The skies over Syria are getting more crowded. Within hours of the British parliament voting to permit bombing of ISIL targets in Syria last week, Tornado bombers set off from their base in Cyprus to bomb oil installations in eastern Syria. After all the passionate arguments that have torn apart the British political class, the result was paltry. The mountains heaved and gave birth to a mouse.
The truth is that the United States has all the aircraft, missiles and bombs required for any air campaign against ISIL. It does not need the help of the Royal Air Force.
In fact the Tornado run was the symbolic price that Britain is paying to join the club of nations that have signed up to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIL’s base in Syria. In the longer term, it will give Britain a seat at the table where a political solution is decided to end the civil war and supervise the hoped-for transition to a country no longer ruled by the Assad family. But that is years ahead.
This was a personal quest for the British prime minister, David Cameron, who two years ago was rebuffed by parliament when he sought permission to launch attacks on the Assad regime for using chemical weapons. Mr Cameron can be pleased that he has – as some in his party believe – wiped away the stain of that lost vote in the fevered aftermath of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
To achieve his goal, however, he exaggerated the likely effect of the entry of Britain’s aircraft. He said that Britain had to destroy ISIL’s headquarters in Raqqa before the group sent armed suicide bombers to London, as it had done in Paris. In fact, no one can be so certain of the balance of risk: joining the bombing coalition may make London more of a target rather than less.
At the same time, he presented the bombing campaign as a stage on the road to a peaceful Syria, conjuring up 70,000 opposition fighters who were ready to liberate Raqqa once the bombers had done their job.
Even the Americans, with their almost unlimited resources, failed to put a dozen reliable fighters on the ground in Syria. There may be tens of thousands of armed opposition fighters in Syria, but they are busy fighting the Syrian army, its Iranian-supplied auxiliaries and the Russian air force. ISIL is not their main enemy.
What is happening is quite different. After years of trying to contain the jihadists in their territory straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border, the anti-ISIL coalition has moved into attacking mode. The change is prompted by ISIL’s campaign of terrorist attacks outside its home base – against a beach resort in Tunisia, Russian tourists flying home from Sharm El Sheikh and Parisians enjoying a Friday evening. The change is endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution which calls on member states to take “all necessary measures” to eradicate ISIL’s safe haven in Iraq and Syria.
That said, there is only one certainty: Raqqa will not fall through bombs alone. There has to be an organised army to retake it. No one is saying what that army will be, though French president Francois Hollande has reportedly said in private that Assad regime forces will have to take part. This would be seen by the many opposition forces fighting the regime as a betrayal, and further proof that the regime’s plan to discredit the opposition by allowing ISIL to flourish has worked beyond his dreams.
For the moment, the Americans are intent on stepping up the pressure on ISIL. Washington is sending a “specialised expeditionary targeting force” to Iraq to gather intelligence and harry the ISIL leadership.
How does all this bring peace closer to Syria? It does not.
It is a military campaign designed to prove that ISIL is not invincible. If anything, the prospects for ending the war are receding. The Russian intervention has sharpened sectarian tensions and given a boost to ISIL recruitment. The outside players all have clashing agendas. Vladimir Putin is intent on maintaining his ally, Bashar Al Assad, in power. He is trying to destroy the opposition forces in the north of Syria so that the arms supply routes from Turkey are disrupted. The Turks see the advance of the Kurdish YPG militia in the borderlands as a greater threat than ISIL. The Europeans and Americans are focusing on degrading ISIL.
With such contradictions, the Vienna talks on the future of Syria will struggle to be more than a fig leaf. The Russians are stalling in the hope that the regime will gain strength.
And what of the Arabs? It is accepted by the anti-ISIL coalition than any army that liberates Raqqa should be Arab and Muslim.
At the moment, the coalition members using air power are a full house of colonial powers: Russia, France and Britain – the countries that signed the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement to divide up the lands of the Ottoman Empire; Turkey, the successor to the Ottomans; and the US, the successor to Britain and France.
The Gulf Arab states which were prominent in the bombing campaign at the start are still actively spreading the anti-ISIL message, but their air assets have been redeployed to Yemen.
Back in London, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, dismissed Mr Cameron’s arguments in favour of bombing ISIL in Syria saying they did not “stack up”. He was absolutely right. No one has a plan for Syria which stacks up, and if they claim to have one, they do not understand the complexity of the situation.
What has changed is that the Americans, after months of indecision, have decided to up their game against ISIL, in both Syria and Iraq. They are putting as many special forces on the ground in Iraq as the Iranians and their Shia Muslim militias will tolerate. That sentence encapsulates how far we are away from any solution.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
