Making A Difference

The Fire In Babylon

Its roots lie in 2003, its fighting base in Syria. ISIS has Iraq half burnt.

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The Fire In Babylon
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In terms of grabbing global headlines and top prime-time news slots, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Greater Syria)—better known as ISIS—has aced most of its rivals in the game. By warring for a transnational Islamic caliphate based on the Sharia, by garnishing its reputation for ferocity with grisly posts on social media, including through its mocking Twitter handle, ‘jihadi spring’, the ISIS has , out of the blue, managed to upstage Al Qaeda and others to become one of the most feared jehadi militia in West Asia.

No wonder then that much of the string of stunning victories of the armed rebels in north and central Iraq over the past week—in which they routed the national army and  overran cities and swathes of provinces in their dramatic drive towards Baghdad—are being attributed to the ISIS.

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However, a deeper analysis clearly suggests that many Sunni groups, comprising former Baath Party members, old intelligence officers, former Republican Guard soldiers and supporters of Saddam Hussein, frustrated with the Baghdad regime’s refusal to share the developmental pie with them, are playing a critical role in the ISIS’s spectacular victories.

Mosul, Tikrit, Tal Afar, Baiji, chunks of Nineveh, Anbar and Diyala province that have fallen under the lightning, audacious strike by the ISIS, and fierce fighting near Baquba, near the rebels’ ultimate and main objective, Baghdad, have raised the spectre of Iraq plunging into another long spell of sectarian violence. Some even predict the disintegration of the country itself.

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For energy-hungry India, the turmoil in Iraq is a matter of concern, since it has a direct potential of disrupting oil supplies (Iraq is India’s second largest supplier of oil). But it’s the kidnapping of 40 Indian construction workers by rebels in Iraq that has posed a much more immediate and serious challenge for the new government in New Delhi (see box).

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Images allegedly showing ISIS men executing Iraqi soldiers. (Photograph by AFP, From Outlook 30 June 2014)

“The fall of Mosul and Tikrit in north Iraq has created an uncertain situation that has serious strategic, economic and security implications which India will have to take into account,” former Indian ambassador to Iraq R. Dayakar told Outlook.

But as the focus remains on the rebels’ steady roll towards Baghdad, a tentatively   begun realignment of key political players both within, and beyond, Iraq may offer a chance to bring an early end to the crisis. As Prime Mini­ster Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia, steps up demands to western powers, particularly the US and regional allies like Iran, it would be interesting to see how internal developments in Iraq force a new line-up of friends and enemies. While the US has promised to help out the Iraqi government in the face of a mortal threat, President Barack Obama has ruled out any possibility of American troops returning to Iraqi soil. As requested by Maliki, the US is likely to aid Iraqi forces with aerial attacks against the ISIS and its allies’ positions in Sunni-dominated areas. In all this, no one has missed the sharp irony of the Obama administration being willing to rely more on Iran for restoring normalcy in Iraq, rather than seeking help from many of its traditional allies in the region.

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The ISIS, its objectives and its current run may look like a sudden outbreak, but most  commentators trace its origins to the US-led invasion of Iraq of 2003. The imbalances created by that, they say, is to be blamed for the recrudescent bloodletting, as well as the rise of jehadi groups like the ISIS. “The ISIS wasn’t even a gleam in Al Qaeda’s eye before Tony (Blair) and Dubya (aka George W. Bush) launched their war of choice against Saddam Hussein, a secular Sunni whose agenda was quite different from religious extremists,” Douglas Little, who teac­hes history at Clark University, US, says. “Like Anthony Eden at Suez in 1956, Blair in 2003 was both ignorant and arrogant. So was Bush.”

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It was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a jehadi veteran of the Afghan campaign who fled to Iraq in 2003 and flourished in the sectarian mayhem that followed the Iraq war, who floated the outfit Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). But when the Coalition Provincial Authority—the transitional authority established after the invasion to govern Iraq—decided to ban Sad­dam’s Baath Party and disbanded the Iraqi army, rendering over 4,00,000 men jobless, the insurgency against the US-led coalition got an infusion of fresh blood.

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However, when the AQI started targeting Iraqi Shias, it triggered a series of differences betw­een it and the Al Qaeda lead­ership. AQI’s mindlessly violent creed even alienated Sunnis, who countered it by launching the Al Sahwa mov­ement that fought it. The death of Zarqawi in a US air attack in 2006 and AQI’s diminishing clout forced the outfit to go underground. It was only when trouble started in neighbouring Syria that AQI morphed into ISIS, drew strength in the civil war there and resurfaced in Iraq, battling Maliki’s Shia government forces along with Sunni insurgents and tribesmen.

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So what happens now? Will the battle between the ISIS and its Sunni allies against the Shia forces of PM Maliki lead to the unravelling of Iraq as predicted? According to Hassan Hassan of Abu Dhabi’s Delma Institute, “A credible and inclusive political process is the way forward. Sunni Iraqis willing to participate in the political process are still in the majority. But to them Maliki has shown time and again that he cannot be trusted.”

Similar views are also expressed by Toby Dodge of the London School of Economics: “It is this failure to build a sustainable and inclusive political system after regime change in 2003 and the authoritarianism of Maliki, Amer­ica’s candidate for PM, that explains the rise of ISIS and the current crisis....”

Yet, Maliki is still the preferred choice for the US and others as he’s deemed to be a ‘secular’ force pitted against the ISIS’s virulent Islamic insurgency. By all indications, he may get a third term as PM. Even if that happens, a stable and prosperous Iraq could only materialise if Maliki’s regime meaningfully pursues policies to make all sections of Iraqi society stakeholders. This balance cannot be restored if minority Sunnis in Iraq are made to pay for the crimes and injustices of the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime.

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