The Russians understand Islamists are very serious about conquering the West

"Meanwhile, the Obama White House announced that the U.S. would not cooperate with the Baghdad center. The sole result was the further marginalization of U.S. influence in Iraq and elsewhere."

"The Islamists’ theme is that Western society must accept and subsidize them through welfare as a form of jizya (the tax money conquered non-Muslims have to pay their Islamic rulers as proof of their submission)."

Russia-hatred among the vast majority of American defense policymakers and their NATO counterparts, U.S. Members of Congress, and defense analysts blinded the U.S. government and its NATO allies to two facts:

1.  The overriding rationale for Russia's actions in Syria has been to destroy the most dangerous Islamist organizations.  

2. To reach this goal, Russia had worked out a comprehensive plan well before it agreed to carry out military operations to rescue the Syrian government.  

It can't be emphasized enough that this rescue mission was conceived as part of Russia's allover plan. 

The United States completely missed this, and so created a muddle by reacting to Russia's moves in Syria as if they were a power play to expand Russia power in the Middle East and challenge the USA's leadership role in the world. 

I can only wonder what kind of military strategists have come to inhabit American defense agencies, that such a collective blindness should occur. Perhaps part of the answer is the great difficulty Washington's defense and political establishments still have in distinguishing between terrorism as a kind of criminality and the terrorist tactics used as part of a comprehensive plan of conquest. 

In any case the Russian administration and its military take the threat of Muslim conquest with the seriousness it merits. The Russian plan for a regional coalition in the Middle East to fight the terror-wielding Islamists flows from this. The United States government should coordinate closely with the coalition instead of making up strategies as it stumbles along.  

And at all costs the Obama Administration must stop trying to run a war effort as if it's a political contest.   

The best explanation of the Russian plan I've found is in Defense & Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky's How Russia Is Deploying Its Military In Syria (October 8, 2015; Oil Price). Here are excerpts:

The Kremlin seemed cognizant that the destruction of the jihadists would first create the most dangerous phenomenon in the Middle East: socio-political vacuum. The law of the region is that, on its own, a vacuum would always be filled by a phenomenon far worse than the one which preceded it.

Hence, before creating a vacuum, it was imperative to prepare the positive forces which would fill it. In the case of the greater Middle East, this meant reinforcing the minorities and rebuilding the Sunni Arab tribes and urban clans (extended families).

 This dynamic is what the Kremlin was determined to accomplish.

While the jihadist forces might be defeated by external forces, the vacuum created must be filled by indigenous grassroots elements. Hence, the Kremlin resolved, it was imperative to coordinate the anti-jihadist effort with all pertinent local forces from the very beginning. Therefore, the Kremlin decided to expand the military coordination center opened in Baghdad in the summer of 2014 into a full-fledged center for the coordination of the regional fight against jihadism.

On September 27, 2015, the Iraqi High command formally announced an agreement on “security and in-telligence cooperation” with Russia, Iran, and Syria in order “to help combat the Islamic State” forces. The statement elaborated that the coordination agreement would enable the participating militaries to “help [each other] and cooperate in collecting information about the terrorist DI’ISH group”. 

 Initially, the center would better coordinate the Russian supply flights from Russia over Iran, Iraq, and Syria. In the very near future, the center was to begin to coordinate the distribution of pertinent intelligence about the jihadist forces they are all confronting jointly. The joint intelligence work would also include coordinating reconnaissance flights, satellite, and other source collection on the basis of operational requirements.

The objective of the center would be to provide the allied forces with actionable intelligence and targeting data. Timing depended, first and foremost, on the Kremlin’s formulating strategy and deciding on timeframes, including how long it would take to deploy all necessary forces and deliver all necessary military supplies.

The long-term objective was to create regional warfighting capacity, from unified logistical effort to coordinated fighting all around al-Jazira, to the establishment of the joint command center for the General Staffs of Russia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Ultimately, the center would coordinate a tightening siege on the Islamic State from both Iraq and Syria by Shi’ite, Kurdish, and ‘Alawite-Druze forces.

The Kremlin considers the Baghdad center as the venue through which the great war for the elimination of the jihadists in the entire al-Jazira will be managed and waged. “The Russian Federation, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Republic of Iraq, and the Islamic Republic of Iran have decided to open an information center in Baghdad which will include the General Staff representatives from the named countries,” a Russian senior official noted. 

