In fight against Islamic State, the enemy of my enemy is, if not my friend, at least my ally

The speech given by US president Barack Obama at the United Nations General Assembly this week has been greeted by some as marking a dramatic change in US foreign policy. Nowhere does this seem more clearly to be the case than in relation to the Middle East.

Obama campaigned for election on the commitment to extricate himself from US involvement in the region. Much of his first term was focused on achieving the objective of complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Later, when the Arab uprisings surprised the world in 2011, his administration moved cautiously, wary of directly involving the US once more.

The US supported Nato efforts to dislodge the Gadafy regime in Libya through an elastic interpretation of a UN Security Council resolution. But the instability that followed in that country, together with the apparent rise of Islamist movements across the Arab world as a consequence of the uprisings, tempered Obama’s response to events in Syria. Here the regime of longtime US enemy Bashar al-Assad faced an increasingly protracted and violent challenge.

Syrian complications

Bringing down the Assad regime has been a long-standing objective of US policy in the region, but fear of the consequences of his departure weighed heavily on the minds of US policymakers. The fact that the regime in Damascus enjoyed the active support of Russia and Iran further complicated the situation.

Assad played on fears that an increasingly radicalised Islamist opposition might succeed him by targeting more moderate opposition while encouraging the rise of jihadists. The result has seen the emergence of groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and, above all, the so-called “Islamic State” (IS), into global consciousness.

At the UN, Obama called for a dismantling of the “network of death” that is IS, and to that end has been putting together a coalition of willing partners inside and outside the region to mount airstrikes against IS positions in Syria. Among these have been Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Most recently, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan announced his country’s support for the campaign against IS.

All of this is in marked contrast to the position almost exactly a year ago, when Obama baulked at the prospect of taking action against the Syrian regime. Then, having deployed chemical weapons, it crossed a “red line” that Obama himself had set.

The new willingness of Obama to take up arms in the region (albeit largely limited to airstrikes) was first in evidence in August, when he authorised the use of US airpower against IS targets in Iraq.

Obama has repeatedly insisted that he will not send US ground troops into Iraq or Syria. But this position is somewhat undermined by “hints” given by US attorney general Eric Holder that ground troops may eventually be necessary to deal with jihadist groups in Syria and by claims that defeating IS may take up to three years.

Engaged in a conflict in both Syria and Iraq that may take years to conclude, Obama now finds himself a long way from extricating the US from direct military involvement in the affairs of the Middle East.

Regional shifts

The sea change in US foreign policy has been accompanied by a number of shifts in the region itself.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have flocked to the anti-IS coalition with mixed motivations. The Sunni Arab states of the region have long been hostile to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. This partly because it is dominated by members of Syria’s minority Alawite community, a branch of Shia Islam. More importantly, it’s because Assad is supported by Shia Iran, whose hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East have been contested by the Saudis and their allies.

As a result, when the fighting broke out in Syria in 2011, radical jihadist groups battling the Assad regime received significant financial support from within the Gulf states. While this was not official state policy, it nonetheless aided in the rise of these groups.

The Gulf states now find themselves, as does the US, in the paradoxical position of sharing a common enemy with the Syrian regime. Indeed the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have confirmed their direct participation in raids on IS targets in Syria.

A similar shift has taken place within Turkey. From the outset, the Islamist AKP government has supported the opposition to Assad and Turkey has been the base for much exiled Syrian political activism.

Turkey has also played its part in the rise of IS. It has been criticised for failing to stem the flow of jihadist fighters across its porous 560-mile border with Syria. According to US sources, some 12,000 foreign fighters have travelled through Turkey to join IS in Syria.

There have also been persistent claims that oil produced in areas under IS control has been sold in Turkey and constitutes a significant element in its resources. A Turkish opposition MP recently claimed that $800 million (€630 million) worth of oil produced in IS-controlled regions had been sold in Turkey this year.

Furthermore, while the Turkish president has announced his support for the US assault on IS in Syria, Turkey continues to be concerned at the possibility that Kurdish involvement in the anti-IS coalition will strengthen its own Kurdish population, with which Ankara has long been at odds.

