Category Archives: Analysis

Obama’s use of drones for killings risks a war without end

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killings using armed drones risks putting the United States on a “slippery slope” into perpetual war and sets a dangerous precedent for lethal operations that other countries might adopt in the future, according to a report by a bipartisan panel that includes several former senior intelligence and military officials.

The group found that more than a decade into the era of armed drones, the American government has yet to carry out a thorough analysis of whether the costs of routine secret killing operations outweigh the benefits. The report urges the administration to conduct such an analysis and to give a public accounting of both militants and civilians killed in drone strikes.

The findings amount to a sort of report card — one that delivers middling grades — a year after President Obama gave a speech promising new guidelines for drone strikes and greater transparency about the killing operations. The report is especially critical of the secrecy that continues to envelop drone operations and questions whether they might be creating terrorists even as they are killing them.

“There is no indication that a U.S. strategy to destroy Al Qaeda has curbed the rise of Sunni Islamic extremism, deterred the establishment of Shia Islamic extremist groups or advanced long-term U.S. security interests,” the report concludes. [Continue reading…]

The complete report, “Recommendations and Report of the Stimson Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy,” can be read here.

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Maliki and ISIS are both enemies of democracy

Michael Weiss writes: The American military official best acquainted with the social fabric of northern and central Iraq says that the disintegration of the country was entirely preventable. Col. Rick Welch spent just under seven years in Iraq and served as Gen. David Petraeus’s chief liaison to the Sunni tribes of Fallujah and Ramadi and to various Shia tribal militia groups, including Muqtada al-Sadr’s now-reconstituted Mahdi Army.

Welch was integral to the so-called “Anbar Awakening,” which turned a lot of former insurgents – or insurgency sympathizers – into US allies against Al-Qaeda. Since retiring from the army, he has resumed his law practice in Ohio but has kept up with these hard-won friends, who have painted a dire picture of what life is like under the Nouri al-Maliki government. If the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the former Ba’athists of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order have managed to plow through Anbar Province with such ease, Welch argues, it is because the Sunnis of Iraq felt they had no recourse but to align with such elements.

“Maliki, in my opinion, is just as much an enemy to democracy in Iraq as ISIS is,” Welch told me last week in a wide-ranging interview. “He pushed them so far that they had to rise up. They tried to get reforms, but they couldn’t get them. There were dragnet arrests; Sunni women were thrown in prison to get to the men. Tribal honor was on the line and revenge thinking was on the line. Maliki made this crisis.” And it was abetted, the colonel says, by US obliviousness of or indifference to what was a noticeable degeneration in Baghdad even before the American troop withdrawal in 2011. [Continue reading…]

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Barrel bombs in Syria: Weapons of mass civilian expulsion

Ryan O’Farrell writes: Over the past six to eight months, barrel bombs have become a major topic of discussion concerning the grinding civil war in Syria. Crude improvised explosive devices, barrel bombs initially took the form of oil drums filled with TNT, gasoline and shrapnel, detonated by a cigarette-lit detonation cord. These were indiscriminate, almost wholly inaccurate weapons, unable to target much of anything after being pushed out the back of transport helicopters, and often detonating long before or after they hit their targets, due to improper timing on the burning safety fuse. These seemed to be weapons of a desperate military, one unable to supply its air force with modern weapons for air strikes, and one resorting to transport helicopters for lack of ground-attack platforms.

But as the use of barrel bombs has expanded, and indeed massively so, their design has become standardized and their strategic value has become more clear. As their use has evolved, the use of barrel bombs has become one of the clearest illustrations of an important aspect of the Syrian government’s urban warfare strategy as it advances on the various rebel groups which had seemingly come so close to toppling it.

The Syrian military, while backed by formidable airpower, armor and even highly-adept foreign fighters from groups like Hezbollah, has a limited capacity for seizing urban areas. Rebels have often been able to turn built-up areas like Old Homs, Darraya, Jobar and eastern Aleppo city into nearly impenetrable fortresses. In such mazes of wrecked apartments, narrow alleyways and endless supply tunnels, rebels equipped with little more than light weapons have consistently been able to hold off major Syrian Arab Army advances almost indefinitely. For instance, Darayya, in the southern suburbs of Damascus, remains in rebel hands after more than two years of fighting, repeated offensives by the government, and virtually uncountable airstrikes and artillery barrages. Attacks on the almost entirely surrounded town have cost the government thousands of casualties, while the town remains in rebel control.

In response to this, the government began adopting different tactics, particularly in the suburbs of Damascus, in the Spring of 2013. Rather than attempting costly and largely ineffective assaults on fortified urban areas to seize them outright, the SAA instead began encircling them. Indeed, most of the southern suburbs of Damsascus, particularly those in the vicinity of the Sayyeda Zainab shrine and the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, were surrounded and besieged by the end of last summer. Since then, starvation and blocking medical supplies has been a brutally effective weapon in winning the besieged districts’ submission. Several neighborhoods and towns in the Damascus suburbs, such as Moadamiyah, Qaboun, Barzeh, and Al-Qadam have reached ceasefire agreements with the government, usually in return for food and some level of autonomy where the former rebel fighters remain in control. It is in this context, encirclement, siege, starvation and finally ceasefire, that we must look at barrel bombs, and thus discern the principles behind their use. [Continue reading…] (H/t EA Worldview)

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Obama’s ‘Yemen model’ doesn’t work in Yemen — it’s unlikely to work in Iraq

PRI reports: President Barack Obama sees success against al-Qaeda in Yemen, and wants to use the same model to overcome ISIS in Iraq.

Middle East watcher Gregory Johnsen thinks that’s a bad idea; he’s not even sure what Obama is seeing in Yemen should be called success.

“It just seems that the US doesn’t have a very good grasp of what’s happening on the ground in Yemen or what’s happening on the ground in Iraq, or how to solve either of these problems,” he says.

Johnsen says the US military strategy used to hunt al-Qaeda members in Yemen has been ineffective, or even counterproductive.

“About four-and-a-half years ago, when the US started this program of drone strikes, special forces advisors on the ground, al-Qaeda in Yemen numbered about 200 to 300 people. Now today, there are several thousand people. So what the US is doing in Yemen isn’t working.” [Continue reading…]

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Saddam Hussein’s faithful friend, the King of Clubs, might be the key to saving Iraq

Michael Knights writes: Over the weekend, in what the Telegraph described as “a potential sign of the fraying of the Sunni insurgent alliance that has overrun vast stretches of territory north of Baghdad in less than two weeks,” a deadly firefight broke out west of Kirkuk, Iraq, between members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham and a rival insurgent group called Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshbandi, or the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi. JRTN now represents the main obstacle to ISIS’s creation of an Islamic caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria, and is most likely being led by Saddam Hussein’s old friend Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the King of Clubs from the infamous deck of cards of most-wanted Iraqis — that is, if he’s not dead.

Born in 1942, Douri came from Dawr, a town of 35,000 people on the east bank of the Tigris and just 20 miles from Hussein’s birthplace (and burial place) of Al-Awja. Growing up poor, Douri worked for an ice-seller as a boy but quickly turned to violent revolutionary politics in his late teenage years. He worked alongside Hussein, who, being a few years older, was Douri’s mentor. They both served in the intelligence and peasantry offices of the Baath Party and later spent time in jail together after the Baath’s brief seizure of power in 1963. Douri remained as Hussein’s eyes and ears in Iraq while Hussein was abroad for the five years preceding the Baathist return to power in 1968.

Back in power, Douri and Hussein picked up where they left off — as inseparable partners. Douri was rewarded for his loyalty by inheriting Hussein’s prior position, the vice presidency and deputy chairmanship of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council. Until Hussein’s capture in 2003, Douri served as his most trusted deputy, always careful not to threaten Hussein’s position. The Douris consistently backed Hussein, and the two families even merged for a time. In a show of loyalty, Douri consented to marry his daughter to Hussein’s eldest son, the infamous sadist Uday. As Iraqi tribal expert Amatzia Baram told me years ago, Douri’s sway with Hussein was so substantial that he could even levy a condition — that the union would not be consummated — and later made a successful petition that his daughter be permitted to divorce Hussein’s homicidal offspring.

