Descent into chaos: stalemate and the rise of ISIS
As is so often the tragic path of revolution, it was the Montagne that triumphed over the Gironde.
Alistair Horne, The Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962.1
Revolutions devour their children. The liberals that made the Tennis Court Oath in 1789 did not see the coming Terror, while leftist protesters among Tehran’s 1978–79 revolutionaries did not imagine they would help bring about Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. Syria’s Revolution, in the lands that were freed from Assad’s rule, frequently followed a similar trajectory. The street protesters of 2011 were a broad coalition, with a strong youth-led educated core, overwhelmingly peaceful and not overtly Islamist. Yet as these original protesters were killed, arrested, or fled – often deliberately targeted by Assad – radical armed groups increasingly became the dominant military and ideological forces. Conservative bodies were established to enforce strict Islamic laws in many rebel areas, such as the Islamist Sharia Authority in eastern Aleppo.2 Some of the original protesters bemoaned the hijacking of their revolution by radicals. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the brutality meted out in the areas held by ISIS, which greatly expanded its territory in 2014. Large stretches of eastern Syria became a theocratic dictatorship that forbade music and smoking and where gruesome spectacles of violence such as public beheadings and even crucifixions were commonplace. Barely three years earlier Raqqa, which became the capital of ISIS’ self-declared ‘Caliphate’, had seen peaceful crowds shouting ‘The People want the fall of the Regime’ and ‘God, Syria, Freedom, that’s all’. What they got was a far cry from the sentiment of 2011.
The expansion of ISIS’ holdings in the summer of 2014 dramatically shifted outside views of the civil war. While the US had ultimately declined to strike Assad in 2013, a year later it assembled an international coalition to ‘degrade and destroy’ the newly declared ‘Caliphate’. Washington regarded ISIS as a more immediate threat than Assad, but the other players mostly saw it as a lesser priority than their other interests in Syria. This chapter will consider how and why ISIS emerged, and who was responsible – with most of the players, particularly Assad, complicit in some way. It will also examine the immediate context in which ISIS’ sudden expansion came: the failure of the long-awaited Geneva II peace conference and the continued infighting among rebel groups, greatly exacerbated by the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Geneva II
The ‘Geneva II’ peace talks finally began on 22 January 2014 in the Swiss resort town of Montreux. UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would later describe the conference as ‘an exercise in futility’, such were the flaws in its conception and execution.3 The meeting resulted from the previous summer’s chemical weapons deal, with Moscow and Washington re-committing to Lavrov and Kerry’s May 2013 agreement on seeking a peaceful solution to the war. However, the belligerents still had to be pressed. After engineering a way out of US strikes, Damascus owed Moscow and so unsurprisingly announced its intention to attend in November, although Russian diplomats claimed this had already been agreed in May.4 Pursuing a diplomatic solution to the crisis had been Russia’s stance since 2011 and the US’ acceptance of this was perceived as vindication by Putin’s government.5
Persuading the opposition was more challenging. The denunciation by eleven Islamist militias in September 2013 rocked the SOC, while the FSA saw itself undermined then attacked by former comrades in the new Islamic Front, sponsored by its own allies in Riyadh. As radical fighters became ever more dominant, the SOC struggled for relevance, and its delegates feared losing what little credibility it had by sitting down with Assad’s representatives at a peace conference. The SNC, still the largest single group, threatened to withdraw from the SOC if it took part. Yet with western and regional powers backing the talks, they were pressured to participate, first in a Friends of Syria meeting in late October, then in the Arab League in early November – when Saudi Arabia and Qatar temporarily put aside their rivalry and urged involvement. The SOC voted to attend Geneva II on 11 November but attached preconditions: relief agencies should be given access to besieged areas and all prisoners, especially women and children, had to be released.6 These demands were later quietly dropped and the SOC delegation arrived in Montreux without any of them having been granted.7 Yet its mandate was limited: radical militants including the Islamic Front rejected the talks, while 45 of the 120 SOC delegates abstained from the final vote to approve participation.8
The one concession granted the SOC was the exclusion of Iran. Tehran’s invitation was controversial, as it had been absent from Annan’s original 2012 Geneva gathering. William Hague and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had both commented in the run-up to the conference that Iran should be party to talks while the US was more amenable now that the more moderate Rouhani was President and nuclear talks had reopened in March 2013.9 Ban Ki-moon, Arab League Secretary General Nabil El-Araby and Brahimi all recognised the importance of Iran’s presence and Ban announced an invitation days before talks began on 19 January. This prompted outrage by the SOC President Ahmad Jarba and his patron, Saudi Arabia. The US, Britain and France now insisted that Iran should attend only if it fully endorsed the Geneva Communiqué, particularly accepting the principle of a transition government, which Tehran had long rejected. With the SOC threatening to walk out, Ban had to humiliatingly rescind Iran’s invitation a day later, prompting Russian disapproval. Despite the presence of representatives from forty different countries, including Australia and Indonesia, Iran, a key player, was thus excluded. It was a bad start.
It became immediately clear that the regime had no interest in negotiation. Its delegation was led by powerless diplomats rather than anyone from Assad’s inner circle who might offer meaningful concessions. It appeared to have been instructed to stonewall and derail the process. On the first day the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Muallem, delivered an extraordinary opening speech that ran well over his allocated time – to the visible irritation of Ban – in which he hurled abuse at the opposition and their foreign backers. The FSA, he said, ‘cannibalise human hearts and livers, barbecue heads, recruit child soldiers and rape women’, their Gulf supporters were ‘princes and emirs living in mud and backwardness’, Erdoğan’s Turkey was a ‘backstabbing neighbour’, and ‘seated among us are representatives of countries who have blood of our people on their hands’.10 Jarba replied in a more measured way, but clinging to the core opposition demand of Assad’s departure, stating, ‘Al-Assad cannot stay on his throne. We cannot have so many people dying because one man wants to stay on the throne.’
As the days progressed, things improved little. Observers noted that the SOC delegation, led by Hadi al-Bahra, gradually became more positive after prompting from their western backers, but the regime remained uninterested, often resorting to insults. The first session in the last week of January, intended to focus on confidence-building measures like humanitarian access, ended with no serious agreements, although a local ceasefire in Homs did eventually progress. A second round, from 10 to 15 February, was agreed upon but, despite a more successful evacuation of besieged civilians in Homs, talks broke down again. On 15 February Brahimi publicly apologised to the Syrian people for the conference’s failure, stating that the regime had refused to countenance a transition government and that he would consult with the conference co-sponsors on how to move forward. However, within weeks Russia annexed the Crimea and the brief era of US–Russian cooperation after the 2013 chemical weapons deal came to a sudden end. As a reward to the SOC for attending Montreux in late January the US had already resumed sending non-lethal aid to the rebels, suspended in December after the FSA’s base was raided by the Islamic Front. A month later it resumed lethal assistance too. Russia, along with China, vetoed a 65-state-sponsored resolution referring the Assad regime to the International Criminal Court on 22 May. A few weeks before, Brahimi, exasperated, had finally resigned.