Questions on strategy

The coming together of Sunni Arab states together with Turkey in the campaign against IS has been trumpeted by the US as evidence that the conflict is of regional and even global concern. But, however successful Obama has been in broadening the anti-IS coalition, questions have been asked regarding both the short and long-term strategies being adopted.

Firstly, doubts have been expressed as to whether airstrikes alone can defeat IS in Iraq or Syria.

In Iraq, as has frequently been noted, the rise of IS has been facilitated not merely by the success of several thousand jihadists in combat with the inept forces of the national Iraqi army, but also by the receptivity of local populations to the group. This in turn stems from the alienation of Sunni majority areas from the Shia-dominated governments that have ruled since the US invasion of 2003.

In Syria too, notwithstanding the abhorrent brutality of IS, there are reports that local populations have welcomed the return of a sort of law and order, the provision of basic services and the supply of food, which had been absent during the course of the civil war. Some doubt that airstrikes alone will change attitudes towards the group in either country.

This links directly to some of the paradoxical implications of recent developments in the region. No matter how the US or its regional allies may try to avoid the conclusion, the decision to attack IS can only bring benefit to erstwhile rivals and enemies. The defeat of IS in Syria, should it come to pass, can only strengthen the Assad regime and, by extension, his patrons in Tehran and Moscow.

Furthermore, what we are now seeing is the successful outcome of the cold-blooded calculation made by Damascus at the outset of the Syrian conflict.

By turning his repressive apparatus on moderate opposition and deliberately creating the conditions for both the emergence and growth of radical Islamist forces, Assad defined a clear conundrum: after the regime, then what? It is precisely to prevent the further success of IS that the US and its allies are now once more embroiled in conflict in the Middle East.

However, there is an even greater paradox at issue. For many observers, it is difficult to see how the long-term objective of the defeat of IS in both Syria and Iraq can be accomplished without deeper engagement with the leadership of both states.

Eric Holder’s remarks seem to represent an acknowledgment that some sort of force on the ground will be necessary to complement airstrikes in Syria. But US support and training for opposition forces other than IS is fraught with difficulty – and support for other Islamist fighters is out of the question.

However, two years of support for moderate opposition forces – a rather blurry concept in this context – has seen these groups make little headway against the regime or the jihadists. That leaves one force on the ground that has the capacity to crush IS: the Syrian regime’s armed forces.

Collaborating with Syria

The airstrikes in Syria have been justified by the US on grounds that have stretched understandings of international law (by no means a first for US foreign policy). It is noteworthy that while Syria has argued that airstrikes without Syrian co-operation would constitute an act of aggression, it has also stated that collaboration with Syrian forces on the ground will be necessary to defeat IS, thus opening the way for co-ordination with the US.

Likewise, it seems clear to many that co-operation with Iran is necessary for the successful conclusion of events in both Syria and Iraq. Iran has far greater sway over the regimes in Baghdad and Damascus than any other foreign power.

While a military defeat of IS is possible under the right conditions, diplomatic and political solutions to the problems of Iraq and Syria will also have to be found sooner or later. The role of Iran in this could be crucial.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, also in New York this week for the UN General Assembly, gave some indications of a change in Iranian policy. At a breakfast meeting with journalists, he condemned the airstrikes in Syria as illegal but quickly moved on to discuss hopes for a final deal in US-Iranian nuclear talks.

Rouhani also mentioned the need for a political solution to Syria’s problems but did not mention Bashar al-Assad by name, leaving some observers with the impression that Iran might be happy with a deal that saw Assad leave.

However, there seems little likelihood that the US will opt for closer co-operation with Damascus or Tehran. Co-operation with Syria has persistently been ruled out by the administration while earlier this month US secretary of state John Kerry accused Iran of being “a state sponsor of terrorism” and stated that it would be “inappropriate” for Iranian officials to join talks on how to combat IS.

Nonetheless, the substitution of military engagement for a long-term political strategy to resolve the problems of Syria and Iraq may doom Obama’s new Middle East foreign policy from the start.

• Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East Politics at University College Dublin.