Playing the Al-Qaeda Card to the Last Iraqi
International,
regional and internal players vying for interests, wealth, power or
influence are all beneficiaries of the “al-Qaeda threat” in Iraq and in
spite of their deadly and bloody competitions they agree only on two
denominators, namely that the presence of the U.S.-installed and
Iran–supported sectarian government in Baghdad and its sectarian
al-Qaeda antithesis are the necessary casus belli for their proxy wars,
which are tearing apart the social fabric of the Iraqi society,
disintegrating the national unity of Iraq and bleeding its population to
the last Iraqi.
The Iraqi people seem a passive player, paying in their blood for all this Machiavellian dirty politics. The
war which the U.S. unleashed by its invasion of Iraq in 2003
undoubtedly continues and the bleeding of the Iraqi people continues as
well.
According to the UN
Assistance Mission to Iraq , 34452 Iraqis were killed since 2008 and
more than ten thousand were killed in 2013 during which suicide bombings
more than tripled according to the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk’s recent testimony
before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The AFP reported that
more than one thousand Iraqis were killed in last January. The UN
refugee agency UNHCR, citing Iraqi government figures, says that more
than 140,000 Iraqis have already been displaced from Iraq ’s western
province of Anbar .
Both the United States and
Russia are now supplying Iraq with multi–billion arms sales to empower
the sectarian government in Baghdad to defeat the sectarian “al-Qaeda
threat.” They see a casus
belli in al–Qaeda to regain a lost ground in Iraq, the first to
rebalance its influence against Iran in a country where it had paid a
heavy price in human souls and taxpayer money only for Iran to reap the
exploits of its invasion of 2003 while the second could not close an
opened Iraqi window of opportunity to re-enter the country as an
exporter of arms who used to be the major supplier of weaponry to the
Iraqi military before the U.S. invasion.
Regionally, Iraq’s ambassador to Iran Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh
announced earlier this month that Baghdad has signed an agreement with
Tehran “to purchase weapons and military equipment;” Iraqi Defense
Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a memorandum of understanding to
strengthen defense and security agreements with Iran last September.
Meanwhile Syria , which is totally preoccupied with fighting a three
–year old wide spread terrorist insurgency within its borders, could not
but coordinate defense with the Iraq military against the common enemy
of the “al-Qaeda threat” in both countries.
Counterbalancing politically and militarily, Turkey and the GCC
countries led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in their anti-Iran proxy wars
in Iraq and Syria, are pouring billions of petrodollars to empower a
sectarian counterbalance by money, arms and political support, which end
up empowering al–Qaeda indirectly or its sectarian allies directly,
thus perpetuating the war and fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq, as a
part of an unabated effort to contain Iran’s expanding regional sphere
of influence.
Ironically, the Turkish member of the U.S.–led NATO as well as the
GCC Arab NATO non–member “partners” seem to stand on the opposite side
with their U.S. strategic ally in the Iraqi war in this tragic drama of
Machiavellian dirty politics.
Internally, the three major partners in the “political process” are
no less Machiavellian in their exploiting of the al-Qaeda card. The
self–ruled northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, which counts down for the
right timing for secession, could not be but happy with the
preoccupation of the central government in Baghdad with the “al–Qaeda
threat.” Pro-Iran Shiite sectarian parties and militias use this threat
to strengthen their sectarian bond and justify their loyalty to Iran as
their protector. Their Sunni sectarian rivals are using the threat to
promote themselves as the “alternative” to al-Qaeda in representing the
Sunnis and to justify their seeking financial, political and
paramilitary support from the U.S. , GCC and Turkey , allegedly to
counter the pro-Iran sectarian government in Baghdad as well as the
expanding Iranian influence in Iraq and the region.
Exploiting his partners’ inter-fighting, Iraqi two–term Prime
Minister Nouri (or Jawad) Al-Maliki, has maneuvered to win a
constitutional interpretation allowing him to run for a third term and,
to reinforce his one-man show of governance, he was in Washington D.C.
last November, then in Tehran the next December, seeking military “help”
against the “al-Qaeda threat” and he got it.
U.S. Continues War by Proxy
24 Apache helicopter with rockets and other equipment connected to
them, 175 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, ScanEagle and Raven
reconnaissance drones have either already been delivered or pending
delivery, among a $4.7 billion worth of military equipment, including
F-16 fighters. James Jeffrey reported in Foreign Policy last Monday that
President Barak Obama’s administration is “increasing intelligence and
operational cooperation with the Iraqi government.” The French Le Figaro
reported early this week that “hundreds” of U.S. security personnel
will return to Iraq to train Iraqis on using these weapons to confirm
what the Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, did not rule out on
last January 17 when he said that “we are in continuing discussions
about how we can improve the Iraqi military.”
