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Islamic State: time to recognise a failing strategy

8 July 2015

In the Islamic State (ISIS), we face a determined enemy melding terrorism and guerrilla warfare with an expansionist, state-building agenda and a mastery of online propaganda. And no country has yet mustered the political will or strategic understanding to defeat the group. In strikingly similar speeches on both sides of the Atlantic on 6 July 6, US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron each admitted that no complete strategy is yet in place, and acknowledged this will be a protracted ‘generational’ struggle with many setbacks.

Over the past year, since its capture of Mosul drew a belated response from the United States, Australia and others, ISIS has adapted to western counterterror efforts, repeatedly beaten Iraqi and Syrian regular troops and Iranian-backed militias, established provinces in Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, the Caucasus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and inspired attacks in western states and several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

Pentagon and White House spin to the contrary, ISIS terrorism shows no sign of diminishing after a year of Western intervention. On 26 June, an ISIS gunman massacred 38 people in Tunisia. The same day, ISIS bombers struck in Kuwait (killing 27) and Syria (killing 20). Five days later ISIS launched coordinated assaults on 21 Egyptian military posts in the Sinai Desert. Along with its ability to generate unprecedented numbers of foreign recruits—12 times as many as at the height of the Iraq War in 2006–08—Islamic State’s ability to inspire attacks like these illustrates its mastery of social media and electronic propaganda, and the effectiveness of its ‘leaderless resistance’ model of individual and small-team guerrilla-style terrorism.

But ISIS is far more than a terrorist group. Behind the front line of its offensives in Iraq and Syria, it has forged a governmental structure that administers 6 million people (a larger population than Singapore, Lebanon, Norway or New Zealand) and controls a territory covering one third of Iraq and roughly the same proportion of Syria. Its economy includes oil exports, sale of utilities like electricity and water, extortion of businesses and wealthy individuals, kidnapping, and the sale of antiquities. Along with its increasingly regular taxation system, this gives ISIS an annual revenue of more than US$600 million —small for a state, but (with the sole exception of the Colombian FARC’s drug revenues in the late 1990s) unprecedented for a terrorist group.

As I argued in a recent Quarterly Essay, ISIS—at its core—is a state-building enterprise. It seeks to create a real-world, territorial state in the Middle East, and then expand it by relatively conventional military conquest. It’s driven by a strongly sectarian, anti-Shi’a ideology, and influenced by the Ba’athist roots of its senior Iraqi leaders. As a string of battlefield victories shows—along with its demonstrated adaptability and resilience to bounce back after defeats—ISIS fields the most effective force currently fighting in the region. ISIS overseas provinces, and its ‘Internationale’—ISIS-inspired individuals and cells undertaking subversion, propaganda and terrorism on its behalf—support the state-building efforts of the core ISIS structure.

There are good reasons to avoid calling ISIS a state: to deny it legitimacy, and enable prosecution of those who travel to join it. But treating it as a state for targeting purposes—destroying its governmental structures, its economy, its military, and its ability to control territory and population—should be at the heart of western strategy. Instead, the approach so far has relied on limited airstrikes (11 strike sorties per day, on average, across Iraq and Syria, since last August) against tactical targets, arming and training the Iraqi military (and a few Syrian rebels) under extraordinarily restrictive rules of engagement, and occasional Special Forces raids. This strategy is failing.

On 18 May, ISIS captured Ramadi—capital of Iraq’s largest, most heavily Sunni province, Anbar—routing western-trained Iraqi troops including the vaunted Golden Division. Only four coalition airstrikes were launched the day Ramadi fell, making no impression on an ISIS force including dozens of armoured vehicles, mortars and artillery, spearheaded by seven suicide trucks followed by a swarm of combat teams on foot and in vehicles. Within days ISIS had consolidated its control of Ramadi, captured the city of Palmyra in Syria, and seized a critical border crossing.

