Iraq-ISIL-Terrorism

No end in sight for Iraq’s nights of terror

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No end in sight for Iraq’s nights of terror

A victory against ISIL will depend on an inclusive Iraqi government and new national security forces.

Salah Nasrawi

On Monday night, terror descended on the Iraqi capital when gunmen and suicide bombers stormed a shopping mall in a busy, predominantly-Shia area, killing and wounding dozens of people and spreading panic among residents.

An even deadlier attack almost simultaneously killed at least 20 people in the beleaguered town of Muqdadiyah northeast of Baghdad. A bomb exploded at a cafe, and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle after people gathered at the scene.

The series of attacks that were claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, was the nightmare scenario that intelligence and security experts have been warning against as peace and stability remain fragile in Iraq.

And, like all bad news, more tragic events followed fast. At least seven Sunni mosques and dozens of shops were firebombed and 10 people were shot and killed in Muqdadiyah the next day in what appeared to be retaliatory sectarian attacks.

For Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the bombings were “a desperate” move by ISIL after “victory [was] achieved” through the retaking of the key western city of Ramadi from the group.

However, what the escalation indicates is that the prospect of the total defeat of ISIL remains far off. ISIL’s decentralised networks in Iraq seem to have become more decentralised and still capable of carrying out large-scale attacks.

There are two sets of factors that explain why the group remains the most significant threat to Iraq: First, its adaptation to new circumstances and methods, and second, the failure of Iraq’s political elite to end the country’s paralysis.

What accounts for ISIL’s ongoing effectiveness in the face of unprecedented onslaught? The answer lies in the group’s ever-changing nature. Since its inception as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the organisation has shown a surprising readiness to adapt its mission and tactics.

The group’s capacity for change is manifested by its ability to be more appealing to recruits and attract new allies, making it harder to find and destroy.

Despite a number of military setbacks across Iraq in the past year, ISIL’s manpower and their ability to carry out attacks do not seem to be waning.

The ongoing attacks in Baghdad and other urban centres are the work of enormous sleeper cells adopting new techniques that make them hard to detect.

As for the political deadlock, this week’s violence has confirmed that the country’s stabilisation will depend largely on resolving its lingering communal conflicts and establishing an all-inclusive, power-sharing process to replace the current dysfunctional ethnic and sect-based quota system.

Much of ISIL’s recruitment comes from disgruntled Iraqi Sunni Muslims who feel excluded and marginalised. Without fair and effective political representation, many feel that they are left with few alternatives for addressing their grievances and resort to joining violent groups like ISIL.

Iraq’s security problems also have some roots in the Shia militias, which are making a bad situation worse.

The militias, which were supposedly created and expanded to fight ISIL, are now assuming more power.

The militias’ rise in political stature and their increasing role in policing neighbourhoods are undermining the security establishment and weakening its resolve to carry out its duties and fight terrorism.

This precarious security situation has worsened communal violence and criminality. Armed clashes between tribes and attacks by armed groups – which include murder, kidnapping for ransom, rape and other violent crimes – are now widespread.

For months, residents in Iraq’s main port city of Basra have been complaining of pervasive lawlessness as armed tribesmen fight one another over economic interests and influence.

In Baghdad and other cities, scenes of unidentified, bullet-riddled bodies strewn in the streets are normal sights.

Another bad omen for Iraq that could have far-reaching consequences for the country’s stability is its faltering economy and financial crisis caused by plummeting oil prices.

The general assessment is that low oil prices are likely to persist, and given the fluid situation in Iraq, security could deteriorate to the point of chaos.

The government has halted spending and imposed sever austerity measures, including the elimination of jobs, higher taxes, and salary cuts for public servants and pensioners.

While the security forces will bear the brunt of the decline in revenues, cuts in spending will damage development and could be a precursor of worse things to come. The economic crisis has led to street protests, and emerging troubles are expected to add a new source of instability to the ISIL violence and Iraq’s fractious sectarian system.

If anything, victory in the campaign again such violence will depend on whether Iraq’s feuding factions can agree on an inclusive government and new national security forces that could defeat ISIL and make Iraq safe from the ongoing threat of terror attacks.

Source: Al Jazeera

Iraq-Iran-Saudi Arabia

Can Iraq survive the Iran-Saudi row?

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Can Iraq survive the Iran-Saudi row?

Analysis: The Iranian-Saudi rupture threatens to derail Iraq’s war efforts against ISIL.

