Extract from ABC 'The Drum'
Opinion
By Daryl
McCann
Updated Tue at 9:31am
There have been even more victories against
Islamic State in Iraq, but the greatest challenge facing the country
may be uniting all the assembled anti-IS forces once their common
enemy is contained, writes Daryl McCann.
A victory is a victory and the
end of Islamic State rule in Ramadi, capital of Iraq's mainly
Sunni province of Anbar, constitutes good news.
Not so long ago the Iraqi Armed Forces were
considered a lost cause but now, with
more than a little help from the United States Air Force, they
are back in the fight.
Some of the fleeing 500 Islamic State (IS)
fighters will relocate to Mosul for a final showdown in Iraq; others
might find themselves ordered to the other side of the Syrian border.
However, the possibility - if it ever existed - that Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi's millennialist death cult might one day lay siege to
Baghdad, 90 kilometres to the east, now seems unlikely.
Key points:
- Iraq's military says IS fighters have withdrawn from the government compound
- The complex must be cleared of explosives, planted by IS, before troops can enter
- Reports IS used civilians as shields to escape
- Jihadists are thought to have regrouped east of Ramadi
The momentum is no longer on the side of the IS.
The fall
of Sinjar in November and the porous
security in the IS-held town of Hawija in Kirkuk province is only
the half of it. This year also saw the IS group's militia vanquished
across northern-eastern Syria, from Kobane
(January 2015) and Tal
Abyad (June 2015) to Al-Hawl
(November 2015).
Success continues apace. The Kurdish-backed Syrian
Democratic Forces, as I write, are enjoying their own victory
on the Euphrates River against IS, although in a very different
part of Mesopotamia from Ramadi.
By the year's end, according to the London-based
Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, the IS "caliphate" will have
lost 14 per cent of the territory it held (in Iraq and Syria) on
January 1, 2015, much of that due to the Syrian Kurds. We are talking
of 12,800 square kilometres gone.
Even Supreme Leader Al
Baghdadi has, over the past day or so, spoken publicly of what we
might call an annus horribilis: "As part of our destiny, we lost
many jihadists in recent fights ... but the rest must continue to
fight to the bitter end." Joseph Goebbels could not have said it
better in a strangely
familiar context.
Explained: The battle for Ramadi
The war-torn city of Ramadi is a focal point in the conflict between Islamic State and coalition troops, forcing thousands to flee in recent years.
None of this is to underestimate the challenge
ahead in eradicating the armed forces of IS and also its violent
apocalyptic creed. On the political front there is always something
going awry. For instance, the sectarianism of ex-prime minister Nour
al-Maliki (2006-14) drove a wedge between the minority Sunni
population and the Shia-dominated government agencies of the Republic
of Iraq.
Hubris does not adequately describe Nour
al-Maliki's mistreatment of the veterans of Anbar's Sunni "Awakening"
(al-Sahawat) who played a key role in seeing off Al Qaeda in Iraq by
the end of 2007. The authorities in Baghdad, during the subsequent
years, treated the people of Ramadi - mostly
populated by Sunni Dulaim tribe - and their political
representatives with disregard.
A quick recall of the
events preceding the triumphant arrival of IS on the scene in
December 2013 proves enlightening. If the anti-IS political
forces in Iraq cannot formulate an effective modus operandi then
history will continue to be one step forward and two steps back.
The current prime minister of Iraq, Haider
al-Abadi, hails from the same political party as his predecessor, the
Islamic Dawa Party. Even so, the present incumbent cuts a far less
polarising figure - though that, of course, is not saying a lot.
The demographics
of Iraq are no straightforward matter, but it is not inaccurate
to speak of the three dominant groups and regions, the Kurds in the
north (15-20 per cent of the total population), the Arab Sunni in the
north-west (less than 20 per cent) and the majority Arab Shia (60 per
cent or more) inhabiting the centre and the south of the country.
For the Republic of Iraq to flourish as a genuine
nation-state it will, inevitably, have to reconfigure itself as a
federation or even confederation. The great military trial ahead -
the 2016 Battle of Mosul - could well serve as not only the final
comeuppance for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's particular version of
theocratic-fascism on Iraq soil, but also a turning point for Iraq -
a heterogeneous entity, to be sure, but one that needs to live in
peace with itself and not oppress other components of the whole; the
late Saddam
Hussein's barbarity towards the Kurds and the long-term
suppression of the Shia population being two cases in point.
Islamic State's seizure of Mosul (population
between 1 and 1.5 million) back on June 10, 2014, struck like an
earthquake. A force of 1,300 lightly armed fighters routed the IAF in
the most farcical of circumstances. The venerable Patrick
Cockburn, writing for the Independent newspaper, caught some of the
momentousness of the occasion.
From Mosul's Great Mosque, some three weeks later,
Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi introduced himself to world as "Caliph
Ibrahim", founder of a new empire. Given the "industrial
scale" atrocities
committed
by
IS
across eastern Syria and western Iraq, the prospect of a military
victory by anti-IS forces next year in Mosul (and Nineveh province
more generally) is something to relish as this year draws to a
conclusion. A victory, after all, is a victory
Nevertheless, how the assembled anti-IS forces -
from the Kurdish Peshmerga and the mostly Shia Popular Mobilization
Units (PMU), to the IAF and sundry Sunni militia - choose to
accommodate and co-operate with each other after the bloody deed is
done might, as with the past, turn out to be more critical than the
battle itself.
Daryl
McCann writes regularly for Quadrant and the Salisbury Review.
Visit
his blog.
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