Terror Vacuum

Strategic Vision vol. 6, no. 34 (August, 2017)

Impending collapse of Islamic State poses challenges for regional security

Wen-hao Lu

Peshmerga fighters near the city of Mosul take down a captured ISIS flag and raise the Kurdish flag in its place.

photo: Kurdishstruggle

On 11 July, 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially announced victory over Islamic State (IS) militants in their former stronghold of Mosul. US President Donald Trump then congratulated the troops on their success, adding that this victory signals that Islamic State’s days in Iraq and Syria are numbered. Additionally, Russia’s recent claim of the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—since confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—further bolsters the hope that the IS will soon fall. In fact, the Islamic State has been facing bitter setbacks since 2016 under a military onslaught from the US-led Global Coalition against Daesh and its local allies, losing vast swathes of territory and thousands of fighters in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Retaking Mosul, and possibly totally chasing IS out the region, is welcome news and worth celebrating. As the Islamic State’s grip on territory loosens, however, the different yet perhaps more daunting task of establishing a new political order begins. The endeavor to gather several factions in the region offers a great benefit for battling IS. Nevertheless, this effort would generate new challenges as those groups overcome their mutual enemy, and then turn their attention working together on building the peace. How its aftermath is managed will be a turning point, and a critical obligation for the Iraqi government. Without a doubt, the country will implode into a new state of civil conflict if the lessons of the rise of IS have not been learned.

Iraqi security forces perform a review for leaders in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi forces have been at the forefront in the struggle against the Islamic State.

photo: Tommy Aviluceau

Sunni marginalization

Among the many reasons that enabled IS to occupy around one-third of Iraq in the summer of 2014, there are a couple significant points that need to be addressed. Under US-backed former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s leadership and political motivation, the marginalization of Iraq’s Sunni communities had widened. In addition, systemic corruption within the Iraqi security services and state institutions enabled IS to capitalize on the Sunni sense of disenfranchisement. Moreover, the worsening civil war next door in Syria further inspired IS to establish its self-proclaimed caliphate across both Iraq and Syria. The fall of Mosul, and the IS threat to Baghdad in 2014, showed the fragility of the Iraqi security forces (ISF).

Iranian influence grew in Iraq and provided a great opportunity for IS to exploit the fears of Iraqi Sunnis and step in as an actor to fill the vacuum of security and provide basic state services to local communities. The situation in the Sunni communities in Iraq after two years is dramatically different, however. Senior Sunni figures today acknowledge that IS was initially viewed by some communities and politicians as a welcome “liberation.” There was an initial marriage of convenience between Islamist jihadists and Baathist insurgents that led to the capture of Mosul. Yet the IS-Baathist split, along with the Islamic State’s brutal rule and the displacement of millions of Sunnis from their homes, left these communities in Iraq—along with many other minority groups—devastated. The social fabric that initially supported IS has frayed, with many Sunnis now taking up arms to join the fight against the group.

The unprecedented cooperation between various forces, most recently in Mosul among ISF, Kurdish fighters and various Shiite, Sunni and other paramilitary groups, plays a vital role in defeating IS. In November 2016, Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi, known as Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), closed off all available land routes between Mosul, IS’s last stronghold in Iraq, and Raqqa, the group’s de-facto capital in Syria. The PMF also teamed up with Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) fighters, or Peshmerga, to encircle Mosul and prevent access to IS-held territories in Syria. These forces have benefited from strong US and Iranian military backing. The military success of US-backed and Iranian-backed Iraqi forces has, in turn, given confidence to more Iraqis that IS can be defeated.

As of early 2017, IS had already lost control of key population centers and territorial strongholds from Fallujah in Iraq to Manbij in Syria; coalition operations aimed at retaking Mosul and Raqqa—the central hubs of its power in Iraq and Syria—were underway. IS had also suffered an estimated 45,000 deaths at the hands of the US-led coalition through the late summer of 2016; it had seen its revenue significantly constricted by airstrikes and other methods; flows of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria had been reduced dramatically. As a result of all this, IS’s combat proficiency, organizational cohesion, and morale have all declined markedly from their peak of 2014–2015, and the group’s leaders have conceded publicly that the “caliphate” might be lost.

Emergent power factions

Despite promising signs on the anti-IS military track, one of the biggest threats facing Iraqi security is the likelihood that new internal conflict among, and within, Iraq’s power factions will emerge the day after the guns stop pointing at IS. This is a fear shared by both Iraqi and Western officials in Iraq. The challenge is how these competing agendas can be balanced, and how the shattered community should be pieced back together. The military actors involved in Mosul’s liberation—Iraqi federal forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, state-sponsored paramilitaries led by Shiite forces and those aligned to local Sunni and minority groups—each come with different political visions for how the province should be governed after IS is defeated. While an agreed-upon military plan exists, every group involved in the military campaign has its own plan B for what comes next.

