Tag Archives: Iraq

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.

Iraq-Shia

Shia power struggle in Iraq

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Shia power struggle in Iraq

At the root of the Iraqi Shia’s troubles lie the competing ambitions of their leaders, writesSalah Nasrawi

The first thought that must have crossed the minds of many Iraqis when they learned about the fight that broke out between a Shia member of parliament and a Shia politician at a Baghdad television building was that the much-feared Shia power struggle had come to pass earlier than many had expected.

“This is a state of militias,” was a comment widely posted by Iraqis on social networks this week, referring to the surge in the number of Shia paramilitary groups in the country and the increasing militarisation of the Shia political factions and their meddling in both public life and state affairs.

The brawl began in the reception area of the Dijla TV station when MP Kadhim Al-Sayyadi of the State of Law bloc and Baligh Abu Galal, a spokesman of the Citizen’s Bloc, accidently ran into one another.

Both groups are within the Shia National Coalition that has been in control of the Iraqi government since the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled the Sunni-dominated regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The brawl started when Abu Galal, scheduled to appear on an evening talk show, did not return the greetings of Al-Sayyadi when the later appeared in the reception area on his way out of the studio. The bickering that followed quickly escalated into a fight that turned into shooting.

Both Al-Sayyadi and Abu Galal have a long history of squabbling with other Shia politicians, sometimes inside parliament or on the air. In May, Al-Sayyadi was beaten up by Shia Sadrist Movement MPs during a debate to elect two ministers. A few months ago, Abu Galal was at the centre of a dispute with an influential Shia tribe that had accused him of slandering an MP belonging to the tribe.

Beneath the chaos looms a complex struggle between Shia leaders that reveals much about the country and the surprisingly opaque nature of power in Shia-led Iraq. On the surface, the Shia National Coalition is a broad grouping encompassing the country’s main Shia factions. Real power, however, rests with an inner circle of oligarchs.

The most recent, and probably the most daunting conflict, grew out of the reforms that Iraqi prime minister Haider Al-Abadi has promised to carry out in response to the widespread protests that have taken place since August against rampant government corruption and poor services and in favour of calls for change.

The struggle has also been fueled by the rise of the Shia militias that first arose after the US-led invasion to confront Al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups and were reinvigorated following the seizure of swathes of Sunni-populated territory in Iraq by the Islamic State (IS) group, threatening Baghdad and Shia-dominated central and southern Iraq.

Al-Abadi’s reforms, though too meagre to matter, have been met with resistance by the Shia oligarchs who dominate the government and parliament. Last month, the parliament withdrew its support for Al-Abadi’s reform package, accusing the prime minister of overstepping his powers.

Many of Al-Abadi’s reforms, such as scrapping top government posts, target Shia politicians accused by protesters of corruption, incompetence and negligence. Among those whose jobs have been axed is Al-Abadi’s predecessor Nuri Al-Maliki who has the post of vice-president in Al-Abadi’s administration.

Some of the measures introduced by Al-Abadi, including cuts to the hefty benefits received by MPs and senior officials that have been key demands of the protesters, have been challenged by Shia politicians who use their positions to fill their pockets through endemic corruption.

Four months after promising the reforms, Al-Abadi is still battling opposition that threatens his authority. Last month, Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone was again declared off limits a few days after Al-Abadi said he would open it to the public. Lifting restrictions on the 10 square km area has been a major demand of the protesters.

But the emergence of the Shia militias remains the most serious challenge to Al-Abadi. The Iran-backed paramilitary forces that have officially become part of Iraq’s armed forces as the Hashid Al-Sha’bi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), are quickly moving to the centre stage of Iraq’s politics and becoming a threat to Al-Abadi’s authority.

Last month, PMF leaders pressed the parliament to send the draft 2016 budget back to the government, demanding increases in funding for their units which they said was not sufficient to allow them to fight IS.

They leaders have also been pushing for increases in the numbers of the Forces, which are now believed to include some 120,000 fighters and aspire to play a larger role in the country’s domestic security.

Al-Abadi seems to be under the hammer of his fellow Shia politicians, who are taking advantage of Iraq’s troubles to cash in on his faltering efforts at curbing corruption, improving government efficiency and taking down IS militants.

The future of Al-Abadi’s government is currently the most discussed topic in Iraq. In recent weeks, there have been frequent reports in the Iraqi media about efforts by Al-Abadi’s opponents to call for a no-confidence vote in his government in parliament.

