February 15, 2015
Mosul,
Iraq’s second largest city, has been occupied by the self-proclaimed Islamic
State since June 2014. The situation for its residents, Moslawis, is
deteriorating, and the isolated city has two to four hours of running water and
electricity per week and no functioning Internet or mobile phone networks. It
is, moreover, becoming a staging ground for Islamic State radicalization.
To
combat the largely Sunni extremist group in Iraq, as well as the growing
radicalization linked to it across the region, many analysts are calling for
another Sunni Awakening. That
Sunni mobilization during Iraq’s 2006–2008 civil war helped to push Al-Qaeda in
Iraq (AQI) into obscurity, and the Sunni community will again need to mobilize
its fighters and battle against Islamic State soldiers if Mosul is to be
reclaimed.
But
the effort to launch a new Awakening faces grave challenges. Sunnis have little
trust in the Iraqi political establishment; their unwillingness to take up arms
is partly due to the negative legacy left by the government of former Prime
Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. But Sunnis’ hesitation also stems from the rise of
Shia militias—which mobilized to combat the Islamic State and now operate
across Iraq with impunity—as well as from Iran’s growing influence in the
current conflict and, they fear, the country.
Iraqi
officials have proposed the establishment of a national guard, which would
institutionalize and unite Sunni tribal forces. Sunni tribal leaders also see
it as a way to ensure that their forces, rather than Shia militias or Kurdish
forces (the peshmerga), provide security to their region. An Iraqi national
guard would help address concerns of both Sunni and Shia leaders, and is an
essential component of any effective strategy to counter the Islamic State in
Iraq.
Maliki’s Legacy
In
the fight against AQI, Iraq’s Sunnis put their trust in Maliki, choosing to
support the Shia leader over other political actors like the Jaysh Rijal
Al-Tariqa Al-Naqshbandia (JRTN), a Sufi-Baathist group of former Saddam
loyalists.
One
key to winning that Sunni support was Maliki’s cross-ethnic targeting of
extremists, who were defined not by sect, but by extralegal militancy. This
policy, pursued at the urging of General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.
forces in Iraq, and other U.S. officials increased Sunnis’ trust of Maliki, as
they began to believe that an institutionalized Iraq could in fact protect them
from the horrors of Shia militias and from Sunni extremist groups.
Under
this demilitarization policy—a frequently overlooked piece of the Awakening
puzzle—Maliki initiated several operations beginning in 2007. Operation
Imposing Law (Fardh Al-Qanoon), for instance, combated both AQI and Shia
militiamen in the streets of Baghdad. More critically, Operation Knights’
Charge (Saulat Al-Fursan) took the battle against Shia militias to another
level by combating them in Shia-dominated Basra and southern Iraq. Muqtada
Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army (Jaysh Al-Mahdi), the largest Shia militia, became
notorious at the time for horrifically murdering and torturing Sunnis
throughout Iraq. Maliki, who himself was often at odds with Sadr, a radical
Shia cleric, initiated a successful policy to drive the militia out of Iraq.
The
original Sunni Awakening would not have been successful in ridding Iraqi
territories of AQI had it not been for this two-pronged strategy of targeting
both Sunni and Shia militias. The approach eventually led the country into an
era of good governance under which the Sunni tribes made attempts to trust the
new political establishment in Baghdad. From these battles, Maliki emerged as
“al-mokhtar” (the chosen one) and championed the antimilitia movement. Maliki
even named his electoral coalition bloc Dawlat Al-Qanoon, meaning State of Law,
an explicit reference to working against extralegal institutions, Sunni, Shia,
and other.
But
only a few years later, sectarianism again crept into Baghdad’s political
narrative. Maliki let the Sunnis down, embracing a hypercentralized and
authoritarian method of governance that marginalized them. When Sunnis,
inspired by the Arab Spring, began to protest in 2011 against a perceived
return to dictatorship, they were treated as foreign insurgents.
Maliki’s regime began systematically torturing and killing Sunnis. His son
Ahmed, moreover, gained notoriety by interrogating and unlawfully imprisoning
Sunnis in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The Sunnis began referring to the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF), which they had put their trust in as a cross-ethnic
institutionalized military, as “Maliki’s Military,” which they said pursued
Shia interests at their expense.
