Shi'ite fighters from Saraya al-Salam take up positions during clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants in Jurf al-Sakhar, Sept. 20STRINGER/IRAQ/Reuters
A Canadian at the heart of the fighting in Syria and Iraq says a U.S.-led coalition has little chance of success in a campaign to destroy the so-called Islamic State that has established a brutal "caliphate" in large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
"I don't see how they can do it," says Mokhtar Lamani, a Moroccan-born Canadian who has served the United Nations and Arab League as a trouble-shooting mediator in some of the Middle East's most intractable conflicts. "They [the Americans] want to arm and train so-called moderates to take the fight to the IS," Mr. Lamani said in a phone interview with The Globe and Mail this week, "but who are these moderates? The U.S. doesn't know."
For more than a year and a half, Mr. Lamani was the UN secretary-general's representative in Damascus, monitoring the civil war there and attempting to facilitate efforts at reaching a peaceful settlement.
"It was Kafkaesque," he said.
From his office and residence atop the well-secured Sheraton Hotel he could look out on the Syrian capital's Ummayad Square with its gorgeous fountains and lush gardens. "But not more than five kilometres away, the scene looked like Stalingrad in the Second World War," he said. "The destruction was so extensive."
Uncharacteristically, Mr. Lamani resigned at the end of March and returned to Montreal where he makes his home in the city's old port district.
What he took away from Syria, he said, is that "absurdity has no bounds."
There are hundreds of rebel groups in Syria today and "fighters change their identity from day to day and week to week," he said in exasperation. "When the [al-Qaeda-linked] Nusra Front was put on the U.S. list [of terrorist organizations], the leaders just told many of their people to set up other groups with different names."
Ultimately, there are four main players in the Syrian civil war: the Assad regime and its allies from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement; Islamic State, which holds a large swath of territory in the East and North; the Nusra Front that holds ground in the north, including Aleppo, as well as the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in the South; and the Islamic Front that is backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Of the four, the Islamic Front is the weakest, yet it's there and in the once dominant Free Syrian Army that the United States expects to find some 5,000 moderates who will fit its needs. Facing some 30,000 Islamic State fighters who are prepared to die for their cause is an impossible task for the force of moderates, says Mr. Lamani.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged as much this week in testimony before Congress.
"I think [the U.S.-trained force] is going to require the assistance in particular of the Jordanians and probably some of the Syrian Kurds and probably the Turks," he said.
However, neither the Jordanians nor the Turks have shown any inclination to get involved in combat outside their own territory. As for the 5,000-strong Syrian rebel force, once they get the new equipment from the Americans, they're just as likely to turn their guns on the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, whom they see as their real enemy, rather than on the Islamic State.
Some would say that the Syrian army is the best equipped to handle the Islamic State and should be brought into the fight – but the Americans dismiss the idea. Not only would that require President Barack Obama to backtrack on his condemnation of the Assad regime, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar (as well as European leaders) have made their participation in the coalition contingent on Washington doing nothing to support the regime in Damascus.
When it comes to Iraq, the situation is not much better. President Obama and Gen. Dempsey can't even agree on an important point: Will there or will there not be U.S. "boots on the ground?"
Mr. Obama insists there will not be any U.S. troops engaged in combat in this operation. Gen. Dempsey says there may well be situations when his contingent of "advisers" will be forced to fight.
Mr. Obama is trying not only to spare U.S. lives, but to allow Iraq's potent Shia militias to carry out much of the fighting. Last week, the powerful Shia leader Muktada al-Sadr announced that his militia would not fight against the Sunni extremists of IS if U.S. forces are deployed. The Shia militant considers Americans to be greater enemies than the Islamic State.
Curiously, Mr. al Sadr's patrons in Iran actually want to have U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. Iranian President Hassan Rohani even asked this week if Mr. Obama was "too frightened" to put his soldiers in harm's way in the cause of fighting terrorism.
Of course, Iran has its own agenda when it comes to the United States. Tehran wants to retain its influence in Syria and Lebanon and doesn't want the Assad regime ousted. It also would like to end the rift between Tehran and Washington – to end the sanctions imposed by the West on Iran and to come to terms over Iran's controversial nuclear program.
That's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's worst nightmare. He has spent most of his political career warning about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and will do everything he can to persuade the Americans to continue to oppose Tehran's agenda.
Now, along comes the Islamic State and the United States and Iran are seemingly allied in opposition to the extremist movement.
Israel may not like the Islamic State, but the group doesn't pose the same existential threat as that of Iran – not yet at least.
Mr. Lamani believes the Islamic State threat should be taken very seriously, but with so many forces at play on the ground in Syria and Iraq, and with so many members of the coalition having diametrically opposed interests, he has "little reason to be optimistic."