isis policy proposal
TRANSCRIPT
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John Barry
18 December 2015
POL 296
Professor Williams
ISIS War in Iraq and Syria Policy Proposal
ISIS is executing a multiple front civil war in Iraq and Syria. Their presence has
transformed both of these conflicts into one large religious war. Because of the nature of this
religious war, and the degree to which ISIS embraces and capitalizes on its position as a religious
army, the degree of brutality in the wars has increased since they entered the fray in April 2013.
This has increased the scale of the war and made traditional resolution, whether among the
parties taking part in the civil war or via an international mediator effectively impossible.
This limits American policy options. Many forms of direct intervention would be
ineffective at best and aggravating at worst. The oft called for “boots on the ground” approach is
likely the most notable offender, as there is no chance it would lead to a resolution and may
enhance the problem by creating martyrs. My policy recommendations mostly entail a
reprioritization of our current policy towards the war, with one additional recommendation that,
while likely effective, would surely be politically unfeasible both domestically and
internationally.
Prioritize getting spiritual leaders in the area to condemn ISIS. Undercut the religious
argument.
Continue airstrikes to keep ISIS in a holding pattern until other policies come to bear.
Support Assad’s forces, and help him create a coalition to combat ISIS domestically (not
feasible).
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Nature and Scope of the Problem
Coding of the War
When attempting to code the civil wars ISIS is waging, it is necessary to make some
assumptions. ISIS currently controls a territorial caliphate that includes portions of both Iraq and
Syria. Coincidentally, both Iraq and Syria are in the midst of separate civil wars, each of which
includes a multitude of factions, all of whom are supported by different international actors. The
Syrian Civil War, for example, currently includes no less than four factions on the ground;
Assad’s forces, rebels fighting Assad, ISIS, and the Kurds. When you add to this mix another,
different civil war that includes another set of factions, it becomes almost impossible to generate
a testable case against any theoretical model when considering the entire timespan of both wars.
The Syrian Civil War began eight years after the outbreak of the Iraq War and was fought along
vastly different circumstances, so attempting to fit one model across both wars would be futile.
Therefore, this paper will treat ISIS’s entry into the two wars as the beginning of a new civil war
itself. This is because in many ways, it truly is a new war, especially in Syria. Has ISIS joined
the war as yet another rebel group fighting Assad, it would have been easy to designate it another
event in the war that does not fundamentally change the tenor of war. However, ISIS is not
aligned with the Syrian rebels who began their war against Assad, nor is it aligned with the
Syrian state. Instead, it sees itself as a transnational polity, whose main objective is the
acquisition of territory. Therefore, this paper will consider the ISIS civil war in Iraq and Syria
which began on April 9, 2013 when the Islamic State in Iraq first announced that it was
expanding its operations into Syria and rebranded itself ISIS (Lister 20). While technically the
force in Syria at the time was what is now known as Jabhat al-Nusra and was not a branch of the
Islamic State, this moment represented the adoption of the transnational ideology that has been
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central to ISIS’s ideology. In addition, this paper will lean more towards an analysis of the
Syrian front of ISIS’s offensive. The first reason for this is that the Syrian Civil War more
closely models a traditional civil war and thus involvement there will be more likely to
Through this framework, it bears investigating whether the conflict ISIS finds itself in is
a traditional civil war at all. Its primary antagonist is not a state apparatus, and it does not link
itself to any previously existing state. One could make an argument that it contains more
elements of extrastate war than intrastate war. However, when applying the criteria that
Sambanis uses in “What is Civil War?”, it can be coded as a civil war. The requirements that
measure the severity of the war, such as casualties and intensity, are not in question. The key
provision in Sambanis’s coding is, “The government (through its military or militias) must be a
principal combatant” (Sambanis 829). While Assad’s forces have rarely confronted ISIS directly,
they certainly are a principal combatant. ISIS has confronted Iraqi military personnel directly,
which fulfills the requirement on the Iraqi front as well.
The next issue of coding involves whether to consider the ISIS civil war in Iraq and Syria
a religious civil war, an ethnic civil war, or neither. This is important to later analysis, as its
coding will change which models should apply to the case. ISIS’s stated goal is to create a Sunni
Islamic state that spans across previously defined borders. Combatant Abu Omar is quoted as
saying, “We are getting stronger every day in Sham and Iraq but it will not end there—of course,
one day we’ll defeat all the taghut regimes and bring back Islam to the whole region, including
al-Quds [Jerusalem]” (Lister 56). In works by scholars on religious civil war such as that of
Tufts, 2007, a civil war is coded as religious based on the discretion of the observer. She codes
wars as religious based on central importance and peripheral importance, and does this without
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any discernible coding model. By this standard, statements like that of Omar are more than
enough to classify ISIS’s campaign as a religious war.
