If only every conflict had just two parties: good guys in white hats on one side and bad guys in black hats on the other side. Then all we would ever have to do is go in and help the white hats win the battle, return home by Christmas, and everyone lives happily ever after. That's probably why everybody loves the Falklands War of 1982 so much. In real life other wars are grey, messy, confusing, dirty and ambiguous.
This is hardly news, Lord Palmerston who became Prime Minister in 1855 is quoted as saying "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests"
As far as I understand it ISIL/IS/ISIS, or whatever they're calling themselves today, are a group driven by Wahhabism, an Islamic sect which has its origins in Saudi Arabia. The ruling elites in most of the middle eastern countries which we like to think of as allies such as Saudi, Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait are Wahhabi. It is a strict form of Sunni Islam and the same ideology that drove al-Qaeda. It would be odd if ISIS did not receive funding from powerful and wealthy benefactors in Wahhabi-controlled states, even if not directly from governments - although that is not unlikely. Fighting wars by proxy is something of a cultural habit in the region. There are so many seething tensions in the middle east its hard to know where to start. At the heart of it is the centuries old religious war raging between Sunni and Shia Islam and the cultural and tribal gravitational forces pulling against the artificial national boundaries which were imposed arbitrarily by western allies (mostly Britain and France) after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW1; then there's the deep sense of betrayal felt by Arabs against those western powers (us) who abandoned their former allies after the defeat of the Ottomans. Throw into that toxic mix the implantation of the Zionist state of Israel in 1948 and the discovery not long after of untold oil wealth to fight over in the region and its surprising things aren't even worse. Iraq is the middle east in microcosm. It is an artificial state with borders drawn with ruler and pencil by bureaucrats in London and Paris in 1920. It is a buffer zone between the old Shia Persian world and Sunni Arabia. It is a hotbed of conflicting tribal loyalties which in recent decades were forcibly held together by a brutal dictator who was funded by oil wealth. What the answer to it all is I've no idea except that those answers will come from the region not from outside. Britain and Europe bear a heavy historical responsibility for the mess which is a legacy from the age of empire. We have a poisonous touch in the region and our involvement always seems to makes things worse. I expect it will shortly do so again.
This raises interesting questions about borders between states. Many of the world's borders are essentially arbitrary lines, either ruler lines drawn on a 19th century map by some (usually British) colonial surveyor, or compromise lines in a treaty hammered out in diplomatic horse-trading, or the cease-fire line reached by armies at the end of a war. Borders cut across ethnic groups, linguistic groups, geographical features, and important resources. People are left unhappy and dissatisfied as a result. Iraq is a prime example. Unsurprisingly there are numerous arguments raised by groups who want to redraw borders for various reasons, and some states are plagued by these disputes. The world's major nations are (in principle) committed to maintaining existing borders unchanged, regardless how arbitrary, unreasonable, and unpopular they may be. Why? Because the whole topic is a can of worms. If once it was acknowledged that state borders were up for grabs, dozens of disputes would break out. Old wounds would be re-opened all over the world. Wars would re-start. Populations would be killed. Governments would fall. There would be a recession. Hence the problem with Eastern Ukraine. It is very obvious, and undeniable, that the Russian-speaking areas of the Crimea and the Donbas are a better fit with Russia than with Ukraine, but nobody wants to acknowledge openly that redrawing state borders is on the agenda. So all the nations of Europe are in denial - Pandora's box syndrome.
