PM's Plan To Fight IS: Fantasy, Not Strategy

The Prime Minister was doing well. David Cameron was laying out a much needed strategy for how so called Islamic State might be defeated.

He was saying how a coalition of air forces was not enough. That the UK needed to be a full part of that coalition. That ground troops would be needed no matter how successful an air campaign would be.

And then the strategy was snapped to the floor by wishful thinking.

The carpet that vanished from beneath David Cameron's feet was embroidered with the colours of the Free Syrian Army and its "moderate allies".

The PM said that 70,000 of them could be a ground force to exploit the coalition's air strikes and support Kurd groups already fighting.

No it cannot. Or, more accurately, will not.

Mr Cameron is correct that the Sunni Arab areas under control of the so-called Islamic State will need to remain under Sunni control after the death cult has been removed.

He is trusting the Joint Intelligence Committee which has told him that there are indeed 70,000 rebel fighters who could, in a wide sense, be described as "moderate".

But it is entirely delusional to suggest that any of these men would be ready to fight Islamic State cultists.

The 70,000 are rather busy fighting Bashar al Assad and have been since 2011. Their houses have been bombed, their families driven into exile and their hearts hardened by nearly half a decade of war against a regime that has enlisted Iran and Russia in its efforts to annihilate rebels, who had their roots in non-violent democratic protest.

The rebels will not fight Islamic State until Assad has been deposed. Or unless there is a ceasefire.

A wildly expensive and futile effort devised by Washington to train and equip 5,000 men, from Syria's rebel groups per year to fight Islamic State collapsed recently because they were not allowed to fight Assad.

The first batch of about 50 were kidnapped by al Qaeda - the next lot of around 30 defected with their weapons to the rebels and the programme has been closed.

That debacle should be taken as proof enough that, in Syria, the rebel priority is getting rid of Assad. The British Prime Minister may say this is an "ISIL-first strategy" but he's not being bombed by Assad.

There is one slight chance that the rebels might join the fight against so-called IS – and that is if optimism shown by John Kerry that a ceasefire between Damascus and the rebels can be agreed "in a matter of weeks".

If the US Secretary of State is right and Russia and Iran have been persuaded to allow a swift transition from civil war to a new dispensation, and Assad himself can be eased out, then - and only then - might some of the 70,000 go to war against IS.

But that, for now, is a fantasy not a strategy.