Press Association/AP/Lefteris Pitarakis. All rights reserved.As I pointed out in early December, changes to the balance of forces in Syria and Iraq have been forcing together the disparate and fractious elements of the “informal Sunni coalition,” nominally led by Saudi Arabia. These actors have had little in common except an extreme wariness of Persian power and influence west of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and a desire to see Bashar al Assad, a Persian ally in Syria, replaced by a Sunni government. Beyond those two points, there is little common ground between the Saudis and Turks. Both nations have their preferred proxies in the Syrian struggle against al Assad; but while the Turks are also focused on limiting Kurdish power, the Saudis are indifferent to them.
This has made the US job of organising a stable coalition against the Islamic State next to impossible, for our Turkish and Saudi allies are dead set against working with the Kurds and the Shi’a-dominated government of Iraq. Instead of a unified, coordinated campaign to sweep Daesh off the field, the US has had to settle for multiple disjointed campaigns with whatever forces are available at the moment and with very limited aims. This is clearly demonstrated by one or two examples:
1. Last year, the United States provided sustained air support to a ground campaign spearheaded by Kurdish ground forces of the YPG militias. These forces broke the ISIS siege of Kobane and rapidly overran villages and towns of the surrounding region. They then linked up with a second Kurdish force moving west from Tall Hamees and captured an airbase at Ayn Issa, only 20 kilometres from the Islamic State capital of Ar Raqqah.
