About a century ago, after World War I, British and French leaders carved up the Middle East and set the modern borders of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Now a growing force of Sunni extremists fighting under the banner of the Islamic State are creating a new nation in the same region ... at gunpoint. Its boundaries are not yet set in ink on a map. But the jihadists have seized vast chunks of Syria and Iraq with a clear goal: Establish a new “caliphate,” an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader. Theirs would be a kingdom where justice is dispensed by bullet, blade and sheer savagery.

For America this is a geopolitical crisis that threatens allies in the region. For people who live there this is an existential crisis that many of them cannot survive without more help from Western powers and Arab countries in the jihadists’ sights.

In recent days, Islamic State jihadists chased off Kurdish peshmerga fighters with surprising ease. Now the insurgents have trapped 40,000 members of the Yazidi religious sect on Mount Sinjar, a barren mountaintop in northern Iraq. The assailants’ plan: Wait for the Yazidis to die of thirst or starvation, or to come down the mountain to be slaughtered. In response, President Barack Obama ordered humanitarian food drops and targeted airstrikes to break the militants’ stranglehold. He cited humanitarian reasons for returning U.S. warplanes to the skies over Iraq.

The ordeal of the Yazidis illuminates a larger truth about the Islamic State. This isn’t a hit-and-run al-Qaida wannabe, shuffling about the deserts, seeking safe havens to plot terror. It is an efficient, battled-ready army that conquers and holds territory. It seeks to control strategic towns near oil fields and Iraqi border crossings with Syria, so it can ferry soldiers and supplies at will.

And it rules with brutality. In Syria, Islamic State fighters hoisted the severed heads of Syrian soldiers on poles. The militants have posted videos of crucifixions and public executions. They executed dozens of Yazidi men and kept their wives for unmarried jihadists, The New York Times reports.

The Islamic State is on the march across Iraq, Syria and even launching military incursions into Lebanon. Last week the militants seized a strategic Iraq dam that provides water and electricity to a wide swath of the country. They can now cut off the water and power or, as they have before, use water as a weapon by flooding homes and schools, forcing more to flee.

The unthinkable ― the fall of Baghdad ― is now thinkable.

All of this brings into focus the primary goal for the U.S. and its allies: Reverse the rampage of the Islamic State. End its state of siege. Relieve a fracturing Iraq.

One way to do that: Give more and better weaponry to the best fighting force in Iraq, the peshmerga. Last week the Kurdish fighters attacked Islamic State forces near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, a welcome counteroffensive to break the Islamists’ momentum. For the first time, the Iraqi government says it will offer air support to Kurdish fighters. Smart move ― and long overdue.

Obama vows that U.S. soldiers won’t return to a combat role in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. can order a few airstrikes, drop some food, and move on.

“With Iran and Saudi Arabia locked in a proxy war in Syria, Saudi Arabia competing with Qatar and Turkey for influence throughout the region, and Kurds ― themselves hardly united ― leaning ever further toward independence, it is not realistic to expect a coherent strategy for confronting (the Islamic State) to emerge from the region,” Noah Bonsey of the International Crisis Group told The Times. “The U.S. has the clout and capacity to build partnerships capable of reversing (Islamic State) gains, but seems to lack the necessary vision and will.”

We’ll see if that reluctance evolves to willingness as the threat grows. It should.

Sending weapons to the Kurds does not pose the same risks as arming Syrian rebels battling Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Kurds can be trusted not to pass weapons to terrorists. They fight to defend their territory, not to enslave or kill those who don’t toe an extremist Islamic line. It is true that, someday, the Kurds could use U.S. weapons in a long-deferred bid for independence. But there won’t be an Iraq for the Kurds to gain independence from if the jihadists establish a de facto nation.

A new map takes shape in the Middle East, one with a menacing power that imperils the lives of millions. It also imperils the national security interests of the U.S. and its allies across the region and beyond.

(Chicago Tribune)

(MCT Information Services)