|
|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
|
Please take a moment to
visit and log in at the subscriber
area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this
information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in
your area.
With
Iraq on the Brink, a New Sunni Insurgency Emerges
by Jonathan Spyer
PJ Media
March 20, 2014
  Be the first of
your friends to like this.
Largely ignored by the global media, Iraq today stands on the brink of
a renewed Sunni insurgency. The emergent insurgency in Iraq is following
the same sectarian pattern as the civil war in Syria and the growing
violence in Lebanon. It also involves many of the same local and regional
players.
The rising violence in Iraq is not, however, simply the result of a
spillover from the Syrian war. It derives also from internal Iraqi
dynamics. But these are themselves in significant ways comparable to the
Syrian and Lebanese situations.
Over 9000 people were killed in fighting in Iraq in 2013. This is not
yet up to the levels of violence just prior to the surge, in the very
worst days of the insurgency against U.S. forces and the sectarian
bloodletting that accompanied it. But it's the highest since 2007. This
year, more than 2000 people have already lost their lives as a result of
political violence in Iraq.
As of today, a coalition of Sunni insurgent groups control the city of
Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province west of Baghdad. The city of Ramadi
remains partially in insurgent hands, though its southern districts have
been re-conquered by government forces in recent days.
Nor is the violence confined to Anbar province. Rather, car bombings
have become a near daily occurrence in Baghdad, and insurgent activity
against Iraqi security forces and non-Sunni civilians is taking place in
Nineveh, Mosul, Kirkuk and elsewhere in areas of high Sunni Arab population.
So who are these insurgents, and why have events in Iraq reached this
crisis point?
As in Syria, a myriad of insurgent groups have emerged. But there are
two main forces. These are ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the
Naqshbandi Army.
ISIS emerged in Iraq in 2004, and for a time constituted the official
franchise of al-Qaeda in the country. Under the leadership of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces in 2005, it became renowned for
its brutal methods.
ISIS experienced a resurgence during the Syrian civil war, and today
it controls much of Raqqa province in eastern Syria, including Raqqa
city.
In February, 2014, ISIS was "expelled" from al-Qaeda because
of its insanely brutal methods in northern Syria, which have included,
for example, execution of civilians for smoking, and for swearing.
This movement is now an active force on the insurgent council that now
governs Falluja. Its fighters also rove freely in the vast deserts of
western Anbar, making the desert highways unsafe for travelers and
government forces.
The Naqshbandi Army is a very different, and somewhat bizarre group.
It is headed by Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a former high official in Saddam
Hussein's regime. Many of the Naqshbandi commanders and fighters are
former officials or members of the Ba'ath party.
The Naqshbandis somewhat bizarrely combine their Ba'athist and
pan-Arabist outlook with support for the Naqshabandi Sufi Muslim sect of
Iraq, from which their name derives.
Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a UK based Iraqi researcher who has emerged as
a leading analyst on the emergent Iraqi insurgency, cautions against
dismissing the Naqshbandi outlook as a "total farce."
Tamimi said in a recent interview that the Sufi orientation served to
differentiate the Naqshbandi from the jihadi outlook of ISIS and other
salafi groups. But he noted that the Ba'athist and Pan-Arab element is
the dominant one, with the religious coloration perhaps an
acknowledgement of the extent to which Iraqi society has become more
religious in recent years.
In addition to these two groups, a variety of smaller militias are
operating, including, notably, tribal forces previously associated with
the "Sahwa" (Awakening) movement. This was the anti al-Qaeda
trend whose emergence was a key element in the relative success of the
U.S.-led surge in reducing violence after 2007.
|
Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
|
So what lies behind the eruption of Sunni violence?
The dawning insurgency is, on one level, the result of the
increasingly sectarian policies pursued by the government of Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki in recent years, which has gathered pace since
the last withdrawal of U.S. forces in December of 2011.
Maliki has targeted senior Sunni politicians, forcing Sunni Vice
President Tariq al-Hashemi into exile, and harassing Finance Minister
Rafi al-Issawi.
The increasing marginalization felt by the Iraqi Sunni Arab minority
birthed a large protest movement in mid-2013.
Maliki's uncompromising tactics against the protest movement in turn
paved the way for the re-igniting of insurgency in January and February
of this year.
Elections are due to take place in Iraq in April. Some observers
suspect that Maliki's hard line against the Sunnis is in part intended to
solidify Shia support for his party.
But the emergent violence in Iraq should also be seen in broader
terms. For Iraq's Sunni Arabs, the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime
and its replacement by a Shia-led government represented an existential
disaster — the toppling of the Sunni domination which had pertained in
the area since the birth of the modern Iraqi state, and for centuries
preceding its emergence.
Maliki's clumsy policies notwithstanding, a reaction against the new
Shia dominance was probably inevitable.
The Sunni uprising against the Assad regime undoubtedly provided an
impetus to Iraq's Sunni Arab population, showing that resistance was
possible, even if in the Syrian context Sunni Arabs form a majority of
the population, while in Iraq they constitute between 15-20% of the
population.
In this regard, the Maliki government's active and vital support for
the Assad regime should be factored into the equation as an additional
factor fueling Sunni anger.
Maliki has made Iraqi airspace and highways available for the
transport of vital Iranian weaponry to the Assads. He has also turned a
blind eye to the flow of Iraqi Shia volunteers heading to Syria to engage
on behalf of the regime.
ISIS, the main component of the emergent Iraqi insurgency, operates in
a contiguous area crossing the porous border between Iraq and Syria.
So in addition to its internal dynamics and origins, the Iraqi
situation also constitutes a single front in a broader sectarian war.
Iraq, a decade after the western invasion that toppled Saddam, stands
on the brink of renewed sectarian conflict. The U.S. response so far has
been to relate to Maliki as the legitimate government of Iraq, and to
supply limited aid (including several hundred Hellfire missiles) to his
"counter-insurgency."
This is a misreading of the picture. Maliki, though elected, is
engaged in sectarian warfare no less than are his Sunni opponents.
The Iraqi situation is driven by sectarian realities, Iranian
interference and the weakness of any unifying, state identity or
structure. Thus the reality of Mid-Eastern dynamics, in 2014 and for the
foreseeable future.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research
in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East
Forum.
Related
Topics: Iraq, Middle East patterns,
Radical Islam
| Jonathan Spyer This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an
integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its
author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment