The United States and its Western allies have responded with airstrikes on militant positions in Iraq and relief operations for the victims of the Al-Qaida splinter groupâs campaign of violence. But the air attacks on Islamic State fighters in Iraq and contemplation of similar action in war-torn Syria will do little more than temporarily curb the militantsâ momentum as the international community struggles to find a long-term solution to their destabilizing threat, analysts say. âThere is no short-term fix that will completely defeat this threat, so itâs important to differentiate between stopping ISISâ momentum and ending or defeating them as an organization,â said Janine Davidson, senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as the group called itself before proclaiming its caliphate two months ago.
Without forces in Syria and Iraq to identify targets and ensure that civilian communities arenât vulnerable, airstrikes alone are unlikely to roll back the Islamic State militants who have seized large swaths of territory in those countries, Davidson said. Targeted strikes can and have taken out militant positions and training camps and can undermine the groupâs image as a force âscreaming through Iraq with one military success after another,â Davidson said. But air power alone wonât do more than chase the militants from one stronghold to another or counter their sophisticated use of social media to recruit and raise funds, she said. In an interview discussing Western statesâ limited options for containing the militants, she said they should focus on forming regional security alliances with Iraqâs and Syriaâs Middle East neighbors and on reform of the Iraqi government that so excluded and repressed Sunni Muslims that many welcomed the militants when they overran northern Iraq.
The Islamic State battlegrounds and gruesome execution of enemies have become a magnet for aspiring militants around the world, said Christopher Chivvis, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp. Chivvis estimates the number of foreign fighters who have joined Islamic State and other militant Sunni factions at 10,000, including as many as 3,000 carrying European passports and a ânot insignificant numberâ from the United States. On Tuesday, White House officials confirmed that a San Diego man, Douglas McAuthur McCain, had died in Syria fighting for Islamic State. âPeople like to be on the winning team and right now it looks like ISIS is winning,â Chivvis said. âThey have effectively challenged Al-Qaida as leader of global jihad, offering a different model for what jihad ought to look likeâmore violent, more locally focused, but equally extreme.â
If the United States and its allies want to combat Islamic Stateâs power to attract disaffected and marginalized Muslims, broad international cooperation is required in law enforcement and intelligence sharing, Chivvis said. He pointed to the U.S. turn at the U.N. Security Council presidency in September as an opportunity to galvanize coordinated efforts to counter the extremistsâ message. Like Davidson, Chivvis sees little prospect of Western states collaborating with Syrian President Bashar Assad to roll back their common enemy, Islamic State. It would be politically and operationally problematic, he said, as Assad is accused of committing war crimes against his own people. An independent U.N. investigative commission on Wednesday issued a scathing report accusing all combatants in Syria of inflicting âimmeasurable sufferingâ on civilians, including the Assad governmentâs sarin gas attacks on suburbs of Aleppo a year ago and barrel-bombing of opposition-held villages in the provinces of Idlib and Hama with chlorine gas in April.
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