Crisis in Baghdad/ ISIS in Libya

UPDATES

Crisis in Baghdad/ ISIS in Libya

May 6, 2016

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Update from AIJAC

May 6, 2016

Update 05/16 #01

This Update deals with two major crisis areas in the Middle East, both with profound effects on the fight against ISIS. One is the major political crisis in Iraq, where the government of Prime Minister Abadi seems paralysed and under threat from radical Shi’ite groups opposed to his reforms designed to reduce corruption and provide a role for the disaffected Sunni minority in government. This led radical militias to storm the Iraqi parliament last week – with major implications for the fight against ISIS in Iraq.

The other is the consolidation and extension of an ISIS emirate in Libya, just 320 kilometres from Europe.

We lead with a good look at the current situation in Baghdad from Evan Moore of the Foreign Policy Initiative. He notes that the problem is that the Iraqi state is simply not functioning as a state with institutions but rather as a state of competing militias, unable to deliver basic services and supporting a “kleptocratic political class” living comfortably in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Moore says that the collapse of the Abadi government might well lead to his replacement with a pro-Iranian leader who would force US forces to leave the country – and effectively end the battle there against ISIS. He has much more to say about how things got to here, and to read it all, CLICK HERE

More detail on recent events in Iraq are provided by George Jaffe of the Washington Post, who also notes how recent events call into question the US Administration’s policies centered on relying on the politically weak Abadi. Jaffe takes as his starting point US Vice-President Joe Biden’s trip to Iraq last week designed to shore up the government (it does not seem to have worked given that the storming of parliament occurred the next day). The piece suggests that the US approach – fighting ISIS without trying to consolidate genuine governance in Iraq – is unlikely to work, and the long-mooted efforts to take back Mosul, Iraqi’s second largest city from ISIS, are farther off than ever. For this valuable piece in full, CLICK HERE. Michael Rubin also comments on Biden’s trip, arguing that sending Biden as its emissary was a bad mistake by the US Administration.

Finally, Israeli academic expert Jonathan Spyer looks at growing European concern about Libya – where ISIS controls a large area in the centre of the country around the major city of Sirte, and is seeking to expand into Libya’s oil fields. He links the Libya problem to Europe’s migrant crisis, with Libya alleged today hosting 800,000 would be migrants, according to estimates, and providing a “perfect storm of proximity to Europe, jihadi control of a section of the coastline, and closeness to sub-Saharan Africa, with its limitless supplies of migrants.” Spyer warns this is a potential threat to Europe that urgently needs serious attention, and to read his full analysis, CLICK HERE

Readers may also be interested in…

Lee Smith reports on what a senior advisor to US President Obama is now admitting about the intellectually dubious tactics the Administration used to push through the Iran nuclear deal.
Meanwhile, Iran-US relations continue to worsen as Iran threatens to blocks the Persian Gulf and demands the withdrawal of US ships from the area, while Supreme Leader Khamenei says the US is the main enemy of both Iran and the whole region.
More on Iran’s threats from Michael Rubin.
Israel finds yet another Hamas tunnel from Gaza into Israel, but Hamas shoots at Israeli forces when they went to uncover it, leading to an exchange of fire.
Isi Leibler writes about the erosion of Holocaust commemoration, in honour of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust remembrance day) yesterday.
Some examples from the many stories and comments now appearing at AIJAC’s daily “Fresh AIR” blog:
- Allon Lee on the visit to Australia of French PM Manuel Valls this week – with some comment on how Valls spoke out forcefully about antisemitism last year, yet France recently voted for a resolution at UNESCO denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
- Sharyn Mittelman analyses how Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s charm offensive recently led to him making very deceptive claims about the regime’s Holocaust denial.
- Colin Rubenstein on the delusion some pro-Palestinian activists seem to have – including apparently Australian academic Amin Saikal – about US President candidate Bernie Sanders and his comments about Israel and the Palestinians, in the Canberra Times.

Iraq on a Knife’s Edge

By Evan Moore

National Review, May 5, 2016

Iraq is in the middle of a political crisis. Just two days after Vice President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Baghdad last Thursday, Shiite cleric and longtime American foe Muqtada al-Sadr directed his followers to storm the Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the national government. Sadr’s supporters occupied the parliament building and attacked a senior lawmaker. This demonstration was not only a blow to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s authority, but may also have grave ramifications for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh).

Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrate in Baghdad, April 30, 2016. (Wissm al-Okili/Reuters)

The situation is fundamentally the product of an Iraqi national government run by sectarian factions rather than by Western-style political parties. As Emma Sky, former political advisor to coalition forces, observes, Iraq has become more of a “state of militias than a state of institutions,” which has spawned “a kleptocratic political class that lives in comfort in the Green Zone, detached from the long-suffering population, which still lacks basic services.”