Other reports have suggested that the beleaguered prime minister has lost the support of Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric, ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who has been backing Al-Abadi’s reforms. During a visit to Najaf, the seat of Al-Sistani’s authority, last month, Al-Abadi did not meet the cleric, a sign that Al-Sistani is probably discontented with the slow pace of reforms.

Opposition to Al-Abadi is also growing within his own Dawa Party, and Party leader Al-Maliki, who fought to stay in office and prevent Al-Abadi from taking over following last year’s elections, is widely believed to be working to overthrow Al-Abadi.

In a stunning remark, the head of the Party’s bloc in parliament, Ali Adeeb, told the Washington Post last week that Al-Abadi was perceived to be “illegitimate.” The statement reflects the deep divisions within the Dawa Party, which has shelved a conference planned this month to elect a new leadership and review the stances taken by Al-Abadi.

After 13 years in power following their rise in US-occupied Iraq, the Shia religious parties are sinking into ever-deeper disarray. Their corrupt and power-greedy leaders are sacrificing competence and unity in the face of the country’s political chaos.

Their maneuvering to block the badly needed reforms, insistence on clinging onto power, and in particular their fierce competition for power and resources have led them to be at war with themselves.

Worse still, the increasing role played by the militias and the militarisation of the Shia groups could drive the country into a political showdown. The prospect of an internecine Shia war looks steadily more alarming and its possible impact on Iraq’s national politics is growing.

On Saturday, Al-Abadi made a passionate appeal to his rivals to abandon a “competition which is aimed at finding fault with others”. He urged them “to belong to the country and not to their political affiliations”.

As if to test the will of his opponents and disperse perceptions about his own weakness, Al-Abadi also trumpeted his achievements in terms of reform and vowed to continue implementing his anti-corruption programme.

Both assertions, however, are now looking rather doubtful.

Al-Abadi may stay in office until the end of his term in 2018, thanks to the complicated political procedures that will be needed to find a replacement. But he will be a lame duck at the mercy of a conglomerate of Shia oligarchs and militia leaders whose agenda is to keep the government under their control.

US-ME intel'-ISIL

Analysis: What does US Intel really know about ISIL?

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Analysis: What does US Intel really know about ISIL?

The US intelligence failure on ISIL is raising serious questions in the Middle East.

Salah Nasrawi |

 A major cause of President George W Bush’s blunder in Iraq was US intelligence failures, first over Saddam Hussein’s lack of weapons of mass destruction and then, after connecting the dots of the September 11 plot, the linking of the Iraqi president to Osama bin Laden’s Al­Qaeda.
It took Bush’s partner in the Iraq fiasco, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, more than 13 years to grudgingly admit in October to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the war conspiracy which led directly to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the destruction it has wreaked in the Middle East was based on “wrong” intelligence.
Without the controversy over the Chilcot Inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War, it would also have been hard to get an admission from Blair that there were “elements of truth” in the idea that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 assisted the rise of the ISIL.
What he has failed to admit, however, is that the prewar intelligence was deliberately “sexed up” to build the case for the invasion. OPINION: Blair, the Iraq War and me Now, as US President Barack Obama agonises over how to defeat ISIL, it seems to be happening again.
Messy US intelligence failure in the war in Iraq has resurfaced, leading to allegations that the US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees military operations across the Middle East, is cooking the books about both ISIL and Iraq.
This week Obama ordered his senior defence officials to find out whether classified intelligence assessments for policymakers had been altered at Centcom to reflect a more optimistic picture of the US military campaign against ISIL.
With cracks revealed in France’s counterterrorism efforts by the November 13 attacks in Paris, the Centcom scandal has gained increasing attention, including a Congressional probe.
The New York Times, which first broke the story, reported that supervisors revised conclusions to mask some of the US military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and beating back ISIL.
According to the newspaper, the analysts said supervisors were particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of the US role in the conflict than was warranted.
While revelations that French intelligence failures might have played into the hands of ISIL in carrying out its deadly attacks in Paris and hence broadening the group’s focus to attack the West, the Pentagon spying scam tells another story of doctoring intelligence behind the group’s expansion.
It appears that the Centcom intelligence reports have overstated military progress against ISIL in Iraq, giving Obama the leeway to avoid responsibility for the rise of ISIL.
Many analysts had for years argued that Obama’s lack of vision on Iraq and his ineffective strategy in Syria would create a radicalising momentum that would help ISIL expand its power.
What the little information about the Centcom scandal revealed so far indicates is that the problem goes beyond analysis failure to actually meddling with intelligence about the campaign against ISIL, by exaggerating successes and downplaying serious setbacks in order to serve the president’s agenda.
This bodes ill for Obama whose current approach to ISIL has largely failed to dislodge the group from its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. Now Obama could face criticism that US intelligence and military officials were only telling him what he wants to hear.
However, the case of US intelligence failure over ISIL is raising more serious questions in the Middle East. Absurd as it may seem, the revelations about cracks in US intelligence have added fodder to conspiracy scenarios that Washington is behind ISIL.
While some Iraqis have complained that the US has been sitting on its hands as the war has raged against ISIL, Iran­backed Shia militias have often accused the US­led coalition of parachuting weapons to ISIL fighters or even targeting Iraq’s security forces’ positions.
In Syria, Obama’s seesaw strategy has given rise to similar theories, in both President Bashar alAssad’s camp and that of his opponents. While the Assad regime blames the Pentagon for failing to foresee the rise of the “Islamic State” as a consequence of its strategy, Syrian opposition believe that the Obama administration has signed off on diplomatic initiatives aimed at bringing down Assad.
Check that against what US Senator John McCain disclosed last May that 75 percent of US pilots on missions to attack ISIL targets are returning without dropping any ordnance, due to delays in decision­making up the chain of command, then conspiracy theorists here seem to be making some rational points.
This analysis appeared first on Al  Jazeera on November 26, 2015
Iraq-Kurds

