‘Defeated’ ISIS is not enough

It’s abandoned its strategically suicidal attempt to be a physical state, but ISIS will emerge better and tougher than before.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters celebrate after fighting Islamic State jihadists near the village of Baghouz in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. Picture: AFP

This Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had finally succeeded in their attempt to crush Islamic State’s final, football field-sized enclave at Baghouz near the Syria-Iraq border.

The battle lasted far longer than local commanders predicted, due to the discovery of more than 30,000 civilians, mostly women and children, hiding in tunnels and bunkers under the village. The tunnel system (unknown to SDF commanders until about ten days ago) was defended by entrenchments around the enclave’s perimeter, and seeded with booby-traps, mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), making attempts to enter it incredibly dangerous.

Islamic State defeated in Syria, US-backed forces declare victory over caliphate

At the same time, the presence of civilians made the SDF and their American advisers reluctant to bring the full weight of available air and artillery firepower to bear on Baghouz. As a result, the SDF adopted a siege warfare approach, waiting the defenders out.

As Islamic State’s territorial “caliphate” collapsed, Syria last week entered its ninth year of war. The conflict, which began on March 15, 2011, with democracy protests in Damascus and Aleppo and rapidly spiralled into mass violence, has killed upwards of 450,000 people and displaced up to 11 million Syrians. It is far from over. But with the capture of Islamic State’s last enclave, the war is starting a new phase.

As intelligence analysts repeatedly have warned, the fall of Baghouz will in no way equate to the defeat of Islamic State. The group simply has abandoned its strategically suicidal attempt to be a physical state complete with cities, government departments, population and territory. It has dropped back into guerilla mode, an approach that has worked for the group at least twice before, letting it recover from near-death experiences in Iraq and elsewhere.

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Terrorist citizens

I described this last year as a cycle of “catastrophic success”, with repeated overreach by Islamic State drawing push-back from its enemies — push-back intense enough to make it adapt and improve but not to destroy it. The Islamic State that emerges from this latest cycle of evolutionary change will be smaller, tougher, better adapted to urban fighting, more technologically savvy and with a renewed support base: the hundreds of thousands of its former “citizens” now detained in Iraq and Syria, on the run in the region or repatriated to countries of origin.

Whether Abu Bakr al-Bagh­dadi, the self-declared Islamic State leader, is trapped in Baghouz or hiding in the Iraqi desert, the group’s leadership is large and competent enough to rebuild.

Already there are signs of renewed Islamic State insurgency in Iraq, where the number of terrorist attacks and IED incidents sponsored by the group has been steadily increasing for several months. Up to 20,000 Islamic State fighters remain at large in Iraq and Syria, and the group has established night-time checkpoints in many districts across the region, forcing civilians to stay indoors at night lest they be subject to extortion, kidnapping or worse.

The ability to survive, continue to terrify (and therefore influence) large populations in Iraq and Syria, and extract resources from the community means the group is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. And, of course, the Islamic State provinces in Afghanistan, Africa and Southeast Asia are alive and well, as is the group’s online network and virtual support base on the internet.

And, even if Islamic State were to evaporate overnight, the Syrian civil war itself is far from over. A large part of Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib remains under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group that, while it is no friend to Islamic State and has worked to prevent former Islamic State fighters infiltrating its territory or joining its organisation, is affiliated with al-Qa’ida. HTS has established what amounts to a liberated zone in Idlib, carrying out basic governance functions, co-opting local communities or coercing them into support, and in effect carving out its own mini-state.

The Assad regime in Damascus, with its Russian and Iranian allies, has discussed an Idlib offensive later this year. Turkey, fearing a vast influx of refugees on top of the huge number of displaced Syrians it already struggles with, has opposed that idea, but an Idlib offensive remains on the table. The collapse of the non-jihadist opposition during the past few years has turned the Syrian war into a struggle between President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies on the one hand, and a collection of jihadist groups and ethnic separatists on the other. Little remains of the original, secular democracy movement of 2011 and, while the regime in Damascus remains unable to conquer the Kurds, it is moving against them politically while seeking to crush HTS and the other jihadist groups.

Landscape reshaped

More broadly, as the war’s filthy floodwaters recede, the landscape they leave behind looks very different from that of 2011. For one thing, Hezbollah has established itself as a major player in western Syria and on the Syria-Lebanon border.

This is a role reversal: I first encountered a Syrian army checkpoint in 1997 near Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, when Syria occupied large parts of Lebanon and called the shots for Hezbollah, whose headquarters was, and remains, at Baalbek. Today the shoe is on the other foot: Hezbollah controls key population centres, supply routes and border areas, and calls the shots for local Syrian militias in the areas of Syria it occupies.

This puts Iran, Hezbollah’s patron, in an increasingly influential regional position. One of the main threats in the next phase will be the emergence of a land bridge from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Lebanon and ultimately to within striking distance of Israel.