This most recent crisis began last August when — in response to a burgeoning protest movement calling for governmental reforms — Prime Minister Abadi announced a series of anti-corruption measures, as well as efforts aimed at empowering the country’s disaffected Sunni minority. But, as Patrick Martin with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has noted, “despite an initial flurry of successful reforms and unparalleled popular support for PM Abadi from thousands of civil demonstrators in Baghdad and southern Iraq, his political opponents have successfully blocked his reforms.” Their obstruction continued this February when Abadi tried to restart his reform initiative. Abadi attempted a “radical cabinet reshuffle” intended to oust entrenched sectarian ministers only to be met with multiple parties “hijack[ing] the process to both protect their own interests and to undermine their opponents within the cabinet.” Meanwhile, Sadr launched a gambit to take over the Iraqi protest movement and strengthen his own position within the Shiite bloc.

Following weeks of fraught negotiations between the competing sectarian factions, several parties fractured as members rejected their parties’ respective leaders, formed a rump parliament, and illegally chose a new speaker. If the rump parliament continues to challenge the authority of the national legislature, then the situation will deteriorate further. ISW projects many possible scenarios arising from this crisis, including protracted deadlock, the dissolution of the central government, mass demonstrations, a challenge from the courts, or a move by the militias for more power.

The greatest risk here is that, if Abadi’s government collapses, he could be replaced by a pro-Iranian leader who would force U.S. troops out of the country. In any case, the planned offensive aimed at retaking Mosul from ISIS is already suffering because of the Iraqis’ need to send reinforcements to the capital. ISIS will no doubt seek to exploit any instability in Baghdad by expanding its attacks throughout the country.

Though this situation reflects failed Iraqi leadership, Washington deserves its share of the blame. From the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011 until the rise of ISIS in 2014, the Obama administration paid Iraq relatively little political attention. As James Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq during that period, wrote, “the biggest mystery of this administration when it comes to Iraq . . . is what happened to high-level Washington attention to support the residual but large American presence after troops left in 2012–2014. U.S. programs to assist the Iraqis in intelligence collection, counterterrorism, and military train-and-equip, all approved at the top, languished on the vine.” But even after ISIS’s six-month sweep across Iraq from January to June 2014, Jeffrey recalled that “neither [Vice President] Biden nor anyone else was able to persuade the president to provide significantly more assistance to the embattled Iraqis.”

The president’s efforts since the U.S. re-entered the conflict in the summer of 2014 have not been exemplary. Mr. Obama has pursued a policy of half measures that has not loosened ISIS’s grip over its strongholds. The new steps that Secretary of Defense Ashton Cater announced last month to support Baghdad — deploying additional U.S. advisors to the battalion level of the Iraqi Security Forces, and using attack helicopters and artillery to support the Iraqi-led ground offensive — should have been made 18 months ago. At present, the Iraqi military is simply not large or capable enough to oust ISIS from Mosul, the country’s second largest city.

Furthermore, while the death of a Navy SEAL who was partnering with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq this week was indeed tragic, the hard truth is that many more U.S. servicemen will need to be put in harm’s way if we want to most effectively support our Iraqi partners. This is a choice that President Obama must make. And he must be willing to accept the consequences.

If he chooses not to do so, then Mr. Obama must recognize that he is further risking the future of an Iraqi government already on a knife’s edge, and that if the political crisis deteriorates further, America’s primary partner in the fight against ISIS will have vanished. ISIS will retain or expand its territory, leaving the jihadist group with a substantial safe haven to prepare further attacks against the West — as well as a new claim on success to draw more recruits.

— Evan Moore is a senior policy analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

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Protests in Baghdad throw administration’s Iraq plan into doubt

By Greg Jaffe

Washington Post, April 30

President Obama’s plan for fighting the Islamic State is predicated on having a credible and effective Iraqi ally on the ground in Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

And in recent days, the administration had been optimistic, despite the growing political unrest in Baghdad, about that critical partnership.

But that optimism — along with the administration’s strategy for battling the Islamic State in Iraq — was thrown into severe doubt after protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament on Saturday and a state of emergency was declared in Baghdad. The big question for White House officials is what happens if Abadi — a critical linchpin in the fight against the Islamic State — does not survive the turmoil that has swept over the Iraqi capital.

The chaos in Baghdad comes just after a visit by Vice President Biden that was intended to help calm the political unrest and keep the battle against the Islamic State on track.

As Biden’s plane was approaching Baghdad on Thursday, a senior administration official described the vice president’s visit — which was shrouded in secrecy prior to his arrival — as a “symbol of how much faith we have in Prime Minister Abadi.”