But aside from keeping Hussein happy and in charge, Douri also had a personal project, a patronage network that he jealously guarded for himself. The name of that network was the Men of the Naqshbandi. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s disastrous Iraq policy

Peter Beinart writes: Obama inherited an Iraq where better security had created an opportunity for better government. The Bush administration’s troop “surge” did not solve the country’s underlying divisions. But by retaking Sunni areas from insurgents, it gave Iraq’s politicians the chance to forge a government inclusive enough to keep the country together.

The problem was that Maliki wasn’t interested in such a government. Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening fighters who had helped subdue al-Qaeda into Iraq’s army, Maliki arrested them. In the run-up to his 2010 reelection bid, Maliki’s Electoral Commission disqualified more than 500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

For the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki meant investing time and energy in Iraq, a country it desperately wanted to pivot away from. A few months before the 2010 elections, according to Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker, “American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its combination of support and indifference, was encouraging Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies.”

When Iraqis went to the polls in March 2010, they gave a narrow plurality to the Iraqiya List, an alliance of parties that enjoyed significant Sunni support but was led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Under pressure from Maliki, however, an Iraqi judge allowed the prime minister’s Dawa Party—which had finished a close second—to form a government instead. According to Emma Sky, chief political adviser to General Raymond Odierno, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, American officials knew this violated Iraq’s constitution. But they never publicly challenged Maliki’s power grab, which was backed by Iran, perhaps because they believed his claim that Iraq’s Shiites would never accept a Sunni-aligned government. “The message” that America’s acquiescence “sent to Iraq’s people and politicians alike,” wrote the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack, “was that the United States under the new Obama administration was no longer going to enforce the rules of the democratic road…. [This] undermined the reform of Iraqi politics and resurrected the specter of the failed state and the civil war.” According to Filkins, one American diplomat in Iraq resigned in disgust. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS was built like a corporation with little need for foreign investors

McClatchy reports: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sprang from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype whose resilience to counterterrorism operations was proven by the time Abu Bakr al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010.

The militant group Baghdadi inherited had in place a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. Its middle-managers detailed, for example, the number of wives and children each fighter had, to gauge compensation rates upon death or capture, and listed expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets that noted payments to an “assassination platoon” and “Al Mustafa Explosives Company.” Income from the Sunni Muslim militants’ looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.”

By the time Baghdadi took charge, the group even had begun siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors — enterprises that Baghdadi would build on and replicate as he expanded operations across the border into Syria, ultimately breaking from his al Qaida roots and declaring himself emir of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Now Baghdadi’s ISIS has seized control of much of Iraq’s Sunni provinces, is consolidating its hold on two provinces in eastern Syria and is circling the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, as 300 newly dispatched American military advisers arrive in Iraq to assess what the United States can do to stop its advance.

Insurgent records suggest that the United States will find it difficult to rout an organization whose structure and attention to detail allowed it to prosper even during the toughest U.S. counterterrorism efforts of the last decade. U.S. officials believed, incorrectly, that the group had been vanquished.

This rare, in-depth look into the seed money and organizational structure of the militant organization comes from the Department of Defense’s classified Harmony Database, a repository of more than a million documents gathered from Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones. Some 200 Iraq-related documents — personal letters, expense reports, membership rosters — were declassified in the past year through West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center for the use of RAND Corp. researchers looking into the evolution of al Qaida in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq, the precursors to ISIS. Some analysis of the documents, which haven’t yet been published, was discussed with McClatchy to lend context to the current crisis.

The documents provide a cautionary tale as the Iraqi government pleads for U.S. military assistance to beat back ISIS’s brazen new campaign. The records reveal that previous incarnations of ISIS have shown an extraordinary ability to regroup even after military defeats. [Continue reading…]

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Assad and Hezbollah’s land bridge from Iran has been severed by ISIS

Juan Cole writes: With the alleged fall to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria of Qa’im on Saturday, and of Talafar a few days ago, the border between Iraq and Syria has now been effectively erased. A new country exists, stretching from the outskirts of Baghdad all the way to Aleppo. In history, it uncannily resembles the state ruled by Imad ad-Din Zangi (AD 1085 – 1146), a Turkish notable who came to power in 1128 after a Shiite Assassin killed his father. His realms lay between the Abbasid Caliphate on the one hand and the Atabegs of Damascus on the other. Like ISIS, he was not able to take and keep Homs. He also was not able to take Palestine away from the Crusaders, despite a brief alliance for that purpose with Buri of Damascus. ISIS also so far lacks Baghdad or Damascus but like Zangi does have much in between.