“The success of the center in the near future will create conditions for the formation on its basis of the coordination committee for the purpose of planning operations and control of units of the armed forces of these four countries fighting against [the Islamic State].” 

The key to the center’s success would be the joint work of the representatives of the general staffs of Russia, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. “The main functions of this structure will be the collection, processing, compilation and analysis of current information about the situation in the Middle East region in the context of the fight against the ‘Islamic state’, the distribution of intelligence and its operational transfer to the general staffs of these countries,” the official explained.

Despite all the declarations of unity and close cooperation, the strain with Iran continues. Politically, Iranian Pres. Hassan Rouhani is reticent about cooperation with Russia.

[...]

Here I'm skipping over considerable discussion to arrive at these passages:

Meanwhile, the Obama White House announced that the U.S. would not cooperate with the Baghdad center. The sole result was the further marginalization of U.S. influence in Iraq and elsewhere.
[...]
Significantly, the Russians’ initial priority areas were also the priority areas of the U.S.-sponsored jihadists in their repeated efforts to reach Damascus and topple the Assad Administration, as well as destroy the ‘Alawite heartland in between. These U.S.-sponsored jihadists not only do not confront the Islamic State forces, but closely cooperate with them in the Aleppo area, the Damascus area, and the Homs pocket.

President Obama, this is no way to run a war.  

A comprehensive Muslim plan for conquering the West is very much in play. This explains the great anger of al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri about Islamic State, which prompted him to exclaim it was ruining the true jihad, in which attacks on civilians and government forces are only a small part at this stage of the conquest plan.

To understand the outline of the plan, study Dr Bodansky's The Paris Jihad, Ready or Not, Has Begun, and Will Widen (January 9, 2015; Oil Price). Here I provide an excerpt:

Initially, the jihadist uppermost leadership committed to a new cycle of spectacular strikes to include the likely use of WMD and received fatwas authorizing the infliction of carnage upon Western civilians. Jihadist leaders warned that such spectacular strikes would have dire effect on the development, consolidation and radicalization of the Islamist communities in West Europe and North America. They feared that any major strike would provoke the Western security authorities into conducting post-attack dragnets that, in turn, would harm the Muslim communities and reverse the achievements of recent incitement and radicalization.

 These warnings led to a clairvoyant decision by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the rest of the Shura Kabira, then in Pakistan, to forego the then planned spectacular strikes in favor of protecting and further developing the all-important Muslim communities at the heart of the West. The new importance and capabilities of Islamist grassroots mobilization were first demonstrated to friends and foes alike in the Paris intifada of October-November 2005.

Since then, the radicalization, transformation, and organization of the Islamist communities in Western Europe have been indigenous. A cadre of highly trained imams, intelligence operatives, and community organizers capitalize on the economic and social decay in order to alienate and radicalize the Muslim communities. 

The key to the Islamists’ success is the intentionally self-inflicted isolation and segregation of the rapidly growing disenfranchised Muslim communities from the rest of society: building mistrust and hostility in the name of establishing Islam and Islamic way of life. Consequently, although French citizens, younger-generation Muslims feel very alienated and are convinced they have no future in a modern Western France. In contrast, radical Islam gives their lives sense of meaning and belonging.
[...]
Islamist leaders subject the population — mainly France-born (or European-born) youth and recent converts — to incessant pressure to isolate themselves from society in the name of maintaining Islamic way of life. The emphasis is on mundane aspects of daily life such as access to halal food, outdoor prayers (which block streets for traffic), Muslim dress code, etc. In order to eradicate Western influence, the Muslims created a separate school system in order to completely cut off their children from non-Muslim students.

Graduates of these Muslim schools are unskilled and can’t find but low-paying menial jobs. The Islamist leaders then point out to the gaps between their communities and the rest of urban France, and urge the frustrated youth to rebel against the ensuing destitute and injustice. Muslim youth have taken to widespread car burnings. French police estimates that 40,000 cars are burned in France every year by Muslim gangs.

Fearing cycles of violence and destructive riots, growing numbers of French local authorities have allowed the establishment of virtual Islamic zones that are no-go areas for police and government services, and where the Islamists have power to govern according to the Sharia while flaunting French law.