Sinjar’s bittersweet victory

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Sinjar’s bittersweet victory

Retaking Sinjar from the Islamic State group is a triumph for Iraq, but its seizure by the Kurds could also be a setback for the country, writes Salah Nasrawi

Things couldn’t have gone much better for the embattled president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, Masoud Barzani, who faces an on-going revolt by opposition parties and civil society groups for refusing to step down and hold presidential elections despite the end of his term in office in August.

A joint Kurdish force on Friday took control of the strategic town of Sinjar in northern Iraq with the help of US-led coalition airstrikes after more than 15 months of its seizure by the Islamic State (IS) terror group.

Barzani rushed to declare victory for “liberating” Sinjar, alleging that the town, part of the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, had been retaken solely by the Kurdistan Region Government’s (KRG) forces.

“Sinjar has been liberated by the Peshmergas,” Barzani boasted, using the Kurdish name for the fighters. He said the town, like dozens of others taken back from IS, would remain forever under the KRG’s red, white, green and yellow banner.

“Other than the Kurdistan flag, we do not accept any other flag rising over Sinjar,” Barzani vowed in a video from atop a hill overlooking the city whose name has been changed by Kurds to Shengal.

But celebrating the annexation of Sinjar, underlined by Barzani’s bragging, may not be as good as it looks. By declaring the liberation of Sinjar, a contested town which is traditionally populated by the Yazidi religious minority, Barzani may have overplayed his hand while he is being challenged by the Shia-led Iraqi government in Baghdad and his Kurdish rivals.

Shia Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi reacted angrily to the announcement and insisted that the Iraqi flag should be raised above the town, while Shia groups demanded that Sinjar be placed back under the central government’s control.

Meanwhile, Barzani has been facing tough opposition to his leadership at home. The main Kurdish parties have challenged his legitimacy as KRG president after he refused to hold elections to choose a new president following the expiration of his second term in office.

Barzani has also refused to step down, triggering a political crisis that has paralysed the government and regional parliament. The dispute culminated in late October when the KRG unilaterally removed four ministers from the Gorran (Change) Party from their posts and replaced them with Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) loyalists.

Barzani’s KDP security forces also barred the speaker of the parliament, a senior Gorran member, from entering Erbil, the region’s capital, in a move slammed by opposition parties as illegal.

Barzani’s swift declaration of triumph in Sinjar could be an unrealistic self-assessment by an embattled leader who is trying to reestablish himself as a Kurdish national hero.

Analysts have noted that Barzani has been trapped by his own ambitions and attempts to stay strong, and Sinjar’s capture could do little to overcome his woes by substituting IS or his political adversaries for building a unified and democratic Kurdistan.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sinjar, home to the biggest Yazidi community in Iraq and hosting some of its most scared shrines, has been a flashpoint for ethnic and religious disputes.

The Yazidis are a religious minority that descends from some of the region’s most ancient roots. Though most of the nearly half a million Yazidis in Iraq speak a kind of a Kurdish dialect they remain members of a distinctive religion.

