ISIS and the Ideologies of Military Intervention and Non-Intervention.

The ideology of non-interventionists in Iraq against ISIS has become increasingly marginal because the so-called 'anti-war left' in Britain was always as simplistic in its approach to the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars as was the equally ideological 'pro-liberation' left championing selfless wars of  'humanitarian intervention'.

The Stop the War Coalition is a failure. It was probably more influential in the period between 2001 to 2003 in shaping the reaction of Tony Blair and those demanding a break from the old realpolitik as regards Iraq and overthrowing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein to put right previous wrongs caused by Britain.

The fact that Saddam Hussein had been backed by the US and Britain in the 1970s and 1980s as bulwark against a potentially more menacing Iran, with pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, was flashed as proof that the US was now posing as offering the military solution to a problem it caused.

The Stop the War Coalition leadership consisted of the disgruntled dregs of the British Communist Party and Trotskyist sects that did not grasp that governments in a democracy are not always the same sorts of politicians always doing the same thing because they do not have much time for representative democracy.

As a consequence, the Second Gulf War tended to get support of intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens who encapsulated the position of those for a war to liberate both Afghanistan and the Taliban when he argued Britain had a moral duty to do so precisely because of its previous failed foreign policies.

With ISIS now staging carefully choreographed executions of American and US hostages, the need to be seen to be doing something in Britain is conjuring up the memory of the way Bush and Blair used the 9/11 attacks back in 2001 to become a pretext for military intervention to be either backed or opposed.

As usual, there are those who point to the disaster of the last Iraq war and occupation as a reason both why ISIS was able to surge into Iraq and why it is not right to intervene militarily again and so the can phrase 'the liberation of Iraq has to be the work of the Iraqis themselves' is thrown out mechanically.

For those such as Richard Seymour, the concern is that this may well be putting people off the anti-war cause and so he has to concede that ISIS is evil in the sense of it being annoying and difficult to fit into a convenient formula that opposes any military intervention to prevent its exterminatory policies and beheadings

'Isis goes to your head and gets under your skin; it leaves you feeling infested. Back in the days when one didn’t know much about the jihadis carrying out beheadings, it was possible to think that they were just – as David Cameron has denounced them – “monsters”, savages, beasts. Or, if one were on the anti-war left, one could simply point out that there was, after all, a war on. A brutal occupation produces a brutal insurgency: case closed'.

The problem then, is not that ISIS is murdering people since Seymour believes that all wars are murder which are based on humanitarian intervention, as made clear in his The Liberal Defence of Murder. ISIS is, therefore, only a small time murderer compared to the US and Britain which are 'state terrorists'.

As a consequence, Seymour routinely downplays ISIS atrocities or rejects them as being the 'real reason' for intervention by the US and, potentially, by Britain in the near future. It was the Kurdish peshmerga which rolled back ISIS and not US airstrikes, though curiously the peshmerga leaders claimed they have helped.

None of that means Britain should involve itself with prsuing a strategy based on the belief that bombing ISIS positions is going to provide a teachological short cut to 'degrading and ultimately defeating' it. Then again, neither Obama nor Cameron have actually claimed that it would so Seymour's argument is a strawman one.

Clearly, Seymour is largely ignorant of the realities of the Middle East and his main aim is to manufacture the politically correct 'line' to be taken on the way the battle against IS is 'framed' for ideological purposes, albeit in more sophisticated way than the 'vulgar' propagandists of the StWC.

In Britain, the Stop the War Coalition and 'anti-war' groups are laregely dominated not by pacifists or by those who are against war on principle but by those who wish to seize upon discontent and unease at Britain's involvement in wars to propagate hatred and resentment against the British state.

Unfortunately, Seymour's interpretation is not much more nuanced than Lindsey German's "stance" that military intervention would only be a reaction to an insurgency wholly the product and 'caused' directly by British foreign policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.

Evidently, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a disastrous decision that helped create the quasi-failed state Iraq is outside Baghdad and the fortified oil producing zones guarded by the peshmerga in Kurdistan and Shi'ites in the south around Basra. Only the discredited and loathed Tony Blair clings to his 'belief' it was 'right'.

So, given that this is no longer hardly 'subversive' knowledge but generally a generally recognised fact, radical 'anti-imperialists' such as Seymour needs to 'stand out' by developing a 'new stance' which is more 'nuanced' but ends up being based purely on ideology fitting the facts to suit it.

For a start, Seymour claims 'Isis would be nowhere if it weren’t for the generalised rejection by Sunni Iraqis of the sectarian political authority in Baghdad.' This is wholly nonsensical because ISIS would, in fact, still be somewhere if they had not surged into Iraq: they would, obviously, be in Syria.

