The Kurdish Question and the New Great Game for Oil and Gas in the Near East.

The siege of the Kurdish city of Kobani in northern Syria demonstrates the futility of thinking air strikes alone could decisively make a difference to the war on the ground. Sunni jihadists are advancing as opposed to retreating in the absence of any coordinated political response to defeating 'Islamic State'.

The US was prepared to launch air strikes in Syria because it regards defeating 'ISIL' in Iraq as the overriding priority. Britain, however, has been reluctant to because, far more than Washington, London is very anxious about pleasing Qatar and so its main regional ally in Turkey.

The US is mostly concerned with ensuring Iraq does not collapse because that would endanger Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well as defeating the main strategic aim and gain of the Second Iraq War in ensuring increased Iraqi oil production, stable oil prices and relatively cheap consumer goods imported from Asia.

While most western states share US energy interests in this regard, Britain and France are far more beholden to Qatari-Turkish geopolitical strategies which seek to rival Russia and Iran in Iraq and especially Syria where there is competition for influence over the gas reserves of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Discovered in 2009-2010, the Levant basin has led to renewed regional rivalries which cut across the old Cold War lines and led Turkey into increased hostility towards Greek Cypriot claims to the Aphrodite gas fields lying off the coast of Cyprus as well as the enmity shown towards Israel.

Turkey has clashed with Israel over its wars against the Sunni Palestinian Muslims of Gaza, one which is crucially concerned with protecting Israeli gas interests as well as over the way Israel has shown interest in cooperating with Russia to exploit its gas and pipe it via Cyprus and so by pass Turkey completely.

Turkey and Qatar from the outset of the conflict in 2011 between Assad and Sunni rebel groups backed the latter so as to realise such designs such as a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline and to exert more control over the development of Syria's offshore gas against Russian influence and domination.

Turkey has developed what Norman Stone calls a 'neo-Ottoman' policy, one in which Sunni Arab and Sunni Muslim interests are courted by Erdogan to win domestic support and that of regions with the oil and gas resources Turkey lacks and would like to control from Lebanon to Syria and into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet Ankara, in fact, has shown reluctance to be involved in any military effort to defeat ISIS that would empower the Kurdish YGP fighters in Syria. Yet it is courting Barzani's Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq so as to draw it into an economic partnership based on Turkey becoming an major energy export route.

The double game played by Erdogan is about benefiting from Kurdish oil while trying to keep a lid on moves for independence to the west in Syria, where the YGP is in battle with ISIS over border regions with oil, and southern Turkey, where there is little oil and every benefit in unifying with regions which have it in abundance.

The worst scenario for Turkey would be that their support for Barzani in Iraqi Kurdistan and the fate of the Kurds in Syria fighting ISIS along with the US could lead to demands for a Greater Kurdistan, one reason Erdogan and Turkish government officials have compared the terrorist threat of ISIS with that of the PKK.

Kurdish Iraq with its capital Erbil has become one of the globe's most lucrative oil regions and the increased wealth it has developed and its ability to defend itself against ISIS is bound to be regarded as an indication of the sort of security and prosperity the Kurds in Syria and Turkey could have as well.

Already Kurdish Iraq is moving ever closer towards independence from Baghdad and wanting something in return for hosting western multinational oil corporations such as Exxon Mobil and beating back ISIS from the Mosul Dam and so saving the Iraqi state from potential destruction.

The Kurds consist of up to thirty million people spread across the Middle East from Turkey, through Syria and Iraq into the western parts of Iran. They could well be regarded as the world's largest ethnic group without a state in an age when the West has supported self-determination in places such as Kosovo.

As the states of Iraq and Syria created after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by France and Britain disintegrate, Turkey has moved towards asserting its influence in both in opposition to ISIS which has countered the neo-Ottoman strategy with its own version of the Caliphate.

While Turkey's claims as a regional power depend upon retaining a 'state-nation' based on ethnic and religious diversity, ISIS detests the Ottoman Empire as a fake usurper of the caliph's position which became an office absorbed into the Sultan's power when it the 'real' Islamic empire was essentially a Sunni Arab one.

The Caliphate was abolished in 1924 but for Sunni Arabs in Iraq who lost out to the Shia and the Kurds after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003, the symbol of lost unity and the fact ISIS is using oil revenues to fund welfare for Sunni Arabs in Syria and Iraq is giving it some appeal.

Saddam's regime was one dominated by the Sunni Arabs. ISIS is ruled and run by former members of the secular Baath Party who converted to radical jihadi-Islamist in American prisons where the Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdad was also detained. In a sense, ISIS is the expression of a radical Sunni Arab nationalism.

The Kurds are Sunni Muslims but would prefer the promise of self determination to be realised in their case as one of the USA's most steadfast allies in the region, one reason Israel as a non-Arab state has gone further than America in calling for Kurdistan to be a made an independent republic.

Turkey, however, has little interest in supporting any western military effort that would end up empowering the Kurds in Syria such as arming or training their troops. Arming them would mean the weapons could be turned against Turkey. But Kurdish fighters are the only force that could defeat ISIS in northern Syria.

The Free Syria Army is, as Patrick Cockburn has pointed out, nothing more that a CIA led group since Sunni militants splintered off from it to fight against both it and Assad and the Kurds. The idea it could act as a 'third force' to destroy ISIS or Assad's military is a piece of abstract geopolitical fiction.