While some Iraqi Yazidis consider themselves to be Kurds, others, like the more than a million Yazidis in Russia, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Iran who do not identify themselves with ethnicities in these countries, refuse to be identified with the Kurds, who are also predominantly Sunni Muslims.

Over the centuries, the Yazidis have been persecuted by their Muslim neighbours who see them as non-believers. In recent years, Yazidis have been slaughtered by fanatics in Iraq, including Kurds, who have used trucks laden with explosives and driven them into their towns.

Sinjar has been a hotbed for inter-Kurdish rivalry since the conflict in Syria started some five years ago. Several Kurdish factions have been seeking dominance of the strategic town which lies on the border with Syria and Turkey.

While Barzani’s Peshmerga forces have long been dominant in towns and villages neighbouring Sinjar, they have been contested by fighters from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey which is vying for influence across Kurdish areas in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Following the capture of Sinjar by IS militants in summer 2014, the PKK helped to find a representative political body for displaced Yazidis and established a Yazidi force to fight against IS militants and to police Yazidi areas.

This force, considered as the most organised, is believed to have played a key role in the fight to take back Sinjar from IS militants.

Other Yazidis have independently formed a voluntary military force known as the Sinjar Defence Units. In April, KDP security forces briefly detained a leader of this group on charges of setting up an illegal military force before releasing him for fear of a backlash.

Yazidis from all over the world have joined these groups in the fight against IS.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the KDP’s main rival in the autonomous Region, has also been expanding its organisations in Sinjar. Its members are working closely with the PKK, other Kurdish groups and Yazidi forces to challenge Barzani’s control of this vital area.

Sinjar is situated in territories often called “disputed territories” by the KRG. Since the war to push back IS militants began last year, Kurdish Peshmergas have seized several towns and cities, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

KRG officials said the newly acquired territories would remain under the jurisdiction of the Kurdish Government and would not be returned to the Baghdad government. The territorial conflict between the Kurds and the Baghdad government is highly contentious and may trigger a war because both sides consider the land a core interest.

The recapture of Sinjar from IS comes amid rising tensions between the Kurdish Peshmergas and Shia paramilitary forces in other parts of the so-called disputed areas.

On Thursday, violence in Tuz Khurmatu, a town about 175 km north of Baghdad, left at least 16 people dead, including five civilians. The fighting turned the mostly Turkomen-populated town into a battlefield and cut a strategic road linking Baghdad to Kirkuk.

The clashes began when fighters from a Turkomen-Shia armed group tried to ram a checkpoint in the town manned by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Most of the Tuz Khurmatu population are Shias, though they are also ethnically Turkomen. They have been resisting Kurdish attempts to impose control over their town for some time.

Though the fighting stopped after mediation by top politicians, Shia militias said they had been sending reinforcements to the town and threatened to “protect” Tuz Khurmatu against what they described as “the barbaric attacks by the Kurdish Peshmergas.”

Barzani’s grip on power remains strong, but this and many other flashpoints should serve as a reminder that he needs to learn the limit of his strength and that he cannot capitalise on the chaos in Iraq to stay forever as the leader of the Kurds and advance his own agenda.

The recapture of Sinjar has dominated headlines and raised expectations that IS will now be driven from other cities in Iraq. But Barzani’s unwavering determination to keep the territories under KRG control has raised red flags in Baghdad and other capitals in the region.

While Al-Abadi has publicly voiced concerns about raising the Kurdish flag in Sinjar, other Shia politicians have warned of the Kurdish use of the standoff to expand control over huge swathes of land taken back from IS.

Qais Al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq militia, warned that the Shias would “liberate” Sinjar from the Kurds. “Sinjar is an Iraqi town which has changed from the Daesh occupation to another occupation,” Al-Khazali said, using the Arabic name for IS.

“We will take back the town,” he vowed.

These and other clashing interests speak volumes about the challenges Iraq now faces, and territorial disputes have a strong possibility of developing into wars.

Last week, Barzani told a delegation from Sulaimaniyah pushing for reconciliation that a Kurdish state could have been declared had the Region’s political parties avoided the current crisis over his presidency.

This overstatement might have been designed to strike a nationalistic chord, but going too far in exploiting Iraq’s chaos to serve a personal agenda will have far-reaching consequences, including the failure to eliminate IS threats to both the Kurds and the Baghdad government.

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This article first appeared  in Al-Ahram Weekly on November 19, 2015