Obama’s address on countering ISIS: The missing context

The only way to understand the emergence of ISIS, and the only way to fight it effectively and defeat it – and also the only way to make it less likely that another ISIS-like militant organization will emerge after ISIS is defeated – is to appreciate the depth of the Sunni sense of grievance.

Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS’s predecessor), and ISIS are all manifestations – ghoulish, perverted, brutal, deadly manifestations – of Sunni grievances. Unless these grievances are addressed, ISIS (or its successor) will find thousands of recruits to fill its ranks, and moderate Sunni individuals and countries, even if they utterly reject ISIS and its brutality, will find it difficult to confront ISIS.

The record of post-9/11 U.S. policies in the Middle East shows that most of the major decisions made by the Bush and Obama administrations supported Shi’a interests at the expense of the Sunnis. Whether this was the result of a purposeful strategy, inadvertence, or ignorance, is a matter of debate, but the record is clear. Here are just a few examples:

  • 2003: U.S. forces remove the brutal Sunni dictator of Iraq, allowing the Shi’a majority in Iraq to come to power. The U.S. invasion, at the cost of more than 4,500 American dead and about $1.5 trillion, moved a large part of Iraq into Shi’a Iran’s sphere of influence.
  • 2004-2006: Despite a large U.S. presence in Iraq, the newly empowered Shi’as systematically disenfranchise the Sunnis in Anbar Province, leading to the emergence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS’s predecessor. The militant group enjoys wide support among Iraq’s Sunnis who see it as a protector of their interests.
  • 2006-2007: Iraq’s moderate Sunnis, however, soon begin to chafe under the strict Islamic law imposed by the Islamists – offering an opening for the United States. Gen. David Petraeus’s “surge” and subsequent Anbar Awakening defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq and lead to a more inclusive government in Baghdad.
  • February 2006: Against desperate opposition by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Bush administration insists on allowing Hamas to participate in the elections to the Palestinian parliament. Hamas is an off-shoot of the Egyptian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, but, like Lebanon’s Shi’a Hezbollah, it served as one of Iran’s regional agents. Hamas’s headquarters was located in Damascus, and it received military and financial assistance from Iran. Hamas wins the elections, but Mahmud Abbas, the PA president, refused to allow them to take power – so, in June 2007, Hamas takes over the Gaza Strip and runs it independently of the PA.
  • July-August 2006: After Hezbollah kills two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border, Israel launches a military campaign to destroy Hezbollah. Israel’s strategy calls for the minimal use of ground forces, and instead relies on heavy use of air-power – with a central feature of the strategy being the methodical destruction of Lebanese infrastructure – in addition to the destruction of Hezbollah targets – in order to force the Lebanese government to use its army to destroy Hezbollah, or risk the destruction of Lebanon. The Bush administration vetoes the Israeli plan, insisting the Israel limit itself only to Hezbollah targets. Whether or not the original Israeli plan would have worked is open to debate, but the U.S.-mandated, Hezbollah-only air campaign against Hezbollah fails to destroy the Shi’a organization.
  • 2009: Following the manipulation of the elections in Iran, which allowed the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to steal the elections, angry Iranians take to the street, only to be met by Revolutionary Guards’ bullets. President Obama delivers two or three speeches about the brutality of the Iranian regime, but the United States does not take any steps, even symbolic ones, to show its displeasure.
  • 2011: U.S. soldiers leave Iraq, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at the urging of Iran, goes back to the policies of disenfranchising the Sunnis, leading to the emergence of ISIS, which Iraq’s Sunnis see as their only protectors against Baghdad’s Shi’a government.
  • February 2011: The Sunni majority in Syria rises in rebellion against the Alawite minority government of Bashar al-Assad, but the Obama administration does nothing to help the moderate anti-regime groups.
  • 2012: ISIS, the Iraq’s based group (many of its leaders are former Iraqi Ba’athists) sees an opportunity to move into Syria to claim to be the protector of Syria’s Sunnis as well.
  • August 2013: The Syrian military uses sarin gas to kill 1,200 Sunni civilians in a suburb of Damascus, and injure hundreds more. Obama says that the use of deadly chemical weapons – and not for the first time – crossed a “red line” and would be met by a U.S. military retaliation. To avert U.S. action, Russia negotiates the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks, but Syria does not hand over all of its chemical weapons. The UN is now investigating chemical weapons used since 2013 by the regime against the Syrian Sunni population, with a report due in February.
  • 2015: The Shi’a Huthis in Yemen rise against the Sunni-dominated, U.S.-supported government. Saudi Arabia launches an air campaign to counter the Huthi advances, but is subject to persistent U.S. pressure to end its campaign against the Iran-supported Huthis.
  • 2015: The United States, as part of the P5+1 group, signs an agreement with Iran which codifies its status as a nuclear weapons threshold state.
  • Israel continues its disenfranchisement of the Palestinians, preventing the emergence of an independent Palestinian state.

Sunnis in the Middle East, and around the world, who look at this (abbreviated) list of post-9/11 U.S. policies in the region, could be forgiven if they were to discern a disturbing pattern from their – the Sunni — perspective.

ISIS is a cultish, apocalyptic, deadly organization – but it has cleverly managed to present itself as the guarantor of Sunni interests in Iraq, Syria, and beyond. The policies followed by the Bush and Obama administrations – and the West, more generally – have created a climate in some Sunni circles in which ISIS’s perverted message does not sound so outlandish or detached from reality.

This is the context in which ISIS has emerged – and this is the context that must be taken into consideration and effectively addressed when fashioning a strategy to defeat ISIS.

It is often said that rather than hunt down and kill individual mosquitoes, it would be more effective to dry the swamp. Al Qaeda (and its offshoots in Iraq, and Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa) and ISIS are mosquitoes – brutal, lethal, preposterous mosquitoes that should be hunted down and killed. Without drying the swamp of Sunni grievances, however, there will be many other mosquitoes even if ISIS disappears

Tomorrow I will discuss what this understanding of the context in which ISIS atrocities take place, and in which our counter-ISIS campaign is conducted, means for an informed and considered U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire