ABOUT, DISEC
DISARMAMENT AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
INTERNATIONAL MILLITARY INTERVENTION IN COMBATTING ISIS FORCES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS
LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE BOARD
Dear Delegates,
It is an honor to be serving as the Executive Board of the Disarmament and International Security Council at DPSGMUN, 2015. Please consider that the following guide, as the name suggests, is merely to provide you with the basic idea of the agenda and the scenario of the crISIS. Your real potential in proving yourself to be an amazing MUNner lies in the depth of research beyond this guide. We hope to see an intense debating session along with strong and factually correct information. We hope to see collective participation from all of you in all of the sessions and if any help regarding the agenda or rules of procedure are required, the Organizing Committee as well as the Executive board members would be much obliged to answer your queries.
This being said, we hope that the three days of the conference which await us may be intellectually as well as educationally stimulating for all of us.
Happy researching!
Best Regards,
Hrithik Modi, Chair
Apratim Bannerjee, Vice-chair
INTRODUCTION
Disarmament and International Security
First Committee
The First Committee deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community and seeks out solutions to the challenges in the international security regime. All 195 full member and full observer-status States are allowed to attend and participate. DISEC came into being with the creation of the UN, so first met shortly after the first UNGA session, in January 1946 – with representatives of just 51 nations. The first ever resolution, adopted by The First Committee on the 24th January was to form a commission on the issues raised by atomic energy. DISEC possess a crucial mandate: to consider disarmament and international security issues across the world, in order to ensure peace and the progress of disarmament. DISEC attempts to form agreements between states on both these issues, in order to form consensus to confront those issues on their mandate.
It considers all disarmament and international security matters within the scope of the Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any other organ of the United Nations; the general principles of cooperation in the maintenance of international peace and security, as well as principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments; promotion of cooperative arrangements and measures aimed at strengthening stability through lower levels of armaments.
The Committee works in close cooperation with the United Nations Disarmament Commission and the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament. It is the only Main Committee of the General Assembly entitled to verbatim records coverage.
The First Committee sessions are structured into three distinctive stages:
⦁ General debate
⦁ Thematic discussions
⦁ Action on drafts
THE MIDDLE EASTERN CONFLICT The end of Nations and the Start of a New Dark Age.
Iraq has disintegrated. Little is exchanged between its three great communities – Shia, Sunni and Kurd – except gunfire. The outside world hopes that a more inclusive government will change this but it is probably too late.
The main victor in the new war in Iraq is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) which wants to annihilate Shia, rather than negotiate with them. Iraq is facing a civil war that could be as bloody as anything that we have seen in Syria and could go on for years.
The Iraqi government had an army with 350,000 soldiers on which $41.6bn (£25bn) had been spent in the three years from 2011, but this force melted away without significant resistance.
The flights were led by commanding officers, some of whom rampantly defected their national allegiances as they abandoned their men. Given that ISIS may have had as few as 1,300 fighters in its assault on Mosul this was one of the great military debacles in history.
Within two weeks, those parts of northern and western Iraq outside Kurdish control were in the hands of ISIS. By the end of the month the group had announced a caliphate straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
The political geography of Iraq was changing before its people's eyes and there were material signs of this everywhere: to hire a truck to come the 200 miles from the Kurdish capital Erbil to Baghdad now cost $10,000 for a single journey, compared to $500 a month earlier. Particularly, Sunni districts such as al-Adhamiyah on the east bank of the Tigris River, young men rightly believed that if they passed through a checkpoint they were likely to be arrested or worse. There were ominous signs that Iraqis feared a future filled with violence as weapons and ammunition soared in price. The cost of a bullet for an AK47 assault rifle quickly tripled to 3,000 Iraqi dinars. Suddenly, almost everybody had guns, including even Baghdad's paunchy, white-shirted traffic police who began carrying sub-machine guns.
Soon dead bodies were being dumped at night. They were stripped of their ID cards but were assumed to be Sunni victims of the militia death squads. The renewed sectarian violence was very visible. There was an appalling video of Iraqi military cadets being machine-gunned near Tikrit by a line of ISIS gunmen as they stood in front of a shallow open grave. Human rights organisations using satellite pictures said they estimated the number of dead to be 170 though it might have been many more.