The Islamists’ theme is that Western society must accept and subsidize them through welfare as a form of jizya (the tax money conquered non-Muslims have to pay their Islamic rulers as proof of their submission).

Islamist leaders argue that the enclaves where sharia law is supreme, being the embodiment of governance by divine law, will ascend to national power and ultimately coerce the infidels to submit to them. Islamist leaders even talk openly of ultimately ruling France and Europe according to the sharia law. The Islamist leadership has thus intentionally created pressure cookers of isolation and hatred.

The alchemy of what could be called Euro-shariasm has been to transform the humiliating condition of living on welfare into a powerful philosophy of conquest. To counter this with praises of Islam and offers of jobs programs is not only ineffective, it's also patronizing.

Just how ineffective the American approach has been when applied in Syria can be appreciated by studying another Bodansky analysis, Syria Behind the Media and Politics. Most of the article is behind a pay wall at Defense & Foreign Affairs but excerpts provided by Questia Magazine, which I'll quote only in part here, reveal the thinking now driving the rebellion against the Assad government:

[..]
September 24, 2013, saw the final nail driven into the coffin of the US and Western effort to influence, let alone control, the Syrian armed opposition.

Abdul-Aziz Salamah, the political leader of Liwaa al-Tawhid in northern Syria, announced that 13 of the leading armed opposition organization inside Syria decided to unite their efforts under an Islamist-jihadist banner as the "Islamist Alliance". 

The Alliance claims to represent more than 75 percent the rebels fighting the Assad Administration. The Islamist Alliance was established in order to create sharia throughout Syria and to formally reject the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) as their legitimate representative. 

Significantly, the group includes some of the largest ostensibly moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) as well as al-Qaida affiliated organizations. Khalid Khoja, a senior SNC official in Turkey, estimated that the 13 groups had around 20,000 fighters and that "they effectively control northern Syria".

The supreme leadership of al-Qaida warmly endorsed the new alliance in a special communiqué. "A group of powerful mujahedin units rejected the authority of the pro-Western Syrian opposition leadership abroad and called for it to be reorganized under an Islamic framework," the al-Qaida communiqué read. "These forces call on all military and civilian forces to unite under a clear Islamic framework based on sharia law, which should be the sole source of legislation."

The immediate roots of this dramatic shift go back to mid-September 2013, when the leaders of the main jihadist organizations and other armed groups gave up on the potentially war-winning intervention by the US-led West and started to reconcile themselves with the irreversible loss of grassroots popular support and legitimization in the Syrian interior. 

Under such conditions, the jihadists' stated goal of an Islamist sharia state against the wishes of both the vast majority of Syrians and the Assad Administration has now become the only viable objective for the armed opposition.

This realization was a reaffirmation of the claim by neo-salafist jihadist leaders that there could be no genuine cooperation with, and support from, the US-led West irrespective of the routine political, intelligence and military cooperation with the sponsoring intelligence services including the "Mukhabarat AmrikT;" that is, US intelligence.

This stunning reversal was both inevitable and unexpected.

Months before the dramatic shift in September 2013, John Kerry shrewdly noted a sea change among moderate Syrian rebels the Obama administration was courting. 

From an October 30, 2015 McClatchy report:

Secretary of State John Kerry and other top international diplomats were just sitting down to dinner in Istanbul after a long day of talks on the war in Syria when the then-leader of the main Syrian opposition coalition decided to make his stand.

Ahmed Moaz Khatib rose before the dinner guests – members of the so-called Friends of Syria group – and declared that he couldn’t eat because all he could see was the blood of his compatriots, according to diplomats who were present as well as his own account of that evening in April 2013.

Khatib accused the deal makers in the room of selling out Syrians’ fight against the government of President Bashar Assad. He resigned on the spot and stormed out of the dining hall, dealing one more blow – a big one – to the Obama administration’s search for reliable partners in the conflict.

“Kerry said, ‘These people are not serious,’” recalled a Western diplomat who witnessed the scene and who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“He said, ‘I’m done.’ He was just done with them.”

They were serious, all right. It's just that they'd become serious about setting an Islamist government in place of the secular one headed by Bashar al-Assad.

********   

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article41967216.html#storylink=cpy