Maliki
furthered his often violent rule by growing close with the League of the
Righteous (Asaib Ahl Al-Haq), a splinter of the Jaysh Al-Mahdi, which he had
fought against. The league, which Sadrists claim stems
from the most notorious renegades of the cleric’s former group, began
terrorizing Sunnis. In only a few years, Maliki ended the era of good
governance and shattered the fledgling Sunni trust.
Today,
Sunni trust in the Iraqi
political establishment is even lower than it was during the U.S.
occupation and the initial shock of regime change that transferred power from
Sunni to Shia. Part of this is due to the sudden end of the era of good
government and Sunni-Shia cooperation. Maliki successfully used “divide and
conquer” tactics to humiliate those Sunni leaders who had given him their trust
following the Awakening. Those who decided not to reengage with Baghdad then,
such as the JRTN, had their approach legitimated, and they now take a “we told
you so” stance.
Sunni
distrust is evident in discussions about combating the Islamic State. As one
Sunni tribal leader put it, “Why are Sunni fighters considered terrorists and
Shia forces considered legal?” This gets to the heart of the issue: both Sunni
and Shia extremists must be countered—as they were during the first
Awakening—if Mosul and other areas are to be liberated from Islamic State
control.
The
crisis of trust is twofold. Sunnis are not willing to fight against the Islamic
State in Mosul along with the powerful anti–Islamic State Shia militias that
roam Iraq, and the Shia-dominated central government is not willing to send
sufficient arms and finances to the Sunnis
Sunni Uncertainty Over
What Comes Next
Sunni
tribal leaders are the key to any political and military solution that can
begin to address ridding Iraq of the Islamic State and the alarming rate of
radicalization that has accompanied it. They are the same figures who,
supported by the United States and Maliki, revolted against AQI during the
original Awakening. And today, conversations with Sunni tribal leaders indicate
that an overwhelming majority of them despise the Islamic State and its
attempts to establish a caliphate, just as they detested AQI.
Yet
these tribal leaders are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Islamic
State has pushed many of the tribes away from governing their territories and
has shattered their traditional structures of representation. The growing
radicalization within territories occupied by the Islamic State calls into
question their own legitimacy as tribal or political leaders.
The
alternative is also bad. Iran has increased its leverage and presence in these
areas. Reports of billboards displaying Iran’s Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a “we won’t be defeated” message in Baghdad
and other Iraqi cities have only increased resentment and anxiety among the
Sunnis. This indeed complicates initiatives to win Sunni participation in the
effort to retake Mosul.
Iran’s
presence is most associated with the rapid rise of the Shia militias.
Unofficial reports estimate that some 60,000 to 90,000 fighters have taken up arms
against the Islamic State. The Badr Brigades, an Iranian-backed Shia militia,
enjoys considerable influence in the central government, and its leader, Hadi Al-Amiri,
was even a candidate to be Iraq’s interior minister, before Iraqi Vice
President Ibrahim Al-Jaafari worked in the final moments to stop the bid. The
ministry is nonetheless strongly influenced by Iran, and Interior Minister
Mohammed Ghabban was widely considered a weak compromise to allow Amiri and Tehran to continue to
exert their control.
Kataib
Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed militia that is related to the Lebanese
Hezbollah, created the Popular Defense Companies to mobilize Iraqi Shia
volunteers. It now controls swaths of land in Sunni-majority areas in Iraq,
including in Baghdad, Diyala, and Amerli. Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, which enjoys strong
support from Iran and Maliki, is similarly powerful. Iran’s fingerprints are
thus all over Iraq, with Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s special
Revolutionary Guards unit, the Quds Force, photographed at various battles
across the country.
These
Shia militias pose several problems for resolving the Iraqi crisis. Under the
banner of fighting the Islamic State, they have initiated a widespread program
of kidnapping, extorting, torturing, and murdering Sunnis, with or without
proof of links to extremist groups. For these acts, they face what Amnesty International described
as absolute impunity, as the Ministry of Interior works to cover up
their crimes. In many cases, this includes officially listing deaths caused by
torture and executions as “health problems” on death certificates.