Salah Nasrawi

When Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior announced the execution of the Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, many feared that Iraq would inevitably be caught in the dark storm expected to gather over relations between Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran.

The question wasn’t whether al-Nimr’s execution would put Iraq in the midst of the crisis between the two regional heavyweights, but rather to what extent the new conflict will inflame the Iraq’s existing sectarian tensions.

Only a day after Riyadh cut its diplomatic ties with Tehran after Iranian protesters stormed its embassy in response to al-Nimr’s execution, blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq.

A least one man, a muezzin, the person who calls for prayer, was killed in the attacks in two districts of south Baghdad.

Thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims demonstrated on Monday outside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad which hosts the Saudi embassy, condemning al-Nimr’s execution with some demanding severing relations with Saudi Arabia. There were similar demonstrations in other Iraqi cities.

The protests followed outrage voiced by Iraq’s Shia political and religious leaders over the execution of al-Nimr and other Shia activists. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shia authority, blasted the execution as “unjust and an aggression”.

Behind the backlash against the executions, however, lie more serious problems. Iraq is particularly vulnerable to the Iranian-Saudi feud, which threatens to deepen its own lingering sectarian conflict.

Both nations back opposing parties and groups in Iraq and pursue geopolitical interests in the country.

The question now is whether the crisis over al-Nimr’s execution will inflame existing ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq as its Shia-led government tries to bring the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL) to a successful conclusion.

The negative effect is due to two mechanisms which are not mutually exclusive: Peripheral, indirectly, through the spillover from Iranian-Saudi rift; and central, due to Shia-Sunni sectarian polarisation inside Iraq.
By and large, the Iranian-Saudi rupture is stoking tension that threatens to derail Iraq’s efforts to build a regional and global front in the war against ISIL.

A string of defeats inflicted in recent weeks in Iraq, most recently in Ramadi, have raised hopes that ISIL’s demise may be closer than had been thought.

The Iranian-Saudi escalation, which is bound to change the rules of the game in the proxy wars in Iraq, will most probably undermine Baghdad’s campaign to defeat ISIL. Saudi-Iran tensions will not only represent yet another hurdle for regional and international action to combat ISIL, but will pit both Iran and Saudi Arabia in a direct confrontation in Iraq.

Today, Riyadh’s new assertiveness –  as Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser, has summed it up in an article in the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat on Tuesday – is all about filling the vacuum in “the leadership of the Arab world” in absence of its “traditional pillars, Egypt, Iraq and Syria”.
Inside Story – The fight for Ramadi, a turning point against ISIL?

For Iraq, the rhetoric of this strategy is being translated into Saudi attempts to create a new multipolar regional order which could throw the delicate international coalition against ISIL off balance.

Saudi Arabia’s endeavours to create a new Sunni-dominated “Islamic military alliance” devoted to fighting global terrorism, and plans to set up a “strategic cooperation council” with Turkey, are seen by Baghdad as primarily motivated by a regional rivalry with Iran.

On the other hand, the acrimony between Iran and Saudi Arabia could bring more chaos to Iraq. As Monday’s bombings of the Sunni mosques have demonstrated the conflict increases fears of renewed Shia-Sunni violence.

The Iran-backed Shia militias, which have been increasingly operating as the country’s main military and political force, seem to be bracing themselves for a showdown if the Iranian-Saudi conflict worsens and spreads into Iraq.

Worse still, increased friction between the two regional rivals could shake up Iraq’s fragile political landscape.

The rupture between Iran and Saudi Arabia comes at a delicate moment in the fledgling effort to launch a badly needed and US-backed political process that will empower Iraqi Sunnis in the aftermath of ISIL’s pushback.

The tensions would only bolster hard-liners on both sides, feeding the deepening Shia-Sunni divide and hindering, or even blocking, a badly needed reconciliation in the fight against ISIL and efforts to bring stability back to Iraq.

Even if the political outrage over the execution of the Saudi Shia leader begins to fade somehow, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are expected to continue simmering and Baghdad will remain caught in what could turn to be an apocalyptic Middle East sectarian storm.

Iraq-Economy-Budget

Iraq’s sickly economy

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Iraq’s sickly economy

Iraq’s faltering economy is likely to take a further turn for the worse as oil prices plummet, writes Salah Nasrawi

When millions of Iraqi pensioners went to banks and cash points to receive their monthly pensions in December they were stunned to find that their regular payments had been drastically slashed.

Some had had their pensions cut by 10 per cent or more. While those who had been given huge pensions by the post-Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq were only slightly affected, the biggest losers were public-sector workers who had retired before Saddam’s ouster. Altogether more than 2.7 million retirees were affected.

The surprise raid on the retirement funds is the latest in a package of austerity measures introduced by the government of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi this year as the state budget is hit by lower oil prices and the increasing cost of the war against the Islamic State terror group (IS).

The government had earlier promised that pensions would not be axed after it had withheld the salaries of government officials as part of a package of austerity measures meant to close an enormous budget deficit.

Iraq has entered its worst economic crisis since 2003 after oil prices dropped sharply. The decline in revenues has raised fears of unrest as a wave of protests against government shortfalls are expected to add a new source of instability to the IS insurgency and the country’s fractious sectarian politics.

On 16 December the Iraqi parliament endorsed a tight 2016 government budget of 113.5 trillion Iraqi dinars ($99.65 billion) with a deficit of 29.4 trillion Iraqi dinars ($25.81 billion).

The government’s programme to reduce the budgetary deficit includes, among other financial restructuring measures, plans to cut spending and the resort to loans.

Under the legislation, the government will eliminate jobs, merge some ministries, halt spending on construction and other investment projects, and make cuts in civil servants’ salaries.

The budget also anticipates $13 billion in other income, some to be raised from new taxation on mobile phone SIM cards, cigarettes, alcohol, cars and Internet services.

But fiscal restructuring is what the government hopes will do most to reduce the worsening deficit.

Last week the Iraqi Central Bank (ICB) increased the sale price of US dollars to banks and currency exchange bureaus by 16 dinars, or 1.37 per cent. The government hopes the adjustment will ease pressure on the dinar, the local currency.

Yet, in order to meet the continued shortfalls in the 2016 budget, the government also decided to resort to substantial international borrowing and bond sales.

Iraq has already secured $1.7 billion in loans from the World Bank and a $833 million loan from the International Monetary Fund. It failed to issue international bonds after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s assigned Iraq a B-minus credit rating, six notches below investment grade, saying its security and institutional risks were among the highest in the world.

In addition to the loans, Iraq plans to borrow billions of dollars from the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank, the Qatar National Bank and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in an attempt to raise an ambitious $6 billion on the international bond market.

A $4 billion loan from domestic commercial banks has also been planned, in addition to the sale of some $4 billion of state bonds on the local market.

But what is most worrying is the government’s intention to finance the budget deficit through indirect loans from the Iraqi Central Bank. The budget law envisages seven trillion dinars worth of ICB-guaranteed bonds that will be offered to the public.

Such a move would require the ICB to use its foreign reserves, crucial in backing the Iraqi dinar and avoiding risks of destabilisation.

Iraq’s escalating financial woes are largely a result of the abysmal performance of the post-Saddam governments. Instead of working to rebuild the economy and sustain growth in basic sectors, they have relied heavily on oil revenues to bankroll the budget.

Though Iraq is the second-largest producer of crude oil in the Organisation of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), the country’s economy is in a shambles due largely to inefficiency and mismanagement.

Some 70 per cent of the budget has been going to pay for food imports, energy subsidies, and funding an inflated bureaucracy and ramshackle armed forces. Government policies are mainly responsible for the decline in the two main productive sectors of the economy, agriculture and industry.

Despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues and international aid since 2003, Iraq still suffers from poor public services. Households in most parts of the country receive only a few hours of electricity a day. Public health services are in tatters and environmental conditions are abysmal.

Rampant corruption, poor financial management and bad public spending are key factors in Iraq’s economic ills. Billions of dollars have been lost in graft, waste and inefficiency over the last ten years.

Though Al-Abadi has pledged to curb corruption, there has been no sign that his government has taken tangible steps to bring corrupt officials to account or recover stolen money.

With expectations that oil prices will remain low in 2016, the country’s budget deficit will continue to inch downward through next year.

Budget projections envision oil exports of 3.6 million barrels per day (bpd), including a total of 550,000 bpd from Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kirkuk Province at a price forecast of $45 a barrel. But even with oil production raised as planned, the government’s budget will continue to stay in the red.

The scale of the damage to Iraq’s economy by government financial policies could be enormous in both the short and the long terms and the micro and macro levels.

The austerity measures are likely to make a terrible situation worse. The cuts, which have already targeted salaries and pensions, could result in further reductions in employees’ and retirees’ benefits, adding frustration to the mix and causing tempers to veer out of control.

The surge in the dollar’s exchange rate with the dinar will raise prices and thus impact the cost of living, especially for low-income groups.