The fall of Mosul and the ISIS-led Sunni revolt marks the end of a distinct period in Iraqi history that began with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US and British invasion of March 2003. There was an attempt by the Iraqi opposition to the old regime and their foreign allies to create a new Iraq in which the three communities shared power in Baghdad. The experiment failed disastrously and it seems it will be impossible to resurrect it because the battle lines between Kurd, Sunni and Shia are now too stark and embittered. One of the most important resurgences is that of the Al-Qa'ida-type movements that today rule a vast area in north and west Iraq and eastern and northern Syria. In fact, it is since Osama bin Laden's death (May 2, 2011) that al-Qa'ida affiliates or clones have had their greatest successes, including the capture of Raqqa in the eastern part of Syria, the only provincial capital in that country to fall to the rebels, in March 2013. In January 2014, ISIS took over Fallujah just 40 miles west of Baghdad, a city famously besieged and stormed by US marines 10 years earlier. Within a few months they had also captured Mosul and Tikrit.
The triumph of ISIS in Iraq in 2013-14 came as a particular surprise because the western media had largely stopped reporting the country. This lack of coverage had been convenient for the US and other Western governments because it enabled them to play down the extent to which "the war on terror" had failed so catastrophically in the years since 9/11.
This failure is masked by deceptions and self-deceptions on the part of governments. An intelligence officer from a Middle East country neighbouring Syria told me that ISIS members "say they are always pleased when sophisticated weapons are sent to anti-Assad groups of any kind because they can always get the arms off them by threats of force or cash payments."
Speaking at West Point on America's role in the world on 28 May 28 2014, President Barack Obama said that the main threat to the United States no longer came from Al-Qa’ida central but from "decentralized Al-Qa’ida affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused on the countries where they operate." He added that "as the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened extremist groups to come after us only increases".
A striking development in the Islamic world in recent decades is the way in which Wahhabism is taking over mainstream Sunni Islam. In one country after another Saudi Arabia is putting up the money for the training of preachers and the building of mosques. A result of this is the spread of sectarian strife between Sunni and Shia. The latter find themselves targeted with unprecedented viciousness from Tunisia to Indonesia.
ISIS is a Wahhabi/Salafi jihadist extremist militant group and self-proclaimed Islamic state and caliphate, which is led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. As of March 2015, it has control over territory occupied by ten million people in Iraq and Syria, and has nominal control over small areas of Libya, Nigeria and Afghanistan. The group also operates or has affiliates in other parts of the world, including North Africa and South Asia.
ISIS took most of the world by surprise when it swept into the Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014, the group and its forebears had been proclaiming their goals for a decade. ISIS is mysterious in part because it is so many things at once. It combines Islamic piety and reverence for the prophet and his companions with the most modern social-media platforms and encryption schemes; its videos blend the raw pornographic violence of a snuff film with the pious chanting of religious warriors; the group has the discipline of a prison gang (many of its recruits were indeed drawn from U.S.-organized prisons in Iraq), but also the tactical subtlety and capacity for deception of the most skilled members of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services, who were also pulled into the ISIS net. It appears less brittle than al-Qaeda because its members care less about religious doctrine and organizational hierarchy, i.e. - ISIS is solid at the core but loose at the edges.
The story of ISIS teaches the same basic lesson that emerged from America’s other failures in the Middle East over the last decade: Attempts by the United States or Islamist rebels to topple authoritarian regimes—in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria—create power vacuums. This empty political space will be filled by extremists unless the United States and its allies build strong local forces that can suppress terrorist groups and warlords both. When the U.S. creates such local forces, it must be persistent. If it withdraws from these efforts, as America did in Iraq in 2011, it invites mayhem. Halfway American intervention has produced nothing but trouble. Rebels have gotten enough support to continue fighting, but not enough to win.