Kerry ruled out sending “American boots” on the Iraqi ground;
obviously he meant “Pentagon boots,” but not the Pentagon–contracted
boots.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) online on this February 3 reported that
the “ U.S. military support there relies increasingly on the presence
of contractors.” It described this strategy as “the strategic deployment
of defense contractors in Iraq .” Citing State Department and Pentagon
figures, the WSJ reported, “As of January 2013, the U.S. had more than
12,500 contractors in Iraq ,” including some 5,000 contractors
supporting the American diplomatic mission in Iraq , the largest in the
world.
It
is obvious that the U.S. administration is continuing its war on Iraq
by the Iraqi ruling proxies who had been left behind when the American
combat mission was ended in December 2011. The administration is
highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” as casus belli as cited Brett
McGurk’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on this
February 8.
The Machiavellian support from Iran , Syria and Russia might for a
while misleadingly portray al-Maliky’s government as anti – American,
but it could not cover up the fact that it was essentially installed by
the U.S. foreign military invasion and is still bound by a “strategic
agreement” with the United States .
Political System Unfixable
However the new U.S. “surge” in “operational cooperation with the
Iraqi government” will most likely not succeed in fixing “Iraq’s
shattered political system,” which “our forces were unable to fix … even
when they were in Iraq in large numbers,” according to Christopher A.
Preble, writing in Cato Institute online on last January 23.
“Sending David Petraeus and Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker back” to Iraq ,
as suggested by U.S. Sen. John McCain to CNN’s “State of the Union ”
last January 12 was a disparate wishful thinking.
“ Iraq ’s shattered political system” is the legitimate product of
the U.S.–engineered “political process” based on sectarian and ethnic
fragmentation of the geopolitical national unity of the country.
Highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” can no more cover up the fact that
the “political process” is a failure that cannot be “fixed” militarily.
Writing in Foreign Policy on this February 10, James Jeffrey said
that the “United States tried to transform Iraq into a model
Western-style democracy,” but “the U.S. experience in the Middle East
came to resemble its long war in Vietnam.”
The sectarian U.S. proxy government in Baghdad , which has developed
into an authoritarian regime, remains the bedrock of the U.S. strategic
failure. The “al-Qaeda threat” is only the expected sectarian
antithesis; it is a byproduct that will disappear with the collapse of
the sectarian “political process.”
Iraq is now “on the edge of the abyss,” director of Middle East
Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), professor Gareth
Stansfield, wrote on this February 3. This situation is “being laid at
the door of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,” who “is now portrayed as a
divisive figure,” he said.
In their report titled “Iraq in Crisis” and published by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on last January 24,
Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai said that the “cause of Iraq’s
current violence” is “its failed politics and system of governance,”
adding that the Iraqi “election in 2010 divided the nation rather than
create any form of stable democracy.”
On the background of the current status quo, Iraq’s next round of
elections, scheduled for next April 30, is expected to fare worse.
Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly last August 14, Salah Nasrawi said that more
than 10 years after the U.S. invasion, “the much-trumpeted Iraqi
democracy is a mirage.” He was vindicated by none other than the Iraqi
Speaker of the parliament Osama Al Nujaifi who was quoted by the Gulf
News on last January 25 as saying during his latest visit to U.S.: “What
we have now is a facade of a democracy — superficial — but on the
inside it’s total chaos.”
Popular Uprising, not al-Qaeda
Al-Maliki’s government
on this February 8 issued a one week ultimatum to what the governor of
Anbar described as the “criminals” who “have kidnapped Fallujah” for
more than a month, but Ross Caputi, a veteran U.S. Marine who
participated in the second U.S. siege of Fallujah in 2004, in an open
letter to U.S. Secretary Kerry published by the Global Research last
Monday, said that “the current violence in Fallujah has been misrepresented in the media.”
“The Iraqi government has not been attacking al Qaeda in Fallujah,”
he said, adding that Al-Maliki’s government “is not a regime the U.S.
should be sending weapons to.” For this purpose Caputi attached a
petition with 11,610 signatures. He described what is happening in the western Iraqi city as a “popular uprising.”
Embracing the same strategy the Americans used in 2007, Iran and U.S.
