Category: The Dish

ISIL's headway in Iraq may embolden Kurds in region strategically http://t.co/l7l2b6jz28 pic.twitter.com/8ZuveARblm

— Today's Zaman (@todayszamancom) June 12, 2014

That’s what Michael Knights proposes to fend off the ISIS menace:

The geometry of the battlefield makes the Kurds particularly vital: ISIS pursued Iraq’s retreating forces south of Mosul for over 200 miles, with most units ordered to rally on Taji in Baghdad’s northern suburbs. This has given ISIS significant depth on the north-south axis, meaning that the government may need to painstakingly retake a sequence of key insurgent-held cities in turn. But due to the Kurds’ advanced positions all along ISIS’ eastern flank, the jihadist movement has very little west-east strategic depth if key centres like Mosul were counterattacked from the Kurdish-held areas. Kurdistan has offered the use of its airbases to U.S. forces many times, and they would be an ideal place from which to conduct limited U.S. airstrikes. This was precisely the formula – U.S. special forces advisers and pesh mergas – that crumbled Saddam’s hold on Mosul and northern Iraq in a matter of days in 2003.

The Iraqi Kurds are generous and brave: they hate the extremism of radical jihadist groups and will not tolerate a major jihadist center in Mosul, located just an hour’s drive east of the shining new skyscrapers of Erbil, the Kurdish capital. Indeed social media reporting of Kurdish martyrs in the fight against ISIS are proliferating. The Kurdish pesh merga are already fighting ISIS at half a dozen points from the Syrian border to Iran, with Baghdad’s air forces in support in some areas.

Jay Newton-Small takes a closer look at what the Kurds stand to gain from this conflict:

The fact that an estimated 5,000 ISIS fighters now stand between Erbil and Baghdad only serves as a physical barricade of a partition that has been in effect for at least six months, if not years. As Iraq falls apart, the Kurds are discretely moving towards their long-sought-after goal of an independent state. “We’ve said all along that we won’t break away from Iraq but Iraq may break away from us, and it seems that it is,” Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government, tells TIME. “There’s been many times that we felt it could happen, that it was only a matter of time that it would happen, and it has.”

Talabani also argues that his government would be a better ally for the US than Maliki’s. In an interview with Eli Lake, he claims that the Kurds aren’t gunning for a land grab:

Talabani told The Daily Beast that the Peshmerga deployment to Kirkuk was actually approved by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “No one has asked us to abandon those posts in Kirkuk,” Talabani said. “On the contrary, the Iraqi prime minister’s office gave us the green light to do what we can to protect as much territory as we can in the north.” The fact that Peshmerga secured positions in Kirkuk with the blessing of Maliki’s Shi’ite-dominated government is in itself a sign of how desperate things have become. …

Talabani said the presence of Peshmerga troops at Kirkuk—which has significant oil resources itself—does not change its status. “It doesn’t change anything on the ground, ultimately we have said Kirkuk belongs to the Kirkukis,” he said. “It’s something we always felt rests with the people of Kirkuk. The fact that there are no longer Iraqi units outside the city, it does not change Kirkuk’s status in the country.”

Keating, however, doubts the Kurds will hand their gains back to Baghdad without extracting some major concessions:

If ISIS is eventually beaten back, it’s likely going to require the help of what seems to be the country’s most organized fighting force, and the conflict will likely end with Kirkuk and several other cities under the control of Kurdish forces. The Kurds may cede these gains back to Baghdad, but I’d expect their price to be high.

Finally, in an interview we highlighted earlier today, Kirk Sowell pushes back on the notion that the Kurds have been operating some kind of autonomous paradise, noting that after an oil dispute the Maliki government had stopped making the monthly payments on which the Kurds were deeply dependent:

[C]oming in to this crisis, the Kurds were on the verge of insolvency. Like, complete insolvency. The only thing that kept them alive was that the Barzanis and the Talabanis [leading Kurdish families] have massive amounts of money stored back that they’d been stealing all of these years. They used it to keep the Kurdish region afloat, or at least pay the peshmerga [independent Kurdish militias].

He calls the new conflict with ISIS a “lifeline” for the Kurds:

Maybe they can get Baghdad to restore their payments, maybe they can’t. If Baghdad doesn’t restore their payments, they might as well declare independence right now. Now that they control Kirkuk, they can export the oil they control to Turkey. They don’t yet have the infrastructure to replace what they were getting from Baghdad, so it would be rough for a year or two. But eventually they’d do OK. So they’re really the big winners here.

Harith Hasan examines how Iraq’s Sunni population views ISIS:

Most Sunnis maintain their suspicious view of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, but they do not see ISIS as a good alternative. It is true that ISIS has largely invested in the sectarian tension in Iraq and the region, but its objectives go beyond the Iraqi borders or the major concerns of Iraq’s Sunni community. Through its simultaneous involvement in Syria and Iraq, ISIS established its distinct entity and identity with an agenda that is largely indifferent to Iraqi politics.

However, fighting ISIS has yet to become a Sunni priority. One reason is the growing strength of the organization and its proven ability to carry out revenge against “traitors,” as was the case with the assassination of Khamis Abu Risha, a leader in the anti al-Qaeda awakening groups (Sahwa) which previously were a key voice in the anti-government rallies in Anbar. Second, the Sunni elite is divided and increasingly incapable of determining its communal priorities, and some of its members think that the main problem lies in the policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government.

Joshua Landis offers an ominous prediction about the coming Shiite backlash:

I would not be shocked to see significant ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad should ISIS attack and give the Iraqi Army a run for its money.

After all, the Iraqi army is large, has helicopters, sophisticated intelligence capabilities, tanks, artillery and all the rest. They were caught napping and without esprit de corps, much as the Syrian army was. But capable officers will emerge who will strip down the “power-sharing” fat that the US built and rebuild it based on loyalty to Maliki and Shiism, if most of that has not been done already. This is what happened in Syria, when we saw the Syrian Army unravel at the base during the first year of the Sunni uprising. The Syrian military was quickly rebuilt along sectarian and regional lines to make it much stronger and more loyal, with locally recruited Iranian style National Defense Forces modeled on the Islamic Guard. If Sunnis choose to form such local militias and ally with the Shiite regime, so much the better. If they do not and choose to lay low until they figure out whether ISIS can win in their regions, the Shiites will go it alone and assume all Sunnis are a fifth column.

In an fascinating interview with Zack Beauchamp, Iraqi politics expert Kirk Sowell highlights the near-complete unviability of ISIS-controlled Iraq:

[T]here’s no money [in northwest Sunni Iraq]. All these provinces are dependent on Baghdad for their budgets. This is what held Iraq together all these years — it would have fallen apart years ago had it not been for this financial dependence. Anbar [an insurgent-controlled Sunni province] is totally dependent; over 95 percent of their money comes from Baghdad. They got a little bit of money from customs when they controlled the [Syrian] border, but they don’t even get that now. Ninevah [the insurgent-controlled province containing Mosul] is going to suffer a complete economic collapse. …

[E]ven if the insurgents had some oil, [which they don’t,] they couldn’t develop it. They’re able to make use of the Syrian oil infrastructure because it’s already developed; but to the extent that there are oil reserves in the insurgent-controlled territory they’re not developed. So there’s nothing to sell.

So in principle they could make their own state, but only if they’d be willing to starve. It’d be a permanent downward economic spiral — like Gaza, basically.

Meanwhile, Shireen T. Hunter argues that the most significant factor in Iraq’s political instability is “the inability of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and its Sunni neighbors to come to terms with a government in which the Shias, by virtue of their considerable majority in Iraq’s population, hold the leading role.” She even claims that the Maliki government’s closeness to Iran was not so much a choice as a necessity after being isolated by the country’s Sunni neighbors:

In short, by exaggerating the sectarian factor, Iraq’s Sunni neighbors have exacerbated Shia fears and made it more difficult for them to pursue a more inclusive policy vis-à-vis the Sunnis. Further, most killings in Iraq have been in Shia areas, undertaken by Sunni extremists of various kinds who are funded by Sunni governments in the region. The plight of the Shias has also not been limited to Iraq. Similar mistreatment in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan has gone unnoticed by the West, while the exclusion of Iraq’s Sunnis from leadership posts in Baghdad has been blown out of proportion. Western and especially US dislike of Iran has been a major cause for the disregarding of mass killings and assassination of Shias.