The Iraqi Society of Pensioners, a pressure group, has threatened that it will call for public protests if the government implements another 3 per cent slash in salaries, as has been widely rumoured. Government employees have made similar threats.

The slash in government spending is likely to impact education, health, and municipal and other social services.

The suspension of construction and other investment projects and the government’s decision to curtail or reduce new jobs in the civil service will most likely cause rising unemployment. It will also make more skilled Iraqis leave the country.

Excessive borrowing, as the government is planning in the 2016 budget, will have long-term consequences. While increasing the public debt, the new borrowing is not intended to generate growth but to cover the spendthrift policies of the government and its budget deficit.

A lot has happened since the 2015 austerity budget was adopted: the economy has stagnated, public spending has come to a halt and public services have worsened, putting more pressure on a population already plagued by violence and endemic corruption.

Street protests over shortages of electricity and other services, which started in August, have turned into calls for an end to the country’s political system which is based on power-sharing between the country’s ethnic and sectarian communities.

With another belt-tightening budget, the Iraqi people’s lives will be made increasingly insecure, raising the spectre of more turbulence as the country wages a costly war against IS which still controls large parts of the country.

ما بعد التجربة

What does Turkey want in Iraq?

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What does Turkey want in Iraq?

Turkey’s latest military gambit in Iraq could be a strategic game-changer, writes Salah Nasrawi

As Iraq continues to suffer, Turkey’s incursions into its war-torn neighbour have become ever more brazen. On 4 December, a column of Turkish troops and equipment crossed the border in the far south of the country at the Ibrahim Al-Khalil border crossing with Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region.

The convoy of several hundred Turkish soldiers and flatbed trucks carrying armoured vehicles made its way at night through territory and checkpoints controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga forces to Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, some 80 km to the south.

Turkish media later reported that some 150 to 200 Turkish soldiers backed by 20 to 25 tanks had been sent to Bashiqa, traditionally a Christian Chaldean-populated district north-east of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which fell to the Islamic State (IS) terror group in June 2014.

The Turkish Hürriyet newspaper reported that Turkey plans to set up a permanent military base in Bashiqa under a deal signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) president Massoud Barzani and former Turkish foreign minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on 4 November.

By establishing a foothold in Bashiqa, seized by the Peshmergas after IS advances last year, Turkey will be able to establish another bridgehead in this strategic part of northern Iraq. Since 1995, the Turkish army has built at least four known military bases inside Iraq in the Dohuk Province, which is under the control of Barzani’s Democratic Kurdistan Party (DKP) administration.

When news of the incursion broke, prompting an angry reaction from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu acknowledged the intervention but said the soldiers had been deployed to provide training for unspecified Iraqi troops in response to a request from Iraq.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi denied “a request or authorisation from the Iraqi federal authorities” for the deployment had been made and told Turkey to “immediately” withdraw its forces, including tanks and artillery. The deployment “is considered a serious violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” Al-Abadi said in a statement.

Turkey’s relationship with Iraq has been tense over a host of issues ranging from its routine military incursions into Iraq, water conflicts, illegal oil exports, and disputes over what Iraq perceives as Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s interference in Iraq’s sectarian disputes.

What the newly assembled Turkish force tells us, however, is something more significant than the building of a new bridgehead inside Iraq, which the Turkish military buildup indicates. The buildup hints at a wider intervention aimed at creating a new reality on the ground in the war-torn country which is now threatened with breakup.

The past several weeks of Turkish activities in Iraq and Syria demonstrate that Ankara has found a new tactic for carrying out its overreaching strategy for achieving its goals and interests in both countries. Turkey’s course of action in the Iraqi and Syrian conflicts clearly signals its intention to assert its regional policy aims and objectives.

The new Turkish troop deployment comes amid preparations by the Iraqi security forces, Iran-backed Shia militias, and pro-government Sunni tribes backed by the US-led international coalition to storm the Iraqi town of Ramadi and take it back from IS militants.

If Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s western Anbar Province, is to be liberated from IS militants, the combined Iraqi forces are then expected to move to take back Mosul, Iraq’s largest city still under IS control.

The Turkish intervention, therefore, would seem to precipitate any move by the Iraqi forces and the Shia militias to take back Mosul for reasons related to Ankara’s views about Iraq’s inter-communal conflicts, its future as a unitary state, and the regional strategic balance, especially with Iran.

The camp in Bashiqa is currently being used by a force called Al-Hashd Al-Watani (National Mobilisation Units), which is made up of about 4,000 to 6,000 mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi policemen and volunteers from Mosul.

