At last, a working model for military intervention

The fight against Isil shows the West it’s better to back local forces with air strikes and training than to invade

After all the controversies that have raged over Britain’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it does seem perverse that little credit is being given to the British military’s contribution to defeating Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

This is, I believe, a consequence of the unpopularity of our recent wars. For all the good intentions about liberating the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq from the respective tyrannies of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the sheer scale of the Western response has led many to conclude that, in the end, the military presence caused more problems than it solved.

This has led politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to avoid the use of ground forces whenever possible. Almost the first mantra you hear politicians utter these days, whenever a new security challenge arises, is that, whatever their response will be, there will be “no boots on the ground”. No wonder the Army finds it a struggle to maintain its recruitment levels.

These strictures, moreover, have had a direct bearing on how the Us-led coalition has approached the daunting task of defeating Isil in Syria and Iraq.

There have, it is true, been a significant number of American and other allied ground forces deployed to the Middle East to fight Isil, although the majority are used in mentoring, training and intelligencegathering roles. Only small units of special forces are actually carrying the fight to the enemy, and most of these are fighting alongside local units, such as Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service and Kurdish groups in northern Syria.

For the rest, the main focus of the coalition effort has been to provide effective support, through air strikes and the like, to the Iraqi armed forces on the ground, who have ultimate responsibility for prosecuting the military campaign against Isil.

And that is how it should be. For when, as now seems increasingly likely, the Iraqis are able to claim they have defeated Isil and eliminated the last pockets of resistance from Mosul, it will be the Iraqi government, and not some swashbuckling American general, who claims the credit.

It looks like it might be a similar picture in Syria, too, where Westernbacked rebel groups such as the Syrian Democratic Forces are also reported to be making good progress in their campaign to evict Isil from its last remaining redoubt at Raqqa.

Our inconclusive interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted the better part of a decade. The campaign to destroy Isil’s self-proclaimed Caliphate will have been accomplished within the space of around two years.

However, the important contribution that Britain and other coalition members have made to the success of this campaign should not be under-estimated.

The US, it is true, has provided most of the air support. But the RAF, too, has made a telling contribution, flying hundreds of sorties against Isil targets.

With the war against Isil, therefore, the West seems finally to have hit upon a workable paradigm for conducting military operations in failed or failing states. While the fighting on the ground is left to local forces, the West helps by providing air cover and other vital support services. That way, the West achieves its goal of destroying its enemies while avoiding the criticism that it is indulging neocolonial ambitions.

But if the anti-isil campaign demonstrates the merits of taking a more considered approach to the challenges of modern conflict, our politicians need also to remember that winning the peace is every bit as important as declaring victory over the enemy.

Both Syria and Iraq have suffered widespread devastation as a result of Isil – in Syria’s case it could prove terminal – and the priority now must be to provide the political and diplomatic support that is required in order to engender a degree of stability. There is certainly cause for optimism as far as Iraq is concerned, despite all the woeful predictions that the country will fragment. Haider al-abadi, the Prime Minister of Iraq, has indicated that he wants to hold a week-long celebration of Isil’s defeat in Mosul – once it actually happens.

This would certainly be a good moment to unite the entire country around a single cause – namely that of making sure Iraq never again falls victim to the evil designs of Islamist fanatics.

This new sense of national purpose might also encourage the Shiadominated government in Baghdad to undertake a proper political reconciliation with the Sunnis, and even persuade the Kurds that their interests are best served by remaining part of Iraq rather than opting to go down the perilous path to full independence.

Syria, which has to contend with the competing interests of Russia and Iran, as well as its own internal factionalism, is a far more challenging prospect, although efforts must still be made to bring some sense of normality to the country.

Otherwise all the achievements of the past two years will amount to little more than a Pyrrhic victory.