09/23/14 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And our first guest on the show today is Patrick Coburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
Author of a great many books, including Motada and the brand new one, The Jihadi's Return.
It's about ISIS and the new Sunni uprising.
It's not out at Amazon yet, but it is out at orbooks.com.
Orbooks.com.
The Jihadi's Return.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you doing?
Not too bad.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So I guess if we could start with Syria here, of course.
The president announced this morning about the strikes overnight, which they were really announced by the Pentagon last night, of course.
But in his statement this morning, he said that, I guess restated, that the policy is indeed to build up an army of moderate rebels, as he put it, as the best counterweight to both the Islamic State and the Assad regime.
And it seemed like that's as good a place as any to start the discussion today, would be.
What's your analysis of that as the stated policy of the U.S. government going into the Syrian side of this war?
I think it's, you know, it's kind of a nonsense, but there aren't, I mean, insofar as there are moderate Syrian rebels, they certainly aren't capable of taking on the Assad government and the Islamic State at the same time.
Why do they keep saying this?
Well, I guess they want to get the Saudis and the Gulf monarchies in line with their policy.
Not so much because they're militarily worth anything, but because these are the guys who originally funded and inspired and have pretty well the same ideology as ISIS and the jihadis in, the Sunni jihadis in Syria and Iraq.
So they want to split that combination.
I think that's why it was important for them to have Saudi and UAE jets or assistance in the airstrikes so they could say, look, these guys have turned against ISIS.
Well, yeah, that certainly makes sense.
And then but now you reported back a couple of weeks ago that the Americans are passing intelligence to Assad to help him target these guys.
It raised the whole question of the back channel and just how much of this policy is being coordinated with Assad.
And then, of course, that raised the question of whether, you know, really the policy is to switch back to Assad rather than to continue on this, as you said, kind of ridiculous third way.
I don't think they'll do a public U-turn.
I mean, I'm told they're passing on information through third parties and it kind of surprises me if they weren't, because otherwise it's an impossible situation.
I mean, what happens if ISIS, if the Islamic State attacks the Syrian army tomorrow near Aleppo and looks as though it's going to capture Aleppo or parts of it?
Is the U.S. going to strike at the Islamic State or are they going to say, well, no, this might strengthen Assad and the Syrian army?
So they can't, you know, they can't really do both at a certain point when you think of the practicalities on the battlefield.
They have to decide whose side they're on.
They can't sort of be both.
Well, that's a real interesting question.
What they would do then if ISIS moved on Aleppo.
As John McCain, Senator McCain, in examining the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey, was saying, well, OK, if we're back in the FSA and Assad attacks them, you're not going to attack him back.
You're not going to protect our FSA heroes from Assad.
And so at some point, this is going to become a real yes-no question where they can no longer pretend to split the difference.
Right.
Yeah, because, you know, who it's the main opposition to ISIS, Islamic State in Syria is the Syrian army.
And.
And while the Syrian Kurds, who are part of a group called the YPG, which is the in turn the affiliate of the main Turkish Kurd organization, the PKK, which the U.S. and the European Union have down as a terrorist organization, so are they not going to help?
They are under attack.
There's a northern Kurdish enclave with half a million people in it on the Turkish border and already about 150,000 have fled.
They're under attack from ISIS.
So is the U.S. going to launch an attack on ISIS to defend this enclave?
So I think when you think about the practicalities of it, they really don't have any choice but to cooperate with all these people they've been denouncing for years, who are actually the people who are fighting ISIS on the ground.
Otherwise their only alternative is a group which doesn't really exist, which is going to be vetted and then trained in Saudi Arabia and then come back to the battlefield.
So it's sort of fantasy.
Now, in the south, well, they don't seem to have had airstrikes on south of Damascus.
There is sort of rebels who are coordinated by sort of foreign intelligence agencies in Oman who've been fighting, trying to fight their way towards Damascus.
But here's another problem that, you see, there isn't much distinction between the so-called moderate rebels and the jihadis like Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda.
You know, it's really sort of absurd to think that you have an opposition area with Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS in it, that they're not fighting side by side with these so-called moderates.
So, you know, again, they have to decide what they're doing.
Now, you know, at the moment it's a tremendous mess.
The first days of bombing always look good, you know, being sort of over the years in Baghdad and elsewhere, you know, bombing of their various targets initially that they can identify.
But after a bit, there aren't any targets where the enemy is.
They won't know where these people are.
So then you start hitting places, you'll certainly hit civilians.
So, you know, it's a policy that sort of looks good today, but I wonder if it's going to look good in a few weeks.
Well, yeah, and it's interesting, like you say, about how the GCC countries there, they hate Assad so much that Obama's kind of roping them into this and sort of putting them de facto on Assad's side before breaking it to them that, yeah, you're on Assad's side here in this thing and that we have to turn you against the groups that you've been helping us support all this time.