Photos from the scene as protesters storm the Iraq parliament in Baghdad

Demonstrators climbed over blast walls surrounding Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone and could be seen streaming into the parliament building.

After 10 hours on the ground in Baghdad and Irbil, Biden was hurtling toward his next stop in Rome. The feeling among the vice president and his advisers was that Iraqi politics were on a trajectory to greater calm and that the battle against the Islamic State would continue to accelerate. Some hopeful advisers on Biden’s plane even suggested that Abadi might emerge from the political crisis stronger for having survived it.

No one is talking that way now. “There’s a realization that the government, as it’s currently structured, can’t hold,” said Doug Ollivant, a former military planner in Baghdad and senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “It’s just not clear how the Iraqis get out of this. I just don’t see how they will.”

It is equally unclear how the administration will move forward if Abadi is unable to consolidate his tenuous grip on power. For much of the past year, the Iraqi prime minister’s survival was taken as a given by senior White House officials who were far more focused on the military fight against the Islamic State.

The president and his top aides have pointed to battlefield gains against the group in Iraq as proof that the administration’s much-criticized strategy was working. In the past 18 months, the Islamic State has lost more than 40 percent of its territory in Iraq, according to U.S. officials.

Attacks on the group’s banks in Mosul have blown up cash totaling from $300 million to
$800 million, according to Pentagon estimates.

“Militarily, the momentum is clearly in the coalition’s favor against [the Islamic State],” said a senior administration official traveling with Biden to Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s strategy. “Every objective fact speaks to the fact that [the Islamic State] is losing.”

Obama has sought to accelerate the military campaign by sending more than 200 U.S. military advisers to Iraq and giving commanders authority to use lethal Apache attack helicopters in support of Iraqi forces. In a recent interview, the president said that by the end of the year he expected that the United States and its Iraqi partners will have “created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall.”

Another senior administration official said that U.S. counterterrorism efforts “always benefit from a stable partner on the ground” and that the Abadi government continues to have the administration’s full support. Even with the current instability in Baghdad, the campaign against the Islamic State will continue, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive counterterrorism operations.

The political crisis in Baghdad began when Abadi made a bold push to replace politically connected members of his cabinet with technocrats and reformers. The prime minister said that his moves were intended to stamp out corruption.

But the proposals alienated powerful blocs and provoked raucous debates within the Iraqi parliament. Thousands of protesters threatened to storm the heavily fortified Green Zone, which is the seat of Iraqi power, but then seemed to back off in the days before Biden’s arrival.

Biden’s meetings Thursday with Abadi and other senior Iraqi officials focused primarily on making sure that the political strife in Baghdad was not interfering with military preparations to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from the Islamic State.

“We talked about the plans that are in store for Mosul and the coordination that’s going on with all of our friends here,” Biden told reporters after his meeting with the Iraqi prime minister. “And so, I’m very optimistic.”

As he spoke, the vice president was standing next to Salim al-Jubouri, the Iraqi parliament speaker. He pointed to Jubouri and noted that they last talked in Biden’s office in Washington. “This is an old friend,” Biden said.

Less than 36 hours later, the protesters were dancing and stomping on Jubouri’s desk in front of the parliament chamber. Jubouri had fled the building.

The dramatic turn of events, some analysts said, points to the critical flaw in the Obama administration’s approach to the battle against the Islamic State, which has prioritized defeating the militant group over the much tougher task of helping Abadi repair Iraq’s corrupt and largely ineffective government.

“The message to the Iraqis has been to focus on the short-term problem that this president would like solved by January,” Ollivant said. “The focus is on the symptom and not the root cause of the problem.”

Other analysts said that the Obama administration’s campaign against the Islamic State was, from the outset, too dependent on Abadi, a weak prime minister who is trying to survive in a political system overrun by cronyism and competing sects.

“We get seized with individual personalities,” said Ali Khedery, who served as special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors in Baghdad from 2003 to 2009. “We fall in love with them. I agree that Abadi is generally speaking a good ally of the United States, but there isn’t much under his control.”

Because Iraqi society is so fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines, Khedery said the U.S. administration should adopt a more decentralized approach, working directly with individual Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders. “What you have is a society that is deeply polarized between communities and even polarized within those communities,” Khedery said. “We need a radical new formula.”

There is no indication at the moment that the White House is considering such a radical change in approach. For now, the hope is that the current unrest in Baghdad is just a blip. The protests were sparked by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is now under pressure from Iran and his fellow Shiites to rein in the demonstrations, said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Iraqi politics.

“Maybe [Sadr] will realize he took a step too far and will dial it back,” the official said. “That could give Abadi more space.”

