Limited success

First, the West’s ill-conceived invasions of Afghanistan in 2001-2 and Iraq in 2003 destabilised the entire Middle East, and facilitated the rise of extremism that has contributed to IS’s unexpected emergence. Having helped create the problem, the West has an obligation to try to resolve it.

Second, the international law norm of the Responsibility to Protect argues that where a state fails to protect its citizens from war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, the international community has a duty to intervene.

The UN considers it is likely that IS has committed genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi people. It is also responsible for many crimes against humanity, having shot, beheaded, tortured and burned unarmed victims, and refused to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Those acts clearly trigger an international responsibility to protect – that is, to intervene – in Iraq and Syria.

The RAAF became directly involved in the conflict in August 2014 when a C-130 dropped aid to refugees in northern Iraq. In late-September, an Air Task Group of 400 RAAF personnel was deployed to the United Arab Emirates, commencing airstrikes against IS targets in Iraq in October.

Operations were extended into Syria in September 2015.

Shortly afterwards, in a development that has made things considerably more complex, Russia began a separate air campaign in Syria. Although the Russian government claims its operation is directed against IS, the US believes the Kremlin’s main intention is to prop up the discredited regime of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad, and that it is targeting anti-Assad rebels rather than IS.

The US-led campaign against IS has achieved some worthwhile results. As CDF Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin has noted, coalition (including RAAF) airstrikes have stopped “… IS massing on the battlefield and taking ground, and having … freedom of manoeuvre”. Furthermore, at the beginning of August, the coalition’s year-long campaign had killed some 15,000 IS militants including, according to the US ambassador to Iraq, approximately half of the organisation’s leaders. “Degrading” IS’s leadership and forcing it to operate largely from urban areas has contained the organisation’s ability to expand.

Nevertheless, the campaign is experiencing difficulties. There are two main concerns: a very low rate-of-effort, and over-centralisation of decision-making.

If our forces are not being allowed to fight to win, we might ask why they’re there. Excessively risk-averse political leadership has been a problem from the start. Anecdotal evidence from pilots suggests that the rules of engagement applied to anti-IS strikes far exceed those required by the commonly accepted standards of the law of armed combat. There are complaints online from pilots who are being frustrated in their attempts to prosecute legitimate targets. One American pilot described watching “hundreds” of tanker trucks lined up at an IS-held oilfield in north-eastern Syria filling up with oil to be traded on the black market. He never received approval to attack.

If our forces are not being allowed to fight to win, we might ask why they’re there.

Unwarranted political interference is compounded by an almost pitiful rate-of-effort. During the most successful air campaign in history, the 1991 Gulf War, coalition air forces flew 1,200 sorties a day. Against IS, they have been flying about 12. Interference from Washington is strangling the operation.

Unlike al-Qaeda, IS is a territory-based movement with many high-value assets that could be legitimately targeted. An air campaign that was serious in its intent could severely inhibit IS’s ability to move forces and supplies, and to raise funds. But that won’t happen with 12 sorties a day and remote control.

Russia’s military intervention is a wild-card which, ironically, has the potential to be a game-changer in favour of all anti-IS forces, including Australia’s. Even if the Russians are primarily targeting anti-Assad forces, in the long run that will harm IS, whom Assad must eventually destroy – and will if he can – if he is to regain control of Syria.

There are indications that some Western governments may be prepared to overlook Assad’s odious history and cooperate with – or at least not impede – Russia’s operations. Everything is relative, and pragmatists might argue that the world should deal with IS first, and then worry about Assad.

A better focused and more intense coalition air campaign has the potential to contain IS’s expansion and degrade its capacity to fight and function. Fine-tuning the campaign would improve the coalition’s chances of achieving those ends, and at the same time bolster IS’s many enemies on the ground.