The first thing that occurred to me on the fall of Qa’im is that Iran no longer has its land bridge to Lebanon. I suppose it could get much of the way there through Kurdish territory, but ISIS could ambush the convoys when they came into Arab Syria. Since Iran has expended a good deal of treasure and blood to keep Bashar al-Assad in power so as to maintain that land bridge, it surely will not easily accept being blocked by ISIS. Without Iranian shipments of rockets and other munitions, Lebanon’s Hizbullah would rapidly decline in importance, and south Lebanon would be open again to potential Israeli occupation. I’d say, we can expect a Shiite counter-strike to maintain the truck routes to Damascus. [Continue reading…]

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How ISIS was forged inside Syria’s jails

Newsweek reports: Mohammed Al-Saud is under no illusions. “In 2011, the majority of the current ISIS leadership was released from jail by Bashar Al Assad,” he said. “No one in the regime has ever admitted this, or explained why.” Al-Saud, a Syrian dissident with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, left Syria under threat of arrest in 2011.

Others were not so lucky. In 2006, Syrian Tarek Alghorani was sentenced to seven years in jail for the contents of his blog. Since his amnesty in 2011, he has been an active opponent of the Damascus regime. “There were around 1,500 people in there,” he recalls, outside a sleepy midtown café in Tunis. “There were about ten of us bloggers, around one hundred Kurds and the rest were just normal people. I’d say that, when they went in, around 90 percent were simply normal Muslims.”

“The situation in there was like the middle ages. There were too many people and not enough space. There wasn’t enough water to drink. There wasn’t enough food to eat and what there was would have been ignored by dogs in the street. Torture was an everyday reality. After years in there, all of those people became Salafists and in a bad, bad way.”

His fellow prisoners were members of ISIS. “Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, (founder of the Jihadist group, Jabhat al-Jabhat al-Nusra) was rumored to be there. Mohammed Haydar Zammar, (one of the organisers of the 9/11 attacks) was there. This is where the Syrian part of ISIS was born,” he said.

Alghorani is convinced that members of ISIS were released strategically by Assad. “From the first days of the revolution (in March 2011), Assad denounced the organisation as being the work of radical Salafists, so he released the Salafists he had created in his prisons to justify the claim … If you do not have an enemy, you create an enemy.” [Continue reading…]

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Palestinians remain shackled by U.S. aid

Nathan Thrall writes: For a moment in early June, it seemed to many Palestinians that their political leadership was on the verge of making a historic shift. On June 2, seven years of political division—between the unelected government in the West Bank dominated by Fatah, and the elected government in Gaza controlled by the Islamist party Hamas—formally came to an end. Hamas ministers in Gaza resigned, surrendering their authority to a new government of national consensus that would rule over both Gaza and the West Bank. More important, the new government pledged to adhere to the three principles long demanded by the US and its European allies as conditions for receiving vital Western aid: non-violence; adherence to past agreements; and recognition of Israel.

But on June 12, the new Palestinian arrangement was thrown into question by the abduction of three Israeli teenagers studying at yeshivas in the West Bank. The Israeli government is holding Hamas accountable for the kidnapping, and US Secretary of State John Kerry has also accused the group, though Hamas has not claimed responsibility and so far no evidence has been provided. The resulting crackdown on Hamas by Israeli forces working in coordination with Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, meanwhile, has renewed doubts that President Mahmoud Abbas can advance Palestinians toward unity. Before the abductions, Israeli, American, and European opposition to real power-sharing between Fatah and Hamas was too great to allow meaningful Palestinian reconciliation, even if the two parties wanted it; today national unity seems more distant still.

Yet it is not obvious that this should be so. Although the US did not change its policy toward Hamas after June 2, it did give formal recognition to the new government. The reason for this recognition was not because Hamas was no longer perceived to be a terrorist organization; it was because, with the Islamist movement’s own acquiescence, the new government excluded Hamas, was stacked with ministers committed to opposing Hamas’s program, and offered Fatah a foothold in Gaza for the first time in seven years. In Gaza and the West Bank, the new government is understood by all factions to belong to Ramallah. That is no less true today than before the kidnapping. The new government contains not a single Hamas-affiliated minister and strongly resembles the previous Fatah-led government in Ramallah, retaining the same prime minister, deputy prime ministers, finance minister, and foreign minister. It also pledged to pursue the political program of Fatah leader, PLO Chairman, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and, most importantly, to meet the three abovementioned conditions for Western aid. [Continue reading…]

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How did Iraqi sectarianism emerge?

Fanar Haddad: Sectarian identity for most of the 20th century was not particularly relevant in political terms. Obviously, this is something that ebbs and flows, but there were other frames of reference that were politically dominant. Come 2003, plenty changes.

Zack Beauchamp: How did things change in 2003?

FH: You can chart a course to 2003 from the mobilization of Shia parties in the mid-20th century, the Iranian Revolution [of 1979], the Iran-Iraq war [of the 1980s], the rebellion of 1991, 13 years of sanctions. These are all part of a cumulative process.

Come 2003, the main opposition forces against Saddam Hussein were ethno-sectarian parties. That’s a really important point. Yes, we can blame — and we should blame — occupation forces and the promises that they pursued, particularly enshrining identity politics as the key marker of Iraqi politics. But that was something that these ethno-sectarian parties, the ones who were the main opposition force, advocated before 2003. This, to them, was the answer.

From a Sunni Arab perspective, the Shia parties and personalities that came to power weren’t just politicians who happened to be Shia. They were politicians whose political outlook was firmly rooted in a Shia-centric, sect-centric view of things. I would say there were a number of prejudices, Sunni suspicions of the new regime. These were unfortunately validated by the nature of the new political elite, and their subsequent decisions and policies.

Post-2003 Iraq, I’d say identity politics have been the norm rather than an anomaly because they’re part of the system by design. The first institution that was set up in 2003 under the auspices of the occupation was the Iraq Governing Council — which was explicitly based on sectarian apportionment. You know, 13 Shias, six Sunnis, or whatever it was, based on what were perceived as the correct demographics.

Not to muddy the water further, but we don’t actually have anywhere near an accurate census for these things. They’re just sort of received wisdom — that Sunnis are increasingly rejecting. The idea that they’re a minority, that they’re only 20 percent: this is something that Sunni voices since 2003 have been rejecting. Whether that’s rational or not is not the point. The point is that they basically look at the demographic claims as Sunnis being marginalized and accorded second-class status on the basis of a lie. They do not accept that they are a minority, and this is a system that’s based on ethno-sectarian demographics.

ZB: How do these sectarian divides affect people’s view of the Iraqi state — not just the Maliki government, but the entire set of political institutions themselves?

FH: I’d say this point is crucial to pre- and post-2003 Iraq: the idea of the legitimacy of the state. It’s also sort of crucial to what’s going on now.

When 2003 came along, a lot of Shias and certainly a lot of Kurds welcomed it. They saw it as their deliverance as Shias and Kurds as much as it was the deliverance of Iraq. On the Sunni side, there was no such sentiment because there barely existed a sense of Sunni identity before 2003. It simply didn’t exist in Iraq.

Now, what you see is the reverse. The Iraqi government is not popular with anyone, the popularity of the government is rock bottom, I’d say, but Shias are more likely to accord the state, the post-2003 order some level of legitimacy. Whereas there is a body of opinion of among Sunnis who just do not ascribe any legitimacy to it whatsoever. [Continue reading…]

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How much territory does ISIS control?

Given the headlines these days, one could be forgiven for imagining that ISIS is now a regional superpower — even though its ranks probably include fewer than 10,000 men. A map published by the Institute for the Study of War on June 10 puts the headlines in perspective.

The small black patches are the areas under ISIS control:

isis-control
(Click on the image to see a larger version.)

A June 20 update shows no expansion in the size of ISIS territory.

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ISIS prefers allegiance, not allies, in Iraq

Abdallah Suleiman Ali writes: Many of the armed factions in Iraq participated in the formation of the Sunni Awakening [movement], which under direct guidance from the leadership of the American occupation forces fought against ISIS. These included the Islamic Army, the Mujahideen Army, the 1920 Revolution Brigade, Hamas of Iraq and many other factions. These groups were mushrooming on Iraqi territory in the wake of the US occupation and the ensuing chaos and instability.

