In short, the debate, once again, is proceeding on a dismally
low intellectual level.
It is as
though speaker after speaker mounted the podium to proclaim his undying support
to the (unspecified) “Good Guys” (stormy applause).
Additionally, bear in mind that, even if such “Moderates”
could be found (hiding under a bed somewhere, or moodily sipping espressos in
Paris cafés) -- We already had over a decade to “train” allegedly moderate
Iraqis, and allegedly moderate Afghanis, at the end
with very little to show for it.
And that was with a full-court-press.
Why would a smaller-scale
training program, in any case probably largely to be farmed-out to the Saudis
and Qataris (who have their own agenda [**] ), be any more effective?
(At least it will be an efficient use of resources, since many of the same trainers who earlier formed and funded the ISIL -- now unemployed -- can be recycled as trainers of "The Moderates".)
[Update 13 Sept 2014]
French Syria-expert Frédéric Pichon makes the same point:
Quant à la Syrie, il me semble
illusoire de compter sur les rebelles dits modérés, qui travaillent souvent
côte à côte avec Al Qaida sur le terrain, pour servir de relais au sol. … Après trois ans de vaines tentatives,
l'Occident n'a pas réussi à identifier sur le terrain des rebelles sûrs qui
pourraient servir de relais à une action sur le terrain.
This observer also throws cold water on the puppet-play
being waged in Washington, to wash its hands of any Iranian assistance:
Malgré toutes les précautions
prises par Washington pour intégrer les pays arabes sunnites, cette coalition incluera de fait l'Iran
dont le rôle est déjà déterminant en Irak dans la lutte contre l'Etat
Islamique: Qassem Soleimani, le commandant des troupes d'élite iraniennes Al
Quds, est en Irak et se bat au côté des forces irakiennes - soutenues et armées
par les États-unis. Cela constitue un obstacle politique majeur pour
l'après-guerre.
[**] Footnote to the assertion that the Saudis here have
their own agenda; again Pichon:
Les dirigeants saoudiens prennent
part à une coalition contre l'Etat Islamique alors qu'un sondage récent révèle
que près de 90% de la population du Royaume soutient l'organisation terroriste.
[Update 12 September 2014] Ah, now here’s an
interesting development:
An alliance of rebel groups bashed
out a “non-aggression” with IS pact on Friday. The alliance on the rebel side was made up of four distinct
groups, among them the US-backed Syria Revolutionary Front.
Not sure what this "Syria Revolutionary Front" is,
exactly; they appear not to rate a
mention in Wikipedia.
Anyhow, don’t count on them rallying to smash the ISIL, or your eggs
will be in a fragile basket.
 |
|
The USG, searching for a Syrian moderate
|
As for Turkey, since it has suffered an influx of refugees
from the chaotic land on its southern border, and since the ISIL has threatened
to target Ankara over the closing of the Ataturk Dam, you would think thay they
would be a mainstay of the US-organized action; but no such luck:
[Update, 17 September 2014] This morning, NPR happily prattled about working only with “vetted”
Syrian oppositionists -- “vetted by the C.I.A.”
Did the C.I.A. also “vet” Chalabi, and Curveball, who (in
league with the Vulcans) lured us into Iraq on phoney intel? Did it vet Humam al-Balawi, of
F.O.B. Chapman ill-fame?
[Update, 23 September 2014]
One Syrian rebel group supported in
the past by the United States condemned the air strikes on Tuesday. Harakat
Hazm, a rebel group that received a shipment of U.S. anti-tank weapons in the
spring, called the airstrikes “an attack on national sovereignty”.
[Update 7 October 2014] Now this:
Equipping the Free Syrian Army got
off to a rocky start. Sources in Turkey told me this summer that one brigade
tried selling American-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles to Jabhat al-Nusra for
$25,000 this year.
I.e., the al-Nusrah Front -- a/w al-Qaeda.
Having popped that bubble, our commentator then blows one of
his own:
For the operation to be a success,
Washington should enlist the support of a group it has spurned: the Syrian
Kurds.