The story of ISIS teaches the same basic lesson that emerged from America’s other failures in the Middle East over the last decade: Attempts by the United States or Islamist rebels to topple authoritarian regimes—in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria—create power vacuums. This empty political space will be filled by extremists unless the United States and its allies build strong local forces that can suppress terrorist groups and warlords both. When the U.S. creates such local forces, it must be persistent. If it withdraws from these efforts, as America did in Iraq in 2011, it invites mayhem. Halfway American intervention has produced nothing but trouble. Rebels have gotten enough support to continue fighting, but not enough to win.
Bottom line is, ISIS can be combated and overthrown only by revolutionary changes in the geo-socio-political scenario of the Middle East and combined efforts of transnational military forces.
ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND LEVANT
COUNTRIES INVOLVED IN THE MIDDLE EASTERN CRISIS
US-led coalition
Started on 15 June 2014, when President Obama ordered US forces to be dispatched to the region, in response to offensives in Iraq conducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). American troops went, at the invitation of the Iraqi Government, to assess Iraqi forces and the threat posed by ISIL. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on 5 September invited Ministers of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark for a separate meeting in which he pressed them to support the fight against ISIL militarily and financially. Those nine countries agreed to do so by supporting anti-ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria with supplies and air support,
Russia-led coalition
End of September 2015, Russia, Iraq, Iran and Syria have agreed to fight ISIL together and have set up a 'joint information center' in Baghdad to coordinate their anti-ISIL operations
Bahrain: The oil-wealthy Gulf nation east of Saudi Arabia was part of the first handful of nations that participated in airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria. Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al Khalifa, speaking on CNN in September, called ISIS a "deviated cult" that must be fought. On Sunday, Bahrain announced it was sending aircraft to Jordan to participate in anti-ISIS efforts. Bahrain has had close relations with the United States for years, and the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is in based in Bahrain.
Belgium
The country has conducted airstrikes against ISIS targets, according to U.S. Central Command. In January, Belgian authorities broke up a plot by ISIS veterans to launch a terror attack in the country.
Canada: Its warplanes have flown 310 sorties against ISIS targets as of February 11, the Canadian armed forces reported. Canadian aircraft have also flown dozens of aerial refueling and reconnaissance missions in support of the anti-ISIS fight, and its cargo aircraft have been used to deliver military aid from Albania and the Czech Republic, the Canadian military said. The military has also sent a small detachment to help advise the Iraqi government and donated $5 million in humanitarian aid.
Denmark
It has conducted airstrikes against ISIS targets, according to U.S. Central Command.
Egypt
The country struck ISIS targets in Libya on Monday after the group reportedly executed 21 Egyptian Christians, and called on anti-ISIS coalition partners to do the same, saying the group poses a threat to international safety and security. Egypt had previously agreed to join the anti-ISIS coalition, but details about its role, if any, have been scarce. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said Egypt has a critical role to play in countering ISIS ideology, and Egypt's grand mufti condemned the terror group, saying that its actions are not in line with Islam, Al-Arabiya reported.
France
French planes have taken part in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, and the nation has flown reconnaissance flights over Iraq, contributed ammunition and madehumanitarian drops over the nation. France's air force was also part of an operation in the Iraqi town of Amerli, along with Australia and Great Britain, that pushed back ISIS fighters. ISIS has called for attacks against Western citizens, singling out "the spiteful and filthy French" for punishment. A video emerged of militants who have pledged allegiance to ISIS beheading Herve Gourdel, a French citizen who was kidnapped in Algeria.
Germany
Although it has declined to participate in airstrikes, Germany has provided Kurdish forces in Iraq with $87 million worth of weapons and other military equipment, along with a handful of troops to help with training, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. Germany has also banned activities supporting ISIS, including making it illegal to fly the trademark black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Italy: It has sent weapons and ammunition valued at $2.5 million to Kurdish fighters in Iraq, along with 280 troops to help train them, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
Iraq
The Kurdish fighting force, the Peshmerga, is battling ISIS on the ground.
Kurdish fighters helped expel ISIS forces from the Syrian city of Kobani in January, and are fighting ISIS forces near Mosul, Iraq, and Sinjar Mountain, the site of a dramatic siege this summer by militants of ethnic minority Yazidis.