So,
while many Sunni tribal leaders share the Shia hatred of the Islamic State,
they are hesitant to join the fight because they do not trust that what comes
next will be better. They do not want to wage war, and spill their blood,
simply to see the Islamic State’s control of their areas replaced by that of
Iranian-backed Shia militias or the sectarian-minded ISF, run in part by an
Interior Ministry with strong ties to Tehran. They are demanding guarantees
that the militias be tackled, as Maliki tackled the Jaysh Al-Mahdi in 2008.
Such guarantees have thus far not been made, and the tribal leaders’ general
perception is that the government of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, which took
power in September 2014, is too weak to challenge the militias as Maliki did.
According
to Sunnis from Mosul, Islamic State leaders told Iraqis in the city and
elsewhere that the group has learned from past mistakes and is different from
AQI. They are referring to AQI’s inattention to local Iraqi leaders and its
strict implementation of sharia law, policies that were largely rejected by
Iraqi Sunnis.
More
critically, the group’s leaders have been telling Sunni Moslawis that
ultimately the Islamic State is better than the only alternative: Iran and the
Shia. Tribal leaders appear to be accepting this “best of the worst” argument
and are unlikely to fight against Islamic State forces unless a more promising
scenario is presented to them.
Trust
in the ISF has similarly been shattered. Moslawis remember that the ISF did not
try to stop the Islamic State’s advance into the
city. Reports that ISF security forces allowed Shia militias and ISF
forces to execute Sunnis under their watch further complicate the
possibility of Sunnis joining with Shia in a new Awakening.
Sunnis
complained in interviews that when the militias do target the Islamic State, it
is generally to protect Shia communities and Iran’s border and interests. Sunni
leaders say more attention has been paid to preventing the Islamic State from
emerging on the border with Iran than arming groups to fight in Mosul. Even
U.S. air campaigns are perceived to only be supporting Shia positions. As a
result, some believe that the United States is only interested in strengthening
Shia power in Baghdad, rather than reviving the approach that worked against Al-Qaeda
in Iraq.
During
the original Awakening—when the United States was on the ground in Iraq and
helping to administer the central government—U.S. funding and weapons were
provided directly to Sunni leaders, and today, many favor the same approach.
But the current U.S. policy is to supply the Sunnis indirectly, by sending arms
and finances to Baghdad. Sunni leaders complain that Abadi’s government has yet
to pass on such assistance, and they trust the Shia government even less than
they trust the United States to ensure that such support is sent to them.
Underfunded and
Underequipped
The
other side of the crisis of trust is found in the central government in
Baghdad. The Shia ruling elite is hesitant to provide weapons and funds to
Sunni political or tribal parties because they are uncertain of where the aid
will go—with many fearing that the leaders will simply give it or lose it to
Islamic State fighters.
As
Sunnis are well aware, the Shia militias are better paid
and better equipped than their forces, courtesy of both Tehran and
the central government of Baghdad. The Shia militias have received essential
weapons, including M16 rifles and rifles with high-tech Steiner scopes, and,
given their relative strength, they will need to be included in the battle to
retake Mosul, along with the Kurdish peshmerga.
Funding
Sunni forces is important for both restoring trust and strengthening local
partners, who can then begin thinking about combating the Islamic State in
Mosul and elsewhere. As the Sunni tribal leaders see it, both the Shia militias
and the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq are directly receiving weapons, funding, and
training from the international community to fend off the Islamic State—but
their tribes remain dependent on Baghdad, and thus underfunded and
underequipped. Without combating the lack of political trust between the camps,
retaking Mosul from the Islamic State will remain problematic.
In
several parts of the Nineveh Province, which includes Mosul, and other areas of
northern Iraq, Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds are competing for territory and oil.
While the Kurdistan Regional Government’s peshmerga can be expected to play a
key role in any liberation of Mosul, there is a general mistrust among Sunnis
that Kurdish fighters will use the opportunity to expand their jurisdiction.