Beside these battlefield defeats, half-hearted western engagement has created space for Iranian-backed militias (the ‘Popular Mobilisation’) who have engaged in sectarian cleansing in Sunni towns, and (with Assad in Syria, and Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon) represent the combat element of an Iranian proxy war to expand Teheran’s influence across the region. US air strikes helped the militias to seize Tikrit in March, and to achieve some progress against ISIS around the strategically critical Bayji oil refinery earlier this month.

But they also weaken the Iraqi government’s credibility, undermine the inclusive agenda of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, strengthen Nuri al-Maliki (the Shi’a-supremacist former Prime Minister closely associated with the militias) and encourage Kurds in the north and Shi’a in the southern region around Basra to break with Baghdad altogether. The rise of Popular Mobilisation militias as the leading element of Iraq’s campaign to recapture Ramadi (and, perhaps, an eventual offensive against Mosul) also means few Sunnis will support the offensive. Under these circumstances, battlefield victories by Iranian-backed Shi’a militia weaken the Iraqi government even more than defeats: not for nothing, the International Crisis Group has argued that the current approach is ‘defeating the Iraqi state, one victory at a time.’

Beyond the immediate threat, the humanitarian impact—the largest number of displaced persons and refugees ever recorded—is unconscionable, and the risk of a wider regional war is sharply elevated. Sunni states in the Arabian Gulf, with regional powers like Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, see expanding Iranian influence as an even more serious threat than ISIS, and are determined to stop it. The failure to mount an effective international intervention against ISIS, along with the appearance of an accommodation with Teheran on its nuclear program, risks turning a long-standing regional cold war into a hot conflict.

Thus, the current approach—in which the United States and its allies, including Australia, seem to be trying to fight the Islamic State without actually fighting—is not only doomed to failure but also likely to have dire knock-on effects. More than a year into the campaign, recognising this failure is the critical first step in crafting a workable strategy going forward.

A body count is not a strategy

12 June 2015

Last week US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a French interview that the American-led coalition had recorded more than 10,000 deaths of ISIS combatants since fighting against the group commenced last year. The linkage of operational success to a body count was roundly condemned by some commentators (see here and here, for instance).

This was followed by a statement by President Obama at the G7 Conference that ‘we don’t yet have a complete strategy against ISIS’. Both are staggering comments.

First, regardless of whether this approach as a valid metric of success, the body count comment does raise two questions: what is the real strength of ISIS, and how are the battle damage assessments conducted? The open source numbers are interesting and almost impossible to verify.

What we do know from open sources is that in late 2014 the commonly quoted figures for ISIS fighters were between 12,000 and 15,000. In early 2015 the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee estimated that ISIS’ strength had increased to between 20,000 and 30,000—and they had lost some 3,000 fighters in the Kobani fight. While plausible, it’s difficult to reconcile ISIS operational performance with rates of losses above 20%.

The Director of US Air Operations over Iraq and Syria has estimated that coalition forces ‘are taking the enemy off the field of battle in significant numbers and at a fairly consistent rate of about 1000 per month’.

But the Institute for the Study of War which does identify its sources calculated that over two days in June 2015, some 292 deaths occurred and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights assesses the combined Islamist faction’s losses in May to be approximately 2,897.

The estimated number of new foreign fighters flowing into ISIS is around 1,000 per month and while this continues to worry governments globally it’s becoming less of the problem. The larger challenge is that the base of the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq is changing. While the Pentagon’s graphics demonstrate the ebb and flow of the battle, what’s important to understand is the population base from which ISIS can now draw is some 6.5 million people. Back in February, on War on the Rocks, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross brought some transparent analysis to this issue. In particular, he attempted to draw some conclusions from the raw body count approach and what’s being seen on the ground. His conclusion is that the real strength of ISIS is likely to be closer to 100,000 than 30,000 and while the quality of the force is problematic a body count of 10,000 or 10% loss would seem more plausible as ISIS seeks to govern as well as fight.