Jordan: The country initially joined in airstrikes against ISIS but suspended its participation when one of its aircraft went down in Syria, leading to the capture of pilot Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh. The kingdom resumed its attacks in February after ISIS released a video depicting the pilot being burned to death in a cage.
Netherlands
The Dutch government sent F-16 fighter jets to bomb ISIS targets and troops to help train Kurdish forces. As of early February, Dutch warplanes had conducted nearly 300 strikes on ISIS targets, the Defense Ministry said.
Recently, the Dutch military said two F-16s dropped bombs on armed ISIS vehicles in northern Iraq that were shooting at Kurdish fighters. The ISIS vehicles were destroyed,the military said, and ISIS fighters were "possibly killed."
Qatar
The small but rich Gulf nation that hosts one of the largest American bases in the Middle East has flown a number of humanitarian flights, State Department officials said. In late September, in his first interview as the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani vowed to support the coalition. Qatar has been accused of funding terrorism, which the Emir dismissed. "We don't fund extremists," he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "If you talk about certain movements, especially in Syria and Iraq, we all consider them terrorist movement." Of the coalition, he said, "We've been asked by our American friends if we can join, and we did."
Saudi Arabia
The kingdom has sent warplanes to strike ISIS targets in Syria and agreed to host efforts to train moderate Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. It also donated $500 million to U.N. humanitarian efforts in Iraq.
Turkey
Though the NATO member initially offered only tacit support for the coalition, Turkey's government in 2014 authorized the use of military force against terrorist organizations, including ISIS, as the militant group's fighters took towns just south of Turkey's border. Foreign troops have also been allowed to launch attacks against ISIS from Turkey. U.S. officials said it had earlier taken steps to cut the flow of money to ISIS and denied entry to or deported several thousand foreign fighters heading to Syria to join the extremists.
United Arab Emirates
Like its ally Jordan, the UAE initially took part in anti-ISIS airstrikes -- the country's first female fighter pilot led one of the missions. But the government suspended its participation in December after the downing of a Jordanian fighter whose pilot was later killed. It resumed airstrikes in February, flying F-16s from Jordan against militant targets.
United Kingdom
The UK began airstrikes against ISIS in October, hitting targets four days after its Parliament approved its involvement. British planes helped Kurdish troops who were fighting ISIS in northwestern Iraq, dropping a bomb on an ISIS heavy weapon position and shooting a missile at an armed pickup, the UK's Defence Ministry said. Since then, warplanes have struck targets in Iraq dozens of times, and British planes had been involved in reconnaissance missions over that country. The British military is also helping train Kurdish Peshmerga and has sent advisers to help Iraqi commanders. Britain has also pledged more than $60 million in humanitarian aid.
Other nations
Also participating in one way or another are the Arab League and the European Union as well as the nations of Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and Ukraine.
Some countries -- such as Kuwait -- are providing bases. Some, like Albania, the Czech Republic and Hungary, have sent weapons and ammunition. Others are providing humanitarian support, taking legal steps to curb recruitment or providing other, unspecified aid
Consequences and Future Ramifications
Intervention in Middle East has had huge regional and global consequences. The conflict is already spreading to Lebanon and Turkey, and could spark a regional war involving Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Iran
Over the last ten years the War on Terror has drastically destabilized the Middle East. The intervention of the United States and its allies brought massive destruction to Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no reason think the outcome will be any different in this time on.
Foreign intervention will further deny the Syrian people the right to determine their own future. It will place the opposition leadership in the hands of the western powers and their allies, who will act in their own interests.
The West's main allies in the intervention, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have no interest in democracy in the Middle East. They are among the most authoritarian regimes in the region and they have done their best to crush the democracy movement. Their continued involvement under shady pretenses may cause massively negative socio-political ramifications for the inhabitants of the affected states.
The US and its allies are already intervening with arms, money and covert action. Early this year (2015) President Obama authorized the CIA to support the opposition in trying to topple the Assad regime. This can further inflame the Syrian Civil War.
The 2011 intervention in Libya began with a no-fly zone. It dramatically increased the rate of killing; tens of thousands died following it. The same scenario may await the affected states too.