IS strength grows as its enemies divide
The Islamic State (IS) still rules most of the territories it captured last year in Iraq and Syria. It may no longer be expanding, but it is little diminished, despite 2,500 US air strikes hitting its military forces and economic infrastructure.
The much-heralded offensive by some 25,000 Iraqi government forces aimed at recapturing the small city of Tikrit has ground to a halt over the past week, though US officials say the city is held by only a few hundred IS fighters. The faltering assault, though it may ultimately succeed, bodes ill for plans to recapture the much larger city of Mosul later in the year.
The battle for Tikrit illustrates one of the great strengths of the IS: the divisions of its many enemies.
In this case the attack force is made up of 20,000 Shia militia that are armed and directed by Iran. There are only 3,000 Iraqi army soldiers. The US says it is not supporting the advance with air strikes because it has not been asked to do so.
It is also concerned about its aircraft becoming the flying artillery for anti-Sunni sectarian cleansing by Shia militias. Iran and the US may both be combating the socalled IS, but they are conducting very different wars. Consequently, Tikrit has been a long time falling despite the IS being so wholly outnumbered.
The preservation of the IS depends on its powers of resistance and the strength of the forces now battering at its outer defences. The inability so far of the US-led coalition, including the UK, France, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers, to win victories against the IS is explained by failures that are political rather than military.
Crucially, the US and its allies are not giving air support to the Shia militias and the Syrian army, which are the two largest ground forces fighting against the IS. The importance of ground-air co-operation was made plain by the siege of the Syrian-Kurdish town of Kobani which the IS failed to take over thanks to co-operation between Syrian Kurdish fighters and American aircraft that carried out 700 air strikes. Likewise in Iraq, the only place where the US and its allies were able to help drive back the IS was in Sinjar, where their aircraft were co-operating with Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
The IS can probably hold out against attacks from a US-backed coalition or an Iranian-backed one if each fights separately, but not against a combination of the two. American and Western European leaders may feel that they have done enough to pen the IS into the admittedly vast area it conquered last year. Certainly, it has made no significant advances since last October and has lost some territory, but the belief that it can safely be left to its own barbaric devices is short-sighted.
The IS is not going to implode because of mounting popular discontent within its borders. Its enemies may deride its pretensions to be a real state, but in terms of the ability to conscript troops, raise taxes and impose its brutal variant of Islam, it is stronger than many neighbouring countries.
In recent weeks The Independent has sought to discover the real state of feeling among people living within that portion of the IS inside Iraq. In a series of interviews published this week we have spoken to Iraqis who have just left the self-declared caliphate and can tell from recent experience what it is really like. We asked people from Sunni Arab towns and cities along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers such as Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karnah and Hit what their lives are like and how they rate the chances of the IS surviving.
Many express detestation or disillusionment with their present rulers, but none predicted their imminent defeat. Almost all those questioned are Sunni Arabs and many said that, as bad as the IS might be, the alternative in the shape of a corrupt and sectarian government might be even worse. “We hate the IS but imagine if the Shia militia were the substitute for it,” said Faisal, a former government employee from Hit on the Euphrates west of Baghdad. “The situation would be more horrible. Every substitute is worse than the previous one.”
The IS feels itself under growing military and economic pressure, but it has also shown itself capable of rising to the challenge. It has long borders to defend, requiring many more soldiers than the 5,000 or so it fielded before the capture of Mosul on June 10 last year. Its front line with the Iraqi Kurds alone is 960 kilometres long (compare this with the Western Front in 1914 that was just 700km long). The response by the IS is to conscript one man of military age from every family living in territory under its control and, since the population under its rule numbers about six million, this means that it is becoming a far larger military organisation than it was last year.
Of course, seeing their sons disappear into an army from which they may never return, is not popular with their families. Many interviews conducted by The Independent were with people who had recently fled IS territory because military service has become obligatory (previously, men who paid a large fine were excused from service). Ali Hussein Mustafa, a student in Mosul, explains that his family finally left because the IS recently amended the conscription law to include men under 18, which meant that his younger brother became liable for military service. Society within the self-declared caliphate is being militarised.
The standard of living within the IS is deteriorating, but this will not necessarily weaken its authority because what resources there are go to its fighting forces. Hamza, a fighter who defected, says that while he was not particularly well paid (the equivalent of 11,200 baht a month) this did not matter because the money was “in addition to many privileges, including food, fuel and, more recently, access to the internet”. The same view is repeated by Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Mosul, who adds that foreign fighters do even better, with excellent privileges in terms of salaries, spoils and even captives.
The new recruits are well trained. The IS continues to blend religious fanaticism with military expertise. Kurdish commanders who have come under attack in recent weeks say that IS units fight as well as ever and are able to sustain heavy casualties without flinching.
At the same time, Islamic rule is becoming more unpopular because of its bizarre religious ideology, conscription, falling standards of living and its extreme violence. This might seem to provide fertile soil for a movement to resist the IS as happened in 2006-07 when the US succeeded in turning many of the tribes against al-Qaeda in Iraq which, like the IS today, had become hated and feared by many Sunni.
But today there is unlikely to be a repeat of the anti-al-Qaeda “Awakening Movement” because the IS is stronger than its predecessor and there is no American army in Iraq to fund, arm and protect an anti-IS Sunni armed opposition.
The terrible fate of tribes and all others who oppose the IS was explained in an Independent interview earlier this year with Sheikh Na’eem al-Gu’ood, the leader of the previously powerful Albu Nimr tribe of western and central Iraq. Last year, the Albu Nimr did rise up against the IS, much as they had done against al-Qaeda in Iraq eight years earlier. They fought for almost 11 months before they ran out of ammunition and were overwhelmed.
Sheikh Na’eem says that since the first killings of Albu Nimr, which began on Oct 25 last year, “the total number of victims in our tribe has reached 864 dead. In addition to which there are many missing whose numbers we don’t know.” He describes it as genocide directed against a single tribe. Nobody was spared IS vengeance, with women and children being killed and thrown into wells. Survivors have fled into the desert or other parts of Iraq.
Asked why the IS was able to take over the giant Anbar province in such a short amount of time, Sheikh Na’eem says: “The main reason is that 90% of the tribes in Anbar collaborated with the IS or joined them except for ourselves.” He complains bitterly that the Albu Nimr got no support from the Iraqi government or the Americans which led to the mass killings. He says the situation is very different from 2006 when his tribe fought alongside the US Army. “Later when the IS came, they considered us the friends and allies of the Americans,” he says. “That is why the IS fights us and considers the killing of our men, women and children lawful.”
The IS doesn’t only target hostile tribes but anybody who has worked for the Iraqi government as soldiers or policemen. At Harshem refugee camp on the outskirts of Irbil, Sunni Arabs explain why they fled there. Ghanim, a 60-year-old former Iraqi army soldier who supports himself on a crutch because he lost a leg fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, says: “I fled because my son is fighting in the Iraqi army today and the IS would punish us for this.”
The IS likes to demonstrate that its vengeance is unrelenting. Abu Ahmed, a community leader who fled to Irbil when the IS took over in Mosul last June, says he left his 100-year-old mother behind in his house in Mosul. One day last September: “IS men came and took my mother out of the house. Then they blew it up and placed a video on Facebook to show me the destruction of my home.”
A rebellion against the IS is unlikely to succeed unless its rule is first weakened by military defeat. That defeat may be a long time coming so long as its external enemies remain divided.
As bad as the IS might be, the alternative in the shape of a corrupt and sectarian government might be even worse.