Potential Consequences of the War and American Response
The war threatens to destabilize the region. While the war is currently a civil war mostly
contained to a contiguous region on the border between Iraq and Syria, ISIS has designs to
expand the war throughout the Middle East. This would result in a jihadist theocracy, which
every nation around the world wants to avoid.
Thus far, the United States’s response to the war has been multipronged. First, the United
States has developed a program to shelter up to 10,000 Syrian refugees displaced by the war.
Second, the United States has trained and armed several rebel groups in Syria, some of whom
have fought ISIS, and some of whom have fought Assad’s Syrian forces. Third, the United States
has attempted to counter ISIS’s message, primarily by collaborating with allies in the region such
as Egypt and Saudi Arabia and coaxing religious leaders to issue fatwahs against ISIS. Fourth,
the United States has begun a counter-finance campaign that aims to destroy ISIS’s refining
capability and other avenues of power. Finally, the United States has conducted airstrikes in both
Iraq and Syria in an effort to degrade ISIS’s power (United States Cong. Committee on Foreign
Affairs 5-6). While these steps have succeeded in rolling back some of ISIS’s gains, they have
been ineffective in eradicating the threat. In addition, the United States’ focus on ISIS has
diverted its attention from seeking a settlement with Assad’s regime.
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Analysis
Origins of the Conflict
Although ISIS’s wars in Syria and Iraq are primarily coded as religious civil wars, they
also fit under Sambanis’s model as an identity war, which encompasses both religious wars and
ethnic wars. According to this model, factors strongly linked with the outbreak of identity war
include an ethnically heterogeneous society, the presence of war in bordering countries, a group
with a political grievance, and a politically unfree society. Iraq and Syria at the time of the
outbreak of ISIS’s involvement in the war fit many of these criteria.
Most obviously, wars were already raging in both regions where ISIS eventually joined
the fight. While not as self-evident as the first point, the other factors hold true as well. Both Iraq
and Syria are highly ethnically heterogeneous. Syria contains a Shia Alawait government, but the
population is majority Sunni Arabs. There is also a significant Kurd presence. Iraq is led by a
Shia government, but it too has large Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations.
Neither country enjoys a high degree of political freedom. According to Freedom
House’s “Freedom in the World” index from the year that ISIS joined the conflict, 2013, both
Iraq and Syria garnered a “not free” rating. In addition, both Iraqis and Syrians could make a
compelling case for political grievances. Assad used chemical weapons against his citizens,
while the Shia government excluded Sunnis from most political representation after Hussein’s
Sunni government was overthrown. However, typically you would expect aggression towards the
state after situations like this. While ISIS has come in combat with Syrian troops at times, they
fight significantly more with Syrian rebels than the state. However, the political exclusion they
suffer as Sunnis could explain why they are more aggressive towards the Iraqi State.
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Intensity
In his paper, “Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent and Magnitude
of Religious Conflict from 1950 to 1996”, Fox finds that religious wars tend to be more intense
than non-religious wars. The variables used to measure intensity include number of combatants,
number of fatalities, and portion of country affected by fighting. While the conflicts in Iraq and
Syria prior to the entry of ISIS into the fray included religious components with the tension
between Sunni and Shia, it was not as prevalent as it became once ISIS declared their intention to
form an Islamic caliphate. The fact that both sides of the religious conflict are Muslim is not
surprising, as Fox finds that Muslims engage in inter-religious war at a higher rate than any other
religious group. Therefore, if Fox’s theory holds true, one would expect the intensity of the civil
war to increase once ISIS got involved and transformed the war into an explicitly religious war.
There was indeed a significant increase in casualties after ISIS joined the Syrian Civil
War in 2013. In 2011, 7,841 people died, while in 2012, 49,294 died. The increase is partially
due to the fact that 2012 was the first full year of war. However, after ISIS joined the war in
2013, casualties jumped, as 73,447 people died in 2013 and 76,021 died in 2014. Every year
since 2012 has featured enough casualties to rank at the most intense level for Fox’s model, but
the jump in casualties coinciding with the introduction of ISIS is undeniable.
Likewise, the map of conflict has expanded since the introduction of ISIS, as much of
Eastern Syria, which was not involved in the original civil war, has been conquered by ISIS. It is
extremely difficult to gauge how many fighters are involved in the Syrian Civil War at any one
time due to the large number of rebel factions. However, the first two criteria display that there
was indeed an uptick in intensity when the war became more explicitly religious.