So why did Geneva II prove such an ‘exercise in futility’? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the conditions were never right for a peace conference to succeed. No side wanted to be there and both, like many of their external backers, still believed primarily in a military solution. As Brahimi had stated beforehand, the problem was getting them to accept the ‘very principle of a political solution’. Academic studies of civil war concur that for negotiation to succeed, both sides need to have reached a hurting stalemate. As David Cunningham writes,
At every point over the course of the conflict, then, each party compares the expected utility from three options: ceasing the armed struggle, agreeing to some negotiated settlement, or continuing fighting. If actors are rational and risk-neutral, they will pursue the policy that gives them the highest expected utility.11
Approaching Geneva II, neither side was sufficiently hurting to believe that negotiation gave them the highest expected utility. The Assad regime had survived the onslaught of 2012–13 and, with Iranian support, was fighting back. The SOC and FSA were weaker, losing ground to radical opposition fighters, but were wary of negotiation in case it should undermine their positions further. Continuing fighting, with greater western backing, in the hope of winning back support on the ground, was still its preferred option.
The two sides attended Montreux, then, not because they saw it as a means to achieve their goals, but to appease their external allies, Russia and the US. Yet neither patron was willing or able to put sufficient pressure on their allies to change their calculations. The SOC was more pliable, due to its weaker position, but with the US offering it arms as a reward for attendance, and its other regional sponsors financing more radical groups like the Islamic Front, armed conflict was hardly being discouraged. Instead, the SOC was incentivised to be seen to engage at Geneva II, to justify receiving heavier armed support after it failed. The regime was also given no incentive to engage. Iran was not invited, leaving a key regime ally outside the tent, actively discouraging Assad from offering anything. Russia, meanwhile, seemed satisfied that Damascus was willing to send a delegation and used none of its leverage, such as withholding UNSC vetoes or weaponry, to nudge the regime further. Indeed, it must be questioned how seriously the sponsors themselves took the conference. Lavrov and Kerry both agreed to the principle of a peaceful outcome, but neither had given more ground on the Geneva Communiqué than in summer 2012. Washington and its allies saw the conference as a means to create a transition government without Assad, while Moscow saw it as a means to create one still dominated by him and his regime. This fundamental disagreement had not been resolved before Montreux, meaning that, even had the two sponsors pushed their Syrian allies harder, they still would have reached the same impasse. Emerging disagreements over Ukraine only made these tensions worse. Geneva II was therefore dead on arrival.
Regional rivalry and rebel politics
As the brief era of Russo-American detente ended, the rivalry between the opposition’s regional backers was intensifying, spilling over on to Syria’s battlefields. The fallout from the anti-MB coup in Egypt in July 2013 and subsequent regional developments caused a serious rupture between the anti-Assad camp’s lead players of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Both Doha and Ankara were furious at Riyadh for sponsoring the Egyptian military’s ouster of their ally Morsi, in whom they had invested considerably – over $5 billion in the case of Qatar. With Turkey insulated by its size and distance, tension centred on the Gulf where Qatar’s new leader, Tamim, was pressured by Saudi Arabia and its partner in the Egyptian coup, the UAE. The Emirati Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed, shared Saudi Arabia’s hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood and resented Qatar’s regional sponsorship of it and its affiliates, not just in Egypt but also in post-Gaddafi Libya. As the new Egyptian government violently cracked down on the MB, Qatari spokesmen and al-Jazeera programmes, especially Qaradawi’s, denounced the new regime, much to Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s chagrin. Doha was believed still to be funding its persecuted allies: nine al-Jazeera journalists were put on trial in Egypt accused of aiding a terrorist organisation, as the MB was designated in September 2013. In addition Saudi Arabia was concerned that Qatar was aiding the al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra in Syria, which Doha denied.
This intra-GCC dispute boiled over in March 2014 when the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, effectively a Saudi Arabia vassal since 2011, withdrew their ambassadors to Qatar. This was not without precedent – Saudi Arabia had done the same in 2002–8 in opposition to anti-Saudi al-Jazeera reports – but the impact was harder, coming when Tamim was still new to his throne and consolidating power. In a joint statement Qatar was accused of not complying with a commitment made in November 2013 not to support ‘anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) whether as groups or individuals – via direct security work or through political influence, and not to support hostile media’ – primarily referring to the MB.12 Though Tamim claimed to be prioritising internal affairs, Mohammed bin Zayed and Riyadh were sceptical that Qatar’s international machinations would suddenly cease, and were also confident that the new Emir was weaker and more assailable than his father. The UAE even hired an American PR consulting firm, Camstoll Group, to target Qatar in the US media and in late 2013 and early 2014 a clutch of journalists accused Qatar of supporting terrorist groups.13 As shown in Chapter 6, Qatar was far from innocent of backing radical groups, but it was not alone. However, the media storm in the US over 2014 contributed to a backlash against Qatar’s previous activism.
