The US War Against ISIS

How America and its Allies Defeated the Caliphate

Aaron Stein

• Editorial: I.B. Tauris
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755634828
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoría: Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften

The war against ISIS is often explained through the group's own rise to power. The American side of the story has not yet been told. This book records how the United States and its allies chose to fight the group, what the consequences have been for transatlantic relations, and how these factors may shape future wars the West decides to pursue.
The book is based on first-person interviews with U.S. and European policymakers, and members of the military in direct combat against ISIS - from U.S and allied forces on the ground to the Kurdish fighters who fought beside them. These interviews show precisely how the West fights wars through the eyes of the people most involved in them and includes key insights about civilian decision-making as it happened. In tracing the war as it developed, the book examines the West's approach to conflict and reveals new insights such as why both the U.S. military and the civilian bureaucracy underestimated Russian military capabilities. The war was always meant to be small and focused, but its repercussions have been considerable and far-reaching, including a serious rupture in Turkish-Western relations and Russia's return to the Middle East.
Aaron Stein shows why mistakes were made in the war against ISIS and what happens when a narrow policy focus on counter terrorism is pursued at the expense of almost all wider regional security and political concerns. At a time when the U.S might be called again to stem the rise of a terror group or to fight against a collective threat, the lessons in this book are essential.

Chapter 1

THE ORIGINS OF US POLICY: A SUPERPOWER AND THE KURDS

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not your typical emir. But he managed to oversee the establishment of a terrorist organization that terrorized Iraq and, eventually, managed to take control over its second largest city. President Barack Obama had sought to end the self-declared Global War on Terror (GWOT), declaring in May 2013 that the United States was at a “crossroads” and must “define the nature and scope of this struggle” against terrorism. This definition, Obama would later indicate, would be defined “not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”¹ After 487 days, on September 22, 2014, Obama authorized the first airstrikes against the Islamic State, launching an air and ground campaign that has continued ever since. The United States was choosing to enter a complicated multisided war in Syria and Iraq to once again combat terrorism.²

As early as 2012, the heirs to Zarqawi’s ideological struggle were busy embedding themselves within the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad, the authoritarian president who assumed power after his father, Hafez, died of a heart attack in the capital, Damascus.³ The gangly and angular ophthalmologist was not his father’s first choice to take power, but assumed the position by default after his older brother, Bassel al-Assad, was killed in a car crash near the Damascus airport.⁴ The Assad regime had, throughout the Cold War, carved out a niche for itself as a useful Soviet client, taking advantage of Moscow’s weapons exports to build up a large military to counter its neighbor Israel.

The Assad regime is a minoritarian government, wherein Syria’s Allawis have gained considerable political and military power since Hafez took power in 1970. The power of the state rests on its dynastic politics, the state’s provision of jobs to the citizenry, and the security services, tasked with defending the country from external and internal threats. This basic social contract is in tension with liberal democracy and has hindered Syria’s political and economic development. In the late 1980s and extending into the early 1990s, the private sector became more important for the regime, raising a broader question about how to simultaneously deepen economic reliance on companies without creating a pathway for their political empowerment. This created a two-tier system of large, politically connected enterprises that were able to take advantage of economics reforms, and a larger cadre of small- and medium-sized businesses that lacked the type of access to the regime to make life easier for them. This status quo prevailed up until Hafez’s death. Upon taking power in 2000, Bashar accelerated efforts to privatize the Syrian economy, as part of a broader effort to undo his father’s centrally planned system, in favor of an economy wedded to neoliberal economic theory.⁵ Cast as a reformer, Bashar also sought to use Syrian foreign policy as a national asset.

The Al-Qaeda-planned attacks on September 11, 2001, complicated relations with Washington, resulting in a series of contradictory outcomes and policies. Despite antagonistic relations with the United States, Syria was a destination for Al-Qaeda members the United States or other countries captured and then sent for questioning in secret prisons around the world.⁶ The regime was also a key ally to many members of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” including Iran and North Korea.⁷ Bashar’s relationship with the third Axis member, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was more complicated and adversarial. Both countries adopted the Ba’athist political ideology, the pan-Arab and anti-colonial ideology that permeated Arab polities in the 1940s, and under which Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad molded to fit their authoritarian impulses. The two countries had overlapping, anti-Israeli interests and fought together (albeit disjointedly) during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. However, relations never fully matured and, by 1979, had soured when Saddam Hussein toppled then Iraqi president Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who had been spearheading talks with his counterparts in Damascus on a political union.

