A framework for destroying ISIS and creating stability in the Middle East

America’s immediate response to ISIS should be two-fold – military and political:

On the military front, America and its allies must and can destroy ISIS quickly. To do this requires a serious commitment from American and allied airpower, and a serious ground army that can attack and eliminate ISIS in the Sunni Arab heartland. But part of the formula for success is to have an army that will be welcomed by the local Sunni Arabs – and their tribal and pre-ISIS Sunni leadership. The Obama policy is to arm the overwhelmingly Shiite Arab Iraqi government army, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and the FSA. But neither of the former two is interested nor motivated to re-conquer the hostile territory of the Sunni Arab heartland. And both are seen in the Sunni heartland as alien forces, which could actually strengthen local support for ISIS.

Equally, the Obama policy of building-up the Free Syrian Army into an effective army to counter and defeat ISIS, is a dangerous illusion. The FSA is a splintered alliance of discredited former Baathists, dreamy democrats, regional warlords, non-ISIS Jihadists, Syrian army defectors, and remnants of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The FSA has been militarily decimated by the Syrian army and ISIS. It would take years of equipping and training the FSA, with the steady cooperation of a secure local power like Turkey, to remake the FSA into an effective army. In addition to the years it will take to make the FSA into a meaningful fighting force, there will always be the risk that the FSA would disintegrate into its disparate parts.

A better approach would be to use the existing professional armies of the major Sunni Arab states. The United States subsidizes the Egyptian army with billions in military equipment and direct and indirect foreign aid. With 500,000 active duty and nearly 1,000,000 reservists, the Egyptian army has more than sufficient capacity to provide the 20,000 to 30,000 professional troops needed for the purpose of destroying ISIS. Egypt should be persuaded to provide the core of a Sunni Arab Legion to destroy ISIS. Similarly, the other regional Sunni Arab powers – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE — have capable and professional armies that can be part of the intervention force. It is in the interests of each of these countries to defang and remove ISIS, particularly if ISIS is replaced, in the Sunni Arab heartland, with an allied mainstream Sunni Arab regime.

We note that since late spring, Egypt has already used its military, in collaboration with the UAE’s military, to conduct operations inside Libya against Islamist militias there.

The Obama administration has estimated that its current strategy of arming the FSA, the Peshmerga, and the Shiite Iraqi army will take three to five years to bear fruit. This time table is absurd and dangerous. It took only three-and-a-half years for America and its allies to defeat both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. ISIS has only some 20,000 irregular fanatics with a miscellany of captured arms. We need to defeat ISIS now – in no more than six months - before they can construct terrorist training camps, collect the billions in potential revenue from the Sunni Arab heartland, and bring a terror campaign to America and Europe.

On the political front, America should pursue a “Five State Solution” to re-partition the two failed states of Syria and Iraq into more stable and cohesive states which will exclude Iranian influence, provide a stable and potentially powerful Sunni Arab state that can ally with the pro-Western Sunni Arab states; and accommodate the security concerns of the major regional non-Arab powers,: Israel, Turkey, and the concerns of neighboring Russia.

Syria and Iraq are failed, artificial states. They were created out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, through a deal cut by a British politician and a French diplomat, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, ninety-eight years ago. These two states were not designed for internal stability, but to satisfy British and French colonial concerns. The new colonies, later states, of Iraq and Syria were a multi-ethic hodgepodge of distinct ethnic zones and enclaves:

Iraq is 55 percent Shiite Arab; 20 percent Sunni Arab; and 22 percent Kurdish, with the Shiite Arab majority concentrated from Baghdad and south, the Kurds concentrated in the mountainous north, and the Sunni Arabs north of Baghdad and in the west.

Syria is 65 percent Sunni Arab; 12 percent Alawite; 10 percent Christian; 10 percent Kurdish; and 4 percent Druze, with the Sunni Arabs concentrated in the central areas, the Alawites predominating in the coastal provinces (70 percent Alawite), the Christians in the coastal provinces and Aleppo, the Druze overwhelmingly in Jebel Druze-Suwaida province (90 percent Druze) and the Hauran in the south along the Israeli border, and the Kurds in the northeast, bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1922, the new French colonial masters of Syria established separate Druze, Alawite and Sunni colonies, and planned to give them independence as separate countries, but then amalgamated those colonies together as Syria in 1936.

Independence in the 1940s brought dysfunctional government, ethnic civil wars, coups, dictatorships and massacres. In both Iraq and Syria, minority based regimes came to power under rival wings of the Arab Baath Party, with the Tikriti clan of Sunni Arabs ruling in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and the Assad clan of Alawites ruling in Syria. Both regimes used mass slaughter to control their ethnic rivals — the victims being the Shiite Arab majority and the Kurds in Iraq, and the Sunni Arab majority and the Kurds in Syria.

Following the Iraq War of 2003, and the toppling of the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein, a coalition of Shiite Arab parties has taken power in Iraq, with Iraqi Kurdistan achieving virtual independence. In the Sunni Arab provinces, however, rule by the Shiite Maliki government meant oppression, corruption, and stagnation. It should have come as no surprise that the American-built Shiite Iraqi army literally collapsed and disintegrated in the face of attacks from ISIS, with Sunni Arabs refusing to fight, and the Iraqi Shiite army retreating to the ethnic frontier between Shiite and Sunni Arab zones.

The Obama policy of trying to reconstruct the two failed states of Syria and Iraq is doomed to failure. Trying to reconstruct two multi-ethnic states, after decades of ethnic civil war and slaughter, while maintaining the artificial partition of their Kurdish and Sunni Arab populations is a recipe for endless ethnic oppression, revolt and instability.