This intra-GCC dispute was played out in Libya, with UAE jets launching a surprise assault alongside Egypt against Qatari-backed Islamists in August 2014, and in Syria, where Riyadh’s allies struggled with Doha’s. Many of the groups originally sponsored by Qatar in 2012–13 had already sought support elsewhere by 2014, and the Saudi Arabian sponsorship of the Islamic Front in late 2013 had secured more rebels for Riyadh than Doha. The Battle of Yabroud in March 2014 was the starkest example of this shift in alignment, and a case of external rivalries hurting the rebel cause. Hezbollah and regime forces assaulted Yabroud as part of the Qalamoun campaign to remove rebel forces from the Lebanese border. The various rebel groups resisted for a month before the sudden loss in two days. Accounts to journalists by both sides suggested that the rebels had split, with Nusra abandoned in the town while other rebel forces retreated. Nusra sources, alleged then to be backed by Qatar, claimed that Saudi Arabia had ordered its allies to retreat and withheld reinforcements. This ensured that Yabroud would fall, weakening Qatar’s allies and preventing them from getting a foothold in Lebanon, opposed by Saudi Arabia’s Lebanese Sunni allies.14
Yet despite success in reducing Qatar’s influence, Saudi Arabia’s Syria policy was not going well. Its newest ally, the Islamic Front, had more success against fellow rebels than against the regime, which was still advancing. In March 2014, barely five months after its formation, observers were noting serious fraying within the Front over relations with ISIS, which was becoming a threat. In April 2014 King Abdullah dismissed Prince Bandar from his position as head of general intelligence. Bandar had been given the Syria file partly in the hope that he could persuade Washington to increase its involvement, but this now lay in tatters after the 2013 non-strike. Since then an angry Bandar had been publicly threatening Russia and, more worryingly, criticising Obama. Though Abdullah and many Saudi Arabian leaders likely agreed in private, the prince was regarded as a loose cannon exacerbating the already strained US–Saudi relationship.15 Bandar’s strategy with the rebels was also problematic, with Saudi Arabia, Gulf and western diplomats privately suggesting that ISIS and Nusra may have benefited from Bandar’s tilt towards Salafist groups in autumn 2013.16
Abdullah shared the Syria file between his son, Mutaib bin Abdullah, head of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, and Minister of the Interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), prompting a nuanced shift in direction. MBN’s appointment was an important panacea for the White House, where he was respected for leading an internal anti-terrorism campaign and for being one of the few in the next generation of Saudi Arabian princes (Ibn Saud’s grandsons) to be given serious power in Riyadh – something Washington had long been urging.17 MBN was more concerned by ISIS and Nusra than Bandar, having cracked down on al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in the 2000s, who targeted him for assassination in four separate attempts.18 As a result of this, and MBN’s character, the departure of Bandar coincided with a more measured Saudi Arabian approach. Attention was focussed on the southern front, and in the north there was greater willingness to cooperate with Turkey and Qatar. Doha, chastened by the combined UAE–Saudi assault gradually relented, symbolically expelling several MB members from Qatar in September 2014 and delegating a lot of its leadership over the Syrian rebels to Turkey. Gradually Ankara too dropped its hostility to Saudi Arabia.19 This cooperation wouldn’t expand sufficiently to make substantial gains on the ground until early 2015, but by mid-2014 the Qatari–Saudi rivalry that had undermined the rebels for so long seemed to be turning a corner.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham
On 10 June 2014 barely 1,300 ISIS fighters captured Mosul, Iraq’s third city with a population of over 600,000. At the end of the month, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (a nom de guerre) announced that the territory he controlled in western Iraq and eastern Syria, centred on Raqqa, were now part of a worldwide Caliphate, the ‘Islamic State’, which sought to unite all Muslims under its political, religious and military authority. The declaration, along with the speed of the capture of Mosul and the brutality it showed its opponents, caught the world’s attention and dramatically shifted the complexion of the Syrian civil war. What had for three years appeared a binary struggle between Assad and the various rebels now included a third major actor, the Islamic State, which opposed both and concerned western leaders far more than Assad ever had. Moreover, after ISIS stepped up its assault on Kurdish positions it became clear that Kurdish militias, dominated by the PYD, were also now effectively a fourth player in the Syrian morass. Transformative though the emergence of ISIS was, its rise took several years before 2014 and, unsurprisingly, was greatly impacted by the actions of external powers.
The rise of ISIS
ISIS had its origins in Iraq. In 2006 al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had thrived in the post-Saddam Hussein chaos, merged with other jihadists to form Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Though its leadership was decimated by the US troop surge of 2007 and a backlash against its harsh conservatism by Iraqi Sunni tribes known as the Sahwa (Awakening) movements, the failure of the US to transform its military success into a political solution coupled with growing Sunni resentment at the sectarian politics of Shia Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, opened the door for ISI’s return.20 In 2010 al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi Islamist detained in Camp Bucca by US forces before joining al-Qaeda, assumed the ISI leadership and reorganised. He recruited many of Saddam’s disgruntled former army officers into his leadership and gradually rebuilt ISI power as the US drew down before leaving Iraq in December 2011.21 Seeing advantage when the Syrian uprising turned into a civil war, as well as sending Abu-Mohammad al-Jolani into Syria to form Nusra, ISI dispatched fighters over the border. It eventually acquired sufficient supporters and territory inside Syria to rename itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in April 2013. Though this prompted a split with Nusra and with al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri (described in Chapter 6) Baghdadi’s organisation continued to thrive on both sides of the border.22 From the very beginning, ISIS positioned itself as a transnational force, attracting to its ranks a large segment of the foreign Jihadists that had travelled to Syria to fight Assad.
ISIS’ uncompromising Jihadism put it on a collision course with other rebel groups. In August 2013 it captured Raqqa, driving out Nusra and the FSA, followed by further clashes the next month in Al-Bab, Deir-ez-Zor, Al-Bukamal and Azaz.23 Alarmed, several rebel militia, including Tawheed, Suqor and Nusra, formed the first of several anti-ISIS alliances, yet made little headway. Fighting erupted more violently in January 2014 when the recently formed Islamic Front accused ISIS of torturing and murdering Hussein al-Suleiman (Abu Rayyan), a popular Ahrar commander. Encouraged by Bandar, the Islamic Front joined with the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (an FSA-dominated group of militia from Idlib) and the Jaysh al-Mujahadeen (a new Aleppo alliance composed of former FSA and MB affiliated militia) to fight ISIS directly. Within a week Nusra also joined.24 An estimated 3,300 were killed on both sides in January and February but the campaign pushed ISIS out of Idlib and the countryside west of Aleppo. ISIS consolidated its positions around Raqqa and the east instead.25 The fighting ended any hopes that ISIS might be reconciled with al-Qaeda. Both Nusra and Zawahiri had tried to broker truces, but ISIS refused and even assassinated the latter’s special envoy, Ahrar commander Abu Khalid al-Suri.26 On 3 February, al-Qaeda general command formally cut all links with ISIS. Some claimed that Baghdadi was too extreme even for al-Qaeda, but the split also came as Zawahiri and his allies were reassessing tactics. After failing in Iraq with the brutal top down approach now favoured by ISIS, al-Qaeda opted instead to build support from the ground up, as Nusra was attempting.27
In parallel with fighting rebels, ISIS faced off against Kurdish militia, primarily the PYD’s YPG. After capturing Kobane from Nusra in July 2013, YPG-led Kurdish forces clashed with various Islamist rebels as it sought to expand into Syria’s Kurdish-dominated north-eastern regions. ISIS engaged the YPG in a series of battles, with the latter sometimes cooperating with local Christian and Turkmen militia and Arab tribes. YPG fighters pushed ISIS out of parts of Hasakah province, including the Yaroubiyeh border crossing into Iraq in October and advanced westwards in November.28 After declaring ‘Rojava’ the YPG then took advantage of rebel–ISIS fighting in early 2014 to capture Tal Abyad. By spring, however, ISIS recovered and in early April began a siege of Kobane, where the PYD had established its headquarters. By June they retook Tal Abyad and forcibly expelled a number of Kurdish and Christian residents.29
