The story told by locals was that they had reached an agreement with the British not to patrol in their town, this agreement had been broken, one local man had been shot dead and it was then they had grabbed their weapons and hunted down the RMPs who were unluckily visiting the police station.
I had as a bodyguard a fierce looking local man called Maythem al-Muhammadawi, who sat in the back of the car with a sub-machine gun cradled on his knee and talked of his days as a guerrilla fighting Saddam Hussein. We did not stay long at the burned out police station before Maythem decided that groups of young men with guns standing around it were beginning to look menacing. On the return journey he confided that: "We are just waiting for our religious leaders to issue a fatwa against the occupation and then we will fight the occupation. If we give up our weapons, how can we fight?" It was the occupation itself, not lack of electricity or engagement with local people, that was the source of their fury.
Shia towns in southern Iraq like Majar al-Kabir have not done badly in the past 10 years. Like the Kurds of the KRG they benefit from living in an area where one community is in an overwhelming majority.
Security is good, though jobs are scarce. The Shia benefit from their parties being dominant in central government, dysfunctional though it is. It is in Baghdad, central Iraq and Sunni areas where violence is worst and any new crisis might first explode.
How likely is a fresh political explosion in Iraq? A bloody but essentially stable balance of power between communities and their foreign backers existed from 2008 to the end of 2011. Since then the Syrian civil war, the US departure from Iraq, the regional Sunni-Shia conflict and the US-led offensive against Iran are all powerfully destabilising forces for a country as divided as Iraq. Its leaders gloomily predict things will get worse and they may be right.
But Iraqi parties have a lot to lose as well as gain from a new paroxysm of violence which may well destroy the country. The Kurds are doing better than other Iraqis but their boom would not long survive a war along the "trigger line". Instead of improving their condition, the Sunni might be finally pushed out of Baghdad. The Shia will be weakened by their failure to hold Iraq together and will become even more dependent on Iran. All parties have strength enough to fight but not to be sure of success. Nevertheless, the political temperature in Iraq is rising to dangerous levels in a region convulsed by political change and an explosion may not be far off.
CONFRONTING ISIS (2014)
Bombing ISIS targets in Kobani, Syria, 22 October 2014
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
ANARCHY IN IRAQ
Islamic militants have captured Iraq's northern capital, Mosul, in a devastating defeat for the Iraqi government, whose forces fled the city discarding weapons and uniforms.
The victory by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) is likely to transform the politics of the Middle East as foreign powers realise that an al-Qa'ida-type group has gained control over a large part of northern Iraq and northern Syria. The US said it supported a "strong, co-ordinated response to push back against this aggression".
An Iraqi army colonel admitted: "We have lost Mosul this morning. Army and police forces left their positions and Isis terrorists are in full control. It's a total collapse of the security forces."
As well as police stations, army bases and the airport, the insurgents have captured two prisons and freed 1,200 prisoners, many of them Isis fighters. Roads out of Mosul are choked with refugees heading for what they hope is safety in Kurdish held territory.
A university lecturer from a well-known family in Mosul told The Independent: "Mosul has fallen completely into the hands of the terrorists. Everyone is fleeing. It's after midnight here. We are also packing up to leave home, but we have no idea where to go."
In Baghdad the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has asked parliament to declare a state of emergency and called on the international community to support Iraq in its fight against "terrorism".
But in the streets of the capital, where the population is mostly Shia, there is growing panic and fear that Isis forces may take the Sunni city of Tikrit, which they are approaching, and then move on to Baghdad.
One woman in Baghdad, who did not want to give her name, said: "People are buying up food and may not come to work tomorrow because they think the situation is going to get worse."
She added that her relatives in Mosul who had been living in the western part of the city, which is bisected by the Tigris River, have moved to the eastern side that contains large Kurdish districts and is defended by well-trained and resolute Kurdish Peshmerga troops. She said: "People in Mosul have seen government forces run away so they think the government will use aircraft to bomb Mosul indiscriminately."
Mosul is a majority Sunni Arab city and traditionally the home of many families that joined the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein. His defence minister was normally somebody from the area. Ever since the US-led invasion in 2003, control of the city by Baghdad has been unstable. In 2004 it was stormed by Sunni insurgents who captured most of it and held it for three days until they retreated after the US military appealed to the Kurds to send Peshmerga units from Dohuk inside the KRG.
Could this happen again? Many of the refugees fleeing towards the KRG and the Kurdish capital, Arbil, are Sunni Arabs but they are likely to be joined by members of small sects and ethnic groups such as the Yazidis and Shabak, whom Isis might kill.
The Kurds lay claim to large parts of Nineveh province though not to Mosul itself. The Isis success shows that the local Sunni political leadership has little influence since the governor Atheel Nujaifi only narrowly escaped from his provincial headquarters before Isis captured it. His brother Osama, the Speaker of parliament, called on Massoud Barzani, President of the KRG, to send Peshmerga to recapture Mosul from "terrorists".
What will the Iraqi government do now? It could counter-attack and in theory it has 900,000 soldiers under arms. But the Iraqi army is more of a patronage system to provide jobs rather than a trained military force.
Though Isis took Falluja, 40 miles west of Baghdad, in January the government has shelled it and dropped barrel bombs but has failed to retake it. Soldiers in Anbar province, where much of the fighting has been concentrated, complain that money for their food and fuel is embezzled by officers and many have deserted.
Even so, the failure of the Iraqi armed forces to fight in Mosul is very striking. "We can't beat them," one officer told a news agency. "They're trained in street fighting and we're not. We need a whole army to drive them out of Mosul. They're like ghosts; they appear to hit and disappear within seconds." Two army officers claim that the security forces were ordered out of the city after the fall of the Ghizlani base which had contained 200 prisoners in a high-security prison. A further 1,000 inmates escaped from a prison called Badush, west of the city. The army and police set fire to fuel dumps and ammunition depots as they retreated, but there is no doubt that the insurgents will have captured large quantities of weapons.
Isis has grown swiftly in strength over the past three years under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Dua, who took over in 2010 after its previous commanders were killed. It has since become highly organised and controlled from the centre, becoming more merciless and fanatical. Its propaganda films frequently show non-Sunni Muslims being executed and its reputation for savagery may have helped demoralise the Iraqi security forces in Mosul.
The resurgence of Isis is also explained by the Iraqi Sunni, some five or six million, being emboldened by the revolt of the Sunni in Syria in 2011. Peaceful protests mutated into armed action. The Sunni uprisings in Iraq and Syria have combined into one crisis.
Saturday, 14 June 2014
IRAN MAKES ITS MOVE
Iran is moving to stop Isis from capturing Baghdad and the provinces immediately to the north of the capital. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is taking a central role in planning and strategy in Baghdad in the wake of the disint
egration of the Iraqi army in the country's north, an Iraqi source has told The Independent.
With the Iraqi army command discredited by recent defeats, the aim of the IRGC is to create a new and more effective fighting force by putting together trustworthy elements of the old army and the Shia militias. According to the source, the aim of the new force would be to give priority "to stabilising the front and rolling it back at least into Samarra and the contested areas of Diyala".
The Iraqi army has 14 divisions, of which four were involved in last week's debacle, but there is no sign of the remaining units rallying and staging a counterattack. Meanwhile, reports of summary executions by Isis fighters began to emerge. The UN expressed concern at the reports even before a Twitter account thought to be controlled by Isis claimed 1,700 Shia troops had been executed.
Militants have captured two towns, Jalula and Sadiyah, in the mixed Sunni-Shia-Kurdish Diyala province. Sadiyah is only 60 miles from Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions without offering any resistance after being given an ultimatum that they must hand over their weapons if they wanted to leave unharmed.
The Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, told the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, by phone that Iraq, with its long common border with Iran and a 60 per cent Shia majority, is Iran's most important ally.
The Iranians are horrified by the sudden military collapse of their ally and the prospect of a viscerally anti-Shia quasi-independent Sunni state emerging in northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. This would create problems for Iran in Syria where it has been struggling with some success to stabilise the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
The leading Shia clerics in Iraq are likewise anxious about the future of Iraq as the first Arab state to be ruled by Shia since the days of Saladin (in the 12th century).
The senior cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbaklai, who normally represents the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shia spiritual leader in Iraq, said at Friday prayers "that citizens who can carry weapons and fight the terrorists in defence of their country, its people and its holy sites should volunteer and join the security forces".
The US, Britain and their allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf might object to further Iranian involvement in Iraq. On the other hand, Washington's only effective alternative policy would be air strikes, but even these may not be enough to put down what is turning into a general uprising of the Sunni community in Iraq, which is five or six million strong and mainly concentrated in the north and west.
It is becoming clear that Isis is not the only Sunni militant group involved in the Sunni insurgents' multipronged offensive that was carefully co-ordinated. Among those engaged are the Jaish Naqshbandi, led by Saddam Hussein's former deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, former members of the Baath party, the Mukhbarat security services and the Special Republican Guard. It is these groups, rather than Isis, which captured Tikrit.
Mr Maliki has blamed "a conspiracy" for the army failing to fight and, though he produced no evidence, it is possible senior Sunni officers in the Iraqi army were involved in a plot. Some 80 per cent of the senior officers in Saddam Hussein's army are estimated to have been Sunni and Mosul was famous as the home of many of them. Saddam traditionally picked his defence minister from Mosul.
