy as it was spoken by the vice president.