Gen. Odierno speaks half the truth needed to defeat ISIS
Rami G. Khouri
July 22, 2015
I listen carefully when a senior American armed
forces officer speaks about current events, because men and women in the
military who put their lives on the line to fight wars initiated by their
political leaders tend to be more sensible about the realities of the world
than the politicians who send them to war. So I was intrigued to read a few days
ago the assessment by the United States Army’s highest officer that the fight
against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will last “ten to twenty
years”—and that the battle required military and non-military efforts.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, is a
man who has spent much of the last twenty years killing people and blowing up
societies in Asia, usually leaving behind wrecks that American warfare either
created or simply exacerbated, in lands like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and now
Syria. Yet his important statement that the solution to defeating the ISIS
cannot happen entirely by military means deserves further consideration by
American and Arab leaders.
Addressing both the military and non-military
dimensions of ISIS is critical to shaping the policies of Arabs, foreign powers
and others in the region who must work together to defeat it. The non-military
dimensions are central to this challenge, because they are why thousands of
individuals in many lands decide continuously to join or support ISIS. Though
Gen. Odierno’s comments were heartening, like all other comments on this issue
by senior Americans, including the president, they stop short of grasping a
critical link: the relationship between the bad socio-economic and political
conditions on the ground in Arab countries, and the impact of American and
other Western powers’ policies that contributed to these conditions.
It is too late to change the impact of previous
policies, such as all-out support for Arab dictators and excessive Western
acquiescence to extremist positions by Israel or some Arab states that are
long-standing allies of the United States, such as Egypt and some Gulf states.
If one thing has been clarified since January 2011, it is that Arab government
policies often differ widely from the sentiment of their own people. So it is
not too late for Western powers to launch a new era of more political realism
and sensitivity to the sentiments and rights of hundreds of millions of Arab
citizens. They can do this by at least speaking out more
forcefully about the domestic distortions and rights denials in Arab countries
that generate mass despair, which often leads to support for extremist
movements like IS.
Odierno said specifically that, “To defeat them
is not just a military issue. It is an economic issue. It is a diplomatic
issue. It is an issue of moderate versus extremists and it is about also,
potentially, having the capability to root them out of the places they now hold
in Iraq and Syria."
He specifically emphasized the continued
importance of a political solution, saying that, "We will never have peace
in Iraq without a government that’s representative of all people in Iraq.”
“In my mind,” he said, “ISIS is a ten to twenty
year problem, it’s not a two years problem. Now, I don’t know what level it will
be a problem, but it’s a long-term problem. This movement is growing right now,
and so I think it’s going to take us a bit longer than we originally thought.”
In fact, he should not be so uncertain about the
level of the problem in the years ahead, because recent history confirms that
the level will be directly proportional to the continuation of the political
deficiencies in Arab societies. Those deficiencies are now very clear for all
to see—if people really wish to see. ISIS and movements like it will be a
problem as long as Arab societies are burdened with presidents for life,
unrepresentative governments, part-time and low-intensity parliaments,
large-scale corruption, excessive militarization, control of executive
authority by security organizations, massive unemployment and underemployment,
limited social protections, amateurish accountability mechanisms, controlled
and constrained media, mediocre education systems, and a judiciary that is
mostly an adjunct of military-managed executive authority.
This is a brief starter kit for issues to reform
in the Arab world, or else radical and violent movements like ISIS will
continue to flourish. Serious reforms in these areas will mean a wholesale
transformation of autocratic, derelict systems into more participatory,
productive ones. The United States and other foreign powers need to acknowledge
how their policies contributed to allowing the Arab world to move into this
mess, and start asking how they can engage with Arab societies more
constructively. The faster and more concretely the United States and Arab
states play their parts in addressing the non-military issues that promote ISIS,
the faster that twenty-year horizon for destroying ISIS and everything it
reflects will whittle down into a shorter time frame.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in
the Daily Star. He was
founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for
Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On
Twitter @ramikhouri.
Copyright
©2015 Rami G. Khouri -- distributed by Agence Global