Some analysts have discounted this possibility, but it remains a key concern in Tel Aviv, where Israeli military and counter-terrorism planners are watching Syria with increasing unease, and from where a series of Israeli airstrikes into Syria have been launched in the past year. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under increasing political and legal pressure, neither he nor any other Israeli leader is likely to accept Iranian encroachment on to the doorstep of Israel.

Countering Iranian influence also seems to be the driving force behind US plans to leave a larger force in Syria than initially contemplated. US President Donald Trump drew intense criticism in December for his plan to pull out entirely by next month, and various administration figures have spoken recently about leaving 1000 or more troops in place — to maintain pressure on Islamic State, protect the SDF and other Kurds from Turkish or regime retaliation, and prevent Iran completely dominating the region.

Tweet of Damocles

Fifty-nine per cent of respondents in a US opinion poll in January favoured a military presence in Syria and, even though Trump repeatedly has said he wants out, the US maintains 200 troops in the northeast with the Kurds and another 200 in the south at Tanf, near the Jordanian border.

The Pentagon recently denied rumours of a larger residual presence, insisting the US remains on track for a full withdrawal. Likewise, allies including Britain and France remain reluctant to commit to any future force until the US makes up its mind.

Last month a friend said the entire Syria enterprise hung under the “tweet of Damocles”, given Trump’s mercurial approach to the region.

One international leader who has been the opposite of mercurial has been Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia has long had a naval base in Syria and its presence in the region goes back to Assad’s father and the 1960s. Since its military intervention in September 2015 — which arguably rescued the Assad regime and turned the tide in the war — Moscow has increased its foothold and re-established itself as a major player, and it is highly unlikely to step back again. Despite serious losses — up to 200 Russian service personnel and members of private military companies such as the Wagner Group have been killed, roughly 20 times as many as the US-led coalition has lost — Russia nevertheless has achieved its core goals at a cost acceptable to Moscow.

Last week Assad thanked Moscow for its support in regaining control of the country, and Russia continues to host diplomatic talks towards a peace agreement. That is nowhere close, but the mere fact Moscow is hosting the talks puts Putin in the driver’s seat.

Turkey continues its occupation of Afrin in northern Syria, and has discussed the creation of a “safe zone” to protect civilians. This idea, which Ankara has been advancing since 2015, is partly intended to relieve pressure on Turkey, which hosts enormous numbers of Syrian refugees and is looking for a way to repatriate them without exposing them to victimisation by the regime.

The other critical factor for Turkey is the Kurds, whose emerging proto-state in northern Syria is unacceptable to Ankara because of its destabilising effect on Turkey’s own Kurdish population, and the involvement of the PKK, the separatist movement that Turkey considers a terrorist group.

The other major destination for Syrian refugees has been Europe. EU governments also want a resolution of the conflict, enabling repatriation of an immigrant population that, however deserving in humanitarian terms, has been associated with a political and cultural backlash in Europe.

Rebuilding Syria

European governments have re-engaged with the Assad regime even as they continue supporting US efforts against Islamic State — in part because of the refugee issue but also because of the enormous economic opportunities associ­ated with urban and industrial reconstruction in Syria, whose cities and infrastructure are all but destroyed. Jordan, too, is leaning in to Damascus as part of a general re-engagement, now the Islamic State threat has receded for the moment, and Assad seems to have won the war on the ground.

It’s difficult to fault European or Jordanian leaders for wanting to play a part in reconstruction. A properly conducted reconstruction program could be the key to safely returning refugees from Europe to Syria.

Likewise, economic opportunities for the whole region are likely to be considerable — the process of reconstruction after a civil war can take two to five times as long as the conflict that caused it, so even if peace broke out tomorrow, reconstruction could take up for 40 years and cost trillions of dollars.

For Australia, the issues are simpler. We originally intervened in Syria and Iraq in 2014 for two reasons: humanitarian concern over the fate of Syrian and Iraqi civilians, and the desire to contribute our part to a global coalition effort against Islamic State. The first of these issues, unfortun­ately, has ceased to be something that we alone can do very much about as the war burns itself out.

And as Islamic State’s territorial caliphate comes to an end, the need for Australian participation in the coalition increasingly will be restricted to our training effort in Iraq, along with specialised activities to prevent a re-emergence of Islamic State and to identify Australian nationals caught up in the conflict.

An Australian role in reconstruction would be a matter for ­debate, and probably would not ­involve a military presence, at least not until the broader question of continued US involvement is ­resolved.

The harsh lesson in dealing with Islamic State, which we and others arguably should have learned the first two times around, is that “defeated enough” (to quote some US policymakers) is not the same as defeated, let alone destroyed. While even one individual member of the group is alive, free and radicalised, Islamic State will fight on, and constant vigilance will be needed to prevent its re-emergence in an evolved form.

As the US continues its pullout, and Syria enters a new phase in the war, look to Idlib, Ankara, Tehran and Moscow for clues as to what will happen next.