Middle EastA framework for destroying ISIS and creating stability in the Middle East
In responding to the barbarism of ISIS, the United States must develop and articulate a political strategy that keeps America out of an inter-ethnic civil war, relies on local Arab armies to defeat ISIS, reduces Iran’s influence in the region, strengthens Israeli security, and prevents terrorist groups like ISIS from ever again establishing a political or geographic foothold in Syria and Iraq. The current U.S. policy of arming the overwhelmingly Shiite Arab Iraqi government army, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and the hodgepodge Free Syrian Army is not going to achieve these goals. Instead, the United States should pursue a strategy based on diplomatically recognizing the already-existing partition of the region into its natural divisions — the “Five State” partition. The Five State approach aims to re-partition the two failed states of Syria and Iraq into more stable and cohesive states which will exclude Iranian influence, provide a stable and potentially powerful Sunni Arab state that can ally with the pro-Western Sunni Arab states, and accommodate the security concerns of the major regional non-Arab powers, Israel, Turkey, and the concerns of neighboring Russia.
Map of the Middle East under the five state partition // Source: radiofarda.com
The rapid rise of the terrorist organization the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has now conquered an area larger than Texas, and perpetrated the horrific beheading of American journalists and a British aid worker and the ritual slaughter of Christian and Yazidi religious minorities, demands a swift and forceful response from the United States. The President and Congress need to send a strong message that this type of brutality, especially against American citizens, anywhere in the world will be punished.
But in responding to the barbarism of ISIS, the United States must develop and articulate a political strategy that keeps America out of an inter-ethnic civil war, relies on local Arab armies to defeat ISIS, reduces Iran’s influence in the region, strengthens Israeli security, and prevents terrorist groups like ISIS from ever again establishing a political or geographic foothold in Syria and Iraq.
This strategy involves diplomatically recognizing the already-existing partition of the region into its natural divisions — the “Five State” partition.
The primary factor that gave rise to ISIS is that twenty-five million Sunni Arabs predominate a region spanning central and eastern Syria and neighboring western Iraq, but these Sunnis have been misruled by traditional rivals: the coastal Alawites in Syria since 1970; and the southern Shiites in Iraq since the 2003 Iraq War. ISIS has now taken control of this region, pushing aside the weaker Saudi-backed and overwhelmingly Sunni Arab rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Iraqi army.
The global community cannot allow this status quo to persist. ISIS cannot have what is effectively its own country from which to plan and executive terrorist attacks against the rest of the world. There is nothing inherently wrong with Sunni Arab self-rule in central Syria/Iraq, but ISIS is a radical and savage organization that must be destroyed before it murders more innocent civilians not only in the Middle East, but also around the world. The fact that many of its members have American and European passports is extremely concerning. The United States, in concert with Arab and European allies, must destroy ISIS before it exports terrorism to our shores.
