On 23 March, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced the capture of Baghouz, the last remaining ISIS stronghold in Syria. This may arguably mark the end of the physical caliphate, but the question of whether ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria remains a point of heated debate. Too much of the dispute, however, has posed this as a binary argument: yes (for defeat) or no (undefeated), worthy of an Oxford Union debate. Yet, the answer is far more nuanced, and far less important than the news would suggest. Whatever side of the argument one sits on regarding Syria, the Long War is far from over.
The proponents of “yes” have plenty of evidence to support their argument. The territory is liberated, ISIS is no longer capable of mounting large-scale military operations, its command and control seems broken and the videos showing hundreds of prisoners and thousands of women and children leaving the shattered Caliphate is a clear rebuke to the glorious victories proclaimed for years in propaganda videos.
Even the most hidebound proponents of “yes” will acknowledge that the military defeat of ISIS does not necessarily mean the group has been eliminated, but they will point out that the U.S. never signed up for a mission to eliminate ISIS, but a mission to ensure that ISIS no longer posed an existential threat to either the Coalition nations or nations in the region. As I argued in my 20 December article on the Trump decision to withdraw from Syria, to remain in the region to fully eliminate ISIS was beyond the capability and the mission of the U.S. forces. Even if, the return of thousands of “defeated” foreign ISIS fighters to Europe, North America and elsewhere may mean that far from having thwarted the “existential threat”, it may have brought the war closer to home.
The opponents of “yes” have an equal amount of evidence to buttress their arguments. While ISIS is no longer able to operate as a conventional military force, it has returned to its terrorist roots and continues to demonstrate its capability to carry out low-level terrorist attacks. Recent incidents in Iraq, Syria and in numerous countries around the world show that ISIS may be down, but not out.
Whatever the outcome of the debate, it is critical to put Syria in perspective. It is merely one campaign in the “Long War”, a generational conflict first noted by then-CENTCOM Commander John Abizaid in 2005 and acknowledged in 2019 by its current Commander Joe Votel. This conflict has been going on at least since 1885 when General Charles Gordon was killed on the steps of Khartoum Palace by the self-proclaimed Mahdi Army in Sudan and the thread from Gordon runs through more recent events such as the siege of the Grand Mosque of Mecca by extremist insurgents in 1979, the murder of Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981, the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar as Salaam in 1998, 9/11, Madrid, 7/7, the rise of al Qaeda, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and now ISIS. And whatever the outcome in Syria and Iraq, ISIS forces and its affiliates and sympathizers remain in (at least) 30+ countries. The defeat of ISIS in Syria has done nothing to affect operations in the Sinai, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and a host of other countries.
In addition, military success has not been followed by effective humanitarian, governance and reconstruction assistance. Over a year after the Iraqi government declared the Caliphate was defeated, Mosul is still described as “Stalingrad” by those who have been there. A city ravaged by war with no sign of reconstruction or serious attempts at rehabilitation. Indeed, the tragic sinking of the ferry on 21 March – in which at least 100 people died, mostly women and children – has largely been blamed on corruption, negligence and the enduring absence of good local governance. Such conditions provide a fertile environment for the return of extremist groups such as ISIS.
If one must score the Union Club debate, the win certainly goes to the naysayers. ISIS has lost its territory, its military capability and its Caliphate and for that significant kudos should go to the Coalition and to the SDF for a brilliant military campaign. But the success is only a minor success as ISIS is still potent, still fighting around the world and the underlying conditions which brought about its emergence are still unresolved.
More importantly, success in the Syria campaign, whether total or partial, does not end the Long War. Just as WWII victories in the North African campaign did not end the war against Germany, no one should suggest the fall of the Caliphate in Syria means the end of terrorism. The conditions which brought about ISIS – a revanchist ideology claiming to cure the discombobulations of modern life, social media that can instantly weaponize the message of “a war on Islam”, contemporaneous events such as New Zealand which rearms that weapon, a seemingly limitless funding stream and a seemingly limitless recruiting pool – none of these were eradicated in Syria.
There should be little doubt that ISIS, its affiliates and its sympathizers will continue the fight. Perhaps what emerges out of Syria is an even more dangerous group of terrorists, an ISIS 2.0 which follows ISIS, as ISIS followed Al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda and legions of their affiliates. No one should misinterpret Baghouz nor the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as whatever one’s position, to reframe Churchill’s quote, Syria is not the end of the Long War, not the beginning of the end, nor even the end of the beginning.
Read more from Mark Kimmitt in The Cipher Brief
