The IS has made a big mistake

 
WASHINGTON

In the global revulsion at the past week’s terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the IS and other extremists. But as the US seeks to broaden this counterterrorism alliance, it should be careful about partnering with Russia — unless Moscow distances itself from a Syrian regime that many Sunni Muslims despise.
The savage attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia should convince Muslim nations and the West that they share a common enemy in extremist groups such as the IS. What they need now is a shared command-and-control structure, like what the US and Britain forged in December 1941, after the shock of Pearl Harbor. Merging military and intelligence resources wasn’t easy, even for longstanding partners in Washington and London. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew that once America had fully joined the battle, the allies’ eventual victory was certain.
Similar confidence would be inspired by a command structure that truly fuses the resources of the US, Europe, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the many other nations that have been targeted by IS terrorists.
A sign of how unpopular these attacks are with Muslims is that the IS isn’t taking credit for the attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia — and that other Islamist groups are condemning the violence, especially the bombing in the holy city of Medina.
Last Tuesday the SITE Intelligence Group gathered some of the online ripostes from rivals of the IS. An Australian cleric named Abu Sulayman, who is a member of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, tweeted: “The #MedinaBlast is a criminal act that Muslims must condemn.” Another pro-al-Qaeda account tweeted: “If IS is not behind the attacks in Istanbul and Medina they should deny their involvement.”
Last Monday’s attacks in Medina, Jeddah and Qatif should deepen cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the US — and draw in other Arab partners, such as Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
The US has a chance to hit the “restart” button with Turkey, too. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been straddling the issue — condemning the IS but failing to close his border with Syria because of pique over US support for Syrian Kurdish fighters. Now that Erdogan can see the jihadist dagger at his throat, he should want closer military and intelligence links with Washington. He should also think about reopening negotiations with the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, so that he’s not fighting a two-front war against terror.
What about Russia? Should Moscow and Washington join forces against terrorism? On one level the answer is obviously yes. Foreign fighters have been streaming from Russia and its former republics to join the IS. Two of the three attackers in Istanbul appear to have been Russians. Real cooperation would be useful, so long as it doesn’t condone and reinforce Russian bad behaviour.
Syria is the test case: The Russians have been asking the US for months to share targeting information about IS and Jabhat al-Nusra positions in Syria, so that Russian forces can attack the extremists and avoid hitting groups that, in theory, are working with the US.
The Obama administration is debating whether to endorse such Russian-American sharing of targeting intelligence. The US military, seeing aggressive Russian behaviour in Europe, is wary. Administration officials who favour cooperation argue that it should come with a warning — that if Syrian forces continue bombing US-backed opposition groups, the US will strike back against the Syrians and take their jets out of the sky.
If Russia accepts such a real limitation
on President Bashar al-Assad, then it should join the team. But if it continues unlimited support for Assad, Russia will only fuel
the extremists’ rage — and complicate American efforts to build a broader, unified command.
The terrorists who struck Istanbul, Dhaka, Baghdad and Medina made a potentially disastrous mistake. It may not look that way, after last week’s encounter with the metastasizing virus of the IS. But the real goal of the extremists has been to divide Muslims and the West. If the US offers strong leadership now, it can repair that breach — and help organize a military and intelligence alliance against a common threat.
— Washington Post Writers Group

David Ignatius, best-selling author and prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than twenty-five years