At the end of the day where does this leave us? ISIS is growing in both numbers and influence. There’s no doubt that they’re also building the trappings of a state. The refugee problem in neighbouring states—particularly Lebanon and Jordan—is increasing in severity every day. The reality is that this is no longer a military problem. It’s a problem demanding a pragmatic political strategy. President Obama’s statement about a lack of strategy isn’t just a sad indictment on his administration, it’s a sad indictment on the political games that now seem to absorb a self-indulgent US Congress.

What should absorb global leaders is the urgent need for a comprehensive political strategy. As I said in an earlier post here, the US isn’t good at strategy, and it continues to reinforce this point of view. While Russia and Iran remain on the outside politically, the underlying issues which continue to destroy Syria from within and thus push Iraq to the inevitable point of dismantlement ensures that a solution to ISIS and a stable Middle East in the mid-term will never be achieved.

The numbers tell the story—and it isn’t a successful one. ISIS is continuing to grow and a narrow military approach alone is no solution at all. If we continue to follow the US strategy of convincing ourselves that we are being successful, we will achieve nothing. As we have from the beginning, we need a political strategy—and we need it urgently.

Iraq: federation or break-up?

5 June 2015

Peter Jennings has recently argued that Australian (and American) ground force personnel, now training elements of the Iraqi army, should accompany them into combat in the future. This change of operational tactics seems necessary following the recent successful assault by Da’ish forces on Ramadi in Iraq and the capture of Palmyra in Syria.

Other observers including Peter Leahy expressed caution on moving in this direction, without a significant debate in the government and parliament on the nature of conflict in the Middle East and its consequences for global terrorism. These challenges, he argued, need a fundamentally more strategic response that counters the ‘epicenter’ of the Islamist threat: their fundamentalist ideology. He predicted that ‘modern secular, mostly Western states’ were involved in an extended ‘hundred years war’ with radical Islamists where ‘ultimately the solutions must come from within the Muslim world’.

Yet, if there is a 100 years’ war, it isn’t so much one directed against the West but rather an epoch in the 1100-year-old dispute between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Like its Christian predecessor in central Europe, this war is as much about the ambitions of princes and prelates as it is about ideology and has ensured that violence in the Islamic world is overwhelmingly Muslim against Muslim.

Within this context it’s difficult to find a strategic epicentre at which to challenge and defeat the ideology of fundamentalist jihad. Jihadi-inspired violence in the Islamic world may be abhorrent, but will it produce a genuine consensus within the Muslim community sufficient to marginalise Islamic extremism? Despite heroic individual efforts, nothing broader has materialised and it would seem wise to disregard strategies that await a groundswell of moderate Islamic sentiment.

In fact, the actions of violent Jihadists are capable of attracting wide support. A recent poll conducted by Al Jazeera Arabic (with mainly Egyptian and Saudi Arabian respondents) found 81% approval for Da’ish. These predominantly Sunni communities were prepared to discount the brutal fundamentalism of Da’ish because it was seen as championing Sunni rights against Shi’ite advances and the military interventions of the West.

The situation in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and other Muslim states is unlikely to promote the growth of a moderate consensus. The financial support for Salafism in the Gulf states, the integration of Wahhabism and the house of Saud, and the readiness of Turkey to merchandise Da’ish’s captured resources, all suggest that the regional strategic environment for Da’ish is, at the least, permissive.

It’s hard to see any developments whereby Koranic study will significantly undermine the standing of fundamentalist Jihadi movements among key sections of the Muslim community; especially for any interpretations that would reinforce Western strategic interests. It seems difficult enough to counter radicalisation of elements within Muslim communities in western nations.

Perhaps the only way to seriously undermine Da’ish is encouraging developments which could lead to a revision of political boundaries across Iraq and Syria. Even if foreign military forces are able to engineer the expulsion of Da’ish from Iraq they would be able to regenerate in Syria. Peter Jennings has emphasised that his call for a change in military tactics in Iraq is prompted by a fear that the country is close to fracturing.

Yet should this break-up be resisted? The days when Iraq was a secular state with the highest rates of intermarriage between Sunni and Shi’ite have passed. The majority Shi’ite Iraqi government relies upon the Shia militias because, with skin in the game, they fight to win. The same is true for the Peshmerga forces that jealously guard almost a quarter of a century of de facto Kurdish independence, as it was also true of the Sunni tribesmen who eliminated Al Qaeda in Iraq during the Anbar Awakening from 2006.