This, at the very moment that, in the Syrian Kurdish town of
Kobane, they are getting their butt crushed, despite American air support!
[Update 17 Oct 2014] And now
this:
From the start, President Obama’s
Syria policy has foundered because of a gap between words and deeds. And he’s
done it again. Having declared that the aim of U.S. policy is to “degrade and
ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, Obama now finds himself pressured to
escalate military action in Syria. This is a path destined for failure. In
fact, the administration should abandon its lofty rhetoric and make clear that
it is focused on a strategy against the Islamic State that is actually
achievable: containment.
Escalation in Syria cannot meet
American objectives and is almost certain to produce chaos and unintended
consequences. The central reality is that Washington has no serious local
partners on the ground. It is important
to understand that the Free Syrian Army doesn’t actually exist. A
Congressional Research Service report points out that the name does not refer
to any “organized command and control structure with national reach.” The
director of national intelligence has testified that the opposition to the
Bashar al-Assad regime is composed of 1,500 separate militias. We call a bunch
of these militias — which are anti-Assad and also anti-Islamist (we hope) — the
Free Syrian Army.
To coin an epigram: the "Free Syrian Army" is neither free, nor Syrian, nor an army.
(4) Political
linguistics: What to call the Caliphate
Our earlier essay, “
ISIL vs. ISIS”, offered a
thorough examination of the competing (Western) acronyms for what in Arabic is
al-Dawlah al-Islâmiyyah fi-l-`Iraq wa-l-Shâm,
from the perspective of historical linguistics.
The newer name,
IS
tout court, resolves the acronymic
conundrum, and moreover is inoffensive in itself, since it sounds like simply a
short-form of ISIS/ISIL -- though in origin it is not that, but rather a sort
of “lengthened” designation in terms of their envisaged AOR -- now not
onomastically laid out, but surely encompassing the whole of the Islamic
oecumene, and probably much more besides.
But it is easy for a Westerner to remain unconscious
of that latter fact, and think of the IS as just one more terrorist group among
many.
The matter becomes considerably knottier when we realize
that the real story here, and what will motivate coming events, is not a change
of name, but a (proclaimed, purported) change of essence: from a mere jihadi ‘group’ (an entity
whose ontological status the IS itself now dismissively minimizes) to that of a
caliphate -- or rather, The Caliphate, since unlike a
kingdom or an emirate, there can in principle be only one such thing at a time,
and its reach wraps the whole of the globe. A comparable ideal held for Christendom, back before
the schisms, when the Church was not merely Catholic (now merely the proper
name of a confession, like Presbyterian or Orthodox) but catholic -- ‘universal’ in its original sense.
The geopolitical and even eschatological claims of such an entity, are enormous, and
difficult to come to grips with, for those who have forgotten history.
 |
The caliph Harûn
al-Rashîd,
graciously receiving
a humble embassy from Charlemagne
|
So, setting aside the comparatively minor kerfuffle over “ISIL
vs. ISIS”, what do we call the, er, … “Caliphate”. Do we use the word, or would that represent a
significant legitimation?
For now, those with enough awareness to realize what the
problem is, are taking a leaf from Frankie Lee:
“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee
With a voice as cold as ice
“That’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity
Though you might call it ‘Paradise’”
“I don’t call it anything”
Said Frankie Lee with a smile
“All right,” said Judas Priest
“I’ll see you after a while.”
(And indeed, they will be seeing us, not that far down the road.
This very Sunday, maybe.)
Here you can witness the French wrestling for the mot juste:
Reconnaître la qualité d'État au
Califat autoproclamé fin juin, à cheval sur l'Irak et la Syrie, serait lui
accorder une existence officielle. Pour
le moment, aucune appellation commune n'a donc été retenue.
(Which means: "We don't call it ... anything.")