Some Moslawis are intrigued by the idea of becoming part of the Kurdistan
Region simply because of its better experience with internal stability, a sharp
contrast with the failed Iraqi security sector. But the majority would likely not welcome the
peshmerga forces for a prolonged stay.
The Need for a National
Guard
Iraqi
and U.S. officials are preparing to try to retake Mosul by summer 2015.
But for such an effort to succeed, local Sunni tribal forces must be
reintegrated with the ISF. This step will unite the Sunni tribes—the only
actors able to effectively command these areas—under an institutional framework
and ensure they are sufficiently funded and equipped to take on the Islamic State.
Tribal
acquiescence, in defiance of an untrustworthy Baghdad, is what facilitates the
Islamic State in Mosul and other territories it controls. Removing the general
perception that the ISF is a Shia instrument will make Sunnis feel like
stakeholders in Iraq’s security and strengthen their resolve against the
Islamic State. Putting Sunni forces under the ISF will also provide a more
legitimate alternative to the dreaded external Shia or Kurdish paramilitary
occupation of their territory. Similar to the original Awakening, then,
integrating the tribes into an anti–Islamic State front will allow Baghdad to
use local partners to drive out the extremists.
Iraqi
and U.S. officials have proposed the establishment of a new national guard
(haras watani) as the best way to give the Sunni tribes a stake in Iraq’s
security and governance and eventually overcome the crisis of trust. Under a
draft law approved by Iraq’s cabinet on February 3, 2015, local forces—in a
decentralized scheme in which the prime minister serves as the general
commander—will be responsible for exclusively protecting their own provinces.
The national guard units are to include fighters who
will be paid by the central government and be treated like legitimate armed
forces within the ISF.
This
option is widely viewed to be in the spirit of Petraeus’s policies during the
first Sunni Awakening. By giving the tribes a stake, weapons, and funding, they
will be more willing to fight off the Islamic State. More critically, their
fear that Shia militias or Kurdish peshmerga will move into Mosul and other
Sunni areas will wither, because the national guard will be able to provide any
needed security.
The
national guard offers several other advantages as well. By including members of
all groups within Iraqi society, it will help the country move away from the
current narrative, in which only Shia concerns are addressed. And, by providing
an institutional framework, it will make the ruling Shia elite more comfortable
with sending weapons and cash to Sunni tribes.
Yet,
challenges continue to plague the national guard. The first come from within
the Sunni community, where tribal leaders agree with the concept, but are
putting forward dozens of different proposals on matters such as which
personnel will be awarded with powerful ranks inside the new force. The Sunni
political leadership must work to forge a compromise among these competing
ideas and camps in order to present one front vis-à-vis Baghdad.
Another
challenge to the national guard is Abadi’s control over his government and
violence carried out by forces that report to the Interior Ministry. Similar to
Maliki’s targeting of the Jaysh Al-Mahdi during the original Awakening, Abadi
will have to retake control by purging the ISF and incorporating Shia militias
into it. This compromise is essential to ensuring that the Shia militias, under
the auspices of the ISF, can provide security in areas where they are perceived
to be legitimate, and not threaten to move into Sunni areas where they will be
met with resistance. This would help quell anxieties that the Sunni tribal
leaders have over what comes next once they fight off the Islamic State in
Mosul. Yet many Iraqis, including Hanan Fatlawi, a member of parliament,
question the prime minister’s ability to slow the spread of Shia militias,
which he does not command, in Sunni governorates.
Much
of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq stems from tragedies that followed the
Islamic State’s invasion of Mosul in June 2014. The problem today is that the
elements necessary to combat the Islamic State, the Iraqi Sunni tribes from the
region, have no trust that sacrificing their blood will facilitate a future
free from Shia oppression. Iraqis could learn from the first Awakening, and
find ways to bring back Iraq’s short-lived era of good governance.
This
article is reprinted with permission from the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. It can be accessed online at: http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/02/11/fight-for-mosul-learning-from-past/i23h
Renad Mansour is a
nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research
focuses on Iraq, Iran, and Kurdish affairs.