If you were the commander in chief of a moderately-armed army (no phantom bombers or nuclear weapons), what would your military/intelligence strategy be in fighting the IS in both Syria and Iraq?
Bear in mind the terrain (flat, no mountains or forests), and the type of weaponry available to the IS (anti-aircraft with limited range, rifles and different types of gunnery, soviet era tanks, medium range artillery, Humvees and howitzers) and the fact that most of their targets are intertwined with civilian sites, making a carpet bombing for example a really costly option in terms of collateral damage. Also, there is a high possibility of a network of tunnels under the ground.
Straight forward Internal Security ops. You need a few months to dislodge them from their captured territory. Then 10 to 20 years of maintaining garrisons for pacification purposes, with targeted intelligence lead operation as needed. The problems are less military and more political. The politicians and public need to live with a generation of headlines of “another soldier has been shot in XYZ”.
This could a good idea only if it was accompanied by continuous air reconnaissance, assassinations of key persons and followed by a full scale military operation involving infantry, tanks and shelling.
Bear in mind that Islamic State isn’t a thing, or a single monster, or one Supreme leader. Like it or not, IS offers something meaningful to thousands of people and they are prepared to fight for what they believe in.
The only long term answer is to change their beliefs but that requires food, jobs, education, respect, and hope.
I don’t think an equivalent army can defeat IS in any short term sense.
It’s distressing to say but maybe we have to stand back and let these conflicted people fight it out. Its not so many years ago that the civilised nations were doing exactly that in Europe.
Mostly agree. There needs to be a political and a military solution to the problem of the so-called Islamic State. You can kill every member of that organization and if the political situation is not addressed, a new organization will spring up in its place.
One of the difficulties is that IS are irregular forces, so it’s not possible to discriminate between military and civilian. And they don’t discriminate either. So the ‘rules of war’ need to be tossed. At least in that regard. I’m going to go Mongol on their arses. If I’m attacking a city held by IS, I’m simply going to level the city. Probably in a thermonuclear fireball. Don’t want to die? Expel IS. After the first city, acceptance of IS - never mind support - will vanish. Remember Gadaffi’s reaction to the initial invasion of Iraq. Suicide bombers? I’m going to kill your parents, your brothers, and your sisters. Nemo me impune lacessit.
And that is why I’m going to echo Ken001 and Not Get Involved in the first place.
Use of latin is extremely unfortunate, as the Romans spent 8 centuries trying and failing to conquer this area.
Mongols rule did not last very long either. Nor does collective punishment work too well. As Arthur Harris and his ilk discovered (including in Iraq) all such attacks do is harden resistance. The ability of humans to endure is much greater than that to inflict.
I would say that the best example of successful anti ISIS type operations would be N Ireland.
Use air strikes to interdict their logistics. The fact that they have come out into the open and are attempting to take and hold ground, even creating a quasi-governmental system with taxes and attempts at benefits means they open themselves up as targets. Once you are interdicting their logistics then concentrate your forces and attack them where they are weak or over extended. The big thing is to have something in place for when you win, both to support and assist areas where you are fighting and to handle ISIS prisoners taken in combat. My suggestion would be to treat them like prisoners of war, but also to set up some way to assess any military or crimes against humanity to deal with them in a reasonable fashion.
Most of this stuff is what is happening already, of course, which is why ISIS is being driven back and is no longer steam rolling ahead. In the end, they will need to also find a political solution to the seemingly endless issue between Shia and Sunny in the region, one where both sides are engaged and empowered and feel they are part of the system and have a stake in it. You’d also need to figure out how to prevent the militias from going hog wild when they win and making matters even worse…I think this is going to be the biggest issue, much more than defeating ISIS, which I don’t see as really a major thing militarily. Once ISIS came out in the open, and once countries started engaging them directly instead of letting them do whatever they had pretty much lost. If they go back to an insurgent model, which is probably their only recourse, the will have lost. They will still be a pain in the ass, but they won’t be a threat anymore.
Nuclear weapons would not be necessary. Some of those extremely large fuel-air explosive bombs (MOAB) would be enough.