The United States and America’s allies in the region should therefore support the re-partition of these two failing multi-ethnic shambles into five more homogenous and cohesive states — a coastal Alawite-Christian State north of Lebanon; a Druze State in southern Syria and along the Israeli border; a unified Kurdistan which includes the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish areas; the Sunni Arab heartland in Mesopotamia, stretching from north of Baghdad to Damascus; and a Shiite Arab state in southern Iraq.

Although such a partition is already occurring de facto — with each of the major ethnic groups already hunkered into enclaves, with their own separate armies — the de jure recognition of this partition would greatly assist in ending the current civil wars and in more rapidly defeating ISIS. Currently, the civil wars are zero-sum conflicts — a victory for one ethnic group means devastation and mass slaughter for its rivals.

The instability of both Iraq and Syria is exacerbated by the security concerns and patronage of outside powers. Russia has its only Mediterranean naval base in Syria and has supported the Assad Alawite regime to protect that base. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, by contrast, have supported the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria against the Alawite regime of Assad. Turkey opposes Assad, but is also vehemently opposed to the Syrian Kurdish areas falling to the PKK and its allies, who have waged a long and bloody war against Turkey. And Israel, which enjoyed decades of peace along the Golan Heights border, is now facing mortar attacks from Sunni Arab rebels.

Meanwhile, Iran, the leading Shiite state, has meddled in both civil wars against the Sunni Arabs, supporting the U.S.-backed Shiite Arab majority regime in Iraq and the Russian-backed Alawite minority regime in Syria. The instability of the region has massively empowered Iran. It is in America’s interests to resolve these conflicts quickly — in a way that excludes Iran and minimizes its power and influence.

During the current American campaign against ISIS, it is particularly important that Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan see American intervention not as a threat, or a folly, but as a major contribution to their core security interests. Equally important, Russia should not see American intervention as an attack on its naval base in Tartus. Russian intervention against America can only widen the local civil wars into a regional war. Finally, the regional balance of power must be restructured to strengthen Israel and America’s allies.

The new map of the Middle East should greatly stabilize the region, and enhance the security of the major regional powers:

A rump Alawite-Christian State, under Russian patronage, would rapidly evolve into another Cyprus or Lebanon. With a population of only four million, it would be a threat to no one, but would still allow Russia to keep its Mediterranean naval base.

Independence for a coastal Alawite-Christian state should also cut the Alawites’ ties to Iran. The current Assad alliance with Iran is one of convenience— the enemy of my enemy. The Alawites are a Western-oriented syncretic sect. They drink alcohol, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and ban the headscarf. They are the opposite of Islamic fundamentalists (just recall the February 1982 massacre of between 20,000 and 40,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama by Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assads). Under the security of Russian patronage, there would be no natural or strategic reason for the Alawites to maintain the Iranian connection — and many reasons not to.

A Druze State of two million, across the Golan Heights and in southern Syria, would be a stable buffer state, which would be a massive benefit to Israeli and Jordanian security. Currently, the Druze are the only Arab population in Israel to have fully integrated into Israeli society. The Druze in Israel serve at the highest levels of the Israeli military and government, and a Druze MP, Majalli Wahabi, even briefly served as acting President of Israel, the first non-Jewish head of State in Israel.

A small, friendly Druze buffer state, replacing a huge and unstable Arab Muslim state on Israel’s Golan border would massively improve Israel’s security situation. It would also help Jordan, which has had periodic security threats from the north. A Druze buffer state has long been seen by Israeli leaders as contributing to Israel’s security, and the idea was actively promoted former Israeli general and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon.

The absorption of Syrian Kurdistan by Iraqi Kurdistan should also stabilize the Turkish frontier, satisfy Turkish security concerns, and enhance America’s strongest and most pro-American enclave in the conflict. Turkey is home to over fifteen million Kurds — 20 percent of Turkey’s population — and the country is deeply hostile to Kurdish separatism and the PKK, the Kurdish rebels fighting in Turkey. But Turkey has also established a positive relationship with the Barzani and Talabani clans who rule Iraqi Kurdistan, engaging in extensive trade deals and joint security operations against the PKK. If Syrian Kurdistan is ruled by and from the larger and friendlier Iraqi Kurdistan, and if the PKK and its allies are excluded, then Turkey should see any resulting settlement as a security enhancement.

The creation of a Sunni Arab heartland state of twenty-five million, ruled by a main-steam regime installed and supported by the Sunni Arab intervention forces, will be a strategic enhancement to America’s Sunni Arab allies - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It will bolster their power vis-a-vis Iran and end creeping Iranian infiltration into Mesopotamia. Under the Sunni Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain, Iraq acted as a counterweight to Iran. The instability of the post-Saddam world is caused in no small part by the collapse of that balance of power between Iran and its Sunni neighbor to the west.

Finally, Shiite Southern Iraq would have less need to invite Iranian assistance if its security situation were improved and secured. The traditional rivalry between Arabs and Persians, and rivalries between the Shiite religious leaders of Iran and southern Iraq, combined with the support of the United States, can continue to keep Iranian influence in southern Iraq to a minimum.

The collapse of Syria and Iraq into bloody civil war, and the rise of the terror group ISIS in the Sunni Arab heartland, are tragic, but from that tragedy may emerge an opportunity to build a stronger and more stable Middle East. American intervention — if executed quickly, intelligently and with strategic vision - can remake the region into an area where Israeli security is enhanced, the Sunni Arab states achieve an effective allied counterweight to Iran, the pro-American Kurds achieve their true independence, and Iran loses its regional allies and is contained. This is far better and wiser American policy toward the Middle East than the policies currently being considered.

Grant Lally is a Contributing Editor of the Homeland Security News Wire. He is also a partner in the New York law firm of Lally & Misir, and is currently the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress in New York’s 3rd district (www.LallyforCongress.com).