Islamic State has its base in Syria and was created by jihadist groups that splintered off and broke away from the control of the Free Syria Army and joined a group that had its origins as ISI during the Sunni insurgency against the Shi'ites in Iraq, a rivalry that long predates the invasion of Iraq.

The collapse of a functioning government in northern Syria and the support given to the most Sunni jihadists by Saudi Arabia and Qatar as part of their proxy war against Iran, which backs Assad, is an important reason why jihadi-Islamists gained ground in Syria and why Hizbollah joined in the war.

This clash is embarrassing for revolutionary leftists in Britain who regarded Hamas and Hizbollah as guerrilla resistance united against Israel and US imperialism, so clearly the line has to be that the US encouraged a 'viscious sectarianism' that would not have otherwise existed.

'..whereas the jihadi ultras of the “war on terror” era were an unpopular, marginalised minority within the Iraqi resistance, always fought and opposed by the mainstream of the Sunni Arab insurgency, Isis succeeds because of the support it enjoys within much of the population it seeks to rule.'

ISIS 'succeeds' because Sunni Arab militias and their tribal leaders took the decision to join forces with ISIS. Any such popularity as they get is tied in to the fact ISIS uses revenues from organised crime and sales of oil to provide jobs, to sponsor children's festivals and even medical clinics'

Iran's backing for the Maliki government only further alienated the Sunni Arab tribes and ex-Baathists, which comprised what Seymour extols as the 'Iraqi resistance' against Baghdad. It is these forces which have aligned with IS in 2014 as a means to increase their strength against the government.

Britain would like to believe it has decisive leverage over Qatar as the US believes it has in Saudi Arabia in trying to pressure both to clamp down on the funding given to fanatical jihadists. But it is not the case, partly as it was not tried back in 2012 or for most of 2013 until ISIS turned against the FSA.

Britain's foreign policy is not made by 'Westminster spear-carriers for American empire' but by those with a shared interest in preventing the collapse of Iraq and any threat to the global oil price caused by ISIS attacks. Over the longer term, Iraq is set to a major oil producer needed to keep oil prices stable.

Britain is one of many global powers with a developed economy that has an interest in that along with OPEC nations and East Asian countries such as Japan and China, even though the 'international core coalition' to defeat ISIS is, in the military sense, primarily a US western-led alliance.

ISIS has a base in Syria and Iraq but it is, like Al Qaida, becoming a franchise operation that is set to spread across the lands claimed as part of the caliphate because in such regions jihadi-Islamists are leading the disenfranchised poor in a war to seize oil or menace oil transit zones.

Throughout all these lands climate change, drought, crop failure , overpopulation, the strain on water supplies and resource struggles are combining in a lethal brew to spawn vicious pyschopathological jihadi-movements that have nothing to lose in trying to deal crippling blows to the world economy.

The 21st century is going to see the response through drone warfare to eliminate and precision zap savage groups in these regions and to protect strategic resources and pipeline routes by creating fortified protection zones out of which the drones would patrol so as keep the threat of sabotage at bay.

The Battle Against IS: Why Iran and Assad's Syria are not part of a Diplomatic Initiative.

'A rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran would help to ease conflicts and tension across the Middle East. The US and UK are now tentatively reaching out to Iran, and should use their influence to facilitate Saudi-Iranian co-operation', The Guardian.

Drawing in Iran into diplomatic negotiations on Syria is vital. It's unlikely though as both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are rivalling each other for influence in any post-Assad future and the US and Britain have backed them because of lucrative arms deals and the fact Saudi Arabia provides 10% of US crude oil imports.

The two main European military powers, Britain and France, increasingly rely upon liquefied natural gas imports from Qatar and have strong bilateral trade relations with the gas rich emirate. If Qatar decides Iran and Assad would not be part of negotiations for a political settlement, then it would not happen.

The Qatari position is that Iran has a 'role to play' but still that 'Assad must go', as if it was only the leader alonne and not the coalition of interests that back him and the degree of support he is bound to have from minorities in the south in and around Damascus as a bulwark against IS.

Iran, on its part, maintains that it is through Assad that democratic reforms could be put forwards as part of a transition process and this had been scuppered by mistakes made by Assad's police back in 2011 and Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel for trying to make Syria’s government collapse.

The rivalry between Iran and Qatar is not merely about sectarian differences or regional influence out of insecurity and misunderstandings but about the geopolitics of economics and energy. These were factors of vital importance in the continuation of the Afghanistan War and in the Syrian Conflict.