Managing a disaggregation of Iraq would not be easy but the US has already facilitated this process by instituting the northern no-fly zone in 1992 and funding Iraqi Sunni tribesmen as part of the US ‘troop surge’ from 2007.

The Americans have now opened more cracks in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Washington’s negotiations with Iran on nuclear energy and the necessity for co-operation in combatting Da’ish have already changed the geo-political dynamics. America’s equivocal Sunni allies must now compete to ensure that their concerns are heard in Washington.

A deliberate policy to encourage political recognition of Iraq’s communal differences might even save the country’s geographic integrity if it resulted in a loose federation. There might even be benefit in interpreting ‘geographic integrity’ loosely, should communities in Syria feel their security lay in associating with like communities in Iraq, thus increasing the area of operations against Da’ish.

Such a strategy would not be without risk. It would require energetic Western support over the long term, and couldn’t guarantee against the revival of fundamentalist Jihadi groups in the future. However, with the current limited military offensive against Da’ish in Iraq and Syria in danger of faltering, there are sound reasons to debate alternative approaches.

Middle East operations: building capacity in Iraq

1 May 2015

Security across the Middle East region is of increasing concern, with the Houthi insurgency destabilising Yemen and drawing airstrikes from Saudi Arabia and nine Arab allies, and the Da’esh franchise spreading its propaganda and its brutal philosophy to North Africa and Afghanistan. The beheading of 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya, the death of 33 civilians in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in a bombing claimed to be by Da’esh, and the arrests in Melbourne and London of young men attracted to their savage cause highlights why our support to the coalition’s mission in the Middle East is so pressing.

In Iraq, the assessment for April is that Iraqi and Kurdish Security Forces have made territorial gains while Da’esh continues to rely on asymmetric tactics. CENTCOM has produced a map that provides analysis of the territory held by Da’esh and since reclaimed by Iraqi Security Forces. There have also been set-backs but the synopsis is that Iraqi ground forces have reclaimed more territory and inflicted more losses on Da’esh than have been suffered. The momentum, while limited in some areas, favours the Iraqi Security Forces.

The Australian government has recently approved the deployment of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission comprised of approximately 300 Australian Army personnel which will operate in partnership with 110 New Zealand Defence Force personnel. The deployment of the advance party has commenced and the collective force will be called ‘Task Group Taji’. The mission is a non-combat, ‘behind-the-wire’, training task within the Taji Military Complex, northwest of Baghdad.

Our training of Iraqi Security Forces will allow us to provide skills and competencies to their forces that will complement other coalition enablers such as air-strike, airborne intelligence-surveillance and reconnaissance, and partnership at the headquarters level. This will help the Iraqi ground forces to counter Da’esh attacks and roll back their hold on Iraqi sovereign-territory.

There are five Building Partner Capacity sites: al-Asad in Anbar province, Erbil in Erbil province, Baghdad, Taji north of Baghdad and Besmayah west of Baghdad where Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Security Forces are being trained for four-to six-week periods of instruction to prepare them for operations against Da’esh. The BPC mission will continue to build Iraq’s military capabilities encompassing the development of individual junior non-commissioned officer and officer through to collective training at the brigade headquarters level in order to:

Manoeuvre,command and control their forces;
Provide support to counter-attack operations;
Build survivability and intelligence-gathering skills such as countering IEDs, and obstacle clearing and breaching; and
Improve professional military conduct, for instance in the Law of Armed Conflict and Rules of Engagement.