It is worth noting that two of the armed factions back then, Ansar al-Islam and the Naqshbandi Army, did not fight against ISIS under the umbrella of the Sunni Awakening nor any other wider movement. Ansar al-Islam started fighting ISIS independently in 2004, through the establishment of the Hamzah Battalion and then the Anbar Revolutionaries Brigade in 2005.

Three factors enabled ISIS to regain its power after the severe blows it had been dealt by the Awakening forces that almost toppled it. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s Sunni insurgency

Hassan Hassan writes: The story of the ongoing events in Iraq is one of lost opportunities. By December 2013, many Sunni leaders had become tired of the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) actions, in their areas and on the other side of the border in Syria, and publicly supported the federal government’s military campaign against the group’s bases. At that time, the momentum against ISIS offered a renewed opportunity for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to work with these Sunni tribal and religious leaders to combat terrorism.

But instead, Maliki gave a speech in which he portrayed his planned military campaign in Anbar as an ancient war between “the followers of Hussein and the followers of Yazid”, a reference to a 7th century defining Shiite battle. The campaign in Anbar has been a disaster, and that failure is directly relevant to today’s crisis. The Iraqi forces failed to dislodge the jihadists and, even worse, Maliki took several steps that played into the hands of extremists. He foolishly shut down a popular protest camp in which thousands of Sunni Iraqis rallied for peaceful change for months, arrested powerful Sunni Member of Parliament Ahmed al-Alwani and killed his brother. Baghdad did not only miss a unique opportunity to move beyond the sectarian divide but made the situation in Sunni areas more favorable for jihadists.

Today, the simplistic portrayal by media and world politicians of the rebellion in Iraq risks making a similar mistake. Headlines as well as political statements focused on ISIS as the only force behind the takeover of several Sunni cities north of Baghdad. And although more recent coverage started to acknowledge the presence of other forces, the dynamics in Sunni areas are still far more complex. But regardless of the extent of its role, ISIS is only one faction in the insurgency. There are at least half a dozen groupings that took part in the offensive. [Continue reading…]

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Three reasons why Turkey misunderstands ISIS

Mustafa Akyol writes: Many Turkish opinion leaders, especially those in the pro-government media, cannot accept ISIS, or its ilk, as extremist Islamist actors with genuinely held beliefs and self-defined goals. Rather they take it for granted that these terror groups are merely the pawns of a great game designed by none other than the Western powers.

For example, Abdulkadir Selvi, a senior journalist who has been quite vocal in the press and on television generally espousing a pro-government stance, wrote a piece last week titled “Who is ISIS working for?” This was his answer: “Al-Qaeda was a useful instrument for the US. To put it in an analogy, ISIS was born from al-Qaeda’s relationship with [the] CIA. The West gave its manners to al-Qaeda and now it designs our region through the hands of ISIS.” In short, al-Qaeda and its offshoot ISIS are both creations of the US Central Intelligence Agency and serve American interests.

Writing in the same pro-government daily, Yeni Şafak, the prominent columnist Yusuf Kaplan took a similar position. His culprit, however, was not the United States, but the United Kingdom. He wrote, “There is no such thing as ISIS. There is rather a heinous power called England … al-Qaeda was an instrument of the Americans, whereas ISIS is an instrument of the English.”

Yet another writer with strong pro-government views, Cemil Ertem, advanced a conspiratorial line in his column in the daily Star, but added a crucial element. ISIS, he argued, is “the product of the same center that also orchestrated Dec. 17” — referring to the day the corruption investigation, or “coup attempt,” against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan became public. Accordingly, that conspiratorial “center” first tried to topple Erdogan with a bogus corruption investigation, and when that failed, it reignited Kurdish tensions in the country and finally ordered ISIS to attack “Turkey’s political and economic assets in Iraq.”

I quoted just three writers, but there are many similar examples. It would not be unfair to say that this conspiratorial understanding of ISIS is a powerful, if not dominant, narrative within Turkey’s pro-government media. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq crisis hits Turkish economy

Mehmet Cetingulec writes: After ISIS took control of Mosul and began advancing toward other towns, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry warned hundreds of Turkish companies and thousands of Turkish workers to leave Anbar, Baghdad, Basra, Diyala, Kirkuk, Mosul and Salahuddin. Two major Turkish banks closed their branches in Baghdad. As Turks began the evacuation, the fallout on commerce became alarming. More than 1,500 Turkish companies operate throughout Iraq, and when some of them hastily closed their offices after ISIS went on the attack, more than 2,000 trucks headed to Iraq had to turn back.

