Burning Sand: Included in the Enlargement Process, Countries Covered by the European War Crimes and Shifting Borders Neighbourhood Policy and Russia

Issue 107 • August-September 2014 CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch Editorial monthly newsletter focuses on the EU’s relations with its geographical neighbours: those in its midst, those Burning sand: included in the enlargement process, countries covered by the European War crimes and shifting borders Neighbourhood Policy and Russia. Each month the newsletter offers a in the Middle East round-up of the previous month’s major developments with links to the full This summer saw an explosion of violence in the Middle East: text of each corresponding news item, between Israel and Gaza, in northern Syria and in northern and analysis or official document. These central Iraq. The Middle East security order of yesteryear is links are presented in chronological history. The writing was already on the wall months ago, but it order. This overview is complemented is now plain for all to see: reality trumps cartography. ‘Sykes- by an editorial note that focuses on a Picot’, the infamous agreement of 1916 in which Britain and current development or a more long- France secretly divided their zones of influence in the Middle term trend pertaining to the EU’s East, is dead.1 Not only have an estimated 2.5 million Syrians relations with its neighbours. fled across the porous borders to neighbouring countries,2 the frontiers with Jordan and Iraq are no longer a physical reality. New dividing lines are being drawn in the burning sand. Table of Contents In terms of geopolitical change, the creation of the Islamic State (IS) and the emergence of a de facto independent Kurdistan are Editorial: “Burning sand: War crimes and the most important developments in the region in the summer shifting borders in the Middle East” of 2014. What is also striking is the level of barbarity of those local actors engaged in the struggle for a place in the future Eastern Partnership regional security order. The US and individual EU member states have been jockeying to position themselves too. The Russia European Union, above and beyond the member states, has been a bystander to developments in the Middle East. It would Southern Neighbourhood seem that the member states intend to use their organisation’s external action capabilities only for issuing political declarations, Enlargement providing humanitarian assistance and paying for post-conflict rehabilitation. Arguably, the direct and indirect challenges Index of European Neighbourhood posed by the multiple crises in the Middle East surpass any Watch Editorials member state’s individual capacity to play a determining role on the international scene. A more comprehensive common strategy should therefore be put in place to guide joint action and to make sure that the dust kicked up in the Middle East settles in places that best suit the EU’s collective interests. Syria The war in Syria has pushed the country further downwards in a CEPS Neighbourhood Watch Editorial addres spiral of madness and exasperation. According to the UN High Centre FOR EurOpean POLicY StuDies (CEPS) Commissioner for Human Rights, the death toll has climbed Place du Congrès 1, beyond 190,000. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria on B-1000 Brussels, Belgium 27 August said that both the Syrian government and Islamic phone: +32 2 229 39 11 State insurgents are committing war crimes and crimes against fax: +32 2 219 41 51 humanity and should face trial at the International Criminal website: www.ceps.eu Court. Its report, the inquiry commission’s eighth since it was established three years ago, pays close attention to the terror e-mail: [email protected] Subscribe! campaign being waged by IS: Editorial team: Steven Blockmans and Hrant Kostanyan 2 European Neighbourhood Watch Editorial “In areas of Syria under [IS] control, particularly in the north and (known as Peshmerga) repelled ISIS troops trying north-east of the country [Aleppo and Raqqa provinces], Fridays to seize parts of Kirkuk. Two weeks later, Massoud are regularly marked by executions, amputations and lashings in Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan autonomous region public squares. (…) Bodies of those killed are placed on display for asked its parliament to organise an independence several days, terrorising the local population”.3 referendum. Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said that his government would support The report goes on to say that “[v]iolence has bled an independent Kurdistan. over the borders of the Syrian Arab republic, with extremism fuelling the conflict’s heightened brutality”. In early August 2014, IS launched a new offensive IS now occupies about a third of Syrian territory, which against Kurdish-held territory in northern Iraq provides it with a source of weapons and recruits to advancing to within 40 kilometres from Erbil. expand its activities in Iraq and elsewhere in the Within days, IS managed to capture the town of Levant. Sinjar, prompting thousands of its Yazidi population – a religious sub-set of the Kurds – to take refuge Issue 107 • August-September • Issue2014 107 Islamic State on Mount Sinjar, where they lacked basic necessities The Islamic State grew out of al-Qaeda’s offshoot such as food and water. The large number of Yazidis in Iraq, where it was founded in 2003 as a reaction executed in the attack and the threat of an even larger to the US-led invasion. In 2005, the Sunni-jihadist massacre of those trapped on Mount Sinjar prompted group declared war on Shia Muslims and used suicide the United States to wade into the conflict. The US bombings and (mass) executions to carry out attacks on asserted that the systematic destruction of the Yazidi Shia-dominated and mixed sectarian neighbourhoods. people by the Islamic State amounted to genocide. In 2006 it rebranded itself as the ‘Islamic State in Iraq’, the name under which it continued to carry out Acceptance of new realities its activities after the withdrawal of US forces from Since 8 August, US airstrikes on IS militants have led to the country. The terrorist group benefitted from the some of the territory being recaptured by Peshmerga. security vacuum in neighbouring Syria to expand its American and British planes airdropped humanitarian activities and adopted the name ‘Islamic State of Iraq aid for the civilians trapped in the mountains. The UK and Syria’ (ISIS). The advances that ISIS troops have also provided surveillance and refuelling to assist the made in large parts of northern Syria have substantially humanitarian mission. France also moved to provide strengthened their position. In 2013, ISIS carried out humanitarian aid to the Kurds. US airstrikes and attacks in Turkey and Lebanon and by the end of last Kurdish ground forces eventually broke the ISIS siege year it advanced on central and northern Iraq. On 3 of Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of refugees to January 2014, ISIS militia shocked the world by taking escape. At this point, the United States started arming control of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, less Kurdish forces directly. France followed suit and the than 100km west of the capital Baghdad. Iraqi Prime UK, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Saudi Arabia and Italy and the Netherlands have indicated that they too Qatar of bankrolling ISIS. In June, during a large-scale intend to supply arms to the Kurds. As rightly observed offensive by ISIS in the north, its troops, outnumbered by Julian Barnes-Dacey, 15 to 1 by Iraqi security forces, seized control of most of Mosul, the strategic and second-most populous city in “unlike in Syria, where the [US and the EU have] struggled for three Iraq, a large part of the surrounding oil-rich Nineveh years to find a reliable address to which they can deliver armed province, and the city of Tikrit. Amid the chaos, Iraqi assistance, the Kurdish regional government and peshmerga military helicopters carried out attacks on ISIS in Syria, represent a dependable and long-standing partner with whom whereas the Syrian Air Force bombed ISIS positions on [the West] feels confident it can engage militarily (…), without Iraqi territory. These uncoordinated actions against the detrimentally exacerbating the politics fuelling the wider Iraqi common enemy underscore the success of ISIS’ policy crisis by backing the perceived sectarian central government in in wiping out the Sykes-Picot divide between the two Baghdad. Fears that arming the Kurds will empower their long- countries. By late June, Iraq had lost complete control standing desire for independence, further fuelling the political of its borders with Jordan and Syria. In a new show disintegration of Iraq – as it probably eventually will with profound of confidence, ISIS changed its name to ‘Islamic State’ consequences – have been seconded to more immediate security (IS) and on 29 June announced the establishment of and humanitarian concerns”. 4 a new ‘Caliphate’, a government based on Islamic law which would include Iraq and Syria. IS called upon However, supporting the Kurds alone will not be Muslims all over the world to pledge allegiance to their enough to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq. For some Caliph, Ibrahim Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. time now, the transatlantic partners have been hesitant to offer military support to the Shia-dominated central Kurdistan government in Baghdad, given its inability to establish When Iraqi government forces fled south as a result a cross-sectarian coalition government that could of ISIS’ northern offensive in June, the Kurds – the have prevented IS’ dramatic rise in the first place. majority of whom adhere to Sunni Islam – advanced The nomination, mid-August, of Haider al-Abadi as into the oil hub of Kirkuk, 100 km south of the Kurdish Iraq’s new Prime Minister has changed Washington’s regional capital Erbil, and thereby expanded their calculus.

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