The force, believed to be equipped and trained by Turkey, was formed by former Mosul governor Atheel Al-Nujaifi, who is close to Turkey.

The new Turkish troop dispatch came a few days after Iraq rejected a US proposal to deploy a new force of special operations troops in Iraq to conduct raids against IS there and in neighbouring Syria. The Turkish move has now created a new reality on the ground that will make it impossible for Baghdad to move to retake Mosul unilaterally without confronting the Turkish troops.

The presence of foreign ground forces is a contentious issue in Iraq, whose Shia-led government feels caught between the United States and its powerful neighbours. Last week, Al-Abadi rejected a proposal by US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter to deploy a special forces contingent to carry out raids against IS.

He also rejected a proposal by two senior US senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, for Washington to send a 100,000-strong force from Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Iraq as part of a multinational ground force to counter IS.

All this is compounded by the fact that the conflict in Iraq is now hurtling into a downward spiral. The Turkish buildup will most likely complicate the fight against IS in both Iraq and Syria and especially the new international alliance that is emerging to take down the terror group.

The United States has distanced itself from Turkey’s putting its troops into Iraq, saying that Turkey’s deployment of hundreds of soldiers in northern Iraq is not part of the activities of the international coalition it leads in Iraq and Syria.

The new crisis triggered by Turkey’s intervention in Iraq is likely to be the latest complication in the war against IS, especially after US President Barack Obama pledged this week to “destroy” IS following its claiming the attack in San Bernardino, California, and the increasing role of NATO in the campaign.

Since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet last month, the country’s western NATO allies have scaled down their coordination with Ankara in the war against IS. Germany has reportedly drawn up plans to prevent sharing intelligence with Turkey as it prepares to support international air strikes against IS.

But Ankara seems to have remained defiant, and the Turkish media reported this week that the country may increase its presence in Bashiqa by hundreds more soldiers in order to bring the total number of troops near Mosul to more than 2,000.

A pledge by Davutoglu that Turkey would not send in additional forces was not good enough to placate Baghdad, which has threatened Ankara with UN action and resistance to the buildup.

This may explain how Turkey plans to make the crisis over the troop deployment in the Mosul area a strategic game-changer in Iraq and Syria after tensions with Russia escalated following Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane last month.

The flare-up has thwarted Turkey’s plans to establish a safe haven in northern Syria, where it had hoped to use the zone to expand its influence in its southern neighbour and block Turkish Kurdish separatists from operating from an emerging autonomous Kurdish enclave in Syria.

Ankara’s adventure in Iraq, therefore, seems to be a two-pronged strategy: a slight change in its plans in Iraq to make up for its aspired safety zone in Syria, and a way of exploiting the turmoil in Iraq in order to advance its long-term agenda in its other southern neighbour.

It is no longer a secret that Turkey has stakes in Iraq, and ever since the 2003 US-led invasion Ankara has been a major regional actor in the beleaguered country, apparently trying to counterbalance Shia Iran’s increasing influence there.

In addition to using its beefed-up presence in northern Iraq to undermine the Kurdish Workers Party’s (PKK) objectives, including having free rein in both Syria and Iraq, the Turkish strategy aims at confronting the increasing Iranian influence in Iraq which is likely to receive a further boost if the Shia militias take part in liberating Mosul from IS.

Underlining Turkey’s aspiring role as a regional Sunni powerhouse and a traditional competitor with Shia Iran for influence in Iraq, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu blasted Tehran’s “sectarian policies” in Iraq and Syria on Monday, which he said were a danger to the region.

To understand the reasons behind the Turkish military buildup in Mosul, one should also pay a brief visit to recent Middle Eastern history. According to the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, signed by Turkey and the allies in the First World War to define the Turkish border following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mosul was given to the newly established Iraqi state.

Many in Turkey believe that Mosul, at that time an Ottoman velayet, or province, that included all northern Iraq, was unduly cut off from the remaining territories of the Empire, what is today Turkey, and they now aspire to see it connected back to the Turkish homeland.

Many experts worry that Erdoğan, who is showing an increasing obsession with reviving Ottomanism, may now try to take advantage of Iraq’s troubles to advance a territorial agenda that includes the annexation of Mosul if the country breaks up.

“If Turkey has reinforced its troops in Mosul with the secret intention of gaining land, then it has launched into a very dangerous venture,” Turkish columnist Taha Akyol wrote in the Hurriyet Daily News on Monday.

