However the US campaign against ISIS goes, the beneficiaries will be its Sunni Muslim allies who are also doubling as our allies. While on the surface ISIS appears to have cut all ties, threatening even former allies like Turkey and Qatar, underneath the surface the pragmatic connections remain as strong as ever.
Terrorism is the fire of the Muslim world. Everyone plays with it and everyone gets burned. The trick is burning someone else with it first.
Americans still think of the relationship between terrorist groups and countries as servant and master. However it’s often more like feeding a rabid dog and then luring it into your neighbor’s yard. It’s less about direct control of a terrorist group and more about maneuvering it to reshape the political and military environment that your enemies and allies operate in.
That’s why Al Qaeda and Iran, religious enemies, could still occasionally cooperate.
The current campaign against ISIS is a typical example. By empowering ISIS, the Sunni Muslim oil states dragged the United States into an alliance with the bands of Islamic Jihadists commonly known as the Free Syrian Army. When the West balked at intervention even after reports of WMD use, the smart money went to ISIS. By turning Al Qaeda into a major regional threat, the United States would be dragged into the conflict and then forced to make common cause with the Free Syrian Army anyway.
When that still didn’t happen on schedule, mass murder and rape by ISIS did the trick. Now the Kurds have been forced out of their neutral position and into an alignment with the Sunni rebels. Western countries have gotten deeper into an alliance with the Free Syrian Army which will ultimately force them into a NATO intervention in Syria to protect the FSA. That was always the endgame. ISIS was the means.
The ISIS gamble was a dangerous one, especially under Obama, but now it’s beginning to pay off.