Iraq Archives - Democracy Digest

Courts undermine Iraq’s rule of law: Daesh ideology still a threat

The Daesh terror group’s ideology is still a threat in Iraq even though the fight against terrorism has ended in military terms, the country’s prime minister said Saturday:

“Our land war with Daesh [aka ISIS or Islamic State] has ended. We have saved all the land of our country and taken control of the Syrian border. But the danger of Daesh’s ideology and sleeper cells remains. I should warn everyone about that,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a speech at a meeting of the Islamic Dawa, Iraq’s ruling party.

Iraq’s counterterrorism law allows the death penalty for anyone “who commits, incites, plans, finances or assists in acts of terrorism.” So Iraqi courts are meting out one-size-fits-all punishment for the perpetrator of crimes against humanity as well for as the wife of an Islamic State fighter who may have had little say in her husband’s career, the New York Times reports.

A Ministry of Justice initiative for “arbitration” among tribes was not welcomed by civil society, which considered it to be “propaganda” for political parties, undermining the work of Iraqi state institutions, according to activist and blogger Ibrahim al-Fatlawi.

“We live in a country known to have enacted laws 7,000 years ago, so how can we accept projects and decisions that strengthen the power and influence of tribes within the institutions of the Iraqi state?” he asked Al-Monitor.

“After thousands of years of Iraqi civilization, the state comes up with such an initiative for electoral purposes, instead of enacting a proper law approved by the state,” the National Endowment for Democracy’s Rahman Aljebouri told Al-Monitor. “This project is substandard,” he said. “The Iraqi state needs to work in accordance with international mechanisms for human rights and institutional work, and such an effort cannot enhance the role and authority of the law and treat everyone equally.”

On May 12, Iraqis will go to the polls for parliamentary elections that will determine the next prime minister at a critical time when the country has emerged from a three-year war with the Islamic State and must now rebuild the damaged infrastructure and address entrenched corruption that is stifling economic growth, the Atlantic Council adds:

Given the events that followed the Kurdish referendum in September 2017, the issue of disputed territories in Northern Iraq and related energy revenue-sharing disagreements will also fall to the new government to address. Additionally, Iraq’s regional relations that have seen promising improvements in the last few years are expected to be influenced by the election and by the political make-up of the new government. The Atlantic Council invites you for a discussion with a panel of experts on likely post-election dynamics, political alliances to form a new government we may see emerge, political and constitutional reforms the next government needs to adopt, and how the election may impact US-Iraq relations.

Featuring
Ambassador Feisal al-Istrabadi, Founding Director, Center for the Study of the Middle East, Indiana University – Bloomington

Credit; ACUS

Ambassador Rend al-Rahim, Co-Founder and President, Iraq Foundation

Dr. Harith Hasan Al-Qarawee, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Visiting Lecturer and Diplomat-in-Residence, Princeton University

Introductory remarks by:
Mr. Frederick Kempe, President and CEO, Atlantic Council

Wednesday, April 25, 2018
12:00 – 1:30 p.m.

Atlantic Council
1030 15th Street NW, 12th Floor (West Tower Elevator)
Washington, DC

Beyond Sunni and Shia: challenging sectarianism in a changing Middle East

One could be forgiven for thinking Iraq remains a tangled mess of sectarian division and political failings, whose people are incapable of resolving their differences and working together to rebuild the country, notes the Hoover Institution’s Kori Schake. Those who believe the people of the Middle East unsuited to democracy may even take satisfaction their bias has been borne out by events. That is not what I saw in Iraq, she wrote for the Atlantic:

What I saw in Iraq this last week was a prime minister striving to build commonality across sectarian communities, to redress grievances and put his personal stamp on efforts to establish accountability for the conduct of security forces. Sectarian leaders are jockeying for position in advance of next year’s parliamentary elections. Politics rather than violence is the means Iraqis are using to contest the crucial issues—even the Kurds mildly say their referendum will be non-binding, “the start of a negotiation” rather than an ultimatum (although it must be admitted that comes only after the U.S. conveying it will not recognize the referendum nor support Kurdish independence).

After championing the reconquest of Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi has over the past month forcefully stared down a Kurdish independence bid and extended the Iraqi government’s reach into disputed areas controlled by Kurdish militias since 2014. Abadi, once written off as a weak functionary, now is more popular than ever, The Washington Post reported.

Iraqi analysts spoken to by Middle East Eye paint a picture of Abadi building over his decades as a political underling, where the inner workings of government were studied, power circles pinpointed and potential rivals placated rather than destroyed.

“Abadi presented a new model” for resolving political conflict in Iraq, said Rahman al-Jobori of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group. “Iraq’s politics have for decades been dominated by ostentatious display. Abadi works quietly and shuns the limelight. That’s the difference,” he said.

Iraqi’s robust civil society is also focused on finding alternative solutions to the root causes of conflicts (e.g. combating corruption and ending sectarian policies), according to a recent analysis.

A number of civil society organizations and women activists in Sulaimani gathered on Sunday (November 12) in protest of amending the Iraqi Personal Status Law and measures to affect women and girls’ matrimonial matters, according to reports:

The Iraqi Personal Status Law 188 of 1959 is an amalgamation of liberal Islamic rules as well as some divergences. It restricts child marriages (by setting the legal age of marriage at 18 years), bans forced marriages and restricts polygamy; it curtails men’s prerogatives in divorce, expands women’s rights in divorce, extends child custody to mothers, and improves inheritance rights for women. It remains one of the most liberal laws in the Arab world with respect to women’s rights. Moreover, the law is meant to be applied across all social and sectarian groups in Iraq. It does not differentiate between the various religious communities and thus sustains social and communal coexistence and national unity.

Instead of treating distinctions between and within Sunni and Shia Islam as primordial and immutable, a new study – Beyond Sunni and Shia: The Roots of Sectarianism in a Changing Middle East – examines how political economy, geopolitics, domestic governance, social media, non- and sub-state groups, and clerical elites have affected the transformation and diffusion of sectarian identities.

The book takes as its starting point the limitations of viewing the region’s travails through the lens of religious identity conflict, says its editor, Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

In particular, it challenges what can be described as the “primordialist” school of thought, a deterministic view that sees religious tensions, particularly between the Shi‘a and Sunni branches of Islam, as preordained and immutable. To be sure, there are important divides between the two sects—over questions of religious and political authority, rituals, jurisprudence, and other matters. But the notion of two hermetic blocs being locked in conflict today—a continuation of an unresolved “age-old” dispute within Islam—is patently false.

At the other end of the spectrum, the study rejects what might be called an excessively materialist or “instrumental” approach to religious identity, which sees sectarianism as simply a proxy for economic or political grievances, or the result of top-down, elite manipulation, adds Wehrey, the author of Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings:

Here again, we acknowledge that elements of this are certainly at play. Authoritarian regimes have found it useful to play up sectarian differences as a ruling strategy, “sectarian entrepreneurs” have stoked communal tensions from pulpits and social media platforms, and sect-based antagonisms have been inflamed by state collapse and the unequal distribution of economic resources. But these worldly explanations have their limits as well. At the societal and individual level, beliefs, identity, and doctrines do in fact matter. RTWT

Credit: FT

The region’s autocratic rules are well-versed in mobilizing sectarian divisions for their own strategic ends, observers suggest.

The Saudis are engaged in a cold war with an opportunistic Iran that’s exploiting their missteps in Yemen and Qatar and exacerbating a dangerous Sunni-Shiite sectarianism in the region, analysts Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky write for Foreign Policy.

Saudi Arabia appears to be committing the original sin of modern Middle East politics — fighting its regional wars in Lebanon and driving that fragile country once again toward civil strife, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius writes:

Hezbollah emerged as the dominant force in Lebanon partly because of the instability that followed Israel’s unwise 1982 invasion. The Iranian-backed militia has subverted Lebanese democracy and been a dangerous forward outpost for Iran’s power. When the Syrian civil war began in 2011, many analysts predicted that a frail Lebanon would tumble back into chaos. But it hasn’t happened — yet — because Hezbollah worked quietly with Saad Hariri and other Lebanese leaders to keep a lid on unrest.