In the same year the tensions in Iran had boiled over, and street protests toppled the American-friendly Shah Reza Pahlavi, transforming monarchical Iran into an Islamic Republic, bound to a system of clerical rule guided by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Syrian-Iranian relationship grew thereafter, built on relationship of mutual interest, linked to the adoption of anti-Israel security policy and support for regional terrorist groups. At the outset of the Iran–Iraq war, Damascus sided with Tehran, agreeing to supply its new ally with weapons and materials throughout the war. Syrian relations with Iran has hindered its relationship with Washington, and also created opportunities for both Hafez and Bashar to use the promise of peace with Jerusalem to engage with Washington in open-ended talks about a potential settlement. Following the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Bashar pursued this dual-tracked approach in relations with Washington. On the one hand, Damascus served as a node in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-run rendition program. And yet, on the other, Syria served as they key overland route for foreign jihadists to transit to Iraq during the US occupation.

Zarqawi oversaw these ratlines, building out an organization that would after his death declare a caliphate in Iraq and, again, in Syria. Zarqawi’s pathway to Syria began in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where fourteen jihadist groups took advantage of the safe haven the country’s leadership, the Taliban, had granted them.⁸ Al-Qaeda was one of the fourteen groups. Al-Qaeda was established in 1988 toward the end of the Soviet occupation, with the intent of training elite jihadists to attack Arab governments. Bin Laden’s outlook changed sometime thereafter, and by 1996 he had settled on a controversial strategy of attacking the so-called far enemy—the United States—as a means to force Washington to end its support for the region’s governments. Absent this protection, Bin Laden argued, his forces would be able to topple regional governments and create an Islamic State. This decision prompted a wave of terrorist attacks against the United States and Europe, culminating in the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Zarqawi had an entirely different approach to terrorism, but filled a recruiting need for Al-Qaeda. In 1998, the group had weak ties to the Levantine countries and faced a rival recruiter, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, a Syrian who had a long history of fighting for jihadist causes. According Brian Fishman, Suri was a “polyglot … who worked on and off again with Al Qaeda, and was a veteran of the seminal Jihadi uprising against Hafez al-Assad in the 1970s and 1980s,” but who eventually grew to become one of Bin Laden’s biggest critics for his focus on attacking Western targets.⁹ Born into poverty in Zarqa, Jordan, Zarqawi transitioned from being a troubled teen, interested in drugs and accused of sexual assault to the brutal leader of a series of terrorist groups, based in Iraq and oftentimes working at cross purposes with Bin Laden’s guidance on how to prosecute jihad. However, his links to the Levant gave Al-Qaeda an entry point to the region, increasing recruits from the area to join the group.¹⁰

The jihadist world changed overnight on September 11, 2001. The Al-Qaeda attacks killed thousands of Americans, but the intra-jihadist warnings about the danger of the American response proved prescient. Just days after civilian airliners plowed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York, and a second plane hit the Pentagon, the United States began its military response. Operation Enduring Freedom, the name given to the American invasion of Afghanistan, began with the insertion of small teams from the CIA, followed by elements from Joint Special Operations Command, backed by overwhelming air power.¹¹ The American war against the Taliban was brief and effective and the war dispersed the jihadist groups that had enjoyed safe haven in Afghanistan.

Zarqawi fled Afghanistan from Kandahar, after narrowly missing being killed in a US airstrike, and fled to Pakistan before traveling to Iran. He ultimately made his way to northern Iraq, where he was welcomed by a Kurdish-majority jihadist group, Ansar al Islam (AAI). The group had a small training camp in the mountainous border with Iran, in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish zone. After taking refuge with AAI, Zarqawi would travel in the Levant, activating a network of men to recruit from and who he could smuggle into Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled. His Kurdish hosts, in March 2003, were the first target in the American war against Saddam Hussein, and led by American Special Forces, dubbed Task Force Viking.

The United States has the world’s most advanced military, outfitted with weapons designed to defeat the Soviet Union, and operated by men and women now trained to fight in the Iraqi desert. As the United States plotted its war against Saddam Hussein, one of the first Special Forces teams chose a different means to infiltrate the country: A Jeep Grand Cherokee and a beat up red pick-up truck with tinted windows and a lowered suspension.¹² The 10th Special Forces Group is assigned to European Command’s (EUCOM) area of responsibility, but after the 9/11 attacks they spent most of their time in the Middle East.

In 2003, 10th Group’s historical focus on European defense had taken a backseat to the demands of GWOT. “10th Group was regionally aligned against Europe, with a rich tradition of deterring the Soviets through irregular means, the demands of Afghanistan and Iraq forced the Group to shift focus almost entirely in the mid-2000s,” according to a current 10th Group member. “I was given Arabic as my language, since most of the work being done at the time was in Iraq, and not Europe.”¹³

The US Special Operations community has a long history of working with the Iraqi Kurds, dating back to the First Gulf War in 1990–91, and then the follow-on imposition of a no-fly-zone (NFZ) following that conflict and before the American-led invasion. In 2003, the CIA and a Special Forces Pilot Team, whose job was to prepare to wage unconventional warfare, had holed up at a house near Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.¹⁴ Iraqi Kurdistan is controlled by two family-run patronage networks, each with its own militia, that together are called the Peshmerga. This has given Westerners a misleading picture of their unity, which has scarcely ever existed, and the two families are often in tension. The Barzani clan controlling Erbil out to Duhok and down to the outskirts of Mosul heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The Talabani family controls the eastern swathe of the territory, with control over Sulaymaniyah and the outskirts of oil-rich Kirkuk, and is in charge of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and its associated Peshmerga.