If ISIS’ ideological differences with other rebels and the Kurds formed an important driver of conflict, another was competition for resources. Two were particularly fought over, border crossings and oilfields, and both were found in ‘Rojava’. Unlike the other rebels or the regime, neither ISIS nor the PYD were seeking to conquer the whole of Syria, but rather build autonomous regions in the east and so attached more value to these resources. Control of border crossings into Turkey and Iraq allowed the PYD to link up with Iraqi and Turkish PKK allies who supplied them with fighters, weapons and finances, and allowed ISIS to link up with their Iraqi forces (in the case of Iraqi borders), or gain access to weapons and finances from external supporters via Turkey. This also made crossings on the Turkish border valuable to non-ISIS rebel groups. All groups made considerable income from taxing anyone crossing or taking goods through their captured border posts.30
The oilfields similarly prompted competition. As the regime withdrew to rump Syria in 2012–13 it prioritised its western natural gas fields, which provided most of Syria’s electricity, abandoning its eastern oilfields.31 Syria’s largest oilfields in Hasakah province were taken over by the PYD in 2012 and, although its leader Salih Muslim claimed the fields were not functioning, other reports suggested up to 40,000 b/d was produced for Rojava’s needs and to sell on. In Deir-ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces tribal actors moved in to operate the fields, constructing basic refineries and negotiating deals with the dominant rebel military groups in the area over the oil’s subsequent transport and sale in Turkey or Iraq.32 In an attempt to bolster the SOC and its allies, in April 2013 the EU lifted its embargo on the purchase of Syrian oil, permitting Europeans to buy crude if approved by the external opposition. However, FSA-SMC groups were weak in the oil-rich east and the lifting of the embargo only incentivised radical groups to secure the fields and deprive their FSA rivals of income. Initially Ahrar and Nusra dominated, but were pushed out by ISIS during clashes in 2013–14. Indeed, in a sign of the importance of resources, Nusra’s last pockets of territory in eastern Syria were the large oilfields in the Euphrates valley, finally lost to ISIS in mid-2014. Using agents from clans and tribes that had sworn them loyalty, ISIS then produced up to 50,000 barrels per day (b/d) by mid-2014, used for their own military purposes and also sold within Syria and to Turkish traders.33
By the time it captured Mosul, then, ISIS had a battle-hardened core that had been fighting other rebels and Kurds for well over a year, funded and fuelled by rent from oil and border posts, as well as outside supporters. It had captured and retained several cities, including Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Fallujah (gained in January 2014) and had infiltrated Mosul before its attack, winning sympathy from a Sunni population resentful of Maliki’s sectarianism. Their assault was helped by the corrupt Iraqi army garrison which, though well equipped by its US allies, was low on morale.34 Within four days, the city capitulated. Al-Baghdadi’s subsequent declaration of a Caliphate came amid a massive expansion of ISIS’ territory. In June the Iraqi cities of Samarra and Tikrit were captured, while pressure was placed on Kirkuk and Baghdad, prompting desperate defensive moves from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraqi forces respectively. ISIS’ audacity, along with its newly acquired wealth, won it many admirers and over 6,000 Syrian fighters, many former FSA, were reported to have joined in July alone.35 Swelled by confidence, new recruits and a vast cache of US-supplied weapons looted from Iraqi army positions in Mosul, ISIS was able to attack all of its Syrian enemies simultaneously. In July Nusra was finally pushed out of the Euphrates. The new weaponry helped intensify the siege on PYD-held Kobane. Finally, it came into conflict more and more with the Assad regime, including a series of bloody clashes from June to August that gave the regime its worst casualties of the war so far. This raised questions about the regime’s relationship with ISIS. Theoretically they were sworn enemies, but had not fought a great deal until now. Observers questioned whether this was simply tactical, in that they were targeting their mutual enemies in the rebels before inevitably turning on each other, or a more sinister collaboration.
ISIS and the regime
Members of the Syrian opposition and their supporters accused Damascus of complicity in ISIS’ rise. Hassan and Weiss list various regime machinations. Patrick Cockburn, in contrast, claims that ISIS attacks on Assad in summer 2014 showed such conspiracies to be false.36 Both arguments carry some weight. The regime certainly created conditions in which ISIS could thrive. Firstly, Assad sponsored al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in the decade before the civil war as a means to destabilise the US presence there.37 Despite Assad’s frequent denials, many regime officials admitted this in private, and the former ambassador to Baghdad, Nawaf al-Fares, who defected in 2012, claimed that he knew several regime liaison officers who worked directly with AQI.38 This helped scupper US attempts to militarily wipe out AQI, allowing the space for Baghdadi to reorganise in 2010 and eventually dispatch agents into Syria.39 Moreover, the regime’s flirtation with Jihadism in the 2000s against the US in Iraq had created networks of Syrian Jihadists that would turn on the regime in favour of ISIS and other radicals once the war began.40 Secondly, once the war began, the regime’s tactics helped radicalise the opposition, creating more space for radicals like ISIS. As described in Chapter 6, regime Shabiha deliberately mocked Sunni beliefs and targeted Sunnis for verbal, psychological and sexual abuse. At the same time, renowned Islamists such as Abboud, Alloush and Issa al-Sheikh were released from prison in the hope that they would squeeze out the moderates.
Most importantly, once ISIS had declared its presence and captured Raqqa and other territory in 2013, the regime targeted it less than other rebel groups. As the regime attacked rebel positions, the ISIS strongholds in the east remained largely untouched. When Assad bombed Raqqa after the attacks of June 2014 it was the first notable regime air raid on ISIS, despite other rebel areas having been exposed to frequent strikes since 2012.41 The opposition accused the regime of deliberately leaving ISIS alone so that it could thrive at the expense of moderate rebel forces, thereby forcing Syrians and outside powers to eventually recognise Assad as the only alternative. Such indirect collaboration looked more deliberate when it emerged that the regime was purchasing gas from ISIS-held plants in 2014.42
However, the extent of regime involvement should not be overstated. The rise of ISIS was broadly in its interest: strengthening the narrative that Assad was facing an Islamist-Jihadist rebellion at home and abroad, and dividing the rebels further over their response to this third force. It made more sense to channel its limited military resources towards the less radical rebels, reinforcing this narrative even more. However, it was also the case that the rebels were a more immediate threat to the regime than ISIS. ISIS’ goal of a state-building project irrespective of territorial borders was less immediately threatening than the rebels’ national struggle. The regime was one enemy of many to ISIS, while it was the enemy to the other rebels. ISIS’ strongholds were in the desert periphery that Assad had largely abandoned as part of Suleimani’s strategy, while the rebels were threatening Assad’s heartland. Direct strikes were launched, but only when ISIS began to threaten rump Syria in summer 2014 and when the regime wanted to curry favour with the west by showing that it too saw the new ‘Caliphate’ as an enemy.
The oil deals should also not be overstated. Before ISIS forced them from Deir-ez-Zor, the regime bought gas from Nusra as well.43 This shows a cynicism from Assad in dealing with Jihadists, and it is questionable whether the regime would have bought oil had the FSA controlled the eastern fields. However, the fact that the regime was willing to buy from Nusra suggests ISIS wasn’t favoured above all Jihadists. This was also seen in the release of Islamist prisoners. None of the high-profile three listed above joined ISIS, instead helping to found other Islamist and Salafist groups such as Ahrar and the Jaysh al-Islam that proved powerful rebel militias. Rather than a grand plan to create ISIS, the regime wanted to see radicals defeat moderates within the rebel forces, and so used multiple tools to try to achieve this, with unpredictable results. Once ISIS emerged and the regime recognised it was the radical antagonist it was looking for, it took a hands-off approach, provided the core territory of rump Syria remained unthreatened.