Considering the Saudis’ extended involvement and apparent losses in these conflicts – seen as attempts to curb Iranian influence – the decision to engage Iran in Lebanon may not be wise, according to Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and expert on Syria.

Landis believes the contest for military supremacy is already over. “The Iranians have won the war for military strength in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. There can be little doubt about this,” he told Al Jazeera.

‘Islamic State not finished’ – governance key to preventing resurgence

As the campaigns to wrest the Islamic State from the territory it held in Iraq and Syria near completion, new conflicts may arise if old political arrangements prevail, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The political conditions in the Middle East that gave rise to ISIS — the sectarian and ethnic conflicts around the region and the collapse of Arab governments and economies — will surely engender a son of ISIS. And even a deeply wounded ISIS can continue to inspire attacks in the West, notes Peter Bergen, the author of United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.

“Islamic State is not finished,” said Aaron Zelin, who studies jihadi movements at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “IS [Islamic State, or Isis] has a plan, and that is to wait out their enemies locally in order to gain time to rebuild their networks while at the same time provide inspiration to followers outside to keep fighting their enemies farther away,’” he told The New York Times.

Diplomats and ordinary Iraqis warn that unless the underlying grievances that Islamic State has been able to exploit are addressed—weak, corrupt governance and sectarianism—Islamic State will eventually re-emerge, The Wall Street Journal adds:

Most expect the group will try to make a comeback in Iraq by exploiting the Sunni Muslim minority’s longstanding grievances with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Islamic State adheres to a radical version of Sunni Islam.

“The group’s financial empire has been systematically dismantled by the U.S.-led coalition, exacting a heavy toll on its ability to pay the salaries of its fighters and the costs of providing minimal services, even basic food, to the inhabitants under its rule,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. “ISIS’s aura of invincibility and legitimacy, resulting from its earlier military success, appears to be shattered beyond repair,” he said.

As it attempts to regroup, the Islamic State could benefit from the power vacuum created in its absence, says Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy. To defeat the Islamic State, someone must develop good governance in its former territories in Iraq and Syria to persuade locals to help uproot the group—an unlikely task that has no credible volunteers, he writes for Lawfare.

“This is a very strong group which has a lot of sympathizers, its ideas are embedded and it has networks. It has a lot to draw on even as it loses its physical territory,” adds Byman, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

IS has lost nearly all the territory it once controlled in Syria and Iraq.. [and] as it gradually disintegrates, theological splits have also emerged within the organization, including the rise of a faction that blames its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for the setbacks, The Washington Post reports.

That leaves IS’s leading rival poised to benefit, analysts suggest.

“I worry that al-Qaida has taken advantage of the past three or four years to very quietly rebuild while ISIS has preoccupied our attention,” said Bruce Hoffman, head of Georgetown University’s security studies program and author of “Inside Terrorism.”

“This is in al-Qaida’s DNA, to either absorb, wait out or forcibly deal with any of their rivals so that they’re the last man standing.” The growth of the Levant Liberation Committee in the past year “has really astonished me,” he added.

Al Qaeda, whose appeal to young fighters had been largely eclipsed by the tech-savvy new caliphate of the Islamic State, is vying for a comeback, The NY Times adds.

“The reason that the I.S. gained a big following quickly was that it appealed to the hotheads, those looking for instant gratification,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who monitors terrorist groups. “That caliphate model is all gone, but Al Qaeda remains.”

While al-Qaeda may yet regain the mantle of worldwide jihad, it could also come under increasing threat in its bastion in northwestern Syria, as the forces arrayed against IS shift their focus to a new potentially worldwide threat, observers suggest.

“The honeymoon period for al-Qaeda, in which the so-called Islamic State absorbed most of the counterterrorism focus while al-Qaeda’s affiliates grew stronger, is coming to an end,” according to an analysis by the Soufan Group security consultancy.