Iraqi proxies have now joined forces against a “popular uprising” that
Fallujah has just become only a symbol. Misleadingly pronouncing
al-Qaeda as their target, the pro-Iran sectarian and the pro-U.S.
so-called “Awakening” tribal militias have revived their 2007 alliance.
The Washington Post on this February 9 reported that the “Shiite
militias” have begun “to remobilize,” including The Badr Organization,
Kataib Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army; it quoted a commander of one such
militia, namely Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as admitting to “targeted”
extrajudicial “killings.”
This unholy alliance is the ideal recipe for fueling the sectarian
divide and inviting a sectarian retaliation in the name of fighting
al-Qaeda; the likely bloody prospects vindicate Cordesman and Khazai’s
conclusion that Iraq is now “a nation in crisis bordering on civil war.”
Al – Qaeda is real and a terrorist threat, but like the sectarian
U.S.-installed government in Baghdad , it was a new comer brought into
Iraq by or because of the invading U.S. troops and most likely it would
last as long as its sectarian antithesis lives on in Baghdad ’s
so–called “Green Zone.”
“Al-Maliki has more than once termed the various fights and
stand-offs” in Iraq “as a fight against “al Qaeda”, but it’s not that
simple,” Michael Holmes wrote in CNN on last January 15. The “Sunni
sense of being under the heel of a sectarian government … has nothing to
do with al Qaeda and won’t evaporate once” it is forced out of Iraq ,
Holmes concluded.
A week earlier, analyst Charles Lister, writing to CNN, concluded
that “al Qaeda” was being used as a political tool” by al–Maliki, who
“has adopted sharply sectarian rhetoric when referring to Sunni elements
… as inherently connected to al Qaeda, with no substantive evidence to
back these claims.”
Al–Qaeda not the Only Force
“Al–Qaeda is “not the only force on the ground in Fallujah, where
“defected local police personnel and armed tribesmen opposed to the
federal government … represent the superior force,” Lister added.
The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) had reported that the “Iraqi insurgency” is
composed of at least a dozen major organizations and perhaps as many as
40 distinct groups with an estimated less than 10% non-Iraqi foreign
insurgents. It is noteworthy that all those who are playing the
“al-Qaeda threat” card are in consensus on blacking out the role of
these movements.
Prominent among them is the Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshabandi
(JRTN) movement, which announced its establishment after Saddam
Hussein’s execution on December 30, 2006. It is the backbone of the
Higher Command for Jihad and Liberation (HCJL), which was formed in
October the following year as a coalition of more than thirty national
“resistance” movements. The National, Pan-Arab and Islamic front (NAIF)
is the Higher Command’s political wing. Saddam’s deputy, Izzat Ibrahim
al-Duri, is the leader of JRTN, HCJL and NAIF as well as the banned
Baath party.
“Since 2009, the movement
has gained significant strength” because of its “commitment to restrict
attacks to “the unbeliever-occupier,” according to Michael Knights,
writing to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) on July1, 2011. “We
absolutely forbid killing or fighting any Iraqi in all the agent state
apparatus of the army, the police, the awakening, and the
administration, except in self-defense situations, and if some agents
and spies in these apparatus tried to confront the resistance,” al-Duri
stated in 2009, thus extricating his movement from the terrorist
atrocities of al-Qaeda, which has drowned the Iraqi people in a
bloodbath of daily suicide bombings.
The majority of these
organizations and groups are indigenous national anti-U.S. resistance
movements. Even the ISIL, which broke out recently with al-Qaeda, is led
and manned mostly by Iraqis. Playing al-Qaeda card is a smokescreen to
downplay their role as the backbone of the national opposition to the
U.S.-installed sectarian proxy government in Baghdad ’s green Zone.
Their Islamic rhetoric is their common language with their religious
people.
Since
the end of the U.S. combat mission in the country in December 2011,
they resorted to popular peaceful protests across Iraq . Late last
December al-Maliki dismantled by force their major camp of protests near
Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar . Protesting armed
men immediately took over Fallujah and Ramadi.
Since
then, more than 45 tribal “military councils” were announced in all the
governorates of Iraq . They held a national conference in January,
which elected the “General Political Council of the Guerrillas of Iraq.”
Coverage of the news and “guerrilla” activities of these councils by Al-Duri’s media outlets is enough indication of the linkage between them and his organizational structure.
No
doubt revolution is brewing and boiling in Iraq against the sectarian
government in Baghdad , its U.S. and Iranian supporters as well as
against its al-Qaeda sectarian antithesis.
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