{"id":20890,"date":"2015-06-05T12:43:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T02:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=20890"},"modified":"2015-06-05T14:23:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T04:23:44","slug":"iraq-federation-or-break-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/iraq-federation-or-break-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq: federation or break-up?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Peter Jennings has recently argued<\/a> that Australian (and American) ground force personnel, now training elements of the Iraqi army, should accompany them into combat in the future. This change of operational tactics seems necessary following the recent successful assault by Da’ish forces on Ramadi in Iraq and the capture of Palmyra in Syria.<\/p>\n Other observers including Peter Leahy expressed caution<\/a> on moving in this direction, without a significant debate in the government and parliament on the nature of conflict in the Middle East and its consequences for global terrorism. These challenges, he argued, need a fundamentally more strategic response that counters the \u2018epicenter\u2019 of the Islamist threat: their fundamentalist ideology. He predicted that \u2018modern secular, mostly Western states\u2019 were involved in an extended \u2018hundred years war\u2019 with radical Islamists where \u2018ultimately the solutions must come from within the Muslim world\u2019.<\/p>\n Yet, if there is a 100 years\u2019 war, it isn\u2019t so much one directed against the West but rather an epoch in the 1100-year-old dispute between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Like its Christian predecessor in central Europe, this war is as much about the ambitions of princes and prelates as it is about ideology and has ensured that violence in the Islamic world is overwhelmingly Muslim against Muslim.<\/p>\n Within this context it\u2019s difficult to find a strategic epicentre at which to challenge and defeat the ideology of fundamentalist jihad. Jihadi-inspired violence in the Islamic world may be abhorrent, but will it produce a genuine consensus within the Muslim community sufficient to marginalise Islamic extremism? Despite heroic individual efforts, nothing broader has materialised and it would seem wise to disregard strategies that await a groundswell of moderate Islamic sentiment.<\/p>\n In fact, the actions of violent Jihadists are capable of attracting wide support. A recent poll<\/a> conducted by Al Jazeera Arabic (with mainly Egyptian and Saudi Arabian respondents) found 81% approval for Da’ish. These predominantly Sunni communities were prepared to discount the brutal fundamentalism of Da’ish because it was seen as championing Sunni rights against Shi’ite advances and the military interventions of the West.<\/p>\n The situation in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and other Muslim states is unlikely to promote the growth of a moderate consensus. The financial support for Salafism in the Gulf states, the integration of Wahhabism and the house of Saud, and the readiness of Turkey to merchandise Da’ish’s captured resources, all suggest that the regional strategic environment for Da’ish is, at the least, permissive.<\/p>\n