Turmoil in the Middle East

07/02/2014 - 15h53

On the eve of Ramadan, the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levent (Isis), an violently extremist jihadi group, having seized territory in both Iraq and Syria, tore down the boundaries between them, and established a Caliphate, a sovereign state, believed by many Muslims to be the inheritor of the prophet Muhammed's temporal and spiritual power.

The first caliphate was created in the 7th century after the death of the prophet. The last Ottoman caliphate was abolished in 1924. The Isis leader has taken the name of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, - a reference to the first caliph in 632 - and calls himself caliph Ibrahim.

Isis began has been active in Syria and Iraq since 2004, but the startling success of Isis on the battlefield over the past month, where the Iraqi army disintegrated overnight in the Sunni north and west of Iraq, leaving behind all of its American supplied equipment, including tanks, surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles, and helicopters, has sent shock waves through the Middle East and beyond.

Isis was already well funded. It controls oil fields captured in eastern Syria. Now it has funds looted from Iraqi banks. Isis seized Mosel, Iraq's second city, on June 10. It seized the Baiji oil refinery on June 18th. It then took Tekrit, hometown of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Kurdish fighters, the seasoned Peshmerga, have deployed along the borders of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and have taken control of the oil rich Kirkuk province.

Kurdistan is now cut off from Bagdad by the Sunni insurgents. The Kurds have long objected to the sectarian policy and lack of resources provided by the Shiia dominated central government in Baghdad led by the Shiia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The victories of Isis have made strange bedfellows. Iran supports the Shia dominated government in Baghdad, so does the beleaguered Alawite dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and so apparently, after a fashion, does President Barack Obama.

The US is flying surveillance unmanned drone missions over Iraq and has sent three hundred special forces advisers to assess conditions and needs. Iran has also sent drones and advisers.

But Russia delivered 5 Su-30k fighter jets fighters by large Russia jumbo transport plane, as well as Russian experts, to Baghdad.

These jets are being reassembled in Baghdad and a second shipment is on the way. The US has not provided the promised F-16 fighter jets, delayed until September or October by Congress, nor the promised attack Apache helicopters, which in any case will require months of pilot training.

Obama wants a unity government of all the factions in Bagdad. But Maliki is not inclined to step down, nor are the Sunnis and Kurds prepared to accept him any longer.

While Obama muses Iraq burns: And it burns in large part because of the errors of past US policy, past US actions, and the current absence of any effective response from a politically gridlocked and domestically preoccupied Washington.

Neither time, nor strategy, nor history, is on the US side this time around.