The surrender of Iraqi towns to ISIS also hit the Turkish markets. The Istanbul stock exchange had climbed to 81,600 points on June 10. After ISIS occupied Mosul, within four days, the index fell to 77,646, a 4,000-point loss. Foreign exchange parity rose, while interest rates and oil prices rose. The worst effect has been the added burden to Turkey’s energy bill.

Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci thinks, however, that Mosul will not adversely affect Turkey. In a statement to the daily Milliyet, he said there were no problems in places such as Sulaimaniyah and Erbil, and that events in Mosul were therefore unlikely to have any negative bearing on Turkish exports.

Parts of Zeybekci’s surprising statement also appeared accepting of a fragmentation of Iraq. He said, “Borders that were drawn superficially 60 years ago will be re-demarcated. Parts of the region will find their right places. There is so much diversity, with Arabs, Sunnis, Shiites, Turkmen and Kurds. Then there are plenty of radical groups. They all want to have a say. The region is so sick that all germs freely attack it.”

Although Zeybekci seems relaxed about the current situation, exporters are not. [Continue reading…]

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The culture war between Khamenei and Rouhani

Akbar Ganji writes: Senior clerics, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Khamenei, believe in a moral mission for the state. They do not, however, believe in moral pluralism and people’s right to choose their own way of life. They also try to impose the Islamic teachings on the people using the state power, believing that it is their duty to send people to paradise. Critics, on the other hand, say that it is not the government’s mission to do so, and that one cannot create hell on Earth for the people, so that they can go to paradise after they die.

Responding to the critics May 13, in a speech to a group of people visiting with him, Khamenei said:

Sometimes, when there is a debate about teaching the people about religion, we hear some people saying here and there, ‘your Excellency, is it our mission to send the people to paradise?’ Yes, it is. That is the difference between an Islamic ruler and a non-Islamic one. An Islamic ruler wishes to rule in a way that people go to paradise [after they die]. Thus, he has to pave the way. We are not talking about using force and imposition, but about helping [the people]. People’s nature tends to want to go to paradise and we should open the way [for them]. This is our duty, the duty that Imam Ali [Shiites’ first Imam, and the Prophet’s son-in-law and cousin] considered his own also.

Responding to Khamenei, in a speech at a conference on public health on May 24 Rouhani said:

We should not futilely worry the people and make them concerned [about their divine fate]. Do not intervene so much in people’s [private] lives, even if it is with good intentions. We should let the people choose their own path [in life]. They cannot be sent to paradise through use of force and lashing. The Prophet did not have a lash in hand; he was a teacher and kind; we should emulate him.

Rouhani’s response angered the hardline and conservative clerics. Ahmad Alamolhoda, a leading conservative cleric and Friday-prayer Imam of Mashhad, the religious city in northeast Iran, angrily declared, “Not only will we use lashes, but also all of our power to stand up against those who block people from going to paradise.” Reactionary cleric Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi asked sarcastically, “Where did you [Rouhani] learn about your religion? In Feyzieh [seminary in Qom] or in Britain?” Another leading conservative cleric, Ahmad Khatami, said, “You [Rouhani] should not pave the path to hell by your speeches.” Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi reacted by saying, “We should not open the hell’s gates to the people.” The country’s prosecutor, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejehei, who has played a leading role in cracking down on the dissidents for years, said, “They say do not bother with people going to hell or paradise. Such statements are mocking the great work of senior clerics.”

Most recently, on June 12, the judiciary chief, conservative cleric Sadegh Larijani, said, “The root of the claim by those who say that we cannot force the people into paradise is in liberalism and [Western] modernity. Rouhani responded to Larijani almost immediately, “What have we said that has disturbed some people? We only said that culture belongs to the people and it is them that should [choose the] best path for their lives. Are we supposed to make pills of culture, write prescription for the people, and ask them to buy the pill at a pharmacy? It is as if some people are still living in the medieval age.” [Continue reading…]

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