But Nussaibah Younis insists that most Sunni grievances are legitimate and must be treated seriously, especially now:

Iraqi Sunnis don’t want to be governed by Isis, they don’t support the massacre of Shia civilians and they don’t want another civil war. But they also don’t believe there is a place for them in Maliki’s Iraq. Iraq’s politicians must persuade them that a future does exist in which Sunnis can participate as equal citizens in an Iraqi state, and that this is something worth fighting for.

I glean from much of this that Obama’s caution is easily the smartest posture. ISIS may well have begun a process by which they are destroyed. And allowing your foes to self-destruct is a talent of the president’s over the years.

(Photo: Iraqi men, who volunteered to fight against the Jihadist militants, gather around buses in Baghdad, ahead of being transported for training at Taji infantry camp on the outskirts of Baghdad, on June 16, 2014, as security forces are bolstering defenses in the capital. By Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty Images.)

When it comes to confronting ISIS, Matt Steinglass encourages the US to embrace a supporting, rather than primary, role:

It is much easier and less risky for America to aid the Iraqi government as part of an anti-ISIS coalition with Turkey and Iran than to do so in the guise of Iraq’s leading patron or ISIS’s archenemy. And a limited programme of military aid might be enough to ward off Republican attacks that the administration is doing nothing about ISIS; critics will be hard pressed to explain to a war-weary public why America should be doing even more to reinsert itself into Sunni-Shiite bloodshed in Iraq. This, in fact, appears to be the policy the Obama administration has selected.

I don’t see why the president should do anything to satiate the desires of the neocons – even a “limited program” of military aid. We’ve already given Maliki a huge amount of aid and he has proven unable to use it wisely. Without some serious concession to the Sunni minority – something I cannot see happening for real – it would merely increase the likelihood of ISIS getting its hands on our aid, rather than having it actually making the slightest bit of difference. But if this scenario rings a bell for you, you’re not hallucinating:

Iran, Turkey, and other regional players will have to take the lead in backing the Iraqi government and combating ISIS, because America lacks the expertise, the political will, and ultimately the capacity to do that job. We’ve tried it; it didn’t work. Perhaps the endgame will end up looking something like what happened in South-East Asia 40 years ago. After America’s departure and the collapse of its hapless proxies, regional powers moved in to assert their interests and create a new geopolitical order.

It’s not an accident that the latest Kagan war-manifesto also argues that we should never have left Vietnam either. Janine Davidson, who rejects the viability of airstrikes, thinks pre-conditioned aid is probably America’s only rational play:

[W]e can help Iraq get its security forces back in order.  The uncomfortable truth is that it will take time. Iraq is in for a long, hard fight; any assistance the United States provides cannot be a quick, one-off effort.

More importantly, a successful strategy will require pressure on Maliki, whose horrifying treatment of the Sunni minority is largely attributable to Iraq’s current woes. As Dr. Walter Ladwig observed in his review of the United States’ new counterinsurgency doctrine, outside intervention in such conflicts can only succeed if the host nation is willing to change its ways—this, in turn, requires a motivating event and outside pressure[.]

Meanwhile, Gordan Chang is waiting for China to finally throw its weight around:

[The Chinese] would have a much harder time [than the US]  if Iraq’s 3.7% of global production suddenly went offline.  China, which is increasingly dependent on energy imports, is now that country’s largest foreign customer, taking an average 1.5 million barrels a day, almost half of Iraq’s production. China National Petroleum Corp., a state enterprise, swooped up Iraqi oil after last decade’s war—Beijing, by the way, sold arms that ended up in the hands of insurgents fighting Americans—by accepting Baghdad’s razor-thin margins and onerous conditions.

Then, many said it was China that won the Iraq War because it signed the major oil deals afterwards. As a result, Beijing now has a lot riding on the outcome in Iraq as ISIS takes on the Shiite-dominated ruling group in Baghdad.

But Russia, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, is likely to butt out:

Despite the serious Russian-US standoff over Ukraine, Moscow will definitely not try to play the role of spoiler and exacerbate the problems the United States faces in the region. There is too high a risk of collapse of the entire regional system, so close to the Russian borders. This is even more so because Russia-friendly Iran in this situation is as interested as the United States in maintaining the status quo in Iraq.