The only way to defeat ISIS has to involve a truce between Assad and the FSA and Syrian National Council or else, by default, ISIS and Sunni militants such as Al Nusra are bound to be the only powerful ground force in northern Syria apart from the Kurds whose fighters are deeply distrusted by Turkey.

Indeed, in the summer of 2013 the FSA and ISIS were aligned in fighting against the Kurds as the YGP had gained strength from Assad's decision to withdraw government forces from the north as part of a strategy to divert Sunni forces away from advancing on to Damascus-and it worked.

Consequently, the YPG and the FSA regard each other as enemies. The Syrian National Council and its backers regard all oil and gas resources in Syria as theirs to develop. They have no interest in either the Kurds or ISIS gaining the Rumelian oil field both are battling to control.

Moreover, neither Qatar nor Turkey have any interest in ISIS being destroyed if Assad benefits because of the ongoing proxy conflict between them and Iran because it seeks a rival pipeline route from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean and then on to global markets to export gas.

Britain and France, the two foremost military powers in the EU, would still prefer Assad to be overthrown. They have lucrative arms deals with Qatar and would benefit from a gas route which avoided the export of LNG via the Iranian controlled Straits of Hormuz and reduced EU dependence upon Russia gas.

That threat of dependence has increased since the fall of Tripoli in Libya into the hands of Islamist militants. It was increased also by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the potential break away of the eastern regions of Ukraine which has removed from potential western control a major east-west transit zone.

Turkey's attempt to become a southern energy corridor, now that Ukraine has descended into conflict is, however, endangered by a similar problem of ethnic irredentism among the Kurds who are fleeing into Turkey in large numbers from Syria as ISIS drives them from their villages and towns.

The Kurds are growing increasing outraged at Ankara's double standards in having allowed jihadists as violent and fanatical as those fighting for Al Nusra to enter Syria from Turkey but trying to prevent Turkish Kurds fighting in support of those being menaced by ISIS in Kobani. This has caused riots on the border

So the west is hamstrung by Turkey being a NATO member which has no interest in the Kurds gaining the upper hand in Syria over ISIS. At the same time it remains the only military force in practice which could repel the jihadists back away from the border with southern Turkey.

One reason why Turkey created a 20km security zone in Syria was to protect a NATO border from Sunni Islamist militants and be in a position to defend the highly symbolic tomb of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, from being destroyed by ISIS which have threatened it several times.

However, Kurdish factions, especially the PKK with whom Turkey had a conflict with from the 1980s until recently, regards the Turkish security measures as an attempt to create a 'buffer zone' between Turkey and the Islamic state at the expense of the Kurdish people who they are allowing to be ethnically cleansed.

As a consequence, if the Kurdish enclaves fall, not only would NATO and the west be seen as 'doing nothing' about the slaughter of Kurds in northern Syria while arming them in Iraq. ISIS could well advance up to the border with Turkey and try to provoke the ground jihad with the west they want in Syria and Iraq.

The sad reality is the suffering of civilians in Syria has always been a secondary consideration to geopolitical energy interests on all sides in this conflict. The emergence of ISIS would have led all external powers to unite in defeating it if a ruthless geopolitical competition over access to resources were not at stake

All these factors have made for a protracted multi-faceted conflict in which the most brutal and effective force can win out if it controls Syria's resources and finance itself to get the weapons and recruits that it needs to have towards fighting towards that end. There is no end to the bloodshed in sight.

The Third Iraq War: Syria, Turkey and the Kurdish Condundrum.

Britain's decision to join the US in bombing ISIS would appear belated and token. The US started bombing back in August 2014 yet ISIS is reported already to have come within a mile or so of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Whether for or against military intervention, experts consider air power alone as insufficient.

Britain's contribution of only six Tornado jets to attack ISIS positions is more about demonstrating that Britain remains at the forefront of combating terror in the Middle East and defending against the potential threat ISIS poses to the oil producing regions of Iraq from Kurdistan down towards Kuwait.

The aim of  'degrading and ultimately defeating' ISIS is about preventing the phantom caliphate from consolidating its position in Iraq and Syria through the exploitation and sale of the oil which it could use to fund its military operations and greater expansion in the region.

Having started with the mission to take on and destroy 'ISIL' in a long war or a 'generational struggle' against a 'global threat' that is mostly regional and confined to the Middle East, politicians such as Cameron seem intent in giving ISIS the sort of global power status the 'Islamic State' has sought out.

The dangers of 'mission creep' are inherent in the rhetoric about 'ISIL' since it is considered an organisation with which no accommodation can be made and so once the war has started, it follows that it would have to be finished or else the initial and costly bombing campaign would have been to no avail.

The main problem is not even the supposed 'allies' in the Greater Middle East are acting in concert because of shadowy geopolitical interests and the fact Qatar and Turkey are as concerned ( in fact pathologically obsessed ) with overthrowing President Assad in Syria as they are with defeating ISIS.

Qatari and Turkish intransigence on Assad's position in Syria remains one reason why there could not have been a negotiated political settlement between the Free Syria Army and Damascus and, as a consequence, why ISIS remains entrenched in its capital Raqqa as the most powerful 'third force' opposed to them both.

Without a truce between Syrian government forces and the FSA, ISIS, even if defeated in Iraq and rolled back from Sunni Arab regions through the action of Iranian backed Shi'ite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga, would always be able to to retreat and regroup in Syria before attacking once more.

