Notes on Government Intervention

On the Rise of ISIS:

- Started w/ soviet invade afghanistan to defend puppet dictator

- some think religious struggle > extremism
ex. Osama Bin Laden > AL Qaeda ex. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi > ISIS
> go back to Iraq, cont. struggle against Islams enemies
> Afghanistan ruled by Taliban, U.S enters post-9/11
> Zarqawi goes to Iraq
- Americans toppel Saddam Husseins sunni dictatorship
> Iraqi Army joins jihadists + jihadists group who thinks repeat of
Afghanistan
- Zarqawis group largest, attacks Shia
> Killed by US in 2006 after rised up, after AQI
> US withdraws in 2011

- Arab Spring
- Syria Bashar Al Assad cracks downs > Civil War
> Al Assad releases jihadists to be w/ rebels, harder to back by W.
-meanwhile AQI now called Islamic State in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
> 2012, top deputy sent to create new branch to fight w/ rebels
- recruits new jihadists after take all prisons
April 2012: take control of all Al Qaeda, ISIS w/ Iraq/Syria
but Al Nusra(deputy) rejects power grab > war (2014)
> ISIS grows powerful in Syria bc. Assad tolerates rise
> launches military invasion of Iraq and folds
- many Sunni tolerate bc Iraq dominated by Shia
- now wants to start caliphate
> many disillusioned and many religious that join
> ISIS overreaches by invading Iraq and Syria (August 2014)
- counteract by Kurds, better organized
> launches genocide against Iraqi Yazidis, murders American James Foley
> American air campaign, loses 1/5 of territory
> now many abroad

Libyan Intervention:
- Libya is better than if hadnt intervened; let Gaddafi stay in power
- civil war pre-existing, and mistakes AFTER invention not during
- goal was to protect civilians under threat
- Gaddafi use genocidal terms, killed 1000s/day
> NATO intervention 8000 dead, mostly combatants, only 72 civs.
- problem they never made clear the commitment
- What libya would have been like
- w/o intervention more like Syria, more death
According to the Libya Body Count, around 4,500 people have so far been killed
over the course of 22 months of civil war.

In Syria, the death toll is about 100 times that, with more than 400,000 killed, according to the
Syrian Center for Policy Research.

- no end in sight bc. no surrender possible

- current civil war;

The NATO operation ended in October 2011. The current civil war in Libya began in May
2014a full two and a half years later. The intervention and todays violence are of course
related, but this does not necessarily mean there is a causal relationship.

- no structural afterwards
- While perhaps less sexy, the U.S. and its allies could have also weighed in on
institutional design and pushed back against Libyas adoption, backed by UNSMIL, of one of
worlds most counterproductive electoral systemssingle non-transferable votealong with an
institutional bias favoring independents. This combination exacerbated tribal and regional
divisions while making power sharing even more difficult.

< US didnt do enough to fulfill responsibility doctrine: get Euro. to help more

- original still holds, morality of intervention

-The near reverse holds true for Libya. The justness of military intervention in March
2011 cannot be undone or negated retroactively.
> impossible to intervene bc. no stability guarantee
- Gaddafi made it hard to do
- he did everything in his power to preempt any civil society organizations or
real, autonomous institutions from emerging.

Balkan War:

- post WWII yugoslavia a multi ethnic come together: President Tito suppressed tension:
- Titos death > Croatia/Slovenia independ. > Serb. army lashed out
- Bosnia attempt, but serbs resisted w/ other Yugoslavs
> Bosnian Muslims + Croats drove in ethnic cleansing
- UN couldnt stop, 100k died, > ended with 1995 bombing to allow
Croats/Muslims furthering
In 1999, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought Serbs in another brutal war to gain
independence. Serbia ended the conflict beaten, battered and alone.