The coming ISIL dispersal – Iraq and Syria
Brian M Downing
In coming weeks, or months, ISIL’s prestigious holdings, Mosul and Raqqa, will have been retaken. ISIL will have only a handful of smaller towns and expanses of land – most of it wasteland. Several thousand ISIL fighters are in Mosul and Raqqa, each. While many or even most will fight to the death, others will exfiltrate from the besieged cities.
Some will have had enough of the jihadi adventure and try to make it home. Others will continue the fight in more unstable regions from North Africa to Central Asia. Theaters outside Iraq and Syria are numerous and opportunistic. Many ISIL fighters now in Mosul and Raqqa will not have to travel so far to continue their efforts.
Iraq
Sectarian hostilities flared when Sunni domination ended and the Shia majority came to power. Reconciliation was not forthcoming under Prime Minister Maliki. While outsiders criticize the government’s heavy-handedness, they had no loved ones who endured Saddam’s misrule and massacres.
The present government has instructed its soldiers to respect the Sunnis of Mosul and other lands retaken from ISIL, but soldiers who have fought the jihadis for over two years will have rougher notions of justice. The same can be said of Shia militias and Kurdish troops. Continued sectarian hostility will provide opportunity for ISIL fighters, whether they remain in ISIL or realign with less apocalyptic Sunnis, especially those wanting separation from Baghdad.
After the US demobilized Saddam’s army in 2003, many army and security officers formed clandestine networks which became integral parts of the Sunni resistance to both the US and the Shia government. Some of them joined ISIL, providing tactical expertise and better discipline.
Saddam’s Ba’ath party officials retained a secret cell organizational structure, even while it ruled the country. In conjunction with affluent contractors, they too were parts of the Sunni resistance to the Americans and “Persians”.
The Sunni tribes of central and western Iraq were part of a ruling social structure before 2003, and their militias fought the US before joining the Anwar Awakening against al Qaeda. More recently, they’ve fought ISIL but will now be seeking experienced fighters in the impending conflict with the Shia government.
Salafism, a Saudi-based branch of Islam that ISIL and al Qaeda draw from, spread in Sunni Iraq after the jarring defeat in Gulf War One and the calamity that followed twelve years later. This austere form of Islam provided solace and hope for a better future from greater piety. Salafi networks will be important actors in the coming Sunni-Shia fight.
Syria
After losing Raqqa, ISIL’s opportunities to continue as a coherent conventional force, and not an underground network, are better to the west in Syria. ISIL controls pockets of territory in eastern Syria and more importantly in mountainous terrain in northern and western parts of the country.
The northern pocket will be their strongest position. However, they will face Turkish, FSA, and Kurdish troops which want the area rid of Islamists in order to establish their own statelets.
ISIL’s best option for survival is to align with other hardline Salafist groups such as the al Nusrah Front and Ahrar al Sham, which are presently engage in a Verdun-like battle for Aleppo. The battle will wear down their numbers in coming weeks and make plain the need for new troops. Alternately, ISIL will hold only shrinking pockets in scattered parts of Syria.
ISIL’s days of a fearsome army, fighting above ground and controlling large amounts of territory, are numbered. In Iraq and Syria, it must reduce its profile and become an inglorious underground network or align with similar but heretofore antagonistic jihadi groups. ISIL, however, will have opportunities outside Iraq and Syria in the vast, ill-governed expanse from Morocco to Central Asia.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.