While the US and Britain were prepared to engage diplomatically with Iran over the ISIS threat to Iraq, Qatar and Turkey would be hostile to any attempt to do a deal with an Iranian backed Assad which would affect their regional geopolitical interests. But without it, ISIS in Syria would be difficult to defeat.

Qatar and Turkey would remain reticent about any attempt to roll back ISIS in Syria that would entrench Assad and both Iranian and Russian influence. The Syrian National Council opposed Russian involvement in exploiting Syria's offshore gas in the Eastern Mediterranean and an Iran-Iraq-Syria 'Shi'ite' gas pipeline.

Turkey, a main backer on Sunni Muslim opposition to the Alawi administration of Assad, would like to become an east-west energy hub. A Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline would reposition it in a stronger position against Russia which would prefer to retain its predominance as Turkey's main source of gas.

Turkey has held back from joining in the military effort against ISIS because it President Erdogan wants to make that conditional upon the west renewing its pressure upon Assad to be replaced by a Sunni dominated government led by the Syrian National Council that would ensure Syria's territorial integrity.

Far from being the eastermost outpost of the west through NATO membership, a Cold War hangover, Turkey under Erdogan has reimagined its role as a 'neo-Ottoman' regional power and maintained an open border policy with Syria so as to facilitate the formation of Sunni militant forces.

Turkey was half-hearted about supporting the battle against ISIS at the Paris talks because it remains concerned arming the Kurds in Iraq could stimulate a wider Kurdish irredentist movement in Kurdish Syria and across the border where the PKK has had an uneasy peace with Ankara after a decades old conflict.

Erdogan has sought to draw Kurdish regions closer in the Turkish sphere of influence but not so far as to lead to calls for a separate state enjoining Kurds in southern Turkey, northern Syria and the already autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, a valued special partner as it has the oil riches Turkey lacks.

Turkey has an oil pipeline stretching from Iraqi Kurdistan in Kirkuk to the port of Ceylan that it would like to make fully operational and has lucrative construction contracts with Erbil. Yet, at the same time, it opposes the wishes of those Kurdish groups in Syria and Turkey with far lessoil wanting to join it as part of one state.

On the contrary, there is reason to think Ankara would prefer these regions as a buffer between it and ISIS, one reason a motion in the Turkish parliament to create a 20km buffer zone in Syria between Turkey and Syria to secure passage for both foreign troops and for Turkish troops to secure Syrian-Kurdish enclaves.

While Turkey would be prepared to intervene militarily to secure its borders from ISIS, it would be more unwilling to contribute towards defeating ISIS without Assad being removed because that would free up the Kurdish fighters in Syria to demand an independent state that could stretch into southern Turkey.

Part of US-British strategy to relieve the Kurds in north-west Iraq from the onslaught of ISIS ( Tornados are bombing ISIS positions to this end ) and arming the peshmerga has already led to demands for the same for those Kurds being cleared from northern Syria and military action to defend Kobani.

While Turkey is a staunch ally of Barzani's KNC in Iraq it is concerned about arms falling into the hands of the 'wrong' Kurdish rebels of the PKK which is a major fighting faction of the YPG. Ankara's attempts to block Kurdish refugees from entering and Kurdish fighters from entering Syria has caused riots

As Turkey has no real interest in assisting the fight against ISIS if it would mean a greater impetus towards Kurdish secession in Turkey itself there have been accusations that Ankara could be in league or plotting with ISIS in order to use it as a tool to keep the Kurds divided and ruled from elsewhere-including Iran.

That Iran backs Assad as a Shi'ite co-religionist and a client prepared to accede to grand designs for a gas pipeline through Iraq and Syria to be completed by 2016 is seen as a direct threat to the Qatar-Turkey scheme for a Sunni axis of influence and one reason why Assad was plotting with the Kurds of Syria.

None of the contending regional powers in Syria has any interest in any one of the contending forces with military power gaining the upper hand. As that by default allows the most brutal warring Sunni militant force to win out, the danger is that the failure to destroy ISIS could lead eventually to greater western intervention.

The western states could hardly intervene to assist the Kurds against ISIS in Syria where Turkey regards the the PKK, the largest and most militant faction in YPG struggling against ISIS, as a threat to its territorial integrity of Turkey and one that is growing angry at Ankara's attempt to stop Turkish Kurds fighting in Syria.

The double standard is resented by the Kurds because prior to April 2014, fighters going to assist the Free Syria Army, even the most militant Al Qaida affiliated groups such as Al Nusra, had been facilitated and tolerated throughout 2012 and 2013 before ISIS turned its guns against the Sunni states and the west.

The battle between ISIS and the YPG is critical because, despite Prime Minister Cameron's claim that ISIS makes money from sales of oil to Assad, most of the Islamic State's revenues come from illicit sales of oil across the long Turkish border, a strategic area through which foreign Sunni militants are recruited.

More than that, the borderlands with Turkey contain some of Syria's richest oil reserves such as the Rumeilan oil fields to the east of Serekaniye which are mostly in Kurdish hands: who control these resources also controls the illegal fuel trade which runs through pipelines built during the sanctions on Saddam in the 1990s.

From Ankara's perspective it benefits its security if neither the YPG nor ISIS could win definitive control over these oil resources with which to buy weapons because it regards both the YPG and ISIS as both dangerous terrorist threats and, if anything, the PKK as far more dangerous to it than ISIS.