Put simply, Iran and Qatar share the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf and have sought the possibility of constructing a gas pipeline westwards towards Europe as part of a geostrategic attempt to consolidate regional influence; in Iran's case it would increase its diplomatic bargaining power.

Qatar wanted a Qatar-Turkey pipeline as early as 2009 via Syria but Iran has sought a pipeline via a Shi'ite dominated Iraq towards the Eastern Mediterranean where Russia has both a naval presence and Gazprom has sought to develop Syrian offshore gas fields with Assad's permission.

The West is hostile to Iranian ambitions for a 'Shi'ite pipeline running through a Shi'ite dominated government in Baghdad and a Syria run by Assad, who signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2012 with regards realising the construction of the pipeline with Iran which was joined in early 2013 by Iraq.

Britain, France and the US, 'Friends of Syria' since 2012, regard that strategy as hostile to its interests in the Middle East. Qatari gas is regarded as essential to make up an important and growing part of the EU's gas imports so as to diversify suppplies away from Russia as made clear during Kerry's visit to Doha in April 2014.

The geopolitics of energy, not least in light of the collapse of Libya and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, has raised the stakes over Syria. With sanctions on Iran and the attempt to thwart the export of Iranian gas east through the IP pipeline, Iran has a vital interest in Syria that the Gulf states oppose completely.

From the perspective of both Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran, it is better that the proxy war goes on in Syria and Iraq than either side gets the upper hand: the only reason both resource rich Sunni states have started to regard IS as a threat is the fear of blowback affecting their own lands.

From Saudi Arabia's perspective, it has no interest in peace in Syria if it means either Qatar or Iran gains a dominant influence because it fears Qatar and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, though not quite as much as it fears Iran and its backing for Shi'ites, many of whom live in the kingdom's oil producing zones.

The New US 'Game Plan' in Iraq and the Middle East.

President Obama made plain at the NATO summit in Wales last week that when confronting the Islamic State, 'We haven't got a strategy yet'. As regards what to do about IS militarily counter-insurgency strategies are being formulated but why a US President would admit having no strategy in public is intriguing.

One reason for this 'public diplomacy' is, quite obviously, that the US is reacting to rapidly changing circumstances on the ground in northern Iraq. The US is responding to events over which it does not have that much control given that since August, when bombing of IS position began, it has only contained IS.

Certain immediate threats as IS posed to the Mosul Dam and Iraq's electricity production and water supply have been staved off. At present, The US has bombed ISIS patrols menacing the Haditha Dam, Iraq's second largest hydroelectric power plant.

In fact, neither Obama nor British Prime Minister David Cameron even refer to 'the Islamic State' or even 'ISIS' in their speeches but to 'ISIL'. To refer to an 'Islamic State' would be giving legitimacy to a self proclaimed Caliphate state. To call it ISIS could imply action in Iraq and Syria.

Refering to 'ISIL' is the handiest acronym because it narrows it down to the Islamic State in Iraq while keeping the 'L' which stands for Levant and hence the plans to expand the Islamic State from Iraq towards the Eastern Medierranean, indeed, to the entire region- Lebanon, Palestine Jordan, Southern Turkey and Israel.

The other reason for referring to 'ISIL' is the Islamic State was once a Sunni insurgent group in Iraq called ISI fighting in Iraq's sectarian wars against Shi'ite militias during the bloody aftermath created by the 2003 US-British invasion with only mere ambitions to spread it out further to the Levant to create a Caliphate.

By refusing to call the Islamic State by the name 'IS' or 'ISIS', the US and Britain would hope to play down the fact it claims to be 'Islamic' as opposed to a straighforwardly terrorist organisation. This would also impress upon its Saudi and Qatari allies the fact it is not really truly Islamic, a sore point in the region.

So when Obama states there is 'no strategy' and that its a direct terror threat to the world he is trying to get opinion in the US and in regional states behind him because he is aware how unpopular the US became at home and abroad, especially in the Middle East, after Bush's invasion and the 'war on terror'.

Obama is trying a low key form of approach and also trying to make it easier for Arab League states to realise they have far more to lose if they were not to join in and assist the 'international core coalition' of states that have agreed to take the necessary measures to asssist Iraqi and Kurdish troops fight IS.

To that end, it is important that Obama's public diplomacy downplays any possibility that Assad has a role in Syria and to stress a Sunni coalition of states in checking IS. That's designed to make potential Arab League cooperation go down easier with the public or in the so-called 'Arab streets'.