So, after all, it blew up in their face, apparently a lot bigger than they possibly imagined it could and now they are having to try to turn the thing around.
But, you know, and I could see how, like you're saying, if they split the difference for a while or try to, that helps legitimize the process to the GCC states.
But I wonder about whether, including, and I guess throw in Jordan there, there's UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, all participating in this to some degree or another, and I wonder whether you'd agree with Michael Schoer that this just completely discredits them.
This is like the final nail in the proof of the coffin that they're nothing but lackeys and sock puppets of the Americans and that the only ones who don't take their marching orders from the Americans in the region are the Islamic State, the guys that we're trying to fight here.
Well, there's, yeah, there's an element of that, but it, you know, these Gulf monarchies, they always, you know, they try and stay in business.
You know, we talk about Saudi Arabia, we're talking about a royal family, you know, nobody elected these people.
Their own legitimacy will now be under question from the Islamic State, who will say exactly that.
They'll say, look, these people are claimed to be Muslims, but in fact they're lackeys of the Americans, and they'll find believers in these places.
I think one thing that I don't see discussed, certainly not over here, maybe in the States, is the one of the things we know about the Islamic State, about ISIS, is that it always retaliates if anybody does anything it doesn't like, and these airstrikes, how is it going to retaliate?
Is it going to retaliate?
You know, it's, will there be more executions, but, you know, that doesn't do them any good.
So I think this idea that you could have an air campaign going on for years and these guys won't retaliate in some way is very naive.
I think it's, things are going to boil up much faster than that.
And of course if there is retaliation, then the incentive to go in and try to finish the job will go up.
Right, well, and you know, I wonder if you think that those beheading videos are just bait.
Again, Michael Scheuer on the show said, oh, that's just them putting a worm on a hook, trying to get us to invade.
They need us to invade because they know that we can never really defeat them and over the long haul it'll just help make their radical case.
It might be like that, but it's kind of speculative, you know.
Maybe they just think if you ritually murder a lot of people in front of cameras you're going to intimidate somebody.
I mean, you may also provoke them, as in this case.
They may just have got it wrong.
It could be the other, it could be that they're just over-confident after their victories over the Samar.
After all, they beat the Iraqi army very quickly, then they beat the Syrian army in a couple of battles in eastern Syria, then they did the same to the Kurds.
It may, after all these people believe that they are divinely inspired, they may just have got over-confident.
It isn't necessarily a trap.
But let's suppose that even if it isn't a trap, what ISIS will be able to present itself as fighting against America, while these other powers have all acted like pawns of Washington.
Certainly that will be the thrust of its propaganda, and certainly it will find believers.
Well, and especially when it's just air attacks, where as you said, all the original targets get taken care of real quick, and then eventually each airstrike is just that much more propaganda for their side, and that much less of an actual value of any destruction gained by our side.
And so then I guess what it would take would be a whole lot of ground troops, but that just makes matters that much worse for us, and that much better for them, at least in a way anyway, in a different way I guess.
You see, if you have an army like the Iraqi army in 1991 or 2003, which is in fixed identifiable positions, then our power is very effective, because you can find out where they are, they don't really have any anti-aircraft guns, and you can destroy it.
But if it's what seems to be happening, and has already happened in Iraq, remember the U.S. has been bombing Iraq since the 8th of August, and ISIS is still being pretty successful in Iraq.
In the last few days they besieged a government position, garrison west of Baghdad, and seem to have captured or killed about 300 people.
They're still controlling crucial areas to the south of Baghdad.
So they can still fight, and they can still win.
It's more difficult for them just to go barreling down the main highway in their trucks packed with gunmen.
But it doesn't mean that they're going to be eliminated any time soon.
It doesn't even mean that they're going to be contained.
Yeah, in other words, we turn them back into an insurgency, but far from eradicating them.
But then, so, well, here's the thing.
I know you have an article here where you say, you know, there should at least be a truce between the anti-ISIS rebels and the Assad regime for now, and it seems like Assad soldiers in combination with the Iranians and the Iraqi army, or the, I guess if you could get the Turks involved, are the most suited in the region to actually going in there and conquering these guys.
But if America pursues any or all of those policies, it seems like it just makes matters that much worse, too, because it just puts America back again directly on the side of the Shiites in the war, and obviously we're on all sides of it all over the place.
But you know, if America is serving just as the air force for the Quds Force, then isn't that just going to, you know, strengthen them?
Same thing with switching back to Assad.
I certainly, you know, you know me, I never supported the rebellion against him or thought that the Western powers should be supporting the rebellion against him, but switching back to him is virtually the same thing as far as what benefit it is to his enemies, it seems like.
Yeah, it's all pretty cynical, really.