“It now appears Zawahiri is seeking to consolidate the terror network and return the group to its heyday as the vanguard of a global movement,” it added. That could place the militants in the crosshairs of the international coalition.

But U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon warned that even with the caliphate in shambles, the virulent ideology and fanaticism that spurred Islamic State’s meteoric rise in the Middle East remains, The Washington Times reports.

“Even after the defeat, the military defeat of ISIS there’s still going to be work to be done,” he said. “ISIS will be defeated militarily, but we know that there still is going to be the ideology and the continued insurgent activity as they devolve into that.”

“Both al Qaeda and ISIS are a creature of fragile and broken state institutions,” said Gerges. “Although the caliphate in Iraq and Syria will be forced to surrender the major cities and towns it controls, the movement will persist as long as Sunni communities feel excluded from the existing order and have no stake in the future.”

The experience of the last eight years shows that an effective counterterrorism strategy must do more than inflict military defeat, say analysts Saskia Brechenmacher and Steven Feldstein. It should minimize civilian casualties and avoid playing into extremist groups’ recruitment strategies, they write for The National Interest:

It needs to mobilize effective and professional local forces that can hold territory liberated from terrorist groups, and help legitimate governance structures to take root. This will require sustained political efforts to broker durable political settlements in conflict zones where terrorists take safe haven and exploit sectarian divisions. And a successful strategy must mobilize international partners, especially from Muslim-majority countries, to confront common threats—while using U.S. leverage to push for greater accountability and compliance with international human-rights standards.

Aymenn al-Tamimi, a counterterrorism expert and research fellow at the Middle East Forum, predicts the ideological appeal of the group will remain strong, the WSJ adds:

In 2015, Washington made a big push to get Middle East allies to address radical ideology at home, believing that a military solution alone cannot defeat groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State. But those regional allies have been slow to make changes.

“There will always be those who are ideologically committed to the Islamic State regardless of whether it controls territory,” said Mr. Tamimi. “To an extent, its draw is larger than holding territory.”

Isis may be on the run for now. But its precursor in Iraq, AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq), was in far worse shape in 2008 than Isis is today, The FT notes:

It took just three years of muddle-headed policy on the part of Baghdad to alienate the Sunni population and set the scene for AQI to re-emerge in its far more dangerous Isis guise. Unless there is a plan soon for how to administer recaptured Syrian territory in a way that is inclusive to the Sunni Arabs, the same will surely happen again. And unless the US and its allies begin thinking more strategically, Isis losses will soon become the Damascus regime’s and its Iranian patrons’ gains.

Civil society taking fight against violent extremism to ‘a whole new level’

Iraqi security forces have made great progress toward defeating the Islamic State in Iraq. But whether this military success will translate into enduring stability will depend in large part upon the attitudes of Iraqi Sunnis toward the postwar stat. Since 2003, Iraqi Sunnis have viewed the political system as unfair and marginalizing their role in the nation’s politics, according to Munqith M. Dagher, founder and chief executive of Baghdad-based Almustakilla for Research, and Karl C. Kaltenthaler, a professor of political science at the University of Akron.

A recent public opinion survey we carried out reveals a startling and potentially significant shift in Sunni attitudes toward the Iraqi state, they write for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. Sunni Arabs base their pessimism primarily on two things, they note:

The first is their experiences in the past. Political exclusion from 2003 to 2011 and then the very harsh treatment they endured at the hands of the highly Shiite sectarian Maliki government have made Sunni Arabs wary of their long-term status in the country.

The second factor is the rise and continued existence of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (popular mobilization units or PMUs). These are predominately Shiite militia, most with deep ties to Iran, that rose in the face of the Islamic State onslaught in 2014 to defeat the Sunni extremist organization. They have become an immensely powerful set of fighting forces that, while under the nominal control of the Iraqi prime minister, are really more controlled by Iran. They have a reputation for being very sectarian and anti-Sunni.

