| ID | 141132 |
| Title Proper | Auxiliaries at war in the Middle East |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Scheipers, Sibylle |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | In a BBC Radio Four interview on 9 October 2014, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon declared that the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in the Middle East ‘can only be won on the ground, but it can also only be won by a home army, not by America or Britain’. According to Fallon, this was the main lesson to be learned from recent Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, where occupation by Western forces had ostensibly triggered full-blown insurgencies. By this logic, rather than deploying ground forces, the West should restrict its role to training and supplying local forces and to supporting the latter with airstrikes. In the fight against ISIS, the relevant local players that warrant Western support are the Iraqi army, Kurdish peshmerga forces and moderate Syrian rebel organisations. |
| `In' analytical Note | Survival : the IISS Quarterly Vol. 57, No.4; Aug/Sep 2015: p.121-138 |
| Journal Source | Survival Vol: 57 No 4 |
| Key Words | Intervention ; Iraq ; Middle East ; Syria ; Islamic State |