Already, these training sites have graduated more than 6,500 security forces with another 5,000 under training. BPC site military trainers come from a host of countries including Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United States

One specific strategy of Da’esh has been the attack and control of Syrian and Iraqi oil refineries as part of its financing to fund its military campaign. Of particular strategic interest to Da’esh has been the Bayji Oil Refinery which has the capacity to process 300,000 barrels of oil a day—equating to one third of Iraq’s oil. However, since fighting began there more than 10 months ago, the refinery has stood still. Da’esh launched their latest attack in mid-April and breached the outer perimeter using vehicles packed with explosives. In and around both the refinery and the city, several hundred Da’esh members have been fighting against Iraqi Security Forces. Since then, Da’esh fighters have remained determined to seize the refinery. The area remains heavily contested. According to coalition reporting, more than half of the Da’esh fighters have been killed and 50 vehicles and weapon systems have been destroyed with close air support provided by almost 90 air-strikes on enemy targets by coalition forces, including the Air Task Group

The Royal Australian Air Force personnel assigned to the Air Task Group continue to make an important contribution through the provision and support of coalition air-strikes. Da’esh have not been able to move in large military convoys on preferred highways, cannot mass forces or operate high value military equipment without facing the threat of aerial attack. However, Da’esh has maintained some freedom of movement along the Euphrates river valley and in the border regions near Sinjar Mountain and Jordan.

F/A-18 Hornets from the Air Task Group have been involved in deliberate attacks against Da’esh fighting positions, sniper hides, and enemy fighters attempting to lay Improvised Explosive Devices. In the past month, 60 strike sorties involving the F/A-18 Hornet have delivered 24 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, 500 pound bombs against a variety of targets in Iraq including seven weapons released against targets in one mission. The E-7 Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft has also continued with its role of air-space coordination and control and has flown almost 90 hours for the month. The KC-30 air-to-air tanker has also maintained its high tempo with 30 sorties for the month of April delivering 2.6 million pounds or 12-hundred tonnes of fuel.

The challenge for Iraqi and coalition forces is not just the disruption and degradation of Da’esh in Iraq but the freedom it has in presenting a false image that the conflict in Iraq and Syria is going its way. As a contributor to the coalition campaign, we may need to put as much effort in the battle for the narrative as we are in finding and targeting Da’esh in Iraq.

ASPI suggests

10 April 2015

For the best reading picks, podcasts and news in international security and defence, here’s ASPI Suggests.

Kicking off today is the Iran nuclear deal; read Martin Skold’s piece on strategy blog The Bridge that grapples with the tension between US policy goals of counterproliferation in Iran and working with Iran to counter ISIS. He argues that the US has more to fear from Sunni jihadists than Iran and consequently should walk away from a ‘resource-sapping Middle East counterproliferation policy’. Keep reading here.

ICYMI check out the extraordinary images published by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) this week of Chinese land reclamation activities on Mischief Reef (overview in the New York Times here).

China’s flip-flopping on the legal status of rocks in another area of maritime disputes, the East China Sea, undermines ‘good faith’ among international actors, writes Ryan Santicola. He argues that China ought to reveal the intent behind its South China reclamation activities in the interests of promoting predictability in state–state relations. Also on AMTI, Wilson VornDick draws on Chinese history to explain why China’s territorial reclamation, known also as terriclaims, differ from other state building projects like Dubai’s artificial archipelago, Palm Jumeirah.

Melian Dialogue fans and game theory wonks, come hither! Neville Morley has a Monkey Cage piece on how Thucydides helps explains Greece’s problems with Germany.

Richard Gowan has a new policy brief for the German Marshall Fund that explores options for triangular cooperation between the US, Japan and Europe on UN peacekeeping. ASPI analyst Lisa Sharland was quoted in the piece, stating that Japan’s constitutional limitations remain a sticking point for greater involvement.

In technology, DARPA is developing underwater zombie pods (also known more blandly as ‘upward falling payloads’) that lie on the deep-ocean floor for years until triggered by an event or command.

Speaking of DARPA, Defense One is hosting an online viewcast on Monday 13 April (early morning Tuesday for Aussies) titled ‘Big data for Defense and national security: maintaining the US technological edge’ featuring Defense One technology editor Patrick Tucker, Dr Paul Cohen of DARPA and Dr Jason Matheny of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Register to receive the link to the viewcast here.

