Suppose you’re a strategist for the Islamic State. Where others see a grinding civil war in Iraq and Syria, you see opportunity.
Governance has collapsed. With millions of Sunni Arabs shut out of politics in Iraq and boxed in by competing factions in Syria, you’ve got fertile ground for a fresh caliphate — even if the locals don’t show much enthusiasm for your medieval predilections. You’ve weathered thousands upon thousands of American airstrikes because you’ve cornered the market there, at least until political conditions change.
But you also see two things that concern you immensely.
First, you’re finding it difficult to expand your caliphate. Boxed in by Iraqi Shiites to the east, Kurds to the north, the Alawite Syrian regime to the west, and rival rebel factions on several fronts, you’ve exhausted your natural growth potential.
Second, millions of Muslims — in fact, over half of Syria’s population — have fled your so-called Islamic State in abject horror, and they’re taking your tax base with them. Hundreds of thousands are headed to Europe, and a smaller number to North America.
In short, your holy war is stalemated, and the locals are bolting your Islamic paradise to go live with the infidels. That looks bad. But you didn’t come this far without understanding how to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
After all, look what you pulled off in France. With a few well-placed gunmen and bombers — European nationals, most of them — you took the war out of the deadlocked Middle East and into the heart of one of the foreign powers meddling in it.
In response, the French voted in droves for the openly fascist National Front party in regional elections, promising to make the lives of Arabs, Muslims, and Syrian refugees there much harder — and potentially radicalizing a few on your behalf. The warm reception those refugees got in Europe was a major PR problem for you, but now it’s like Europe is handing them right back.
In America, they’re doing your job on their own. You didn’t even know those Muslim shooters in San Bernardino. But after one mass shooting — which probably wouldn’t have prompted any policy changes had the suspects been Christian, as in Colorado Springs — you’ve got leading Republican presidential candidates falling over each other to make life worse for Muslims in the U.S.
It shouldn’t be this easy, you think. The U.S. boasts perhaps the most prosperous, well-integrated Muslim population in the western world. And since 9/11, white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have actually killed more Americans than Islamic terrorists, according to the New America Foundation.
But you’ve seen the polls. Over half of Americans — including more than three-quarters of Republicans — say Islam is “at odds” with American values.
The attackers in Paris and San Bernardino were neither Syrian nor refugees. Yet Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and other candidates — and not to mention over 30 state governors — are cooking up schemes to bar the door against Syrian refugees. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is vowing to keep all Muslims out of the country. It’s as if a major political party has taken the liberty of turning your PR problem into a potential recruiting opportunity.
Of course, that’s exactly how your own propagandists planned it when they wrote — in English! — about their plot to “destroy the grey zone” between infidels and believers. Indeed, in the black and white world of the GOP primary, there’s no room for grey.
If the Americans were smart, they’d stop with their hapless bombing and wayward arms shipments (which often find their way to you, anyway). Instead, they’d push for an arms embargo on all Syrian factions, negotiate a ceasefire among your warring rivals, and use whatever influence they have in Baghdad to give Sunnis a political stake there.
Moreover, they’d accept 100,000 or more Syrian refugees — and integrate them into their own, already thriving Arab and Muslim communities.
Instead, their politicians are whipping up a xenophobic fury and promising to deepen their involvement in the chaos that’s allowed you to thrive in the Middle East. You’ve never been one for Crusader holidays, but it’s almost like a Christmas present.
Peter Certo is the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus (fpif.org), a foreign policy journal published by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