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Intervention
According to Kaufmann, intervention in ethnic wars cannot follow the same pattern as
intervention in non-ethnic wars. He would expect a successful resolution of ethnic war in one of
three circumstances: when a party wins complete victory, win the war is suppressed by a military
occupation (although this resolution only lasts as long as the occupier is willing to stay), or a
partition granting each ethnicity its own state.
Unfortunately, the religious component in the case of ISIS makes a successful resolution
even more difficult. Consider the total victory path. This is the most likely way that the ISIS civil
war will eventually end. If the United States could intervene in order to build a coalition between
a few of the other warring factions to directly stage a multilateral campaign against ISIS, they
might eventually be successful. However, this possibility remains unlikely, considering the level
of animosity that still exists between the Syrian rebels and Assad’s government. Additionally,
this approach could take a very long time. One prolonging factor of religious wars is the fact that
martyrdom is often seen as a noble death (Toft 100). ISIS will not come to a resolution in order
to avoid further deaths.
The second solution, which again could work as a temporary stopgap, would face much
the same problem as the first issue. ISIS would never surrender no matter how many casualties
we inflicted during our intervention. Thus, we would be pouring resources into a stopgap
measure that would revert back to its original state as soon as we pulled out. The American
public likely does not have the patience for another war of this type again. The only way this
could be a marginally successful strategy is if the United States could also successfully form a
coalition of other factions to continue the fight against ISIS domestically and exterminate them.
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The third form of intervention that Kaufmann suggests for ethnic conflicts would not be
effective in the case of ISIS. There is no doubt that there are religious and ethnic components to
ISIS’s violence. Indeed, their justification for war is religious. However, they are motivated by
the desire to acquire territory above all else. This is why, in Syria, they have fought the Sunni
rebels more often than they have the Shia Alwaite government. A multistate solution would do
nothing to pacify their desire for more territory. An intervention of this form would do nothing to
end the war and may lead to even greater degrees of brutality.
Termination
According to Toft, one of the problematic results of religious civil war is increased
difficulty in reaching a termination. This is partially a result of outbidding, another effect of
religious civil war. Leaders try to display their religious credentials in order to attract support
from locals in the region. This often results in an escalation of tensions. ISIS has clearly done
this from the moment they joined the war, as their very nature is that of an extreme jihadist
theocracy.
Because of this cycle of religious bidding and other factors associated with religious
wars, they often extend far beyond when one would expect a war governed by self-interest to
end. Therefore, Toft finds it likely that any settlement reached in situations of religious war are
likely to only be temporary unless it is achieved through total victory.
The Syrian war undeniably fits this model. However, before it could even get to the point
where it could act irrationally because of its religious beliefs, any steps toward settlement would
fail due to the very nature of ISIS and the chaos surrounding its caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Due
to the extreme lengths that ISIS has gone to during its military, it has received universal
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condemnation from the entire world community. As currently constructed, they would not find
one state actor who would be willing to enter into good faith negotiations with them. Therefore,
any settlement is impossible.
However, in order to apply Toft’s model, we can make an assumption that ISIS was
somehow able to find a negotiating partner with the ability to grant it a satisfactory settlement.
Say, for example, that Iraq and Syria offer to create an Islamic State whose borders fall
generously along the current frontline of battle. A rational actor would accept this form of
settlement. However, Toft argues that religious actors in war are not rational and do not act to
reach settlements rationally. Based on the statements made by ISIS members, her theory would
apply to the group. Their stated goal is to create a global caliphate. To limit that to a relatively
small area on the border of Iraq and Syria.would be a betrayal of their ethos. Even if they were to
temporarily agree to such an arrangement, it seems likely that tensions would erupt again leading
back to war, just as Toft predicts.
Conclusions
The ISIS war in Iraq and Syria is a difficult case for hopes of intervention because of the
high level of religiosity inherent in its most aggressive faction. Every theory of civil war that
posits that the introduction of religion into a war will intensify the war is proved valid by the
ISIS war in Iraq and Syria. The only instance where the ISIS war varied from the model actually
made Kaufmann’s already restrictive theory of how foreign intervention could yield positive
outcomes in cases of ethnic civil war even more restrictive.
There is no evidence in any of the theoretical models that suggests that ISIS will halt its
aggression. If it adheres to its current mode of war, ISIS will continue to act aggressively until it
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suffers total defeat. Unfortunately, total defeat for a faction fighting a religious war has a high
barrier to entry, as these fighters are not adverse to making themselves martyrs for their cause.
Therefore, total defeat would likely only occur if a multilateral coalition of domestic factions
operated together with the expressed purpose of destroying ISIS. With the sectarianism currently
rampant in the region, this is unlikely.
