Unity will defeat Isil

Yesterday brought hope of a breakthrough in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with a Kurdish assault on the important Iraqi town of Sinjar. Isil is highly mobile and its troops can easily dodge aerial assaults, so it has fallen to these Kurds to do the bloody, risky work on the ground that Western governments, terrified of repeating past mistakes, refuse to countenance. Reliance on the Kurds, however, is problematic. Their armies are politically divided and have contrasting strategies. They are united by a hunger for statehood – something opposed by another vital regional player, Turkey. Bringing order to the Middle East thus increasingly feels like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that refuse to fit together.

Today, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, is in Turkey to discuss cooperation over defeating terrorism. He has a hard task ahead of him. The Turkish government despises Syria’s Bashar alAssad and wants him gone, but is terrified of a heavily armed Kurdish movement entrenching itself along the border. Turkey has sensibly decided to put Syria and Iraq on the agenda at this weekend’s meeting of the G20, and perhaps this will encourage greater collaboration. As military minds turn towards taking Raqqa, the self-declared capital of Isil in northern Syria, unity of purpose is needed.

Ultimately, Isil will only be beaten if the people of Syria and Iraq are offered a compelling, coherent alternative to dictatorship and chaos. The Kurds are fighting for their freedom; the Shia are fighting to resist Sunni domination; ethnic and religious minorities are fighting for their survival. At present, too few are fighting for a democratic Syria or a peaceful, multi-ethnic Iraq.