The French, it turns out, are having qualms, not only with the edgy 'Caliphate' designation, but even with 'The State' (which Obama likewise deprecated in his address). That very informative article goes on to present an elegant
solution which has now been adopted by the French leadership -- call it by its Arabic acronym Dâ`ish (داعش), which the group itself despises:
En France, c'est Laurent Fabius
qui, à l'Assemblée nationale, s'est livré à une mise au point sémantique: s'il
utilisait auparavant l'expression «État islamique», le ministre des Affaires
étrangères préconise désormais l'appelation «Daech». «Vous avez parlé d'un
prétendu “État islamique”: permettez-moi de revenir, un instant seulement, sur
cette expression, a-t-il dit, mercredi, au Palais Bourbon. Le groupe terroriste
dont il s'agit n'est pas un État. Il voudrait l'être, il ne l'est pas, et c'est
lui faire un cadeau que l'appeler «État». De la même façon, je recommande de ne
pas utiliser l'expression “État islamique”, car cela occasionne une confusion
entre l'islam, l'islamisme, et les musulmans. Il s'agit de ce que les Arabes
appellent “Daech”, et que
j'appellerai pour ma part “les égorgeurs de Daech”!»
Depuis quelques temps, le président
de la République, François Hollande et le ministre de la Défense, Jean-Yves Le
Drian, utilisent également la terminologie «Daech».
This, then, would be the dysphemistic
name for the Caliphate, the way the jihadis spurn the term Saudi Arabia (with its blasphemous dynastic claims) and refer
rather to the Âl Salûl.
An alternate dysphemism has been suggested by the “«Dar
al-Ifta», que le Guardian décrit
comme une autorité religieuse à l'intérieur comme à l'extérieur de l'Egypte,
dépendant du ministère de la justice Égyptien. Dar al-Ifta demande aux
occidentaux d'appeler l'État islamique «Séparatistes d'al-Qaida en Irak et en
Syrie», soit SQIS.”
That has a certain charm, especially if the members of the
SQIS organization are accordingly designated
SQISlings.
[Update 15 September 2014] In his entertainingly satirical French-language commentary,
Fouad Laroui (our favorite Franco-Morocco-Dutcho radio
feuilletoniste) comes up with a hit-parade
(pronounced EET-pah-RAHD) of dysphemisms:
for the ISIL, the “IS-no-good”
(pronounced EEZ-no-GOOOD); for Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi (the Caliph Ibrahim, to
those who acknowledge him as such), “EEZ-no-GOOOD sa-barbe-à-poux”; for the
faux-caliphate, the “califarfelu”, for which the adjective is “califarfelutique”.
Additionally, he makes the same allusion to the HRE epigram
that I did;
les beaux esprits se rencontrent.
[Update 17 September 2014]
Amy Davidson’s lucid essay on the ISIL quandary, including
its rhetorical/linguistic aspects, heads off this week's
New Yorker.
[Update 19 September 2014] In light of yesterday’s events in Sydney … The order of vulnerability listed above remains valid; but the overall level of threat is now
further elevated. Further, the practical distance beween adjacent
levels may well be compressed, given the potential for the face-off between
civilizations to go global rather quickly. For an analysis, see here:
[Update November 2015] Some clear-eyed commentary, not gulled by the "neither Islamic nor a State" meme:
"Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That
Has Made It"
Der algerische Publizist Kamel
Daoud stellt nach einer Gegenüberstellung des "Islamischen Staats"
und des Königreichs Saudi-Arabien nüchtern fest, dass die Ansichten des
einflussreichen saudischen Klerus sich nicht grundsätzlich von der Ideologie
der Terroristen unterschieden. Beide basierten auf dem Wahhabismus, einem
messianischen Radikalismus aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. "One might counter: Isn’t
Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh? Yes, but to focus on that would
be to overlook the strength of the ties between the reigning family and the
clergy that accounts for its stability — and also, increasingly, for its
precariousness. The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by
succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between
king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the
country and gives legitimacy to the regime. (...) All of which leaves one
skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous declarations regarding the
necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war can only be myopic, for it targets
the effect rather than the cause. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not
a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when
the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense
editorial industry remains intact?"
(New York Times vom 21.11.2015)
.