Turkey's conflict with the PKK date back to 1984 and they were aligned with Assad's Syria: even in 22013 the Kurds of Syria were in league with Damascus because Assad wanted to divert the Free Syria Army northwards away from the capital and both they and the Kurds squabbled over the oil reserves.

The reticence of the Syrian Kurds to either want the restoration of rule from Damascus or to remain within a Sunni Arab dominated Syria being fought for by the Free Syria Army or, of course to an insane degree by ISIS and Al Nusra, means it is highly unlikely either Turkey or Qatar could get their way in Syria.

Yet it is precisely just such a foreign policy which is bound to provoke the Kurds in Syria into further resistance that makes a political settlement difficult to acheive : if the Kurds are thwarted in their quest for autonomy they would align even with Assad against Turkey meaning it would back Sunni militants against it.

Resource War in Northern Iraq: Oil and the Anglo-American Military Intervention.

".. alongside the humanitarian crisis there is also a political and extremism crisis in Iraq that has a direct effect on us back here in the UK. We do have a fully worked through strategy for helping with allies to deal with this monstrous organisation – the Islamic State."-British Prime Minister David Cameron

The problem with Cameron's lame public diplomacy is that anyone who knows anything about the conflict in northern Iraq and Syria regards with complete contempt the cant about a 'monstrous organisation' and the impact it could have on our streets, a stock justification used for 'staying the course' in the Afghanistan.

It is about time British political leaders stopped treating the British public as some sort of infantile herd that can be fobbed off with condescending precision tooled up soundbites of the sort about  'military prowess', 'the terrorist organisation' and the possibility of 'mayhem in our streets'.

With the spread of the Internet and the 'information revolution', those even remotely interested in what is going on in northern Iraq could quickly discover that the reasons for intervention are not only concerned with saving the Yazidis from being killed by IS or about some more imminent terror threat being now a red alert.

The war in northern Iraq is not a simplistic conflict between forces of good versus evil, though IS is certainly evil and malign. It's a complicated many sided struggle over access to water as well as an ethnic/sectarian war between Kurds and Sunni Arabs over the oil wealth of Kirkuk amongst other things.

Unless the intention of the British involvement is to kill as many IS foot soldiers as possible and take out British born jihadists, then Cameron should refrain from trying to justify the war according to the idea it is primarily about protecting Britain from jihadists. It may actually increase that risk.

Cameron is, no doubt, aware that the cost of military intervention could be to lead to a spike in the threat of terrorism in Britain so he would need to manage risk and expectations by emphasising the ongoing nature of the threat the better to be able justify more intervention in future if attacked.

Britain would be better off tightening up borders and working with Turkey to prevent European jihadists crossing. Security measures are somewhat different to military campaigns to roll back what is, in reality, a potential threat to Iraq's stability and so global oil supplies and prices.

The crisis in Iraq has curtailed the supply of crude oil from OPEC's second largest producer and saw prices surge over $114 a barrel for the first time in nine months back in June 2014. Despite being less dependent on Middle East oil than in 2003, increased oil prices could affact the East Asian economies.

Energy analyst Anthony Cordesman argues "The United States, strategically, is a major trading power. It is particularly dependent on the import of manufactured goods from three countries which are extremely dependent on energy imports. Those happen to be China, South Korea, and Japan."

So while Sunni militants had been encroaching into Iraq months before the US and Britain decided to act, partly because of the Yazidis situation, but more due to the threat to Iraq as the world's 7th largest oil producer and the threat to Erbil and Kurdistan's oil boom regional state.

The Kurdish militias took Kirkuk in June 2014 and the threat to it from IS would set back British Petroleum's plans to reverse declining output at the oilfield discovered in 1927. Providing aid to the KRG could help remove opposition to BP's plans in Kirkuk, aswell as shoring yp the Iraqi government in Baghdad

Britain is among the many global players vying for oil contracts and the right to drill in Kurdish oil fields. The danger of that strategy is it could push Kurdistan further towards independence in a way that could anger Iran whose cooperation even Cameron has belatedly come to regard as essential to defeating IS.

Obama only gave the go-ahead for air strikes as soon as Erbil seemed in striking distance of the oil fields being drilled by Chevron and ExxonMobil. It is the involvement of such global oil majors that has put a strain on the relationship between Baghdad and Kurdistan that has helped destabilise Iraq.

Iraq is the cockpit of proxy struggles and resource wars and this vital fact in relation to both it and neighbouring Syria is routinely screened out from mainstream media accounts of the war when energy geopolitics should be getting a lot coverage and integrated into factual accounts of the conflict.

Blood, Oil and Barbarism in Syria and Iraq.

'Isis can only be defeated by Sunnis. To gain their support, the new Iraqi government needs to be inclusive, address the legitimate Sunni grievances and allow the recruitment of local Sunni forces as part of the Iraqi security forces.' Iraq’s new prime minister must get Sunnis on side if he wants to defeat Isis, Guardian Agust 16, 2014 .

The Sunni tribes have aligned with ISIS as part of a tactical move to improve their bargaining position with a Shi'ite dominated Baghdad. The problem is that ISIS is growing into a state within two states, the new Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq, and it has become self financing through its control of oil.

