Begin With Humility

Douglas Alexander writes:

The Middle East is today defined by a level of turmoil and disorder reminiscent of some of the darkest days of the region’s bloody and tumultuous history.

Three years on from the start of the Arab uprisings, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and millions have been forced to flee their homes, as sectarian, religious and political fault lines open.

For decades the hopes of citizens in the region for freedom and prosperity have been trapped between repressive dictatorships and illiberal opposition groups.

Despite this leaving little space for civic society or pluralist politics to develop in 2011 the Arab uprisings seemed to herald a new beginning.

Yet – with the possible exception of Tunisia – despite the hopes of millions, these uprisings ultimately failed to create the space for democratic, peaceful national reconciliation.

They instead precipitated a period of unprecedented turmoil in Syria, Egypt and Libya – the spillover effect of which has in turn brought to the fore historic sectarian and religious tensions across the region, most recently today in Iraq.

In the face of such seismic challenges, it is clear that any Western strategy for engagement with the Middle East must begin with humility.

Humility because it will never be possible for outside powers to fully anticipate the outcomes of what is being played out on the dusty battlefields of Iraq, Syria and on the streets of Beirut, Amman or Gaza City.

Combatants are drawn from different countries, sects, factions and often answer to different leaders and commanders.

Humility also because ultimately the fate of the region is primarily in the hands of its peoples and its leaders.

But that humility must not give way to passivity.

Instead the UK should now be striving, along with allies, to develop an approach that reflects the complexity of the challenges we face, but also the necessity of tackling them.

The first component of any strategy for helping bring greater stability and security to the Middle East must clearly begin with an effective response to ISIL – the latest, and possibly most brutal, manifestation of this period of regional upheaval.

The declaration of an Islamic caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, controlling considerable wealth and weapons – alongside the continued flow of jihadists from and to the West – is not a sideshow security concern, but a primary security threat.

So firstly, the West must now ensure Iraq has the political, security and diplomatic support required.

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani most recently made clear that “we will never ask you to put boots on the ground to fight for us”.

But given the US’s unique military capabilities, President Obama was right to agree to the Iraqi government’s request for military support in the form of air strikes against ISIL in Northern Iraq.

While military intervention will at times be necessary, it will not alone be sufficient, and must be in support of clear political objectives.

That means the West must offer clear support to the new Iraqi government and promote a power-sharing agreement in Baghdad, as well as decentralisation of key services.

An effective Iraqi response to ISIL should not focus only on defeating them, but also on what replaces them, and so particular concessions for Sunni-dominated areas in the north may also be needed.

Alongside military and political support for Bagdad, the international community must do more to support the Kurdistan Regional government.

Today the Peshmarga are the effective front line against ISIL, sharing a 600-mile border with ISIL controlled land.

They need more coordinated international assistance, including intelligence assets, but also arms and potentially heavy weaponry – the West must stand ready to deliver that.

Secondly, a strategy for combating ISIL cannot be confined to within the borders of Iraq alone.

In Syria, ISIL governed territory in the country is used to draw in, train and radicalise jihadists – including from Britain. 

Of course the UK government needs to ensure effective counter-radicalisation programs are in place, and sufficient powers and resources are available to tackle the flow of these people between the UK and Syria.

And while Assad cannot have a future in governing Syria, the international community must now return to trying to achieve a transitional agreement, of the type anticipated in the Geneva II process, which could help facilitate a more effective security response to ISIL on the ground.

Clearly the barriers to achieving this remain significant, but the urgency of the threat posed by ISIL could be a crucial catalyst.

The West must also wake up to the intense pressure facing Jordan today – a country with one of the longest borders with Iraqi-ISIL held territory in the region and an even longer border with Syria in the North.

The conflict in Gaza is already stoking resentment among the population, half of whom are Palestinians, and as thousands of Syrian refugees continuing to flow into the kingdom each day, adding to the more than 650,000 who are already there, the pressures on the Jordanian government are mounting.

So alongside the UK’s bilateral cooperation, the international community should agree a comprehensive approach to ensuring that Jordan has the economic, security and humanitarian resources it needs to help stabilise the country and secure the border areas, including a possible expansion of military training programs for the Jordanian armed forces.

Third, an international response to the rise of ISIL must work on bringing together the key regional players.

In recent years, the major regional powers have been directly fuelling conflicts across the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Syria.

But the rise of ISIL has now created a threat so extreme that it unites previous adversaries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom has an interest in allowing it to succeed.

The apparent consensus around the need for al-Maliki to step aside in Iraq, which Iran ultimately helped facilitate, as well as Saudi-Arabia’s apparent willingness to use its influence with the Sunni tribes against ISIL, seem to suggest a move beyond simple zero-sum regional politics.

The unprecedented extent of this shared interest among key players only reinforces the need for a regionally-led response to ISIL.

President Hollande has already called for an international conference to respond to the threat of ISIL. That is a welcome initiative, but it would be strengthened if it were to happen under the auspices of the UN.

So the UK should now propose that the five permanent members on the UN Security Council – the P5 – convene a regional summit in the coming days to agree a strategy for tackling the threat of ISIL.

The UK government could and should lead on convening this summit – as a permanent member of the UNSC, and as its current Chair – and to secure the participation of key regional allies including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Iran.

The past few weeks have demonstrated the fundamental danger of the West not possessing a more strategic approach to the Middle East.

But the emergence of new overlapping interests among key regional actors could also be a moment of potential opportunity for the West to re-engage political and diplomatically in order to now pursue how far this coalition of interests can be extended.