If threats to the US 'homeland' are no a clear and present danger but could be due to the number of foreign fighters ( i.e jihadists ) with European visas later going on to the US to threaten it ( as Obama has claimed is rationale for 'going on the offense' ), this calls into question what the 'game plan' actually is in fact.

While claiming that "this is not the equivalent of the Iraq war", the rationale is, as it was back in 2003, connected to the quest for energy security: only this time the very threats to regional security said to have been posed by Saddam Hussein are far more so a decade on.

Iraqi oil remains a vital component of OPEC's total oil production needed to keep global oil prices stable or falling at between $110 to $100 per barrel so as to ensure the recovery of the world's major developed and developing economies. The global economy is very sensitive to oil price surges at present.

Julian Jessop, chief global economist of Capital Economics made this plain in June 2014 "We suggest that, as a rule of thumb, the net impact of a $10 rise in oil prices is to cut global growth by around 0.2-0.3 percentage points". Over the last decade there have been some changes, however,

The 'shale revolution' in the US allowed the US to withdraw from Iraq by 2011 and refocus upon the challenges posed by China's economic ascendancy, one largely unhindered by the financial crash and subsequent economic slowdown of 2007-2008.

Yet the North America's rising oil production is not sufficient to meet the rise in global demand caused by accelerating industrialisation and economic growth in China. The IEA, the US authority on energy, made plain future increases in the Middle Eastern oil production are vital.

As the IEA report forecast makes quite clear. 60 percent of expected growth in OPEC's crude production capacity in 2019 would come from Iraq. Iraq does, after all, hold the world's fifth largest oil reserves and had been unable to meet full capacity under Saddam and after 2003.

So the reasons the US is ready to intervene militarily in Iraq ( and even Syria if necessary ) are fourfold; energy security, the prospect of regional instability posed by IS, containing China's growing power and checking Iran's and Russia's geopolitical designs in the Great Middle East from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

Firstly, the US and the 'international' core alliance needs to protect and secure the oil producing regions of southern Iraq and Kurdistan from attack and sabotage by IS operatives. These regions accounted for the largest jumps in oil production and exports in 2014.

With oil exports from Libya having declined following the outbreak of conflict in 2011, the collapse of a functioning state after Gaddafi was toppled and with Tripoli haven fall to Islamist jihadists, Iraq's oil fields are being tapped to make up the shortfall in production.

Secondly, the US needs to shore up and protect the GCC nations from potential blowback from Syria. Having allowed funds to be transfered to Sunni jihadists in Syria and backed groups such as al Nusra, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in the sights of IS as a potential terror target.

Thirdly, the 'international coalition' is a western one which aims at preserving and enhancing US global leadership and influence in the Middle East against potential Chinese inroads within the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran and Egypt where China has been vying for arms deals and influence

Defending Qatar and Saudi Arabia is considered a vital US and British interest no matter how risky, bungling and even opposed the Gulf Powers strategies have been in Syria where both powers backed the most fanatical jihadists as a means to determine a post-Assad future against each other and Iran.

The US still depends on Saudi Arabia for around 10% of its crude oil imports but Saudi Arabia has the West 'over the barrel' because its a vital ally, just as Qatar is too, because both are opposed to Iran which is a major oil and gas rival that is more friendly towards China.

To maintain a US army and naval presence in the Persian Gulf is considered essential as a check not only on Iran but also as a potential means to control the sea lanes between the Middle East and China and so to contain any threat posed by rival alliances.

That's where Afghanistan is important. By threatening an energy deprived Pakistan with sanctions if it accepted gas from an Iranian-Pakistan pipeline, the US and other Western powers could back the TAPI pipeline alternative without alienating China too much.

Fourthly, President Obama's continued stress on not dealing with Assad until IS is either destroyed or its power broken down in Iraq and on the alliance with the Arab League is about ensuring Iranian amitions to unite Iraq and Syria under its Shi'ite leadership is prevented.

The US, France and Britain would prefer a predominant Sunni government in Damascus or one amenable to Western influence, to block off the possibility of an Iranian gas pipeline from the Persian Gulf stretching through to the Eastern Mediterranean where Russian firms are being allowed to explore Syria's offshore gas.

Qatar and Turkey prefer a pipeline that runs between the Qatari part of the South Pars gas field it shares with Iran to run via Syria towards Turkey as part of a regional energy strategy that further contains Iran and averts the export of LNG via an Iranian controlled strategic 'chokepoint' in the Straits of Hormuz,

These are the real factors underlying the geopolitics of the conflict in the Middle East.

The Islamic State: Climate Change, Terror and the Making of a Caliphate.

