#dnaEdit: Reaping whirlwind

The American strategy perspective in West Asia has always been short-sighted and blinkered, and this has resulted in instability and strife, and more tragically it has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — such is the mendacity of the free and liberal Western media agencies that they describe the ISIS as the Islamic State of Syria and Levant; they think that Iraq can be protected by a magic formula if it is not mentioned in the ISIS acronym! — is an indirect and unintended outcome of the American financial aid and supply of arms to the separatists and jihadists fighting the Bashar Assad government in Syria. The Assad government has managed to repel the murderous politico-military onslaught of the Islamists for the moment.

It is at this stage that the ISIS has emerged from the rag-tag army of Assad’s opponents. Unable to make headway in Syria, the ISIS armed bands have moved into the north of Iraq, the autonomous Kurdish region, and they have swept the Christian towns and Sinjar, the home of Yazidis, a minority Muslim sect among the ethnic minority of Kurds. The ISIS has managed to defeat the Kurdish forces and they are threatening to overrun the region, including the important town of Erbil. The surprising and rapid success of ISIS reminds one of emergence of the Taliban in 1996 in Afghanistan.

The Obama decision on targeted air strikes is a diplomatic signal that America is defending the religious minorities, Iraqi Christians and Kurdish Yazidis. The Western intervention in Sudan in the wake of Darfur crisis was also to defend the south Sudan Christian population. This aspect of Western strategy remains unstated in the Western media but it is very much factored in by the Arabs, the Arab media and the Islamists among them. Western policy analysts may want to see this development through the prism of protecting civilians and religious minorities in conformity with the standards of international human rights, but the combatants, including the ISIS and the Kurds, and the victims, the Iraqi Christians and the Yazidis, know that it is a clash of religious identities. Political power struggles in the region are carried on the axis of distorted principles of faith.

There are two political problems underlying the ongoing Iraq crisis. The Shia-dominated Iraqi government in Baghdad will have to take cognisance of the large Sunni minority and learn to share political power in an equitable manner. This needs to be done not from any altruistic motive but for the sheer pragmatic need for peace and stability. Once the Shia-Sunni national alliance is stabilised, then the protection of the religious minorities, Christians and Yazidis, becomes feasible. The need is for the Iraqis to counter the ISIS and not the Americans. It is surprising that the national government at Baghdad remains indifferent to the ISIS taking control of large tracts of the country. Americans and the West will have to commit themselves to the national integrity of Iraq and Syria if the alarming progress of the ISIS has to be halted. The sectarian rivalries and strife in Iraq, Syria and Iran are too deeply embedded in the religious history of the people and the region. It is the nation-state formations that can provide the bulwark against Islamist, mainly Sunni, raiders. The primary Western obligation is to respect the sovereignty and territory of the states in the region. Targeted strikes and humanitarian aid are but knee-jerk responses.