ISIL on the decline
In the summer of 2014 a band of terrorists and assassins bounded onto the stage of history and announced plans to conquer the world. Naming themselves the Islamic State, but often called ISIS or ISIL or Daesh, they proclaimed themselves a caliphate, an ancient form of Islamic government.
For a while, they seemed unstoppable. They stormed into two pitifully crippled states, Iraq and Syria, killing and enslaving wherever they went, pausing now and then to vandalize a precious historic site because it symbolized a heresy.
Disciplined a nd unscrupulous, they set a terrifying pace. But at the moment they seem on a downward curve. Within Iraq, they have lost about 40 per cent of the territory they once controlled and have acquired nothing since last May. In Syria they have lost a fifth of what they had. The defeat of ISIL forces in Ramadi last month was not an isolated event. They have surrendered the cities of Sinjar and Tikrit as well.
To achieve vict ory in Ramadi the anti- ISIL coalition had to marshal about 10,000 troops, heavy artillery, air support and U. S. intelligence. The result was delicately political as well as forcefully military. Which element in the coalition wins a battle is at least as important as the victory itself. As Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution commented, “It was essential to put a Sunni face on the retaking of an overwhelmingly Sunni town, as well as have security personnel whom the Sunni populace would accept and trust. Iraqis haven’t forgotten the human rights abuses that Shiite militiamen committed after the fall of Tikrit.”
There are Shiite soldiers along with the Sunnis in the coalition but reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites — enemies since the 10th century — remains more a hope than an expectation. It was necessary to keep the participation of Iranian- backed Shiite militia at a minimum. They could not be allowed to take credit and the Americans did all they could to keep that from happening. Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the coalition, emphasized that Ramadi was a “a proud moment for Iraq” and for the Iraqi Army, the Counter Terrorism Service, the Iraqi Air Force and tribal fighters. Their progress was hampered by ISIL booby traps, snipers and the destruction of the bridges leading to Ramadi. But the nasty, sectarian competition within the struggle against ISIL was just as troublesome.
ISIL has also been weakened by an element in politics they probably despise, public opinion. Wherever they go, the local people (Sunni as well as Shiite) hate and fear them. Daniel Pipes, one of the most eloquent writers on Middle East developments, sums it up in a sentence: “To know Islamists is to reject them.”
Islamists are the totalitarian branch of Islam. They believe in the dictatorship of belief, the elimination of infidels and a severe and merciless religious code.
Hostility to them develops across a nation as well as in a village. In Egypt the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood introduced a fairly moderate form of Islamist policy under their leader and president, Mohamed Morsi. After a year, massive demonstrations drove Morsi and his gang from office. They were replaced by the military government of Abdel Fattah el- Sisi. He appears eager to exceed in brutality President Hosni Mubarak, whose forced resignation in 2011 was considered one of the glories of the Arab Spring.
Globally, police have recently made progress in opposing Islamists. In Bosnia- Herzegovina they charged a gang plotting a murderous attack in Sarajevo. The attackers were described as “close to Islamic State.” The supreme court in Bangladesh has upheld the death sentence for murder of an Islamist l eader. In Indonesia, t he world’s most populous Muslim nation, an anti- terror squad ( acting on intelligence provided by the FBI and Australian police) arrested six men suspected of planning suicide bombings. They had a black flag inspired by the Islamic State.
The Islamists are far from defeated but their internal weakness might in the end do them the most harm. “The Shiite-Sunni conflict is boiling,” according to a former senior official of Israel’s Mossad, quoted the other day in the Jerusalem Post. Saudi Arabia’s execution of a popular Shiite cleric has led to a breakdown in diplomatic relations between a majority Sunni nation ( Saudi Arabia) and a majority Shiite nation ( Iran). If that moves down to the level of the jihad, it could produce another wave of homicide, one t hat will prompt many to echo the comment of Henry Kissinger during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. He said it was “a shame that there can only be one loser.”
IN SYRIA, THEY’VE LOST A FIFTH OF THEIR TERRITORY. IN IRAQ, 40%.