I mean, I've always felt about the uprisings of 2011 in Syria, Egypt, and Libya, and Yemen, that, you know, what tainted them, because they were genuine, they were genuine uprisings against oppressive dictatorial regimes, is that the U.S. and others supported them, but who are the big allies in supporting these democratic, secular uprisings were Saudi Arabia and these absolute monarchies, you know, regimes that come out of the Middle Ages.
It was never likely that these people were in favor of spreading democratic rights to anybody.
They certainly hadn't done it at home.
So there was a strong element of hypocrisy there, and of course they used their vast financial resources.
The end of the uprisings that got supported in Libya and Syria were the jihadis, were the most bigoted, the most regressive people, and that's one of the reasons they came out on top, that that's where the money was going.
So you know, it's a very simple reason there, but somehow it doesn't get spread around very much.
All right, now, so what about Abadi?
Do you have any reason to believe the new prime minister of Iraq can find a way to work with Sunni tribal and religious leaders and maybe some politicians in a way that could in any way replicate the so-called awakening movement and the undermining of support from within the Sunni community in the lands that ISIS has already conquered?
Well, I'm sure they'll try, and I'm sure there will be those who try and do that, but it'll be very difficult, far more difficult than it was in 2007.
There were 150,000 American troops there at that time.
ISIS is much more powerful than al-Qaeda in Iraq, its predecessor.
It's very paranoid and it will be expecting a stab in the back.
It's already sort of detained various people.
I just can't see that really happening effectively.
There's another thing that isn't brought up very much about ISIS, which is it tends to recruit from the poor, the poor Sunni young men, unemployed, pretty hopeless.
There's a sort of social element in this uprising, too.
They really don't like the Sunni leaders.
They think they've sort of betrayed the faith.
They think they've betrayed their community.
They think they're a bunch of fat cats in Baghdad.
I mean, they're quite prepared to kill the Shia, but they're quite prepared to kill these guys, too.
It's true in Syria, as well, that they recruit from these people who you sometimes see referred to in newspapers as underclass.
I think the simplest thing is they're the poor, you know, with things are pretty hopeless, and they seem to be where ISIS recruits.
Yeah, well, best paying job in town.
Sorry?
I said best paying job in town.
It's a good job, but it's also, you know, it's sort of, it's something to believe in, you know.
It's not the best, it's probably the only job around, you know.
These people are pretty angry, and they'll fight pretty hard.
The, you know, Arab nationalism that you used to have was very much a sort of, tended to be the middle classes, tended to be the professions, tended to be the army.
Didn't resonate quite so much with the sort of broad masses of the poor, but the sort of born again, the religion, the old style religion that ISIS believes in, that does.
That has a real constituency among the Sunni poor.
Well, now, what about that blowback again from America supporting the Iranian Shiite, Iranian backed Shiite government against these, you know, the Sunni populations, again, in the name of fighting ISIS?
How bad is that going to backfire?
Is it possible that's a pretty good way to get rid of ISIS in a pretty severe way, and maybe we'll be able to keep them, you know, mostly marginalized?
Or is that just a recipe for absolute disaster, sending Soleimani?
I don't think various other things are going to happen, Scott.
You know, the one thing I think to take on board about these bombings today, these airstrikes today, or airstrikes by the U.S. earlier in Iraq, or even the victories that ISIS won in the summer in Iraq and Syria, is that, you know, these were significant.
Nobody was ever going to come out 100% the winner, and so this war is going to go on.
I mean, these airstrikes, yeah, it'll sort of maybe contain a little ISIS, and they'll suffer casualties, but they're not going to go out of business far from it.
But they probably don't have the strength to win in Syria or Iraq, so, you know, we have a lot more things that can happen.
What happens if they retaliate against the U.S., you know, or let's say Britain, you know, people here talk about, you know, could they do anything, come to the homeland, but they don't have to.
There are two and a half million British tourists every year in Turkey, not difficult to cross the Turkish border.
So there are lots of things, many of them pretty nasty, that could still happen.
Yeah, and then I guess there's, it's pretty obvious most of the time how people react to things like that.
They double down.
They're not going to, the British and the Americans are the same.
They're going to double down and not learn a lesson and finally stop intervening just because there's another attack or ten more.
Yeah, I think at the moment, you know, because of these executions of two American journalists and the British aid worker, of course, there's much more public support for doing something about ISIS, but there isn't support for a long war and these, in this case, I think sort of public feeling that, you know, you can very slip back into the quagmire in Iraq and Syria, you know, is probably better than that of politicians who've got it, you know, they got it wrong in 2003 and they got it wrong in 2011 and I think they're getting it wrong now.
All right, so that's Patrick Coburn.
The book is The Jihadi's Return, ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.
You can't get it at Amazon yet.
You got to go to orbooks.com, that's orbooks.com and of course you can read him regularly in The Independent at independent.co.uk and they reprint just about all of it too, I'm pretty sure at unz.com, that's unz, unz.com.
Thanks very much for coming back on the show, Patrick, really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
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