Al-Monitor Week in Review

Monday, June 1, 2015

Baghdad stumbles in response to Ramadi refugees

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said May 29 that onerous documentation requirements by the government of Iraq have made life even more difficult for some 85,000 Iraqis displaced by Ramadi's capture by the Islamic State (IS) on May 17.

According to the UNHCR, the overall total number of displaced from the Ramadi region now totals 180,000 since fighting began in April.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi writes from Baghdad that the Iraqi government’s response to the fall of Ramadi, including a sponsorship requirement for those wishing to enter Baghdad, has worsened both the plight of the displaced and the sectarian tensions that underlie the country’s political crisis.

Kadhimi describes the government’s policy as reflective of “strained relations, doubts and fears, and has led to the loss of an opportunity to achieve decisive social progress with respect to Sunni-Shiite differences by winning over the displaced. This can be seen in the official position of the government, which eventually opened the gates of Baghdad in the face of the displaced. It is related to and confirmed by the positions of the social elites, political parties, the media and security forces. Instead of turning the displacement of Anbar’s residents to their capital into an opportunity to consecrate unified action to fight IS, these powers kept stirring sectarian strife, which constituted a free service for IS.”

Kadhimi nonetheless suggests that there may yet be a new opportunity for an Iraqi consensus to defeat IS: “Real opportunities were lost so far in terms of consolidation of national unity to confront the terrorist aggression. Despite previous mistakes, today there is a new Iraqi consensus on the need to free Anbar from the clutches of the terrorist organization. There is no doubt that this consensus is a new opportunity to invest all energy to achieving this goal, by refraining from stirring and promoting sectarianism and aligning the actions of the army, security forces and the Popular Mobilization Units with the hopes of Anbar's population. Moreover, military units from the displaced themselves must undergo swift training to be one of the top liberators.”

IS attacks Saudi Arabia

Last week this column addressed the consequences of Bruce Riedel’s spot-on question of whether Saudi Arabia had made IS a "secondary priority" to the war in Yemen. 

IS took credit this past week for two terrorist bombings at Shiite mosques in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, killing 24 people and injuring more than 100.

Riedel writes that the war in Yemen and the threat from IS are linked and contributing to an even more combustible sectarian climate:

“The Saudi campaign to oust the Houthi Zaydi Shiite rebels from Sanaa and other Yemeni cities has an inherent sectarian element. By accusing the Zaydis of being Persian pawns, the Saudis and their allies play to underlying sectarian passions. Pakistan, which has its own deep sectarian problem, warned the Saudis that the war in Yemen would fan sectarian tensions across the Islamic world.

"The Saudis have a large counterterrorist and internal security community led by Crown Prince [Mohammed bin] Nayef with a track record of getting results. The Ministry of the Interior and the Saudi National Guard have an extensive presence in Eastern Province and the southwest. But repressing anti-Shiite violence while curbing Shiite protests in the midst of an external war against a Shiite enemy backed by Iran is a delicate and complex task that will test the crown prince and National Guard commander Prince Mitab bin Abdullah.”

Riedel concludes, “For its part, IS will probably try to expand its sectarian war into Saudi Arabia's allies Bahrain and Kuwait. If the caliphate can attack Shiite targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, the wave of violence will spread even further into Arabia. The caliphate is ambitious and searching for more victims.”

Madawi Al-Rasheed observes that within Saudi Arabia “an unprecedented solidarity campaign with the victims immediately began to surface, with the leadership and society condemning the attacks and calling for national unity against those who undermine peace and harmony. The great irony is that the IS attack stems from the convergence of state systematic discrimination against the Shiites, the unwillingness of the latter to curb the excesses of Wahhabi denunciation against them as heretics and untrustworthy fifth columnists, and the de facto support for the ideology of IS in Saudi society.”

Rasheed adds, “Saudi Shiites are a small minority in a country that continues to remain hostile to their religious tradition, rituals and loyalty to clerics beyond Saudi borders. Most of their activism since the 1960s has been peaceful, with occasional violence erupting mostly by the security forces. Since the Arab uprisings, they have remained peaceful, calling for citizenship and respect for their differences. However, if the leadership continues to ignore such demands in a region where sectarian violence is the language of politics, the situation will continue to deteriorate.”

Al-Qaeda’s "political guerrilla war" in Syria

Ali Hashem this week analyzes the writings of al-Qaeda strategist Abdullah bin Mohammed, who advocates that jihadists rebrand themselves and focus on governance, rather than anti-Western violence. Hashem explains that Mohammed’s strategy of "political guerrilla war" may fit the recent attempt to recast Jabhat al-Nusra “as a result of pressure exerted by allies in the region who want to legitimize the group so it can play a role in Syria's future. The idea to create the Army of Conquest (Jaish al-Fatah), with all the Islamist groups fighting under one banner legitimized by regional and international backers, might well have been influenced by bin Mohammed's theory.”

In the latest effort in the campaign to mainstream the al-Qaeda faction, Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told Al Jazeera on May 27 that “[Jabhat al-Nusra] doesn’t have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the US or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime. Maybe al-Qaeda does that but not here in Syria."

Golani added, however, that “our options are open when it comes to targeting the Americans if they will continue their attacks against us in Syria. Everyone has the right to defend themselves."

The notion of an al-Qaeda breakaway faction being a force we should be doing business with in Syria should be a laugh-out-loud non-starter. It is of course adopted by those in the region pursuing an aggressively sectarian agenda in Syria, which the United States and the West should not be buying. This column has warned since December 2013 that the rise of the Islamic Front grouping among the Syrian opposition at the time would be a “disaster for Syria’s opposition and future.” This is not because all Islamist parties should be outright excluded from Syria’s political opposition, but because the evolution of these groups, now including the Army of Conquest, which is backed by Turkey and other US partners, would eventually end up as a means to mainstream forces like Jabhat al-Nusra. And this is exactly what is happening.

Meanwhile, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos warned last week that conditions in Syria were “deteriorating by the day.” She said that IS' conquest of Palmyra has witnessed “new depths of depravity” including “maiming, raping and destroying.”