The Caliphate ( Islamic State ), established and centred on Raqqa in Syria, does clearly have its origins on uneducated mosque imams contantly extolling the Caliphate as a symbol of a lost spritual and political realm towards which Sunni Muslims should aspire and realise through jihad.

Syrian writer Hassan Hassan cites the Syrian cleric Mohammed Habash claiming "Isis did not arrive from Mars; it is a natural product of our retrograde discourse." and while that is true, the sad reality is that it has caught on because of a civilisational crisis in this part of the Middle East that has induced it.

One thing that comes across from Vice News's report 'Spread of the Caliphate' is that the foot soldiers of IS are both brutal and banal, largely semi-educated men all the more dangerous for the indoctrinated certitude with which they assert their credo that they are on a roll and shall follow God until victory is assured.

The ISIS jihadists are in for the long game, indoctrinating and grooming the children to become future warriors as the only way for the Caliphate to survive and strive forth towards its destiny of creating some sort of pure community that is uncontaminated by enemy influences from without and within.

If they were not so deadly, their corny attempts at piety would be entirely laughable as opposed to merely contemptible. Hence the point of their headless corpses strewn across pavements and sticking heads on spikes is meant to give the impression that they are, in fact, very serious.

The aim is to spread the Caliphate out, kill or convert the Infidel ( or with Christians make them pay a tax ) and to be part of God's project as it unfolds and is realised. Women are to be nowhere seen on the streets of Raqqa. Jihadists previously living in Europe claimed they left the girls behind for the cause.

Women need to be properly concealed in order to thereby maintain the fundamental purity of the Caliphate from within, the better to make it more ferocious and formidable without against Indidels and Hypocrites ( secular Arabs). It says so, they claim, in the Qu'ran.

This myth of the return of the Caliphate is one held on to by the simple minded but it could only spread in the conditions of lawless chaos of the sort that existed in Afghanistan in the 1990s. ISIS is similar to both the Taliban and Al Qaida but this time rolled into one-and with control over lots of oil resources.

IS is selling crude oil on the international black market, something even reported to be reducing oil prices. It is making $1 million a day from the sale and the rush of adrenalin from that and the prospect of using revenues to expand their Caliphate is causing millennial style fervour.

The support among Sunni Arabs for this is based on a revolt of those living in lands where crop failure, desertification, drought and having been pushed out of ant prospect of adequate poliitical representation in either Syria or Iraq has led to the Caliphate as a "solution" to all earthly evils.

The Sunni Arab zone in northern Syria and Iraq is trapped between other regions with far more resources both as regards the vast majority of the oil wealth ( which lie in the Kurdish regions to the east ) and those absolutely vital to life such as water. Iraq is a resource war over oil and water.

The River Euphrates drying up as a consequence of climate change, decreasing precipitation and increasingly hot summers. Turkey was alleged to have reduced supplies along the Euphrates upstream. That makes the necessity to spread the war as far as possible even more 'vital'.

So many Sunni Arabs in Iraq have come to believe nothing to lose by aligning with a pyschopathological group that asserts their interests as against the Kurds, Turks, and Shi'ites. IS attempted to take the Mosul dam so as to have control over electricity and water: this is a resource war.

The cause of jihad is precisely what they have to sustain them both materially and in hope of regaining the dominance Sunni Muslims once had in the region more generally and in Iraq, in particular, under Saddam Hussein who used to use control over the water supply as a tool of control over the Shi'ite south.

Evidently, IS pursues policies that are evil and mad but there is, beyond evident sadistic cruelty and pleasure in murdering Infidels and Hypocrites, a method and motive to the madness and mayhem and the clear intention to instil terror and utter fear. They need to be taken seriously.

If Iraq and Syria were to break up, it is difficult to see how there could be a secure and viable state for Sunni Arabs as that would depend on the wars in both states having any prospect of ending. And so IS is taking the destiny of Sunni Muslims into its own hands, destroying the Sykes-Picot borders of 1916.

ISIS is an outgrowth of failed attempts to back Sunni forces by the Saudis as a check on Iranian influence in Syria, the idea of Sunni persecution and yet historical superiority, myths of the Caliphate and the collapse of Syrian and Iraqi Sunni regions especially through climate change and war.

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.

The Spread of ISIS and the Possibility of Regional Sectarian War in the Middle East.

'The solution to the threat confronting Iraq is not the intervention of the Assad regime. In fact, it’s the Assad regime and the terrible violence they perpetrated against their own people that allowed (Isis) to thrive in the first place'.

President Obama's spokesman, Joshua Earnest's statement that the administration has “no reason to dispute” the reports of Syrian airstrikes in Iraq is one designed to provide a pretext for air strikes against Assad should Washington become concerned that Iranian influence is growing.

