World will blame Obama for ISIS

In a riveting new book, Blood Year: Islamic State and the Failures of the War on Terror, author David Kilcullen unpeels several layers off the world's most lethal terror group.

Islamic State (IS) was created by a confluence of strategic errors. The first was (then) United States President George W Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Two years earlier, in December 2001, Bush had inexplicably halted America's shock-and-awe bombing of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre.

Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape into the caves in the Tora Bora mountains. He would later be given sanctuary in Abbottabad by the Pakistani army before eventually being killed by US navy seals after another decade.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 at the height of the Cold War laid the groundwork for global jihadism. The US used Pakistani, Afghan and foreign militants to fight the Soviets. Once the Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan in 1989, battle-hardened jihadis filled the vacuum.

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America had unleashed the terror-genie from the bottle. Through the 1990s it grew steadily. After the September 2001 attack on the US, jihadi terrorism acquired critical mass.

As Kilcullen writes, the US invasion of Iraq put into place the conditions for the future rise of ISIS. Between 2003 and 2007, the US disbanded the well-trained Iraqi army, dismembered the ruling Ba'ath party and sacked the country's vast bureaucracy. Iraq, rendered defenceless, was a prize ready to be plucked.

President Barack Obama compounded Bush's errors. After taking office in January 2009, Obama set a timetable for the US troops' withdrawal from Iraq. By 2011, most US troops had left Iraq. Terrorist groups like al Qaeda had been marginalised in the US troop surge between 2007 and 2009. But now, as the US troops began to leave, they regrouped rapidly.

Parts of al-Qaeda merged with Iraq's Sunni minority, disaffected by President Nouri al-Maliki's pro-Shia bias. By 2013, the group had acquired significant manpower and resources. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was born. Within a year, in 2014, ISIS declared a caliphate across Iraq and Syria. In months, it swept through northern and central Iraq, capturing Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and advancing within 30km of Baghdad. It was pushed back by a Shia coalition of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters.

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Meanwhile, ISIS took over large swathes of territory in Syria and established the caliphate's "capital" in Raqqa.

The untold story of America's manic effort to rid Syria of President Bashar al-Assad demonstrates the extent to which the US defies international law to dismember states. A Wikileaks document, purported to be from Hillary Clinton's recently declassified email (for which she is under the FBI investigation), lays bare America's "destroy Syria" policy that collaterally helped ISIS grow into the monster it is.

The Syrian civil war and resultant migrant crisis allowed ISIS to prosper through choreographed brutality: beheadings, rape and torture. It dealt in fear. With revenue from oilfields and "taxes" from citizens in territories it controlled, it attracted fighters from Chechnya and Bosnia to Algeria and Morocco.

When ISIS's territorial advance was finally halted in 2015, it turned to targeted terror attacks in Europe. The terror strikes in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016 revealed both ISIS's strengths and weaknesses. It showed it still had the resilience and resources to mount lethal, coordinated attacks in the heart of Europe.

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But a measure of desperation was also felt on its part. The US and Russian airstrikes have degraded ISIS's capabilities. Its top leaders are being assassinated one by one. Last week ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's second-in-command, Haji Imam, was killed by the US special forces. Two weeks earlier, another top ISIS commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, was assassinated in US airstrikes. The Russian forces have meanwhile destroyed ISIS ammunition dumps, oil tankers, pipelines, supply centres and artillery.

After the Brussels terror attack, in which four American citizens were killed, the US has stepped up airstrikes and drone attacks on ISIS targets. The newly retrained Iraqi army, aided by Iran and Hezbollah as well as Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, is preparing an assault on Mosul later this year. The next target would be Raqqa where al-Baghdadi is holed up. For that though, US-led ground troops or a large contingent of special forces may be necessary.

Obama, however, may not have learnt from his mistakes in 2009-2015. His half-hearted approach has allowed ISIS to expand to lawless Libya with little US intervention. Obama's obsession with evicting President al-Assad conflicts with the more vital mission of evicting ISIS from Syria and Iraq.

ISIS exploited America's loathing of al-Assad to keep the Syrian army at bay. Russia's intervention has now put paid to that: Palmyra, a vital ancient desert city, fell to the Syrian army last week. Aleppo has been encircled. Only Raqqa remains.

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Kilcullen's book is a reminder of how poorly Bush, and now Obama, have handled the crisis in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Two consequences have flowed from this.

One, terrorism is the "new normal" for Europe. Whether or not ISIS is eventually destroyed - which it will be - other terrorist groups will take its place. Bush and Obama - and their early ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair - are accountable. They will be judged by history.

Blair conceded in an interview with the Sunday Times in London on March 27, 2016: "(IS) does not seek dialogue but dominance. It cannot therefore be contained. It has to be defeated. (It needs) active on-the-ground military support."

The second consequence of Obama's Middle East policy is the impact ISIS will likely have on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. For every terror attack it unleashes in Europe and elsewhere, ISIS adds to controversial front-runner Donald Trump's chances of winning the Republican nomination - and possibly the presidential election in November.

It is a prospect al-Baghdadi, ensconced in his Raqqa hideout, will not relish.