[LINK] "Outside the box: a Sunni endgame in Syria, Iraq?"

[rfmcdonald]

Fernando Betancourt at Open Democracy speculates about one scenario for the end of ISIS, pregnant with risk for everyone involved, which just so happens to be everyone now.

There are signs of previously unknown levels of cooperation and alignment between the United States and the key Sunni states in the region, which could lead to a power-sharing agreement that satisfies their strategic interests. The principal events are as follows:

In October, a group of 53 Saudi imams unaffiliated with the government called for a jihad against the Russian, Iranian and Syrian governments. The group went even further than official condemnation and likened the Russian intervention to the 1980 war in Afghanistan—which led to the birth of Al Qaeda, in case anyone has forgotten. It is significant that the Saudi government allowed or was not able to stop the communication; the former would indicate approval of the intensified message while the latter would imply weakness and the desire of the Saudis to avoid internal dissension from the more radical clergy.

On 5 November, the USAF announced the deployment of six F-15C Eagles to Incirlik AFB in Turkey. That is interesting, because unlike the F-15E Strike Eagle the F-15C is a pure air superiority fighter that has no ground attack role, yet ISIS has no air force. The mission is to protect Turkish airspace; but from what? The only planes flying over Syria belong to the Combined Joint Task Force, to Russia or to the Syrian government.

On 24 November, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 that had momentarily violated Turkish airspace. This act goes far beyond Turkish aspirations in Syria and involves a much wider Russo-Turkish competition encompassing the Black Sea and the Caucasus; but the fact that military action was taken in this particular theatre is significant and may indicate that Turkey is prepared to act more aggressively than previous indicated.

On 5 December, the Iraqi government officially accused the Turkish government of an “illegal incursion” of troops into northern Iraq. This was in response to the rotation of about 150 trainers to an Iraqi camp north of Mosul, which has been a largely routine occurrence until now. Yet, freakish as this protest might seem, it was serious enough for the Turkish ambassador to be summoned to Baghdad and the Turkish government to issue a warning to all of its nationals to leave Iraq.