Just as the Kurdish regions have grown more autonomous because of their oil wealth , ISIS has gained control over Syria's major oil fields such as al-Omar and al-Tanak. In July 2014, it was reported that ISIS was selling oil on the black market abroad to raise funds for more weapons and ammunition.

Even if the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Haidar al-Abadi, is able to prove a less divisive figure in Iraq's politics, no 'unitary government' has any guarantee of being able to do very much about ISIS having a base in northern Syria nor is it going to be able to destroy the emerging Caliphate overnight.

The danger is that the decision to arm the Kurdish peshmerga would lead some to advocate doing the same with the FSA in Syria because ministers such as Fabius in France have already started to put forward the idea that ISIS has been able to develop due to Assad paying for their illicit oil exports.

Iran would see that as a threat to its regional interests and view with hostility attempts to draw Kurdistan into a Turkish led strategy of economic development through the development of the Kirkuk-Ceylan pipeline, related infrastructure developments and calls for Kurdish oil exports to be officialised.

Support for Assad in Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon would be stepped up to prevent the dominance of the FSA and the Muslim Brotherhood, even if Iran has an interest in checking ISIS in Iraq. But any attempt to deal with ISIS by knocking out Assad would only entrench regional proxy conflicts.

Should Iran respond by increasing military support for Shi'ite militias, then it is possible its main Gulf rival in Saudi Arabia would continue its contradictory and lethally dangerous policy of turning a blind eye to the finance given to ISIS by private donors as part of a strategy to divert internal discontent outwards.

So reducing the power of ISIS would mean a negotiated settlement in Syria based on including Iran at any future Geneva Conference and not making Assad's departure a precondition. It would also mean a crackdown on shady black market oil exports from Tuz Khurmatu into Turkey.

The outlook, more generally, is relentlessly grim. There is much evidence that the Sunni uprisings and ISIS are outgrowths not only of resource struggles over oil but also of access to water induced by global heating from the Middle East through to Central and Northern Africa where ISIS could spread.

The winter of 2014 saw one of the worst droughts in decades, with rain and show in the mountains of Eastern Turkey at half their usual level. Crop failure and desertification in Syria and Iraq are processes no unity government in Baghdad could reverse but they contribute in driving the desperate towards ISIS.

There is a real probability whole parts of the Middle East are heading towards complete decivilisation, chaos and bloodshed that could last for decades and intensify. If the West is not going to be dragged in, it needs to make finding alternatives to oil and gas a matter of emergency.

Arming the Kurds and the Danger of Spreading Regional Conflict.

While the strategy of arming the Kurds and trying to draw the Sunnis into a unity government would appear to be one way to check the spread of IS in Iraq, one danger would be that it could give impetus to the cause of arming the Free Syrian Army across the border.

The FSA, in its propaganda, has already accused President Assad of secretly plotting with ISIS so that they could divert the FSA in northern Syria away from taking Damascus. The problem is that official Western policy is still the one framed by Hillary Clinton and William Hague-'Assad must go'.

When it comes down to it Western policy 'remains contradictory and self-defeating', to use veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn's words, because of the seldom mentioned matrix of energy geopolitics that dominates Western policy ( and the regional powers ) with regards the Middle East.

The US and EU powers would like to tacitly work with Iran in Iraq so as to bolster Baghdad against IS. Yet in Syria the West wants to remove Assad so as to check the expansion of Iranian interests towards the Eastern Mediterranean and the possibility of a gas pipeline stretching there from the South Pars gas field.

As Qatar becomes a regional power and a major economic partner of Western powers, and a vital supplier of liquefied natural gas to stave off potential energy shortfalls in Britain and France, Western foreign policy has increasingly aligned itself to a Qatari-Turkish Sunni axis of influence.

Not only does Qatar host a US Gulf air base, Qatar’s al-Udeid air field, used for strikes against IS, Qatar has tried to extend its regional reach into energy and infrastructure projects, signing a Memorandum of Understand with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) back in 2009.

With Qatar and Turkey aligned in checking Iranian interests in Syria, having their own scheme for a gas pipeline between Qatar's part of the South Pars gas field and Turkey, Iran could get more concerned that both in Syria and Kurdistan, the West is plotting to contain and encircle it further.

The strategy of providing arms to the Kurdish peshmerga is being balanced with one of trying to shore up Iraq as a 'unitary state'. The problem would be if Kurdistan would then regard that as a signal that it could and should break from Baghdad, not least over rows over oil revenues and contracts.

Despite being regarded as opposed to Kurdish independence, Erdogan's government is prepared to see greater autonomy and, in May 2014, Turkey started officially to export Kurdish oil on to the international market as part of his grand design to position it as an east-west energy hub.

Turkey's geostrategy could only raise tensions with Baghdad and especially with Iran, historically its regional competitor in the Kurdish borderlands and, to the north, in the Caucasus where a shadowy New Great Game for pipeline routes also contains the potential for war and destabilisation.

Iran would fear what Norman Stone calls Erdogan's 'neo-Ottoman' strategy as it would act as a magnet in drawing the Kurds into a prosperous economic block driven by oil wealth and could lead to Kurdish irredentist tendencies and even uprisings within Iran as happened back in 1946.

Set against a background of continued sanctions on Iran, the attempt to block off Iranian gas exports to the east via Pakistan, through trying to cajole the latter into accepting gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan ( the proposed TAPI pipeline ), the failure to take Iranian interests into account could be dangerous.