Paratroopers engage ISIS militants with strategically placed artillery fire in support of Iraqi and Peshmerga fighters in Mosul, Iraq, July 6, 2017.

photo: Christopher Bigelow

The potential for renewed conflict in these countries is increased by power rivalries between competing armed political and militia factions. Many of these factions seek support from regional powers, which, having fought hard to counter IS, now want to retain a degree of influence in the liberated areas. In such circumstances, it is almost impossible to establish a government that holds some elections and then leads the country to solve economic, political, sectarian, and security problems. Greater instability in Iraq and Libya is likely if the post-IS transition does not cope with the core drivers of extremist forces, or if regional rivalries provoke further conflict among the forces that defeated IS.

Besides the issue of internal political and militia factions, after the caliphate is eliminated, the issue of what becomes of the IS fighters who remain has also generated concern, especially as to how this may relate to the spread of terrorism. The defeat of the IS core will not necessarily destroy affiliated groups in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, and Afghanistan. It will not remove the danger that IS

There is every probability that a group similar to the Islamic State will surface in the near future.

fighters may form a new insurgency to continue the fight even after the caliphate is destroyed. Nor will the defeat of IS remove the threat posed by Al Qaida affiliates such as al Shabaab in Somalia, AQAP in Yemen, Jabhat al Nusra in Syria, and other groups capable of carrying out major attacks. Additionally, the fact that the greater Middle East is riven by ongoing conflict and instability, and that it continues to generate toxic ideological radicalism, means that the broader danger of jihadist extremism is unlikely to disappear. In particular, the problem of foreign fighters who gained experience in Syria before returning to their countries of origin means that Western homelands may face the threat of lone-wolf, wolf-pack, and copycat terrorist attacks such as those spawned by IS in California, Paris, Istanbul, and numerous other places.

Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade practice target engagement with a Stinger Missile in South Korea.

photo: Kathleen Polanco

Finally, there is one more issue that needs to be considered. Despite international financial support, the struggle against IS and the fall in oil prices have drained Iraqi resources. Persistent corruption and economic mismanagement have added to those woes and led to a grave economic crisis. Continued economic downturn will further strain the ability of the Iraqi central government to deal with post-IS security and political challenges and to meet the demands of the country’s growing population of young people.

The IS was born when a group split from al-Qaeda, considering the latter to be weak and lacking in vision. Its goal was to establish an Islamic caliphate. While the IS model will not survive for too long in the Middle East, there is every probability that a group similar to the Islamic State will surface in the near future. With the IS decentralization in the Middle East, there could be multiple groups similar to the Islamic State all over the world at the same time. This is especially possible in Southeast Asia, where both groups have a strong footprint. Additionally, a megamerger between post-IS elements and al-Qaeda cannot be ruled out, either.

Implications for Asia

Moreover, it is estimated that more than 1,000 Southeast Asians, both fighters and their family members, supported and live in the Islamic State. With IS central likely to be defeated soon, it is not difficult to believe that those people will return home to their respective countries. A new dimension would be returnees from regional conflicts such as in Marawi City, where there are Southeast Asian fighters from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, and elsewhere supporting their Filipino co-jihadists. The security situation could worsen with the region being awash with IS and non-IS returnees who are skilled in combat operations, adept in the use of sophisticated military weapons and tactics, and most important of all, experienced in combat, ideologically fortified, and strongly networked.

Undoubtedly, the Islamic State group will be defeated in the near future as expected. A lesson has been learned in recent years that counter-terrorism without stabilization simply does not work. Without a sustained international effort to address the political and economic grievances that gave rise to IS, a new wave of extremism and conflict will surely follow.

There are, nevertheless, openings to bolster Iraqi security forces and provide willing political actors with expertise in capacity-building and decentralizing power. The states that have supported the anti-IS coalition should now shift their efforts into immediate and longer-term stabilization efforts. These are all encouraging developments, but it remains to be seen if this cooperation can continue into the political sphere once IS is defeated. Cooperation between external, local fighting groups and the ISF will also be needed in the security realm if IS doubles down on its large-scale terrorist attacks and adopts more guerrilla warfare tactics once it has lost its territorial control.

For Taiwan, the specter of a rising Muslim extremist presence in Southeast Asia as the IS collapses poses a threat to national security. The country imports hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers annually, a majority of whom are young Muslim men from Southeast Asia. Some of them may be susceptible to IS recruiting propaganda and might carry out terrorist attacks in Taiwan. Furthermore, the new Southbound Policy, which is the main focus of the Tsai Ing-wen administration, is seeking stronger economic ties with nations in Southeast Asia. In order to meet the possible challenges of a post-IS era, Taiwan should work more closely with intelligence communities in the region and organizations like Interpol to ensure that such potential threats do not go unaddressed.

A security team 1st Battalion, 153rd Infantry Regiment provides security for a C-130J during a cargo mission in Somalia.

photo: Russ Scalf

Colonel Wen-hao Lu is an instructor at the ROC War College at National Defense University. He can be reached for comment at luwenhao73@gmail.com