The US military had carved out a relationship with these two factions after the 1991 Gulf War, with 10th Group maintaining a presence in Zakho, near the border with Turkey and in KDP territory, and via constant interaction with the PUK.¹⁵ This partnership was born out of tragedy. As the United States ousted the Iraqis from Kuwait, then president George H.W. Bush encouraged the Kurds to rise up against the Iraqi leadership. However, after violence erupted, the United States stood aside as Saddam Hussein used helicopter gun ships and amassed artillery to beat back the offensive after the PUK had briefly sided control of Kirkuk.¹⁶ The military onslaught prompted a mass exodus of Kurdish civilians from urban areas to the mountainous border region with Turkey, creating a secondary refugee crisis that Ankara had to contend with. The dire humanitarian situation prompted coalition intervention to impose an NFZ over northern and southern Iraq.

The NFZ over Iraqi Kurdistan was initially part of Operation Provide Comfort, a military mission that began in 1991, and then transitioned to Operation Northern Watch, enforced by a composite wing of US Air Force aircraft. At the outset of the NFZ, the Iraqis did try and test it on a handful of occasions, leading to a series of F-15C shoot downs of Iraqi air force jets. By 1994, “the No Fly Zone the north was like the gentleman’s NFZ. We only enforced it during the day, when the Turks would allow us, and only for a couple hours a day,” according to Col. (R) Mike “Starbaby” Pietrucha, who deployed to Turkey on multiple occasions to enforce the NFZ during the 1990s.¹⁷

The safety this NFZ provided enabled the two major families in Kurdistan to focus on their own power struggle. By 1996, tensions had boiled over, and the KDP and PUK-affiliated Peshmerga began to fight one another in a civil conflict. The PUK managed to gain the upper hand, prompting Massoud Barzani, the patriarch of the Barzani clan and the de facto leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, to invite Saddam Hussein’s army to quell the PUK. Jalal Talabani, for his part, had sought help from neighboring Iran, placing the United States in a rather difficult situation.

For the American men on the ground, the Kurdish civil war forced the withdrawal of the forces deployed in 1991, as part of operation Provide Comfort, the name given to the mission to defend the Iraqi Kurds from aerial attack. “There was always some degree of emotional scar within 10th group about the Kurds,” according to a retired Special Forces member. “The 10th Group guys, they used to always talk about the Provide Comfort era and how they pulled out of the Zakho house in 1996. In 2003, there was an excitement about making it right with the Kurds for what happened after 1991. We tell guys not to go native, but it is hard not to fall for the Kurds.”¹⁸

These linkages to both the KDP and PUK were an important factor in shaping how the United States planned to intervene in the country after the 9/11 attacks. During the build-up for the invasion, the Bush administration sought to make a definitive linkage between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. The intent was to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein was harboring and supporting the terrorist group, ensuring that the Iraqi dictator would qualify for preventative military action. Just one day after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush sought to reassure the American public that “the search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts” and warned that “we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”¹⁹ This shift in policy signaled the American shift to preventive war and the decision to use military force to deny safe haven to terrorist groups to disrupt external plotting.

As the United States prepared for war against Iraq in 2002, the job of selling it to the American people and to wary allies was left to then Secretary of State Colin Powell. In the speech, Colin Powell warned of a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants.”²⁰ The first challenge for the United States was augmenting the number of forces in northern Iraq to prepare for the invasion. As the initial teams were moving into northern Iraq, the United States and Turkey remained at odds over the looming invasion, and whether Ankara would allow an invasion from its territory.

The United States and the Turkish Republic have been allies since 1952, when Turkey formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The two countries shared overlapping views of the Soviet Union and worked together to deter Russian aggression along Turkey’s borders. After the end of the Cold War, Turkey’s interests began to change, as a generation of new leaders began to consider deepening relations with Turkey’s neighbors in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Turkey’s domestic security situation deteriorated, following the rise of a secular-minded and Marxist-inspired insurgent groups dubbed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Kurdish politics in Turkey have historically been repressed. Kurdish political factions, in turn, have gravitated toward leftist political platforms, focused on egalitarianism and a tearing down of social hierarchies that stratify society. The PKK’s ideological founder and most revered figure, Abdullah Ocalan, was born in Sanliurfa, an ethnically mixed city at the edge of Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast. Growing up poor, Ocalan moved to Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, in 1966, where he was soon swept up in the growing leftist counterculture politics dominant at the time.²¹ After he was arrested in 1972, Ocalan gravitated toward radical leftist politics, leaving prison with a passion to help instigate a political revolution. By 1973, he was advocating for armed struggle to liberate the Kurds and to overturn what he deemed...