One other reason is that Washington needs to deflect the blame for what has happened in Iraq away from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and place it wholly on to Assad and his Shi'ite allies now that Tehran has taken more of a belligerant stance in wanting to shore up Maliki with military assistance and drones.
 
The growth and spread of ISIS has less to do with Assad than with the bulk of the past funding for Sunni jihadist groups being provided from private donors in Gulf states allied with the US and Britain such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar with those states tacit backing.

The reason for that is that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia were vying throughout 2013 to back the most effective jihadist factions fighting with the Free Syria Army against Assad and in competition with each other. ISIS was aligned to the FSA in 2013 in their fight against Kurdish separatists.

From a tactical perspective, this backing of Sunni jihadists has backfired because ISIS turned against the FSA and, in effect, enabled Assad to roll back the FSA in and around Damascus much to the annoyance of the 'Friends of Syria Group which met in London in May 2014.

In his speech John Kerry stated 'Assad may think that today he is doing better and this process is somehow going to come to a close with him sitting pretty – but we are not going away". After all, Assad had not agreed to a political settlement in which his own arrest and trial would be a precondition.

The stakes in this geopolitical game are regional influence and energy interests. Britain and France even more than the US have been at the forefront of the demand that Assad must go because their ally Qatar announced plans in 2009 to build a Qatar-Turkey pipeline that would provide gas to the EU.

This pipeline has become all the more important with the danger posed by the expansion of Russia's influence both over the Black Sea region after the annexation of Crimea and in Syria and the Levant where it signed a lucrative deals with its client Assad to exploit gas reserves off the Syrian coast in December 2013

Hence the prospect of a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline has been set back by Assad remaining in power and announcing in 2011 it would not be built and agreeing to alternative plans for a 'Shi'ite pipeline' from the South Pars gasfield Iran shares with rival Qatar via Iraq and Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Both Britain and France were itching for the US to launch airstrikes against Assad in the summer of 2013 to assist the Sunni insurgents in overthrowing him and, therefore, to check both Iran, whose participation in the Geneva Conference has been rejected because Qatar and Saudi Arabia were against it.

ISIS represents a form of 'blowback' from the strategy of using Sunni jihadist fanatics to get rid of Assad. In surging towards Baghdad it posed both a threat but also an opportunity for Britain and the US to make support and assistance to President Maliki conditional on moving away from Tehran.

The Syrian opposition is keen to play on what are reported to be Assad's airstrikes against ISIS across the border in Iraq because they support their Gulf allies foreign policy and would like to see Shi'ite influence in Iraq reduced. Months before in January 2014 they had accused Assad of backing ISIS.

The reason for that was ISIS had tied up the FSA in northern Syria. Now that ISIS is 'objectively' posing a threat to Shi'ite axis, Al Qaida affiliated groups in Syria such as Al Nusra, that were bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have decided that ISIS is not so extreme after all and pledged allegiance.

Part of the decision is, of course, ideological as Al Qaida is wanting a showdown with the Shi'ites and Iran is a colossal sectarian war. But over the long term this clash is a deadly consequence of the Gulf powers foreign policy, one aided and abetted by the US and Britain.

US Foreign Policy on Iraq: Breaking the Shia Alliance in From Syria to Iran.

The US is unlikely to intervene militarily in Iraq again unless the Kurdish region were threatened or if Baghdad were to fall under an an attack by ISIS and revived Baathist forces, thus opening the way for the major oil producing regions in the south to be menaced.

For the Obama administration the threat from ISIS presents an opportunity to put pressure on Maliki not to allow Iraq to be used as either a land bridge for Iran's support for President Assad or for its air space to be used to transport weapons to Lebanon's Hizbollah.

It has been a continued aim of the foreign policy of Clinton from 2011 onwards as Secretary of State and then, as potential presidential candidate, that 'Assad must go'. Washington is concerned at the possibility that Assad has looked like stronger in Syria and that Baghdad is moving too close to Tehran.

Not only has Iraq signed a $195m arms deal with Iran, the threat of the 6,000-kilometer "Islamic Pipeline' from the South Pars gas field to the Eastern Meditteranean would become closer to realisation, thus angering Qatar with whom Iran shares the huge reserves of gas in the Gulf.

Qatar has bankrolled and funded Sunni jihadists, some in groups that are affiliated to Al Qaida, as a means of both removing Assad and furthering the rival plan to build a gas pipeline to Turkey and thence on to European markets, one reason why Britain and France have allied with Qatar.