However, it is also unlikely that ISIS will do much to expand its current borders. The air
strikes underway by the United States and other world powers will not defeat ISIS, but they do
slow its expansion. Instead, ISIS will most likely spend the foreseeable future acting out its
brutal form of religious warfare on the same region, with a possible move outside of the region
into terrorist attacks in other regions if they grow frustrated by the war of attrition that awaits
them.
Policy Recommendations
As has been stated by multiple theorists, religious wars tend to escalate in terms of
intensity and duration. The introduction of ISIS into the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts created a
brand new war that was fundamentally different than the tenor of the wars that preceded it,
especially the Syrian Civil War. The chances of reaching a settlement with ISIS due to their
religious nature are almost none, no matter how many battlefield casualties they sustain. The
promise of martyrdom that accompanies battlefield death in religious war may even mean that a
significant escalation of intervention could actually aggravate the issue.
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Therefore, the suggestion that we put boots on the ground is unwise. The only way that
boots on the ground could bring about an end to this civil war would be if the American led
ground force eradicated every member of ISIS. The brutality that this would entail would yield
terrible optics, hurting us on the world stage. Otherwise, the United States would become
embroiled in another endless war as it tries to force a rational settlement with a group that all
evidence points to would refuse any settlement. It would likely result in the United States pulling
out after expending a great deal of blood and treasure but would not contribute a great deal to the
settlement of the war.
Our best chance to bring about a peaceful end to this conflict is to attempt to shift the war
back to a war of political grievance instead of a war of religion. If the war currently included just
Assad’s forces and the Sunni Rebels that began the first civil war in 2011, a settlement could be
well within grasp. Unfortunately, it is more difficult for a war to drift from non-religious to
religious than the other way around. However, if we are to have any chance of creating a
settlement, we must try to find a way to remove the religious aspect from this war.
This is why, although it is not publicized as much as our other policies in the region, our
current approach of convincing Muslim spiritual leaders to speak out against ISIS is extremely
effective. ISIS’s power comes through its ability to religiously outbid every other faction. By
deteriorating its claim to the religion of Islam, we can work to reduce its claim as a war of
religion. After doing this, we and other may be able to broker some form of settlement.
Barring this best case scenario, we should refocus on the conflict between Assad and the
rebels in Syria. There are so many factions currently fighting in Syria that it is unlikely that any
one group will break through for a sustained string of battlefield victories. Even ISIS has not
seen much change in its territorial holding recently. If one side can break through as the chief
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competitor to ISIS, they may be able to roll back ISIS’s gains. That faction would face the same
settlement problem once they move onto fight ISIS because they would still be fighting a
religious war. However, although the Syrian rebels and Assad’s forces are embroiled in a larger
religious war, neither of them has displayed the religious bidding that makes settlement difficult.
Therefore, pushing for a settlement between these factions is a legitimate strategy. Whichever
faction that was would be better equipped than American forces to fight a war of attrition within
their own territory. Unfortunately, while we have attempted to do this by training and equipping
rebel forces to fight Assad’s forces and ISIS, this has been out least effective mode of
intervention thus far. This would be completely politically unfeasible, but if the United States
truly wanted to bring about the best chance of ending the rest of the fighting in Syria in order to
end the war with ISIS, it could throw its support behind Assad. This move would be extremely
unpopular both domestically and amongst our allies, so it remains unfeasible.
Our most discusses current form of policy intervention, air strikes, will not end the civil
war but continued air strikes can function to contain ISIS while one of these other policy
recommendations takes its course.
On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this
paper.
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Works Cited
Fox, Jonathan. "Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent and Magnitude of
Religious Conflict from 1950 to 1996." International Political Science Review Int Polit
Sci Rev 25.1 (2004): 55-76. Web.
"Freedom in the World 2013." Freedom House. Freedom House, 2013. Web. 18 Dec. 2015.
Kaufmann, Chaim. "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars." International
Security 20.4 (1996): 136-75. Web.
Lister, Charles R. The Islamic State: A Brief Introduction. Washington: Brookings Institution,
2015. Print.
Sambanis, Nicholas. "Do Ethnic and Nonethnic Civil Wars Have the Same Causes?: A
Theoretical and Empirical Inquiry (Part 1)." Journal of Conflict Resolution 45.3 (2001):
259-82. Web.
Sambanis, Nicholas. "What Is Civil War?: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an
Operational Definition." Journal of Conflict Resolution 48.6 (2004): 814-58. Web.
Toft, Monica Duffy. "Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War."
International Security 31.4 (2007): 97-131. Web.
United States. Cong. Committee on Foreign Affairs,. Countering ISIS: Are We Making
Progress?: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives,
One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, Second Session, December 10, 2014. 113 Cong., 2nd
sess. Cong. Rept. 113-234. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 2014. Print.