Unintended Consequences of Obamas ISIS Plan

by Don Liebich | September 29, 2014

Over the last two weeks, the U.S. has begun an air campaign in Iraq and Syria,
bombing ISIS ammunition inventories, carrying out targeted killings of ISIS leaders,
destroying military equipment that ISIS has captured from the Iraqi military,
blowing up oil refineries all in an effort to degrade the capability of ISIS or the
Islamic State (IS). This tactic, seeming to have short-term success, carries
substantial risk of unintended consequences that could pose a greater threat to U.S.
security than that presented by the current Islamic State.

This is not the first intervention in the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
that has resulted in unintended consequences that have come home to roost. The
most egregious example is the arming, financing and training of the mujahideen to
fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which eventually resulted in the 9/11 attacks.
Another example is the U.S.-led overthrow of Libyas Muammar Gaddafi which
empowered and strengthened al-Qaeda in North Africa, resulting in growing chaos
and instability throughout the region.
Ever since his September 8 announcement of the U.S. plan to degrade and destroy
ISIS, President Obama has done little to explain exactly what degrade and destroy
means in terms of a strategic goal and the tactics that will be used to achieve it. The
tactics that seem to be emerging are a combination of air strikes in Syria and Iraq,
designed to harass ISIS forces, and an effort to train and equip the Iraqi Army,
Kurdish Peshmerga and so-called moderate rebel groups in Syria to bear the brunt of
the ground combat necessary to dislodge ISIS from the territory that it has
conquered in eastern Syria and Central Western Iraq. As Obama has pointed out, the
program to train these regional fighters is a long-term project and, in my opinion,
given the failure of the multi-year, multi-billion dollar effort to train the Iraqi Army
following the invasion of Iraq, has dubious prospects for success.
However, the prospects for unintended consequences from the aerial harassment
campaign are great:
The blowback from civilian collateral damage from the air strikes, which are based on
limited intelligence, is certain to incentivize ISIS to attack the far enemy, the U.S.,
rather than concentrating its efforts on maintaining a grip on the conquered
territory.
In early air strikes, the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
reports that eight civilians including three children have been killed. All of these have
brothers, sisters, friends and fellow tribe members who are now very angry with the
U.S. Some may actually live in the U.S. Already the Department of Homeland Security
has warned of security threats originating in Syria.
Aleppo-based al-Monitor correspondent, Edward Dark, (a pseudonym) reports, It
would be foolish to believe that U.S. military action against IS is popular here or will
go down well, especially when civilian casualties start to mount. On the contrary, it
will most likely prove counterproductive, stoking anti-Western resentment among the
population and increasing support for IS, driving even more recruits to its ranks. The
terror group knows this well, which is why it is secretly overjoyed at the prospect of
military action against it. In its calculations, the loss of fighters to strikes is more
than outweighed by the outpouring of support it expects both locally and on the
international jihadist scene.
Because the harassment campaign will not dislodge ISIS from the territory that it
controls, the nation states of Syria and Iraq as we have known them since shortly
after World War I will disappear. While the final outcome of the campaign to
degrade ISIS is unclear, the most likely result is the creation of rump states in
western and southern Syria controlled by the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, a
Shite-controlled Iraqi state in southern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled rump state in
northern Iraq and either a chaotic or ISIS-controlled state in eastern Syria and
central/western Iraq.
Statements by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that, Baghdad and the holy sites (in
Karbala) are a red line for Iran seem to indicate that Iran is okay with the breakup
of Iraq as long as it doesnt infringe on Iran and the Iraqi Shite population. An
outcome that leaves ISIS in control, however tenuously, does not seem to be a recipe
for stability.
Unless the Obama administration is able to find a way to put boots on the ground
sufficient to restore the status quo ante an unlikely prospect given its poor
relations with the most powerful players, Iran, Turkey and Syria the probable
outcome is a drastically altered map of the Middle East. Since the U.S. cannot
prevent the unintended consequences, the key to dealing with this situation is to
recognize and deal with the down sides.
Don Liebich is the author ofFault Lines: The Layman's Guide to Understanding
America's Role in the Ever-Changing Middle East, a native of New York, and a
graduate of the Harvard Business School PMD program. He spent his career with the
U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine service and Sysco Corp. He has traveled extensively to
the Middle East and has been involved with economic development, citizen diplomacy
and human rights projects in Jordan, Israel/Palestine including the West Bank, UAE
and Iran, where he has as a citizen diplomat met with leaders from Hamas and
Hezbollah, among other groups, which has afforded him a unique understanding of
U.S./Middle East foreign policy.