Mosul

Analysis: The fate of Mosul in Turkey’s hands?

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Analysis: The fate of Mosul in Turkey’s hands?

Turkey keeps the world guessing as it moves militarily in Iraq – but it’s all about geopolitics.

Salah Nasrawi

On December 4, less than two weeks into the standoff with Moscow over thedowning of a Russian jet operating in Syria, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, sent a convoy of several hundred Turkish soldiers, bolstered by tanks and armoured vehicles, deep into Iraq’s territory, stirring another conflict in his country’s troubled southern backyard.

The incursion embittered relations between Ankara and Baghdad and increased tensions among Iraq’s embattled communities. The dispute has also threatened to draw in the rest of Iraq’s neighbours, who have high stakes in the war-torn nation.

On Monday, some Turkish troops started leaving their camp in Iraq and moving north, a Turkish military source and a senior official said.It may be too early to figure out Turkey’s motives behind its military build-up in Iraq, but in many ways the confrontation appears to have been waiting to happen.

Ankara says its soldiers were sent to guard a training camp for Iraqi Sunni volunteers stationed in Bashiqa, near Mosul. The volunteers are training to take back the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. Ankara also claims that Turkish troops are in Iraq at the request of Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s prime minister.

While Abadi denies making such a request, the country’s top Shia religious authority, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, instructed the government not to tolerate any infringement of Iraq’s sovereignty.

Iraq’s Iran-backed Shia militias, including Muqtada al-Sadr’s powerful Mahdi Army, meanwhile, have vowed to put up a “decisive” fight against the Turkish soldiers.

 

In that context, and as Erdogan insists that troop withdrawal is “out of the question”, Turkey appears to be heading towards an escalation with Iraq.

Ankara’s operation in Iraq is still relatively limited in scale, but its military campaign marks a testing ground for Turkey’s strategy in dealing with regional conflicts and for its attempt to be accepted as a key actor in the Middle East.

So, why did Ankara decide to intervene directly in Iraq, knowing that it could cause issues both with Iraq’s Shia community and with Iran, which has enhanced its clout in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003?

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Friday, Erdogan shared some of his deep and bitter feelings about what he views as the reasons behind the flare up, saying Ankara’s problems with Baghdad stem from the latter’s “sectarian polices” against Sunnis and its alliance with Iran. The Iranian and Iraqi cooperation with Russia, Turkey’s new nemesis, was another reason for the tensions.

There is much to untangle here. Relations between Iraq and Turkey have remained strained since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which empowered Iraq’s Shia community and allowed Kurds to establish full autonomy in northern Iraq. Iraq’s Shia community cemented relations with Iran, while some Iraqi Sunnis sought patronage from Turkey.

As the gap between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad widened, Ankara also succeeded in co-opting Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdish region, whose acrimonious relationship with Baghdad has become poisonous since his Peshmerga forces seized disputed territories retaken from ISIL.

The latest display of Turkish frustration at Iran and Iraq’s Shia-led government, however, is a result of Russia’s build-up in Syria, which threatens Ankara’s plans to establish a safe haven in northern Syria.

Ankara had hoped to use the zone to expand its influence and block an emerging autonomous Kurdish enclave on its southern border that could fall under the control of its arch enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

While its beefed-up presence in Bashiqa will allow Turkey to act aggressively to thwart the PKK’s efforts to build new bases in territories retaken from ISIL, as it did in Sinjar, the Turkish strategy also aims to confront increasing Iranian influence after Iraqi forces eventually retake Mosul from ISIL.

But there are more long-term and strategic challenges that may illustrate why Turkey’s response has been so determined and aggressive.

With many Iraqi Sunnis now fearful that their liberated cities will be under the control of Shia militias, Iraq is facing a severe crisis. In reinforcing its military presence in Iraq, Turkey seems to be getting out in front of the country’s possible partitioning, in an effort to gain territorial advantage.

With Mosul being the last Ottoman vilayet (administrative division) to fall in World War I, the city given to Iraq under the Sykes-Picot agreement has a particular claim on the hearts and minds of many Turks.

“The sudden and dramatic moves are linked to each other. It’s a stage for interested parties and local players to position and reposition themselves as events unfold,” wrote Yavuz Baydar, a columnist, in the Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman, on December 7.

Indeed, many Turkish politicians and commentators have been sending signals that the fate of Mosul will be Turkey’s most serious challenge if Iraq collapses.

First published in  Al Jazeera on December  15, 2015

Analysis & views from the Middle East