Isis fighters are the shock troops of the Sunni offensive but are also part of a broad anti-government coalition, the unity of which may be difficult to maintain if Isis gives full range to its bigoted anti-Shia ideology and starts destroying their mosques, churches and other religious monuments. Some leaflets circulating in Mosul insist that women should not leave the house unless absolutely necessary.
The victories of Isis over superior forces in such a short space of time will greatly increase its prestige and its appeal to the Sunni not only in Iraq but in the rest of the Muslim world. It has also captured military equipment including at least two helicopters. Government forces have made some air attacks - such as one against a mosque in Tikrit yesterday - but not enough to prevent the advance of Isis, whose commanders are eager not to give their enemy time to reorganise. Intoxicated by unexpected success the Isis fighters will be difficult to stop.
For the moment, the government in Baghdad appears paralysed, Mr Maliki having failed to assemble a quorum in parliament to give him emergency powers. But even if such powers had been secured it is not clear how far they would enable him to tackle his main problem, which is that security forces are refusing to fight.
Sunday, 13 July 2014
HOW SAUDIS HELPED ISIS TAKE OVER NORTHERN IRAQ
How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Sometime before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."
The fatal moment predicted by Prince Bandar may now have come for many Shia, with Saudi Arabia playing an important role in bringing it about by supporting the anti-Shia jihad in Iraq and Syria. Since the capture of Mosul by the Isis on 10 June, Shia women and children have been killed in villages south of Kirkuk, and Shia air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit.
In Mosul, Shia shrines and mosques have been blown up, and in the nearby Shia Turkoman city of Tal Afar 4,000 houses have been taken over by Isis fighters as "spoils of war". Simply to be identified as Shia or a related sect, such as the Alawites, in Sunni rebel-held parts of Iraq and Syria today, has become as dangerous as being a Jew was in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe in 1940.
There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al-Qa'ida-type jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasised the significance of Prince Bandar's words, saying that they constituted "a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed".
He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. He said: "Such things simply do not happen spontaneously." This sounds realistic since the tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with Isis without their consent.
Dearlove's explosive revelation about the prediction of a day of reckoning for the Shia by Prince Bandar, and the former head of MI6's view that Saudi Arabia is involved in the Isis-led Sunni rebellion, has attracted surprisingly little attention. Coverage of Dearlove's speech focused instead on his main theme that the threat from Isis to the West is being exaggerated because, unlike Bin Laden's al-Qa'ida, it is absorbed in a new conflict that "is essentially Muslim on Muslim". Unfortunately, Christians in areas captured by Isis are finding this is not true, as their churches are desecrated and they are forced to flee. A difference between al-Qa'ida and Isis is that the latter is much better organised; if it does attack Western targets the results are likely to be devastating.
The forecast by Prince Bandar, who was at the heart of Saudi security policy for more than three decades, that the 100 million Shia in the Middle East face disaster at the hands of the Sunni majority, will convince many Shia that they are the victims of a Saudi-led campaign to crush them. "The Shia in general are getting very frightened after what happened in northern Iraq," said an Iraqi commentator, who did not want his name published. Shia see the th
reat as not only military but stemming from the expanded influence over mainstream Sunni Islam of Wahhabism, the puritanical and intolerant version of Islam espoused by Saudi Arabia that condemns Shia and other Islamic sects as non-Muslim apostates and polytheists.
Dearlove says that he has no inside knowledge obtained since he retired as head of MI6 10 years ago to become Master of Pembroke College in Cambridge. But, drawing on past experience, he sees Saudi strategic thinking as being shaped by two deep-seated beliefs or attitudes. First, they are convinced that there "can be no legitimate or admissible challenge to the Islamic purity of their Wahhabi credentials as guardians of Islam's holiest shrines". But, perhaps more significantly given the deepening Sunni-Shia confrontation, the Saudi belief that they possess a monopoly of Islamic truth leads them to be "deeply attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge Shia-dom".
Western governments traditionally play down the connection between Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabist faith, on the one hand, and jihadism, whether of the variety espoused by Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida or by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's Isis. There is nothing conspiratorial or secret about these links: 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as was Bin Laden and most of the private donors who funded the operation.
The difference between al-Qa'ida and Isis can be overstated: when Bin Laden was killed by United States forces in 2011, al-Baghdadi released a statement eulogising him, and Isis pledged to launch 100 attacks in revenge for his death.
But there has always been a second theme to Saudi policy towards al-Qa'ida type jihadis, contradicting Prince Bandar's approach and seeing jihadis as a mortal threat to the Kingdom. Dearlove illustrates this attitude by relating how, soon after 9/11, he visited the Saudi capital Riyadh with Tony Blair.
Iraq- The West Shakes Up The Middle East Page 26