The long- and short-term fallout of the summer 2014 ISIS campaign offered more indications that any regime complicity was looser than the alleged conspiracy. The regime had been enjoying its brightest successes of the war in the wake of the failed Geneva II talks. After capturing Yabroud in March, and further successes in the Qalamoun campaign, central Homs had finally been conquered in May. A deal was agreed to allow 1,200 rebel fighters to evacuate the old city in exchange for relief for besieged regime villages in Aleppo and the release of forty rebel-held detainees, crucially including at least one Iranian. With the self-declared ‘capital of the revolution’ and a key strategic crossroads back in his hands, Assad defiantly stood for re-election when his seven-year presidential term expired in June.44 The possibility that Assad would not run had been a contested point at Montreux, so his announcement to do so illustrated the extent of the conference’s failure. A delegation of thirty countries including lawmakers from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, were invited to observe the poll, but no impartial international bodies were present and the US, other western states and the opposition dismissed Assad’s comfortable re-election.45 Soon afterwards, the regime recaptured the north-western village of Kassab and, then, on 23 June, the OPCW announced the last of its chemical weapons had been handed over.
Yet any celebration was soon short-lived as the full extent of ISIS’ sudden advance became clear. In the short term, ISIS violently overran regime positions in June, July and August, including the Tabqa airbase, Division 17 base in Raqqa, Regiment 121 base in Hasakah and key gas facilities in Homs and Palmyra.46 After two weeks the regime dislodged ISIS from the key Shaer gas field in Homs province, but a fresh assault was launched in November.47 This was significant, not just because ISIS was striking rump Syria for the first time, but because of the scale and manner of the assaults. The regime lost hundreds of troops, many gruesomely executed by ISIS, who uploaded YouTube videos of Assad soldiers’ heads on spikes.48 While the regime responded with air strikes, the psychological blow to Assad’s supporters was considerable. Having characterised the opposition all as Jihadists since 2011, Syrians in regime territory questioned why the government had done so little until now against this self-declared Caliphate. In an unprecedented sign of frustration, previously loyal Syrians, particularly Alawis, took to social media to complain, especially after 250 soldiers were violently executed after the fall of Tabqa. Rumours swirled that officers in some bases had been airlifted to safety, leaving the conscripted soldiers to their fate.49
Such grumblings were exacerbated by the long-term consequence of the ISIS expansion: the withdrawal of Iraqi Shia militias from Syria. ISIS’ conquest of western Iraq is another reason to question the extent of regime conspiracy, as it weakened Iran’s position there. The loss of Mosul and the threat to Baghdad prompted an internal crisis that forced Tehran, under pressure from the US, to facilitate the resignation of its ally, Maliki. Another Iranian ally from within Maliki’s Dawa party, Haider al-Abadi, took over, who was believed to be less overtly sectarian than his predecessor and better placed to counter ISIS. Whether ordered by Suleimani or of their own accord, several thousand Shia Iraqi militiamen serving in Syria rapidly returned to protect their homes and the pro-Iranian government. This left Assad with an even sharper manpower shortage. Suleimani later tried to fill the gaps with Afghans and other foreign Shia, but the regime had to escalate a countrywide conscription drive already under way. In the six provinces most firmly in regime hands, young men of military age were targeted in security raids and at checkpoints to ensure they had done their compulsory military service. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported an average of 170 related detentions a week in the first seven months of 2014, while decrees were passed making it harder for eligible men to leave the country or avoid service. In some instances even amnestied former rebels were conscripted.50 Assad was already losing manpower faster than he could replace it, but the loss of the Iraqis after summer 2014 made this a more acute problem, which the regime would prove unable to solve itself.
ISIS’ many parents
If the Assad regime bore considerable responsibility for ISIS, so did his many international enemies. Through a mixture of bungling, short-termism, indirect and intentional policies, the west, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all played a role. As discussed in Chapter 1 and above, ISIS’ predecessors in Iraq emerged as a direct consequence of the 2003 Iraq war and it is difficult to imagine its rise without the US and British invasion and its disastrously managed post-war reorganisations – something reluctantly conceded by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2015.51 However, western responsibility extended further. The factors that allowed ISIS to succeed in summer 2014 owe much to the circumstances of the US withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011. Determined to fulfil Obama’s election manifesto pledge to leave Iraq, his administration squandered many of the gains of the 2007–8 surge. It empowered Maliki’s sectarian government without ensuring sufficient space for Sunnis after the Sahwa success, drawing many to ISIS.52 On top of this Obama left a hastily rebuilt Iraqi military and security force to fill the void, ignoring the pleas of Iraq’s own Chief of Staff that they were not ready.53 As a consequence, when ISIS assaulted Mosul it faced an incompetent military, packed with Maliki’s cronies who had boosted local support for ISIS with their sectarianism. Yet the poor quality of the Iraqi forces did not stop the US continuing to supply it with advanced military equipment – in 2014 alone the State Department approved $579 million worth of sales. This resulted in the huge cache of arms captured by ISIS in Mosul, including approximately 2,300 Humvee armoured vehicles, which instantly made it the best armed opposition group in the Syrian civil war.54
The US might also be accused of wilful neglect on ISIS’ rise. A Defense Intelligence Agency document of 2012 noted:
If the situation unravels [in Syria] there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) [sic], and this is exactly what the supporting powers in the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.55
The document identifies that ‘Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria’, acknowledges the threat that an ISIS-type organisation could pose, and recognises that the US’ own regional allies were willing to entertain the idea as a counter to Assad. Of course, this was but one report among many in US intelligence circles, yet it does show that the possibility of radical groups retaining territory was considered, even if other analyses were prioritised. Even so, as discussed in Chapter 6, it was at least another year before the US started pressuring its Gulf allies to tighten the flow of private support to such radical groups, and it wasn’t until after summer 2014 that it began to scrutinise Turkey’s open border policy. Instead, US policy seems to have been to hope that the moderate opposition would triumph over Assad before any such principality might emerge and prove a threat to its interests in the region. Indeed, when asked about ISIS’ capture of Fallujah in January 2014, Obama stated, ‘If a jayvee [Junior Varsity] team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant’ – implying they were no major threat.56
The extent to which regional powers welcomed the rise of ISIS or an equivalent warrants scrutiny. Turkey was accused by the Iraqi government and the PYD of collaborating with ISIS, with the former suspecting that Turkish intelligence helped ISIS reconstitute itself in 2011.57 There is no direct evidence for this nor does such direct collaboration seem likely but, rather like the Syrian regime, Ankara would have seen advantages in the emergence of a counterweight to Assad, the PYD and the Iran-allied government in Baghdad. More passive collaboration or, at least, no active attempts to prevent ISIS’ rise did occur. As discussed in Chapters 6 and 8, Turkey was willing to send arms and support to a variety of radical groups, with few checks in place to ensure they were not then passed on to Jihadists or that the recipients did not radicalise. Similarly, Turkey’s open border allowed foreign fighters drawn to ISIS to pass into Syria relatively easily. There were multiple reports of ISIS fighters crossing back into Turkey to recuperate from fighting in hospitals and safe houses, with little evidence of government crackdowns even after summer 2014.58 Moreover, oilfields captured by ISIS in Iraq and Syria were soon made operational again, reportedly by procuring spare parts from Turkey, while oil was exported there (and Jordan) via smugglers and middlemen. Few believed Turkey was actively encouraging this but the Iraqi government argued that more could be done to shut down smuggling routes.59 Turkey’s reluctance to join the US-led coalition against ISIS in late summer 2014 only strengthened the charges of passive collaboration.
