I think you’ll find in reality that the “recognition” depends on being made to be hesitant about sending in the troops, not the other way round.
Your other statement lacks a solid base in reality too - you may notice a complete lack of hesitancy on the part of many states invading or bombing other legally recognised states, if they lack the firepower for a proper defence. Hint - Libya.
The other ingredient you are missing is that other states have been backing ISIS, sending in their money, training, manpower etc.
We DO recognize the right of conquest (I thought the Tibet example was a pretty good one). We just set quite high barriers: we want that conquest legitimized by an internationally-brokered peace process, which won’t happen with ISIS for at least a decade, probably more like a generation. I don’t think they’ll be around that long, but I won’t bet on it.
Can someone explain this please because I’m a bit confused as to which states are or are not helping ISIS to come into being. Did this plan go ahead or not ?
"C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.
8.C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT [see C above ], IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)"
You aren’t reading things correctly. “Opposition groups” and “ISIL” are not synonymous. ISIL doesn’t have any government supporting it – not Iran, not Iraq, not Syria, not Russia, not the US.
…but that’s not always true, after all al-Baghdadi is a cleric and lawyer, and seems to be in charge by virtue of providing an intellectual framework that appeals to the men with guns, and to his supporters in other states. Sometimes lawyers fear the whip hand of the military, sometimes they can pull their strings, depends on situation, but either way the law is useless without guns and to make a state the guns generally come first.
I think you will find the opposite. Certainly, no-one is “hesitant” to bomb ISIS right now - if they hestitate, it is purely to about committing expensive resources.
Yes, states do attack each other - if said states lack significant friends - something I may have mentioned, a trifle, in the post you were quoting. There is, however, a lot more hesitancy to attack an actual state, than some non-state armed group.
It gets support through Turkey, Saudi - at the very least with a very blind eye. We like to assume that all those weapons given by NATO to opposition groups and then handed over by those groups to AQ and ISIS are done so accidentally. too.
If you are talking re-taking old territories, OK, but most of the middle East is old territories divided and redrawn by colonial powers. ISIS wants to re-take those. To them it’s a restoration as much as the creation of something new, rubbing out the Sykes-Picot lines.
The first article you link to is making the same error you do. Supporting Sunnis doesn’t mean supporting ISIL. It also, probably intentionally, misrepresents the actions of individual Saudis – who certainly have AQ sympathies – with the actions of the Saudi government, who hate AQ, so crappy press articles just say, “the Saudis support AQ!”
And we’re talking about Turkey, who is currently dropping bombs on ISIL, right?
Looks like you skimmed it too quickly. It says explicitly -
"substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the ***Isis ***surge "
The next question is whether these private donors have government sanction or not, or whether any preventive measures by the Saudi government are half hearted so as to maintain ISIS support.
And Patrick Cockburn is one of the best Middle East journalists in the world.
As to Turkey - it’s right there in black and white again. If you can’t read it that’s OK, others can, let’s see what they have to say.
So, answer RNATB’s question about the US and the IRA.
I honestly don’t know his reputation, so I googled him. The first article that came up was him writing two weeks ago that there is no evidence that Russia is increasing its military commitment to Syria (oops!) and that the UK drone strikes in Syria are a mark of British tyranny. Those stories don’t exactly seem like the work of the world’s leading journalists.
What the relevence of that question is escapes me. IRA ? ISIS ? Got me there. I’ll have to plead my right to remain silent there, officer. And you forgot to say please.
Well you know his reputation now.
“He has written three books on Iraq’s recent history. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009,[1] Foreign Commentator of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards 2013, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year (British Journalism Awards 2014), Foreign Reporter of the Year (The Press Awards For 2014).”
If you don’t know who Patrick Cockburn is already then you can’t have been reading much about the Middle East.
What was the evidence, two weeks ago, that Russia was increasing it’s military commitment ? Did you catch it ? Of course that’s irrelevant anyway to whether ISIS is being supported by states, of which the evidence is widespread.
Because you seem to want to blur the difference between a person supporting terrorists and that person’s country supporting terrorists.
Apparently so. It seems he has much the same approach to journalism as his brother, who is well regarded by folks with some political views, but who I don’t think does a good job. You should know that after going to university in the UK, my tolerance for British journalists who assume that everyone wants to know their own opinion, rather than read good reporting, has been exhausted.
I don’t regularly read the Independent, no. Is reading that small newspaper now the sine qua non of being literate in world affairs?