With the avowed objective of taking the fight against violent extremism to “a whole new level” and drawing on a network of three foundations, the Global Hope Coalition has assembled an impressive group to spearhead the civil society effort to amplify the impact of courageous individuals who stand up to terror and violence, notes Wendy Chamberlin, president of the Middle East Institute. These heroes, who take great risks to oppose extremists, deserve support to defeat the radicals in their midst; to preserve cultural heritage from wanton destruction, and to build bridges across widening cultural and religious divides, she writes for The Hill:

Consider, for example, Latifa Ibn Ziaten (right). In March 2012, a homegrown terrorist, Mohammed Merah, shot and killed Ibn Ziaten’s 30-year-old son, Imad, a French Muslim soldier. Imad was one of Merah’s six victims, who included three children. Following these senseless murders, Ibn Ziaten established the Imad Association for Youth and Peace, and has been roaming dilapidated housing projects, overcrowded prisons and immigrant-dominated schools which form fertile grounds for violent extremism ….

And there’s Kochar Saleh (left), a 27-year-old Kurdish woman from northern Iraq who has been organizing local resistance to ISIS, helping the tormented Yazidi and Christian communities, and providing assistance to refugees. Kochar has witnessed first-hand the terrorists’ atrocities and their savage treatment of Yazidi girls. She led a group of women fighters in the protracted battle to liberate Mosul. RTWT

While Islamic State may be on the back foot in Iraq and Syria, the lack of strong central governance in many countries in the Sahel has contributed to the flourishing of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), notes Bennett Seftel, deputy director of analysis at The Cipher Brief:

With these governments unable to hold territory or provide basic social services to many in need, AQIM has been able hunker down in ungoverned spaces….Burkina Faso boasts one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, while in Niger, approximately 8 million of the country’s 19 million citizens are without safe drinking water. Helping to provide education, healthcare, and even access to clean water could go a long way in suppressing the allure of terrorism.

“[We] need to enhance outreach with partner nations in that area so that improving civil society is a priority as part of the counterterrorism efforts,” says David Shedd, a former Acting Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “That means coming in with education and other longer term efforts that address the grievances associated with some of the things that AQIM takes advantage of.”

In “one of the most dangerous developments yet, violent extremism has taken root among the region’s diverse ethno-linguistic communities and profits from and exacerbates inter-communal conflicts and resentments,” according to Michael Shurkin, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND corporation.

Iraq’s Badr part of Iran’s growing ‘Shiite International’

Since 2014, the Shiite Badr Organization, led by its Secretary General Hadi al-Amiri, has become one of the main actors in Iraqi politics, notes Dr. Guido Steinberg, a Senior Associate in the Middle East and Africa Division of Germany’s SWP foreign policy institute. The Badr Organization, which relies strongly on support from Tehran, has become the most important instrument of Iranian politics in its neighboring country, he writes:

Tehran’s aim is to exert as much influence as possible on the central government in Baghdad and, at the same time, build a strong militia that depends on it. Since Badr established control over the province of Diyala and the Interior Ministry of Baghdad, the organization has grown appreciably and is now playing a role similar to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Badr is also part of a growing “Shiite International” which supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and aggravates religious conflicts between Sunnites and Shiites through its violent acts. The

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combination of these factors makes the organization an increasingly important obstacle to the future stabilization of Iraq.

Iranian influence is a major challenge to the authority of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, experts suggest.

“There are three Iranian paths in Iraq’s near future,” Abdul Rahman al-Jubouri of the National Endowment for Democracy recently told Al-Monitor:

The first is to preserve the influence acquired over the past 14 years; second is to preserve a particular influence in the western parts [the Sunni areas]; and third is to look for Shiite liberals on the Iraqi political map.” Since Iraq is a secular state constitutionally, Iran’s Shiite government needs liberal Shiites in the Iraqi government to maintain its influence there.

He added, “Iran has warned against taking measures such as dismissing the PMU or making do without them. In contrast, Abadi wants to disavow from forces fighting in Syria. This is in itself a point of divergence between both sides.”

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