Qatar’s policies similarly contributed. While Tamim stated in September 2014 that ‘Qatar has never supported and will never support terrorist organizations’, its scattergun approach to sending arms and finance did little to prevent radical groups, including ISIS, from benefiting.60 Joe Biden, among others, complained about Qatar’s alleged willingness to fund radical Islamists, including Nusra and al-Qaeda.61 As noted in Chapter 6, the fluidity of allegiance to different militias early on made it perfectly possible that weapons and funds intended for Nusra and their allies could have ended up in ISIS’ hands before early 2014. Similarly, the uncontrolled flow of money from the Gulf to radical groups in Syria in 2011–13 makes it highly plausible that ISIS was supported by Gulf-based backers, whatever the intentions of Doha and Riyadh. There is no evidence of direct collaboration by Qatar; however, given its closeness to Turkey on goals and ideology, a similar policy of passivity was likely pursued before summer 2014.
Saudi Arabia’s role is more complex. Some have noted that Saudi Arabian support for the coup against the MB in Egypt indirectly benefited ISIS by disillusioning a generation of Islamists with the democratic process, convincing them that violent radicalism was the only route to power.62 More directly, Cockburn argues that ISIS’ ideology draws heavily on Saudi Wahhabism, drawing a link between decades of Saudi-funded religious propaganda and the appeal of radicalism in the Muslim world.63 Similarly, some argue that Saudi-approved sectarian preaching after 2011 created space for the sectarian hatred against Shia espoused by Jihadists.64 At the same time, Saudi Arabia has long feared al-Qaeda and its equivalents. While Bandar backed Salafist groups like the Islamic Front, it was to rival ISIS and Nusra, not collaborate. As discussed, Saudi Arabia was tighter in its direct funding, preferring the moderate FSA and SNC until late 2013, although it too could have better controlled flows from private citizens, both in terms of funds and personnel. Some funds and weapons intended for more moderate forces may have ended up in ISIS’ hands, but that was a feature of the fluidity of Syria’s rebellion and, of the three regional powers, Riyadh appeared most intent on preventing radicals gaining arms.
It should also be noted that Assad’s allies may also have played a role in ISIS’ rise. The Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper, reported in 2015 that since 2011 Russia’s intelligence agency, the FSB, facilitated the movement of Dagestani Islamists into Syria. The logic of this alleged ‘Green Corridor’ was that it was better to have Russian Islamists fighting abroad, where ideally they would be killed, than have them cause trouble at home.65 Charles Lister notes how a high number of the foreign Jihadists fighting for ISIS were Russian speakers, though many had been living outside Russia prior to 2011.66 Iran’s, albeit indirect, role in ISIS’ rise was easier to see. The Shia militia established by Suleimani himself to resist US occupation in the 2000s practised many of the sectarian policies of the Maliki government that drove some of Iraq’s Sunnis into ISIS.
ISIS therefore had a variety of parents. Indigenous factors cannot be ignored, as a sense of Sunni oppression at the hands of Maliki in Iraq after 2006 (but especially after the US withdrawal in 2011) and Assad in eastern Syria after 2011 generated genuine grass-roots support. Similarly, in the context of this oppression, the sectarian propaganda emanating from elsewhere may have furthered its appeal. But the structural shifts that allowed for ISIS’ rise came from the outside. The weakening of the Iraqi state after the US-led invasion of 2003 created political and physical space for ISIS’ predecessors, AQI and ISI. The Syrian civil war, itself heavily shaped by external actors, created similar space for ISI to expand. The Assad regime, having facilitated AQI and ISI’s activities before 2010, effectively helped the newly declared ISIS to triumph over more moderate opposition. However, the regime was far from alone, with Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in their own way culpable. Weapons and support found their way to ISIS relatively easily with no one actively trying to prevent their rise. Turkey may even have turned a blind eye to ISIS, seeing it as a counterweight to the PYD. Even the US seemed to wilfully neglect and underestimate ISIS’ potential. ISIS’ rise therefore came because too many actors believed it was less of a threat than other, more immediate enemies, and some, especially the regime, saw advantages to be won by its emergence. Such short-termism would come back to haunt all.
Fighting ‘the Caliphate’
The sudden creation of ‘the Caliphate’ shocked most of the external players in the Syrian civil war, prompting a wide-ranging reaction. Moscow, fearful that such a clear success for Middle Eastern Jihadists might inspire those at home, was quick to offer the embattled Iraqi government an emergency delivery of Su-25 attack aircraft in early July. Saudi Arabia was similarly alarmed. In June it strengthened border defences with Iraq, something that proved prescient when ISIS suicide bombers killed three border guards in January 2015.67 Like Russia, Riyadh was most concerned with domestic terrorism. In November, al-Baghdadi released an audio recording urging followers to target Arabia, particularly the Shia minority in the Eastern Province. A few weeks earlier three Saudis had opened fire in a Shia mosque killing nine in Al-Dalwa, Eastern Province, and a series of similar attacks followed in 2015. Iran had potentially the most to lose with ISIS’ advance in Iraq. As well as engineering Maliki’s eventual departure, Tehran immediately ordered Suleimani from Damascus to Baghdad in June. With Iran determined to avoid any partition of Iraq, preferring to keep the whole state in its sphere rather than just the Shia south, the Quds Force General set about reorganising Iraq’s forces to reconquer lost ground.68 The most dramatic response, however, came from Washington, which abandoned its previous aversion to military intervention in Syria.