One way to avoid the intensification of a regional proxy war, indeed of the escalation into a wider regional war in which even the global powers would be sucked in deeper towards a greater collision would be to involve Iran directly in diplomatic talks over Syria instead of ignoring them as as been hitherto the case.

On ISIS and the Kurdish Region.

Though the purpose of the US air strikes was to contain ISIS and, in conjunction with humanitarian food drops to the Yazidis to save them from imminent death, the wider purpose of this military intervention seems to have been the need to protect the Kurdish region from attack and to protect the Mosul Dam.

The reason is that ISIS could use their control of the dam to deny electricity to Iraq as a means of increasing their strength against their enemies in Baghdad and Erbil. More catastrophically, if ISIS blew up the dam a 65m high wave would be created that would cause widespread flooding and 500,000 deaths.

The determination to arm the Kurdish peshmerga and send in US and UK special forces is connected to that. Evidently, oil interests are at stake as Kirkuk is a major oil producing zone in the Kurdish region and if it were to be taken by ISIS it would increase it's revenue to fund its operations further.

Apart from that, Erbil is a major oil prospecting boomtown with Western companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil leading the exploration and drilling for oil. Had the Kurdish region not been threatened, Obama would not have decided upon risking air strikes and arming the Kurds.

Whether ISIS would blow up the Mosul dam is not certain because it has not destroyed energy installations in the territory it occupies such as the Qayara refinery. ISIS is part of a resource war backed by Arab Sunnis who lost out to the Shi'ites and Kurds after Saddam's regime was removed.

The danger with that strategy is it would lead to Kurdish demands for independence from Baghdad, something that would sink plans to try to coalition a 'unity government' that would help to draw Sunni Arabs back into the fold and end the benefits of them aligning with ISIS.

The situation in Iraq is a bloody chaos with no easy means to resolve it. It's a proxy ground, as is Syria, for regional powers vying and contending for influence. Turkey has interests in shoring up the Kurdish region as relations have warmed in recent years as oil imports have increased.

Iran would want to block moves towards Kurdish independence and autonomy as it would check their plans to have a Shi'ite dominated Iraq amenable to the promotion of its energy interests and struggle for a regional Shi'ite 'axis of resistance' to Turkish and Qatari plans to remove Assad in Syria.

Washington's policy has been vacillating and contradictory. Having made the mistake of backing the Turkish and Qatari move to remove Assad to check Iranian influence, it effectively guaranteed the space would be created that would enable a group such as ISIS to gain ground.

Whatever, the Western powers attempt through military intervention or backing the Kurds in Iraq in bound to have unforeseen consequences. Whole swathes of norther Syria and Iraq could descend into barbarism for decades due to resource struggles, global warming. crop failure and religious fanaticism.

ISIS, Kurdistan and the Geopolitical Stakes for the US and Britain in Syria and Iraq.

"The evidence is there for all to see what happens in the absence of cooperation. It leaves a political and military opening for extremists."- William Hague

With Washington said to be ready to intervene militarily along with Iran to roll back the threat posed to Bagdhad by the ISIS, it is vital to remember that the Obama administration has claimed it is prepared to use air strikes against it both in Syria and Iraq.

As ISIS has its main base in Raqqah, it owes its surge deep into Iraq through Mosul and Tikrit not merely to the continued chaos that has not gone away aftermath of the Iraq War but also due to the fact that the US and Britain have been tacitly backing fanatical Sunni jihadists in Syria.

That is why Obama and Hague focused solely on the failings of the Shi'ite government of al Maliki in Baghdad as a way of diverting attention away from the fact that ISIS were fighting with the Free Syria Army as recently as 2013, a force backed by Britain and the US as a means to overthrow President Assad.

ISIS was not only able to develop due to the way Sunni jihadists groups have become progressively more brutal in northern Syria. The group owed the bulk of its past funding to donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait where it was regarded in Iraq as a means to combat Shi'ite militias and Iran's influence.

Hagues' propaganda use of the flexible cant word 'extremist' means 'jihadists not under our control' or else not objectively on the side of Britain's Gulf allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which have been vying for influence in any post-Assad Syria by promoting the most effective .i.e. ruthless jihadists.

The absurdity of the geopolitical situation in Syria and Iraq is such that Britain and the US are effectively backing Al Qaida affiliated groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra by funnelling weapons to the FSA which only in the course of 2014 has been fighting against ISIS.

One reason is that whereas the FSA and ISIS had a common interest in fighting Kurdish separatists, ISIS wanted to surge into Iraq and the Kurdish separatists were prepared to do a deal with ISIS to allow them to march southwards and link up with Baathists opposed to the Shi'ites in Baghdad.

The reason is that Kurdish separatists in Syria and the autonomous region of Iraq wanted to seize Kirkuk which they consider the ancient ( and oil rich ) capital city of Kurdistan. By having ISIS put pressure on Baghdad and fight against the FSA they could increase their reach and power over their territory and oil

The US and Britain would be prepared to shore up al Maliki's Shi'ite government only upon certain conditions so it can continue to exert influence in Baghdad and to prevent Iran from increasing its role in Iraq through sending troops , signing lucrative arms deals and shipping weapons to Assad.

Hence the other reason-apart from the potential threat to the oil producing regions south of Baghdad- for military intervention by the US, with British intelligence assistance, is to reduce ISIS so as to effectively back up the FSA's struggle  and ensure the goal of 'regime change' in Damascus is furthered.