One reason for the speed and scale of ISIS's surge from northern Syria into central Iraq, and Al Qaida's break with ISIS, is that Assad was cunning enough to have left it alone, realising it would fight against the other jihadists and tie up both the FSA and Kurdish separatists in the north.

ISIS was able to operate and spread because in 2013 Qatar was prepared to finance and arm the most fanatical jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham and Turkey was prepared to allow ISIS to develop so as to fight alongside the FSA as a means of countering the threat of Kurdish irredentism.

Until 2014, ISIS was a staunch ally of the Free Syria Army until it became apparent that by attacking the Kurds, they were allowing Assad down south in Damascus the freedom to roll back the FSA from its positions outside the Syrian capital ( leading to accusations Assad was funding ISIS ).

In fact, the chaos and the rise of ISIS is more to do with the FSA being riven with factional struggles between those backed by Qatar and those by Saudi Arabia, both of which are vying to impose their leadership on the Sunni insurgent forces should Assad be overthrown.

Saudi Arabia has been wary that Qatar's preparedness to back the Muslim Brotherhood which is a traditional enemy and hostile to the Wahhabite state. But it has been more concerned with rivalling Qatar with Salafists that would do their bidding such as the Jabhat Al Nusra Front.

The upshot of this sordid power politics is that ISIS has grown into a major threat because of the way Syria has acted as a cockpit for backing the most ruthless Sunni jihadists so as to get rid of Assad and advance energy interests with the tacit backing of the US and Britain.

As a consequence of a shoddy realpolitik, the entire region has become even more unstable and Iraq more so than at any time since the sectarian warfare that erupted after the US invasion of 2003. ISIS is regarded by Maliki in Iraq as part of a Saudi plot; Assad is blamed by the FSA for supporting it.

Saudi Arabia clearly could have an interest in seeing Iraq descend into sectarian warfare. ISIS would engage the Shia government in Iraq and thwart Iran's plans to extend its interests westwards. The US would only intervene if the Kurdish oil fields or those in south Iraq were threatened.

Washington would be quite content to see Iran checked by having Maliki's government embroiled in a struggle against ISIS as it could then make military intervention to shore up his government conditional on moving away from Tehran and abandoning such plans as the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline.

Back to Iraq: The Syrian Conflict and Jihadist Blowback.

The capture of Mosul and Tikrit by ISIS-and the potential military intervention of the US in Iraq once more being considered-is a consequence of the 'blowback' created by Western geostrategy in Syria and the continued chaotic aftermath of the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the unintended consequences of Bush and Blair's invasion was that it has empowered the Shi'ites whose militias were needed to defeat the threat of Sunni militias and the remnants of Saddam's army which are now clearly involved in the retaking of the old Iraqi dictator's home city.

The US and Britain have been concerned since the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011 that should President Assad and his Alawite Shia government not be overthrown, that Maliki's Iraq would form a land bridge between Syria and Iran through which weapons and men could be sent to Lebanon's Hizbollah.

ISIS has been gaining ground throughout 2014 and so brutal and successful has it proved in battle, that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar,along with their ally the US, have been secretly backing jihadist groups in Syria in their opposition to ISIS which was considered 'al-Qaeda's most extreme wing'.

However, it is a fact that one of the jihadist groups fighting ISIS is the Jabhat Al Nusra Front. This organisation is funded and supplied with arms by Saudi Arabia as a means to bolster the power of Salafists against the Shia and also as a rival to the power of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood ( backed by Qatar).

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are aligned in opposition to the power of Assad in Syria and Maliki in Iran as both are Shi'ite administrations. However, the Sunni insurgents in Syria are divided between those backed by either regional power and that has weakened the military opposition to Assad.

Saudi Arabia opposes the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and went as far as labelling it 'a terrorist organisation' recently because Saudi Arabia has always feared Muslim Brotherhood ideas as subversive and because it Qatar is trying to assert its leadership over the Free Syrian Army.

With ISIS being rejected by Al Qaida for being 'too extreme', the absurdity is that Saudi Arabia , and by extension the US, are going to be effectively backing groups such as the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaida affiliate, to fight against ISIS and bring the jihadist movement back 'under control'.

Moreover, ISIS's success in northern Syria threatens to destroy the military opposition to Assad from the Free Syrian Army that the US and Britain have tacitly backed through supporting Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as Turkey which had intitially allowed ISIS to operate along its borders.