Obama takes action
The capture of Mosul exposed how much Obama had underestimated ISIS and he quickly reacted. The first concern was Iraq, and a small number of troops were dispatched to Baghdad to assess the threat level, while additional aircraft were sent to the region in June. In August the US launched bombing raids on ISIS positions in Iraq and by September these had been extended into Syria. Washington put together two international coalitions against ISIS, a larger group welcomed by Baghdad, and a smaller one to hit ISIS in Syria, but without Damascus’ permission to violate its sovereignty. Obama remained committed, however, to keeping substantial US troops off the ground. Instead, he offered material support to Iraqi and KRG forces in Iraq and, in late June, unexpectedly announced a $500 million DoD programme to train and equip ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. Unlike the support offered to rebel groups by the US since 2013, this programme was run by the Pentagon, not the CIA.
So why did Obama take action in 2014 against ISIS, when he had sought to avoid striking Assad the year before? First and foremost, ISIS’ advance represented an immediate danger to US regional interests in a way that Assad did not. ISIS was dismembering a state the US had only just left, having invested time and money in rebuilding its institutions that Washington wasn’t willing to write off. It also was advancing on the KRG, a key US regional ally, home to a joint operations centre with the US and Iraqi military in Erbil, and one of the Middle East’s few stable entities. Secondly, attacking ISIS was consistent with Obama’s declared goal since becoming President, of degrading al-Qaeda and militant Jihadists.69 While Assad posed no ideological threat to the US, Jihadism, with its transnational desire to break down borders and specifically target the west, its allies and its regional interests, did. Obama hadn’t believed that ISIS were equivalent to the al-Qaeda network but the Mosul takeover changed his mind.
Finally, domestic factors impacted his thinking. Obama’s authorisation of airstrikes first came on 7 August after the international media had focused on 50,000 Yazidis (an ethnically Kurdish group practising an ancient religion linked to Zoroastrianism) besieged by ISIS on a mountain in Sinjar, Iraq. Addressing the nation on television, Obama cited the prevention of a Yazidi massacre as justification for military action, along with protecting US citizens in Erbil and preventing ISIS’ advance on the KRG. In the coming days ISIS positions around Erbil and Sinjar were bombed, while aid was airdropped to the trapped Yazidis, most of whom eventually escaped with the help of YPG and PKK fighters who had come down to Sinjar. Public opinion also impacted Obama’s decision to widen the campaign, on 3 September, announcing that the US goal was now to ‘degrade, and ultimately destroy’ ISIS. This followed an outcry at the videoed beheading of two US journalist prisoners by ISIS, first James Foley on 19 August and then Steven Sotloff the day before Obama’s announcement. However, while the ever important need to ‘do something’ is likely to have entered the President’s calculations, this declared objective and the subsequent forming of international anti-ISIS coalitions was consistent with Obama’s long-standing anti-Jihadist agenda rather than a sudden folding to public will.70
These solutions proved limited, however. After eighteen months of Operation Inherent Resolve, as the actions against ISIS were named, nearly 11,000 strikes had been launched, two-thirds in Iraq. The US undertook most strikes, particularly in Syria where, by mid-March 2016, 3,401 American attacks had been registered, compared to barely 225 by its coalition partners, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE and the UK.71 US officials estimated that in this time over 22,000 ISIS targets were damaged or destroyed, including 126 tanks, 374 Humvees and 1,162 staging areas. Yet despite degrading ISIS’ military capabilities, and helping to halt some advances in Iraq and Rojava (discussed below), Obama’s declared goal of destroying the Caliphate proved difficult. In the first year of the operation it actually thrived, pushing deeper into western Syria to capture Palmyra from the regime and east into Iraq to gain Ramadi, both in May 2015. Via its polished multilingual propaganda ISIS released videos and publications emphasising its brutality to its enemies and its piousness to potential sympathisers, prompting up to 30,000 foreign Muslims from 86 countries, to abscond to the Caliphate by late 2015.72 Indeed, this propaganda utilised the US-led bombings, and the civilian casualties they caused, to portray itself as yet another Muslim victim of western imperialism. ISIS was fast replacing al-Qaeda as the worldwide beacon of Jihadism; extremists in Libya, Egypt, Nigeria and elsewhere declared their loyalty.
The US was constrained by its unwillingness to deploy its own troops to the ISIS fight, insisting that local partners would do the job. In Iraq that meant the new Baghdad government and the KRG. Washington effectively cooperated with Iran in this, despite Tehran’s muted protests that US strikes on ISIS in Syria (but not Iraq) were illegal.73 In Syria, with the White House committed to Assad’s fall, no such collaboration was entertained, despite impudent proposals from Damascus and some western commentators. Instead, the ‘train and equip’ programme was expected to help fill the vacuum. This hastily put together plan aimed to vet non-radical rebels, and train them in camps in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar before sending them into Syria. Importantly, they were expected to fight ISIS, not Assad. Yet the rebels saw Assad not ISIS as the primary enemy and were deterred from joining. Those that did were delayed by excruciatingly slow vetting.74 Despite aiming for 5,400 trained troops in the first year, Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted in July 2015 that only 60 were ready.75
Moreover, this handful could not match the established Islamist rebels, who were suspicious of the new US-backed forces, opposed its ‘ISIS-first, Assad second’ mission and coveted its weaponry. In late 2014 and early 2015, the radical rebels grew in strength, particularly Nusra and Ahrar, discussed further in Chapter 10. Nusra had already clashed with Harakat al-Hazm, a group benefiting from considerable CIA support. Hazm had been the public face of a CIA–Saudi initiative to boost FSA-aligned militia in northern Syria, receiving US-supplied TOW anti-tank weaponry from April 2014. Yet they clashed with and were defeated by Nusra on several occasions, causing many of their fighters to defect to Nusra and Ahrar, their weaponry to be seized, and, eventually, the militia to disband in March 2015.76 Unsurprisingly the train-and-equip fighters met a similar fate. Soon after Carter’s statement in July, fifty-four fighters of a Pentagon-sponsored ‘New Syrian Force’ (mostly from ‘Division 30’ of the FSA) crossed into Turkey, but within days their leader was abducted by Nusra and their weapons taken. The same happened to seventy-one further fighters in September and, soon afterwards, the train and equip programme was shelved.77
In the first year of the ISIS campaign, the slow progress of airstrikes and the failure of ‘train and equip’ can partly be attributed to strategy. Bombing alone rarely succeeds and the idea of creating a new ground force from scratch was unrealistic.78 That said, given that the US had little more success against ISIS in Iraq where it was cooperating with the government suggests that, had Obama worked directly with Assad, he might have achieved no better results. Both governments were widely hated in ISIS-held territory whatever people’s view of ‘the Caliphate’. Washington’s diplomatic approach created further obstacles. Regional powers joined the bombing coalition but with limited enthusiasm, as none ranked ISIS as the same level of threat as Washington. Riyadh, Doha and Ankara repeated their ongoing pleas that Assad should be dealt with first. Indeed each continued to back, whether directly or indirectly, the rebel groups that helped undermine the train and equip programme.
