Sectarian monster reawakened in Iraq

By : Ramzy Baroud

Iraqi Shiite fighters chanted “Labeiki ya Zaynab,” as they swayed, dancing with their rifles before TV news cameras in Baghdad on June 13. They were apparently getting ready for a difficult fight ahead.

That chant alone is enough to demonstrate the ugly sectarian nature of the war in Iraq, which has reached an unprecedented highpoint in recent days. Fewer than 1,000 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) advanced against Iraq’s largest city of Mosul on June 10, sending two Iraqi army divisions (nearly 30,000 soldiers) to a chaotic retreat.

Shiite cleric Ali Al-Sistani made the call to fight in a statement read on his behalf during a Friday prayer’s sermon in Kerbala.

The terrorists of whom Sistani speaks are those of ISIL, whose numbers throughout the region is estimated to be at only 7,000 fighters. They are well organized, fairly well equipped and absolutely ruthless in their conduct.

To secure their remarkable territorial gains, they quickly moved south, closing in on other Iraqi towns: They attacked and took over Baiji on June 11. On the same day, they conquered Tikrit, where ex-Baathist fighters joined them. For two days, they tried to take over Samarra, but couldn’t, only to move against Jalawala and Saaddiyah, to the east of Baghdad. It is impossible to verify reports of what is taking place in towns that fall under the control of ISIL, but considering their bloody legacy in Syria, and ISIL’s own online reporting on their own activities, one can expect the worse.

Within days, ISIL was in control of a large swathe of land which lumped together offers a new map fully altering the political boundaries of the Middle East that were largely envisioned by colonial powers France and Britain nearly a century ago.

What the future holds is difficult to predict. The US administration is petrified by the notion of getting involved in Iraq once more. It was its orginal meddling, at the behest of the neoconservatives who largely determined US foreign policy during George W. Bush’s administration that ignited this ongoing strife in the first place. They admitted failure and withdrew in Dec 2011, hoping to sustain a level of influence over the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. They failed miserably as well and it is now Iran that is an influential foreign power in Baghdad.

In fact, Iran’s influence and interests are so strong that despite much saber rattling by US President Barack Obama, the US cannot possibly modify the massively changing reality in Iraq without Iranian help. Reports in the US and British media are pointing to possible US-Iranian involvement to counter ISIL, not just in Iraq, but also in Syria.

History is accelerating at a frantic speed. Seemingly impossible alliances are being hastily formed. Maps are being redrawn in directions that are determined by masked fighters with automatic weapons mounted on the back of pickup trucks. True, no one could have predicted such events, but when some warned that the Iraq war would “destabilize” the region for many years to come, this is precisely what they meant.

When Bush led his war on Iraq in order to fight Al-Qaeda, the group simply didn’t exist in that country; the war however, brought Al-Qaeda to Iraq. A mix of hubris and ignorance of the facts — and lack of understanding of Iraq’s history — allowed the Bush administration to sustain that horrible war.

The Americans toyed with Iraq in numerous ways. They dissolved the army, dismissed all government institutions, attempted to restructure a new society based on the recommendations of Pentagon and CIA analysts in Washington D.C. and Virginia. They oppressed the Sunni Muslims, empowered Shiites and fed the flame of sectarianism with no regard to the consequences. When things didn’t go as planned, they tried to empower some Shiite groups over others, and armed some Sunni groups to fight the Iraqi resistance to the war, which was mostly made of Sunni fighters.

And the consequences were most bloody. Iraq’s civil war of 2006-07 claimed tens of thousands to be added to the ever-growing toll caused by the war adventure. No sham elections were enough to remedy the situation, no torture technique was enough to suppress the rebellion, and no fiddling with the sectarian or ethnic demographics of the country was enough to create the coveted “stability.”

In December 2011, the Americans ran away from the Iraq inferno, leaving behind a fight that was not yet settled. What is going on in Iraq right now is an integral part of the US-infused mayhem. It should be telling enough that the leader of ISIL, Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi is an Iraqi from Samarra, who fought against the Americans and was himself held and tortured in the largest US prison in Iraq, Camp Bucca for five years.

It would not be precise to make the claim that ISIL started in the dungeon of a US prison in Iraq. The ISIL story would need to be examined in greater depth since it is as stretched as the current geography of the conflict, and as mysterious as the masked characters who are blowing people up with no mercy and beheading with no regard to the upright values of the religion they purport to represent. But there can be no denial that the US ignorant orchestration of the mass oppression of Iraqis, and Sunnis in particular during the 2003 war until their much-touted withdrawal was a major factor in ISIL formation, and the horrendous levels of violence the extremist group utilizes.

It is unclear whether ISIL will be able to hold onto the territories it gained or sustain itself in a battle that involves Baghdad, Iran and the US. But a few things should be clear:

The systematic political marginalization of Iraq’s Sunni communities is both senseless and unsustainable. A new political and social contract is needed to re-order the mess created by the US invasion and other foreign intervention in Iraq, including that of Iran.

The nature of the conflict has become so convoluted that a political settlement in Iraq would have to tackle a similar settlement in Syria, which is serving as a breeding ground for brutality, by the Syrian regime and opposition forces, especially ISIL. That factory of radicalization must close down as soon as possible in a way that would allow Syria’s wounds, and by extension Iraq’s, to heal.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.