There is a decent likelihood that the situation would stabilize in 5 or 10 years without US interference. Other nations in the region could unite to stifle ISIS.
If the Romans failed to conquer Syria/Judea then I guess nothing is ever conquered, just held temporarily. In which case the criticism is moot anyway. The Roman subjugation of a 2,000 year old version of a popular resistance in Judea was pretty much as effective as any subjugation has ever been.
How well did they did in Mesopotamia? They captured Ctesiphon what, five times? Carted off and sold most of the population into slavery. Damn near bankrupted their empire as well while doing it. During their last war, they burnt down Nivenah (the same city everyone is crying about ISIS destroying).
Here’s what I would do. I would have several thousand of my soldiers act as double agents. Said soldiers would show up in Syria, posing as angry, stupid thugs who want to join the Caliphate and get some sex slaves to rape, just like the thousands of foreign fighters who have already joined ISIS. Then, at a pre-arranged signal, all my double-agents would suddenly start killing the real members of the ISIS military and destroying weapons and infrastructure. A group of my agents would also be given the task of assassinating Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
Even if my agents failed to destroy the IS outright, it would sow distrust in the ranks. Since ISIS is so reliant on foreigners, they should be vulnerable to this sort of thing.
They never really beat the Parthians, though. So that’s territory that was never really conquered. But Syria Palaestina ( in its various incarnations as one or more provinces) was a long time, stable part of the empire. Even remaining so for a few hundred years after the fall of the Western Empire. And, it wasn’t taken by uprising or lack of ability to hold the people subjugated but was taken away from them by superior force by an outside power.
Likewise, the problems with the Parthians had nothing to do with lack of ability to hold territory due to a population resisting subjugation, but with the Parthian ability to consistently beat Roman legions when it mattered. Plus I believe every time the Romans captured Ctesiphon it was more of a sacking, not really an occupation with an eye toward holding it long term. I think they did hold it for a few years once as a bargaining chip in the peace process.
Against insurgents Rome generally did very well for most of its history, for periods of hundreds and hundreds of years. That’s what we’re talking about in regard to ISIS. Now, I’m also one to usually point out that the Ancient world and the modern world have similarities but don’t compare that well–I wouldn’t have brought up comparison with Rome at all like the earlier poster did.
I would do what the Iraqis are doing now – in tactical terms, advance with superior force, but slowly and carefully because of all the snipers and mines and booby traps; in strategic terms the same, again slowly and carefully to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage.
Step 1 of MDMP - Receive the Mission
My civilian leadership, in the form of Morphinepoet, gave me pretty unclear guidance while hinting at huge possibilities like international agreements to operate across national boundaries (or willingness to ignore them). It’s vague but I can get my staff planning.
Step 2: Mission Analysis
Gather my staff, issue my understanding of the civilian leadership’s mission and intent to be used for planning purposes, staff priorities of work, and include some guidance on information on want presented in the MA brief (since things are so weak from higher).
Bugger off with my Sergeant Major to conduct battlefield circulation. See how things stand with key subordinates who are currently engaged in defensive operations to assess their readiness, morale, and capability. Let the chief of staff chain my planners to the planning slave ship oars. We don’t abbreviate this planning process on this one.
What has the US ever done in the Middle East that didn’t alienate some large group? I challenge you to come up with a defensible example.
It’s time to leave the Middle East to it’s own devices. It would not be possible to unfriend Israel, but letting the rest of the area evolve without US interference is the smart thing to do.
[QUOTE=Mr. Duality]
What has the US ever done in the Middle East that didn’t alienate some large group? I challenge you to come up with a defensible example.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I challenge you to come up with an example of a large country doing basically anything that didn’t alienate ‘some large group’, with some arbitrary definition of ‘large group’.
You know, ‘we’ (as in every single industrialized nation on earth) still need all of that oil stuff, right? It’s in no one’s best interest right now to just let the Middle East burn, regardless of how evil America is and all of that. Which is why the Europeans are also involving themselves in this.