Generally, ISIS is an offshoot and product of the increased radicalisation and competition for control amongst Sunni jihadists and, as such, a product of Saudi and Qatari foreign policy backed by Britain and the US. But it is seen as a threat because it has allowed Assad to regain the military initiative.

Throughout 2014 Assad has been rolling back the FSA from positions around Damascus and the strategically vital land between the Syrian capital to the Mediterranean coast, the route through which arms are supplied to the government and that connects to Hizbollah's base in Lebanon.

ISIS poses a threat because it has divided the Sunni jihadists in Syria and allowed Assad and hence Russia-which backs Assad and has an interest in blocking Qatar's and Turkey's plan for a gas pipeline that would rival its supply to Europe-to gain the upper hand in the Middle East.

On the other hand, the fact that ISIS has been able to collude with the Kurdish militias to threaten the Iraqi capital provides an opportunity for Washington and London to make any military assistance conditional on moving away from Tehran ( that's what Hague really means by the 'need for cooperation' in Iraq ).

Ultimately, US and British foreign policy is about energy geopolitics and siding with key regional allies which provide them with oil ( as Saudi Arabia does to the US ) and with the large and increasing quantities gas which Qatar provides to Britain and France, thus allowing it to diversify supply away from Russia.

ISIS, Iraq and Syria: The Geopolitical Stakes

It is not clear in the latest media reports on the new Iraq crisis whether the Obama administration is considering air strikes designed only to take out ISIS targets or if the existence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq is to act as the pretext to try and take out President Assad's military assets in Syria.

From the beginning of 2014, Assad's forces have rolled back the Sunni insurgent forces from the area around the capital Damascus, partly because ISIS started only this year to engage militarily with both the Free Syria Army and Kurdish separatists in northern Syria

Previously, in 2013, ISIS  was a staunch jihadist ally of the Free Syria Army in attacking the forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Kurdistan. As a consequence of rivalries with the Free Syria Army and its desire to align with forces within Iraq opposed to Baghdad, ISIS broke away from the FSA.

Whereas the FSA and its Western and Gulf allies backers have accused Assad of backing ISIS as a means to draw their forces into a diversionary war, Kurdish militias in northern Iraq may have colluded with ISIS in order to weaken the Maliki government in Baghdad because of disputes over the export of oil.

The danger is that Washington is going to use accusations that Assad has backed ISIS, as opposed to simply having not attacked them through realising they could fight the the FSA, to launch the air stikes it was prepared to launch in August 2013 after the Syrian military's alleged gas attack on Ghouta.

Of course, ISIS has been regarded by Western intelligence reports leaked to the media as an offshoot of Al Qaida that Assad may have abetted. Certainly, there have been defections as the competition for control over oil supplies has ensured the survival of the most brutal and pathologically violent groups.

However, even if Assad has played a murky double game with the Sunni jihadists and foreign fighters forming ISIS, the vast majority of the funding and provision of the weapons that has created this situation of increasing 'radicalisation' is from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which are competing to get the most effective jihadist group fighting for their interests.

What Washington and London fear is that Assad has outplayed the West by turning its use of jihadi assets in Syria as a means of thwarting the plan, mostly backed by Qatar, to use Al Qaida affiliated groups such as the Al Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham to overthrow him.

Qatar has resisted forthrightly any attempt to change that foreign policy, one that has led to quarrels with Saudi Arabia which had previously supported Al Nusra but has started to fear jihadi influence spreading back home and preferred to bankroll more 'moderate' jihadi groups such as Jaysh al-Islam.

Saudi Arabia has attempted to persuade Washington to lift restrictions on supplying this new 'improved' jihadi group with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles to give it the edge over Al Qaida affiliated groups ( still backed by Qatar ) and, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Washington could regard the deep incursion into Iraq by ISIS as too good an opportunity to miss in using it as a pretext to roll back Assad in Syria and to make saving Maliki's Shia government in Iraq through effective use of air power, conditional on breaking its arms deals with Iran and trying to reach out to Iraqi sunni Muslims.

By so doing, Washington could decisively scupper any potential realisation of the proposed 'Islamic pipeline' between Iran, Iraq and Syria that would allow Tehran to export gas to the Eastern Mediterranean and thwart the preferred Qatar-Turkey pipeline that is proposed from the South Pars fieldb both Gulf powers share.

Apart from the benefits of hemming in Iran as part of a broader attempt to encircle and destroy the regime in Tehran through sanctions, Washington would be able to decisively set back Russia's plans to control the gas supply to Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean.

Syria: The US, Kurdish Designs, Turkey, Iraq and Iran

No matter how President Obama and his team try to spin it a military intervention and 'upgrading' assistance to the insurgents against Assad backed by Qatar and Turkey would be tantamount to directly taking sides in the Syrian conflict. Up until now, Washington has only given CIA help to the Sunni dominated Free Syria Army;

Washington's foreign policy has consistently called for Assad to go. In refusing to engage with Iran diplomatically has made a slide into involvement in the civil war inevitable. There can be no political settlement if Washington demands that the precondition for peace is for Assad's Shia government to surrender.

The Alawites fear retribution from Sunni jihadists who have fought with the FSA including elements affiliated with Al Qaida such as the al Nusra Front who are fighting against Assad. They are not controlled by 'official' Sunni insurgents and the Syrian National Coalition and want to ethnically cleanse Alawi villages.