Turkey was particularly ambiguous toward ISIS after summer 2014. Ankara was unwilling to either join the bombing coalition or allow the US to use Turkish bases until July 2015, when a Turkish soldier was killed in an ISIS attack. This suggested either that Erdoğan underestimated the extent of the threat or, as some posited, that some kind of deal had been made with ‘the Caliphate’ to secure the peaceful release in September 2014 of forty-nine Turks captured in Mosul. Whatever the reason, Turkey’s slowness in mobilising ensured its border into Syria remained porous, allowing foreign supporters relatively easy access. Complicating matters was Ankara’s attitude to the Kurds; it saw the PKK and their Syrian affiliate the PYD as its greatest regional threat – more than Assad and certainly more than ISIS. It therefore proved problematic when the US began backing the PYD as its only viable Syrian ally against ISIS.
In the final days of 2012, Erdoğan had surprisingly announced that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) was in discussion with the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, about a possible peace process. As talks progressed, in March 2013 the PKK announced a ceasefire and a withdrawal of its forces to northern Iraq the following month. Many hoped this marked the end of the long Turkey–PKK conflict that first began in 1984. However, Erdoğan was slow to deliver the promised political and cultural reforms and some feared he was using the peace process cynically. He hoped to persuade enough Kurds to back his party to win a two-thirds ‘super-majority’ in parliament that was needed to change the constitution. The AKP Party’s internal rules prevented Erdoğan from serving a further term as Prime Minister after August 2014 so the super-majority would allow him to transform Turkey into a presidential system with himself as a powerful head of state. Yet the wave of protests against his rule in 2013, and then a public falling out with the powerful supporters of the Turkish Islamist Fethullah Gulen derailed this plan. After deploying excessive force and autocratic means against both enemies, while also recognising that the Kurds would need real concessions that he was unwilling to give, Erdoğan changed tactics. He increasingly saw Turkey’s right-wing nationalists, who strongly opposed any compromise with the PKK, as the route to his super-majority and edged away from the peace process. It helped that the PKK had not upheld its end of the bargain and retained a military presence in Turkey.
It was against this backdrop that Turkey ambivalently observed ISIS’ war with the PYD. Ankara had tightened its ties to the KRG in March 2014 to counter the PYD’s rise in neighbouring Syria. As well as selling Turkey 100,000 b/d of oil from Erbil, without Baghdad’s authorisation, Barzani strengthened the KRG’s western border to prevent KRG-based PKK operatives from supplying the PYD.79 Then on 13 September 2014 ISIS launched a massive assault on the PYD stronghold of Kobane. Despite YPG resistance, by early October ISIS forces had reached the city centre, sending a wave of up to 200,000 Kurdish refugees over the nearby border into Turkey. As ISIS advanced, the PYD begged Turkey to allow resupply from Turkish-based PKK fighters, or even to intervene itself. Ankara refused, seemingly preferring to see the YPG crushed.
The YPG’s brave stand gained global media attention, as did contrasting images of Turkish tanks perched on the border doing nothing. Consequently Ankara came under pressure from both its allies and its appalled domestic Kurdish population, who rioted and demonstrated in several cities.80 Turkey partly relented on 29 October by allowing a small group of approved Syrian FSA fighters into Kobane, and then a larger contingent of Barzani’s Peshmerga from Iraq. The PKK, however, remained blocked, prompting several violent retaliations against the Turkish government. While the combined YPG-Peshmerga-FSA forces eventually turned the tide, pushing ISIS from Kobane by late January 2015, the damage between Ankara and its Kurds was vast. The PKK ceasefire had effectively broken down, prompting an upsurge in violence in 2015, while Kurdish nationalism had been rallied by the Kobane siege, the reverse of Erdoğan’s intention.
In contrast to Turkey, the US swiftly recognised the symbolic importance of Kobane in halting ISIS’ seemingly unstoppable advance and launched multiple airstrikes in support of the YPG from early October. This greatly aided the YPG’s survival and also put the US in contact with the previously unknown force. The US had designated the PKK a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 1997 in support of its NATO ally Turkey, yet now found that its Syrian affiliate was what it was looking for to counter ISIS: an effective, secular, indigenous force. In the months that followed, the Pentagon worked closely with joint forces of YPG and some FSA units, that would eventually form the Syrian Democratic Forces – a YPG-dominated military umbrella in north and eastern Syria.81 Such was the extent of US cooperation, analyst Aron Lund half-joked that, since late 2014, “the United States Air Force has transformed itself into something that more closely resembles the Western Kurdistan Air Force.”.82 Reinforced, the YPG and its various allies successfully pushed back against ISIS in 2015, securing Hasakah in April and capturing Tal-Abyad in July, leaving a long stretch of the Syrian side of the Turkish border under PYD control. While Washington was quietly pleased at finally rolling back ISIS, the manner of the victory and who it empowered placed considerable strain on US–Turkish ties.
Despite the dramatic events of summer 2014 and ISIS’ sudden land grab, the basic structure of the Syrian civil war remained unaltered. Though territory changed hands back and forth, the conflict was essentially stalemated, and sustained as such by outside powers. The regime and the non-ISIS rebel forces both received enough support to survive, but not enough to decisively tip the conflict. Moreover, having invested so heavily in Assad’s survival or demise, none of the external supporters were willing to back down, nor were hurting sufficiently from their involvement to be forced into compromise. The declaration of ISIS’ ‘Caliphate’ did not change this, although it did ultimately exacerbate Assad’s manpower shortage and shift the momentum from the regime back towards the rebels. The US’ reaction and intervention against ISIS added a further layer of complexity to what was already a complex, internationalised civil war.
Obama’s various actions against ISIS did not signify a return to US hegemony over the Middle East; quite the contrary. His unwillingness to consider any substantial ‘boots on the ground’ indicated that, on his watch at least, the days of sizeable US troop deployments in the region were over, even to deal with a clear security threat. Yet the difficulty in finding allies willing to take up the fight against ISIS showed how much the previous years’ disengagement had altered the international relations of the region. Of the major powers involved in Syria, only the US saw ISIS as the number one threat, and while Washington’s regional allies joined in early bombing raids and paid lip service to Obama’s coalition, in reality their priorities were elsewhere. That the US couldn’t persuade its long-standing ally Turkey to allow it to use Turkish airbases or even seriously regulate its border until Turkey itself was targeted was an indicator of how diminished Washington’s influence had become. At the same time, regional players were far more assertive and independent than before, not just the US’ traditional rivals like Iran and Russia organising their own operations against ISIS, but also allies like Saudi Arabia. The US’ slow campaign against ISIS, and its difficulties in rallying sufficient regional support to successfully degrade and destroy it illustrated clearly that though the US may have remained the most powerful player in the Middle East, its days of hegemony were seemingly over. As has been shown, this trend, having already impacted the shape of the Syrian civil war, was now being strongly reinforced by it. Moreover, the extent of perceived US decline in the region was soon to be starkly exposed in late summer 2015, when Russia directly entered the war in support of Assad.