Meanwhile, the internet and software giants are making further strides into robotics and artificial intelligence, with Google patenting a way to give robots personalities based on a deceased person and IBM testing AI software that mimics the human brain. Watch this space!

Video

Over on bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Stephen Walt try to make sense of Obama’s Middle East strategy, including America’s de facto alliance with Iran in Iraq (41mins).

Flight Path

31 March 2015

In this week’s flight path, we cover the Germanwings plane crash, Joint Strike Fighter close air support capability, Australia’s next Chief of Air Force, Russia’s bombers and safety deposit boxes in space.

Recent revelations that identified German co-pilot Andrew Lubitz as deliberately locking the cockpit and crashing the Germanwings Airbus into the French Alps has highlighted some of the complex issues in cockpit security. Despite acknowledging Lubitz’s history with depression, the debate has largely focused on the need to enforce a rule that stipulates two pilots must be in the cockpit at all times. In fact, just yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced Australia’s airlines would immediately implement the two-person rule for all services operated by aircraft with over 50 seats. In contrast to this approach, Australian pilot Mark Gilmour argues the debate is ignoring the elephant in the room: mental health. Gilmour suggests the solution lies in destigmatising mental health in the aviation industry and avoiding kneejerk reactions such as implementing impractical cockpit rules.

In F-35 news, due to software package delays, the JSF won’t be able to provide close air support (CAS) to ground troops until 2022. Delays in the software package mean the precision guided Small Diameter Bomb II can’t be used to track and hit moving targets up to 40 miles. With USAF’s A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka Warthog) due to be retired in 2019, the software delay potentially creates a CAS capability gap in US Air Force.

Back in Australia, Tony Abbott recently announced Air Vice-Marshal Gavin Davies is to replace retiring Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Geoff Brown from 4 July 2015. One of the key responsibilities facing Air Force’s leadership will be the RAAF units and army instructors involved in the conflict in Iraq. Their attention will also be on recent airstrikes in Tikrit and over Yemen. The Air Force’s Plan Jericho will be the blueprint for the service’s future development.

Turning to Europe, where last Tuesday Russia delivered on its plan to send nuclear-capable bombers to the Crimean peninsula. Although not detected directly over Crimea, NATO jets escorted two Tu-22 type bombers and two Su-27 jets that were flying with their transponders switched off near the Baltic States and Sweden.

In tech news, an Australian-based company Sentient is making drones smarter with Kestrel, its ‘automated detection software’. The software picks out objects from the background of drone footage and highlights them for the human operator to focus on in real time. The software reduces human labour and reduces the potential for human error. Last month, Sentient signed a contract with the US Navy to install Kestrel on US navy MQ-8 Fire Scout drones. To see the claimed accuracy of the software, watch the demonstration video here.

Finally, in an unexpected development, Defense One is reporting that the US Air Force might have to protect money laundering in space. A combination of cyber threats and an increasingly accessible space market has led to a new class of start-ups offering satellite-based data centres safe from physical hacking and law enforcement. Marked as an orbital safety deposit box, those behind cyrptocurrency Bitcoin are seeking opportunities to store encryption keys on their own space satellites. As the US can provide a strategic umbrella in space, one observer even speculates that the US may move to create their own laws and legal jurisdictions in space.

Japan and the hostage crisis

3 February 2015

Japan’s discovering that being a ‘normal’ state in international relations isn’t all beer and skittles. The brutal death of two Japanese hostages at the hands of Islamic State is, in an ugly back-handed way, confirmation of Abe’s success in growing Japan’s international role. Other players are increasingly seeing Japan as an international actor and have begun feeling out what sort of actor it is. Is it susceptible to coercive pressure against its citizens? Against its territorial claims? Will its international role be primarily that of a follower or a leader? When and how might it resort to use of force? Do remnants of the old ‘Yoshida doctrine’—named after post-WWII prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru—still remain and, if so, in relation to which issues?