Turkey, moreover, is a NATO member threatened with the conflict between the Kurds and the radical Sunni jihadists of al Nusra. spilling over the border. Backing the FSA in Syria, Washington would face the prospect of Iran intervening more to back militant Kurdish separatists.
 
The danger of Kurdish separatist struggles with Sunni jihadists in northern Syria on the border with both Turkey and Iraq is that it threatens to destabilise border districts and towns in a way that could yet draw in other Western powers should it escalate. 

The Syrian government no longer has much control over the north east of the country and is content to see the al Nusra Front pinned down by Kurdish militias. Iran also gave support for those seeking Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq in order to increase its regional influence.

The reason for move towards separatism that the West opposes, in order to show solidarity with Turkey as a NATO member, is opposition to a potential future for an oil and gas rich Kurdistan with its own ideas about its role in the world that elude the control of regional and global powers.

As part of a fractured Iraq, the relative autonomy of Kirkuk from the Shia dominated government in Baghdad has yielded benefits for Western oil concerns who are willing to invest. But the West does not want to drive Baghdad towards Iran by pushing for Kurdish autonomy too much.

Nor does Iran want to back Kurdish independence more than is needed in order to only cause problems for Turkey alone because it is backing the Muslim Brotherhood against Iran's Shia client Assad. Iran has its own large Kurdish minority.

When Obama states that Syria is not Iraq and not Afghanistan, because of the history the US had in its invasions of both countries, he only wishes to emphasise the distinction between limited military intervention and war.

Unfortunately, Syria is very much a similar case to its Iraq neighbour in being a country more opened up to the competing energy interests of global powers since the US invasion of 2003. Syria is also similar to Afghanistan in being a geopolitically vital pipeline transit zone.

The 21st century is set to be an epoch of intense and bloody struggles and conflicts over resources. Western nations are necessarily going to be involved in them due their overdependence upon oil and gas in those volatile lands where they lie. 

Syria: The Geopolitical Constellation and the Move Towards Military Involvement in the Syrian civil War.

'While stressing that Washington's primary goal remained "limited and proportional" attacks, to degrade Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and deter their future use, the president hinted at a broader long-term mission that may ultimately bring about a change of regime.

"It also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region"' 

President Barack Obama, Tuesday Sepember 3 2013 ( The Guardian, Obama hints at larger strategy to topple Assad in effort to win over Republicans )

Washington has always wanted regime change from the outset of the Syrian Civil War in April 2011. That Obama is now indicating that a policy of siding with the Syrian 'rebels'  is back 'on the table' in addition to missile strikes. one advocated staunchly by the neoconservative John McCain, reflects a continuity in policy.

The rationale is clear: the US, France and UK will not tolerate any extension of Iranian influence in Syria through Assad and Hizbollah while they are tacitly backing the attempt by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to extend their influence by backing the armed Sunni Islamist opponents of the government.

The bottom line is that Qatar is an ally with a strategic partnership with Britain in a variety of military and economic bilateral ties which is completely opposed to Iran's rival geopolitical designs for Syria in the future-if it has one-including proposed pipelines to pump gas west towards Europe.

Turkey is already has sections of gas pipeline to hook up to Qatar and that requires the potential Shi'ite axis of influence from Iran to the Eastern Mediterranean be broken and Assad removed in Syria. That requires the playing the role of a revived Ottoman Empire and extending greater friendship ties to other Arab states.

Turkey wants to stand with Qatar not only due to the desire to increase its prominence as an energy hub between Europe and Asia. Gas rich Qatar now provides most of Turkey's tourist revenue. As Professor Norman Stone emphasised, after the protests in Turkey back in June 2013,

'Arab money is behind the shopping malls and is underpinning the Turkish current-account deficit. The Saudis and Qatar seem to be mainly involved, and now they buy up land in Yalova, over the water from Istanbul, as well. This has delighted the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu'.

The danger is that in pushing for the support for the Sunni insurgents aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran would step up its support for Kurdish militias who want autonomy in Syria and Turkey leading to the conflict spilling over into a NATO member. The al Nusra Front is already in conflict with the Kurds.

So Syria is the proxy war ground not only for external powers but also for ethnic and sectarian enmities that straddle borders and have created fault lines across the Middle East. It is a lethal theatre in the New Great Game being played by the world's largest powers for control over energy flows across the region and beyond.

The ultimate target is Iran. Hemmed in to the east by a government installed by the West through the Afghanistan war and occupation, Iran is also having its gas export routes west thwarted by the US and other allies who have opposed Iran as an independent geopolitical player since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

If the US embarks on military intervention through missile strikes, Assad could react in a dangerous way and Iran is not going to be prepared to see him removed or overthrown by pro-Washington opponents. Hizbollah will step up operations and Iraq under a Shia president leans towards Tehran as well.

That is why measures towards what  David Cameron  called the need to 'tilt the balance', in the rebel's favour is now back' on the table' in Washington. No doubt Britain will be a willing partner in funnelling aid to the Sunni militias in order to put Assad in the position of negotiating his exit at a second Geneva Conference.

Washington's foreign policy and the insistence that 'Assad must go' exacerbated the problems in Syria to the point where any political settlement looks unlikely and yet where military intervention could intensify the level of killing and instability as well as committing the West to the Sunni side in a complex conflict.