This colossal mess is a consequence of Qatar and Saudi Arabia using Syria as a proxy war battleground against both Iran and Iraq, a strategy aided and abetted by the US and Britain. Baghdad has remained close to its Shia neighbour to the east as has, of course, Assad.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia fear a Shi'ite axis stretching from the Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.Qatar has been allowed to 'play with fire' because it is a major supplier of liquified natural gas to Britain and France and a huge source of investment in both London and Paris.

In addition, Qatar and its allies in Britain and France has wanted Assad to go because they fear Iran could use its influence in Iraq and Syria, should the Free Syria Army be defeated, to construct an 'Islamic pipeline' which would allow gas from the South Pars field ( shared with Qatar) to flow west.

With ISIS poised to strike at Baghdad, the US would be clearly wary of Iraq being taken over by fanatical jihadists, even if both it and Saudi Arabia could see it as a chance to use the potential threat  as a means of getting a less militantly Shia and pro-Iranian government in Iraq.

Even so, ISIS would be poised to capture important oil installations in Kirkuk and threaten the Kurdish regions of Iraq, where the US and Britain have been at the forefront of vying for oil exploration contracts, and so affect global oil prices which are already running at a three month high.

More ominously, ISIS is believed to contain at least 20 British nationals in it as well as jihadists from across the world being trained in the art of terror and machine gunning and beheading civilians at random. The threat of terrorists coming back to Western capitals could increase.

Western foreign policy has clearly failed as far as the publicly declared aim of 'countering extremism'. The reason is that it has been too closely associated with backing the irresponsible policies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia because of the hold they have over the US, France and Britain as regards energy and finance.

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.

Syria: Patrick Cockburn on the Impact of Air Strikes

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent is no doubt the best journalist writing on the Syrian Crisis at present. His analysis here is well worth the read. How Syria action risks unsettling fragile Middle East balance of power Wednesday 28 August 2013

'Will air strikes help spread the Syrian conflict to other countries in the region? The important point here is to take on board how far it has already spread and the degree to which it already destabilising Syria’s neighbours. The al-Qa’ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, which fights in both Iraq and Syria, has already become stronger thanks to Syria, and is responsible for bombings in Iraq more intense than anything seen since 2008. The same organisation is responsible for ethnically cleansing Syrian Kurds in north-east Syria, 40,000 of whom have already fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. If the Assad government becomes weaker then the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and other jihadists, the most effective rebel fighting forces, will be strengthened.

Turkey is likely to support US actions, its importance depending on whether or not the US air base at Incirlik in south-east Turkey is used. Turkey has a 560-mile long frontier with Syria but it is vulnerable to Syria and Iran acting through Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Turkish government support for the rebels in Syria is also strongly opposed by the Turkish opposition who have been reinvigorated by mass street protests this summer.

Syrian Crisis: Red Lines and Green Lights.

Regionwide war could break out if , in response to US and UK cruise missile strikes, Iran steps up the arms supply to Assad's government and its proxy Hizbollah attacked Israel. Then Israel, a nuclear power, may well decide to try and use the rhetoric about WMDs to take out Iran's suspected WMD sites.

Israel has kept fairly quiet during the Syrian crisis and threats of military action against Syria. Some Iranian spokesmen and commanders have made oblique statements about how an attack on Syria would 'fan the flames' of 'outrage' across the Middle East.

If Israel sees Assad or Hizbollah as being directly supported by Tehran while they are attacking Israel it could deliver an ultimatum to Iran or just act if the situation on the ground deteriorates into an ever greater life and death struggle between Assad's most Shia Alawi backed government and majority Sunni militias.

Another regional flashpoint is Bahrain. The tiny Gulf Kingdom is ruled by a Sunni monarch in a land where 70% of the population is Shia. Since the Arab Spring of 2011 there have been revolts and riots so bad that Saudi forces had to roll in and crush the protests.

If Qatar and Saudi Arabia step up their arms supplies to the insurgent groups they are backing in Syria further ( they did on August 25 after Western military intervention was first put forth ) Iran could, if pushed too far, try to stoke up unrest to increase its regional influence against Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain was relatively stable in 2013. However, in July Shia terrorist groups were already setting off explosions in order to exacerbate sectarian tensions. Bahrain is also the naval base for the US Fifth Fleet which would be used in Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Assad's Shia state.

Tensions are simmering in Bahrain because leading members of high society close Bahraini royal court such as the Salafist Sheikh Faisal al-Ghurair las month announced “We are happy to tell you that we have sent arms and ammunition to the mujahedeen in Syria”.

However, the real tensions that could create the greatest instability would be the chaos in Syria developed greater and turned into a failed state such as Afghanistan, not least as Saudi Arabia is terrified not only by potential Shia opposition in the east near main oil producing zones but Al Qaida 'blowback'.