Most of those questions don’t have neat answers. Japan’s confronting a problem of strategic identity. Since WWII it’s lived principally on a strategic diet of an alliance relationship with the US coupled—under the Yoshida doctrine—with a low-profile role in international affairs. That doctrine didn’t say Japan would be a recluse, but emphasised its international role as a merchant state and not a samurai one. That role could still have important strategic effects, including by helping other regional countries—like Australia—to grow their economies. But in the harder security realm, the Yoshida doctrine pulled Japan towards non-involvement; in particular, use of force was off the table. In the international response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, for example, Japan contributed a substantial sum of money towards the liberation effort—but no troops. Read more

Strike from the air, advise and assist on the ground

12 December 2014

Below is an extract from ASPI’s forthcoming publication Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL. Click here to register for the publication’s free launch event.

The US has had combat advisers in Iraq since August 2014; Australian special operations forces joined Operation Inherent Resolve on the ground in mid-November. The initial 200-strong Australian element joined a force of advisers from various countries that form part of the official coalition. They find themselves dealing with the reality of other influences on the ground, the most notable being the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds force.

While much of the media focus has been on airstrikes and air power, the land component advisory force has been busy setting the conditions for the current and future efforts of the Iraqi security forces to push ISIL out of Iraq and reassert control over Iraqi territory and its population. These ‘advise and assist’ efforts have been constrained by restrictions on activity and complicated by the armed politics of a fragile and broken Iraq. We’re already seeing how some of these trends and tactical pressures are forcing operational and strategic decisions, including the recent addition of 1,500 more US troops and President Obama’s direct request of Prime Minister Abbott for more Australian advisers. Read more

Strike from the air: the first 100 days of the campaign against ISIL

8 December 2014

Next Tuesday, ASPI will release the first publication of a continuing, open-source study of the coalition campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The report is an important part of ASPI’s mission to provide policy-relevant research and analysis to better inform government decision-making and the public’s understanding of strategic and defence issues. With Australian blood and treasure committed to the efforts of the US-led coalition, it’s important that ASPI provides research, analysis and constructive commentary on the campaign efforts to deepen understanding of events, decisions, costs, risks and potential outcomes.

Australia’s role in the international coalition is currently limited to airstrikes on targets in Iraq and an evolving commitment to training elements of the Iraqi security forces. Both roles are indefinitely sustainable, given the ADF’s capacity to rotate forces and projections of defence spending. The broader challenge for Canberra will be to explain how this fits into a credible international strategy with a realisable political objective. Read more

Give (unconventional) war a chance

23 October 2014

Unconventional warfare isn’t popular among Western strategists these days. Whether it’s supporting insurgent groups (the strict definition) or supporting militias allied with government forces, proxy warfare has a bad reputation. The complex situation in Syria and Iraq isn’t helping matters: the US is struggling to find a reliable proxy in Syria and confidence in Iraq’s security forces and associated militias is low. In a recent editorial in the Canberra Times, Hugh White said, ‘For half a century America and its allies have been trying to win messy civil wars without fighting themselves and by training and equipping one side or the other. It never works’.

Professor White’s not alone in his dismal assessment. The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti reports that a recent CIA study came to a similarly dim conclusion—that US efforts at unconventional warfare had little effect on the long-term outcome of conflicts. Despite those conclusions, it’s unwise for strategists prematurely to dismiss the idea of supporting insurgent groups and working with non-state armed groups in both current and future conflicts.

For those who find proxy warfare detestable, its poor record mightn’t seem worrisome. Unfortunately, global trends suggest future conflicts will be characterised by insurgents, militias, and non-state armed groups who’ll be important in determining outcomes. Reports, including the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030, show that increasingly those groups emerge to fill the security vacuums of failing states. They have easier access to external sources of support. Russia and Iran clearly see proxy warfare as part of their strategic culture. Even most conventional future scenarios—what Douglas MacGregor calls ‘wars of decision’—will have insurgents seeking to influence outcomes before, during, and after decisive actions. So it’s critical that strategists understand unconventional warfare and how to counter it. No matter how detestable we might find proxy warfare, it does work and our enemies would be happy to use it against us. Read more