It is also possible that the protests, spurred by the Iraqi government’s failure to provide basic services such as clean water and electricity, could grow worse. This time, demonstrators broke chairs and smashed windows in the parliament building. They berated lawmakers and chanted slogans for TV cameras.

“Iraq is becoming increasingly ungovernable,” said Emma Sky, who served as a senior political adviser to the U.S. military prior to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. “Non-state actors are stronger than the state. The government is paralyzed and corrupt.”

Greg Jaffe covers the White House for The Washington Post, where he has been since March 2009.

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Black Banner at the gates of Europe

Jonathan Spyer

The Islamic State Comes to Libya

Jerusalem Post, 29/4

ISIS forces parade in Sirte, Libya

At a meeting of G5 world leaders in Hanover, Germany this week, a proposal was raised for US warships to join vessels of EU navies off the coast of Libya. Their mission would be to help slow the flow of migrants from Africa. They would also be responsible for guarding the southern tip of Europe from seaborne terror attacks. Such a notion, unimaginable a few years ago, is now very much on the range of possibilities.

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond this week, noted that his government did nor ‘rule out’ the possibility of a ground forces deployment into Libya, to combat the threat of IS.

What is the reason for the renewed focus on troubled Libya?

The short answer is that an area of de facto Islamic State sovereignty now exists on an area of the Libyan coast, situated just 320 km from the island of Lampedusa, the southernmost point of Italian sovereignty in the Mediterranean.

That is to say, the Islamic State – in sovereign form, not merely as an idea – is now separated by only a relatively narrow stretch of water from the southern tip of Europe.

IS controls an area of around 200km around the north-central city of Sirte on the Libyan coast. In addition to opening the gateway to Europe, this area gives the jihadis access to sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb.

Sirte is no dusty backwater. It has an extensive infrastructure, including a seaport, and an international airport,

It is also adjacent to two sites vital to the oil industry on which Libya relies – the Sidr oil port and the refinery at Ras Lanuff.

Libya is an area in which central government has broken down – the type of space in which Islamic State naturally flourishes. An agreement for a new, countrywide government was reached in December and a new government announced on January 19^th. This was intended to replace a situation in which two separate administrations nominally held power – an officially recognized government in Tobruk and a de facto Islamist authority in Tripoli, the capital. The IS holding in Sirte is situated between the two.

But the new government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj has not been recognized by the parliament in Tobruk. And more importantly, it lacks the physical resources to impose its will throughout the country.

Hence, Libya – along with Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, is a state which has effectively ceased to function.

The difference is that Libya combines the perfect storm of proximity to Europe, jihadi control of a section of the coastline, and closeness to sub-Saharan Africa, with its limitless supplies of migrants. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian estimated in a statement to Agence France Presse this week that around 800,000 would be migrants are currently concentrated in Libya.

All this is serving to concentrate the minds of western policymakers.

As IS prepares to expand toward areas vital for the Libyan oil industry on which the country depends, the issue becomes more urgent.

The organization has ambitions to push out its area of control to both east and west. Its immediate targets are the city of Misrata, halfway between Sirte and Tripoli, and Ajdabiya to the east.

Western forces are already present and assisting in the effort to prevent this. In late February, US special forces carried out a raid on the town of Sabratha, in which 40 IS men were killed.

Reports have appeared in the British and French media concerning the presence of special forces soldiers also from both these countries close to the IS holding in Sirte. British and French aircraft are carrying out reconnaissance missions over Sirte. Le Monde described what it termed a ‘secret war’ being conducted by French intelligence and special forces personnel against IS on Libyan soil.

The strategy at present appears to resemble that being employed in Syria and Iraq. Namely – use air power to partner with local allies identified by intelligence and bolstered by the discreet presence of western special forces.

The entities surrounding IS on Libyan soil are of course far from helpless. And the jihadis have only around 6000 fighters. So the prospects for a rapid expansion remain limited. Nevertheless, the potential for severe disruption of European life represented by an IS entity at the gates of the continent should not be underestimated.

From a European point of view, the nightmare scenario is not only the flow of migrants itself, nor the chance of IS attacks from the sea.

Rather, the combination of the two – the prospect whereby IS will seek to infiltrate fighters and organizers into the continent by way of the flow of migrants is what keeps European security officials awake at night.

It is no longer a theoretical possibility. Najim Lachraoui, one of the suicide bombers in the attack on Brussels Airport on March 22, 2016, was able to return to Europe from Syria by posing as a migrant. Lachraoui was Belgian-born but had travelled to Syria to volunteer with Islamic State.

The latest statements from western officials suggest that they appear to be waking up to the extent of the challenge. The nature and extent of their response remains to be seen.

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Tags: Iraq