Moscow, however, is unlikely to undertake active efforts to assist Washington. For the Russian leadership, as well as for Russian public opinion, what is happening in Iraq is a verdict on the entire US policy after the Cold War, and the symbol of the resounding failure of those who only recently displayed the utmost arrogance toward everyone who disagreed with their policies. Putin sees in Iraq yet further proof of how right he was.

Analyzing ISIS’s strategic position, Bill Roggio sees the militants’ moves so far as part of an effort to encircle the capital, very similar to the strategy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Islamic State of Iraq employed in 2006:

The ISIS advance toward Baghdad may be temporarily held off as the government rallies its remaining security forces and Shia militias organize for the upcoming battle. But at the least, ISIS should be able to take control of some Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and wreak havoc on the city with IEDs, ambushes, single suicide attacks, and suicide assaults that target civilians, the government, security forces, and foreign installations. Additionally, the brutal sectarian slaughter of Sunni and Shia alike that punctuated the violence in Baghdad from 2005 to 2007 is likely to return as Shia militias and ISIS fighters roam the streets.

Meanwhile, many Western embassy personnel are being evacuated and bombings are already happening in and around the city:

In Baghdad on Sunday, a suicide attacker detonated explosives in a vest he was wearing, killing at least nine people and wounding 20 in a crowded street in the centre of the capital, police and medical sources said. At least six people were killed, including three soldiers and three volunteers, when four mortars landed at a recruiting centre in Khlais, 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad. Volunteers were gathered by army to join fighting to regain control of the northern town of Udhaim from ISIL militants.

Nader Uskowi adds that the militants’ capture of the Turkmen-majority city of Tal Afar yesterday strengthens their position in Iraq’s northwest:

With the capture of Tal Afar, the ISIL now controls the entire Nineveh province, solidifying their grip on the Tigris valley north of Baghdad. The insurgents want to establish an Islamic caliphate in the area. …

Meanwhile, there were reports of heavy fighting on Sunday between Iraqi security forces and ISIL in the city of Baquba, 37 miles northeast of Baghdad, and the provincial capital of Diyala. If the city were to fall, the insurgents will have three-pronged access to Baghdad: from Anbar to the west, Nineveh and Salahuddin to the north, and from Diyala to the northeast.

And Maliki is calling up his Iranian-trained Shiite militias to defend it:

Before the fall of Mosul this week, the activities of both Asaib [Ahl Haq] and Kataeb Hezbollah had been kept out of the open. Politicians and group members acknowledged the militias’ activities in private, but government spokesmen and Asaib and Kataeb Hezbollah publicly denied their involvement in fighting. Now, with Sunni armed groups pushing to break through Baghdad’s western, northern, southern and eastern edges, Asaib and Kataeb Hezbollah are at the tip of the vanguard of informal volunteers. No one bothers to pretend any more that the fighters are not patrolling and battling in Baghdad’s hinterlands.

Amid rumors and allegations of Iranian advisers or units working in Iraq to defend Shiite territories, the likelihood is that any Iranian presence is tied to these groups, which have been nurtured and trained by Iraq’s neighbor for years.

If ISIS fails to capture Baghdad, James Barnes expects the group to fail spectacularly:

ISIS took over Mosul, parts of Kirkuk and then moved south to Tikrit and have been on the march since. Since then, the Kurds in the north have retaken Kirkuk (they did it in a day) and have sworn to defend Iraqi Kurdistan from any incursion. Mosul is within spitting distance of Kurdish forces and they could, frankly, invade and begin retaking it at any time if they chose to. Western Iraq is a desert and if ISIS is routed on its way to Baghdad and tries to retreat back into Syria it will have an enormous problem doing so. They’d have to either go back north whence they came and possibly face Kurdish forces or they’d have to head straight west across the desert where they’d be sitting ducks for Iraqi (or even Iranian) air strikes. This is a classic case of bad strategy on the part of ISIS. They can get in but unless they take the capital of Baghdad then they have no way of getting out and despite what the news is saying, Iraqi Sunnis don’t have the stomach to engage in a protracted civil war. They’re too few in number, no one would support them, and they’re ultimately Iraqis, not heart eating al-Qa’ida affiliates.

(Map by the Long War Journal)