Defeating IS merely the start of long battle for peace in Iraq
barbaric rule by the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group is getting into a grisly stride. As I write, the slow and bloody advance on Mosul by the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga fighters continues, and with every mile, IS throws up ever more fierce resistance.
For ordinary Iraqis and those of us who have come here to cover this huge international story, however, there is a sense of the worst being yet to come. Only yesterday I watched as a column of trucks rumbled out of the dry, dusty Nineveh plain.
On board were Iraqi paramilitary policemen heading from the oil refinery town of Baiji to the recently liberated town of Bartella, which had seen fierce fighting between the Iraqi army and IS last week.
The policemen were a rum lot, tough looking and battle hardened. Their ranks were also representative of Iraqi’s ethnic and religious diversity. Among them were Turkmen, Shabak and Christians but the majority were Shia, as was evident from the large poster billboard of the Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani fixed to the sides of their trucks.
In this one brief snapshot lies a clue as to the dangers that lie ahead for Iraq even if it should rid itself in the coming weeks or months of the scourge that is IS in Mosul.
The battle for the city involves a delicate choreography that, in order to succeed, requires a trust, solidarity and cooperation that so often in Iraq has been found fragile or wanting.
The Iraqi Army, Kurdish peshmerga, the international coalition, Shiite militia fighters, Sunni tribesmen and dozens of other small militias who represent northern Iraq’s bewildering array of ethnic and religious minorities all have a stake in the outcome of the battle for Mosul.
Taking the city from IS is only the start of the challenge and to speak of outright winners and losers simply because IS might be routed is to indulge in a politically naive assessment of what lies ahead.
There is no way to fully know how hard the fight will be or how determined IS is to hold the city. What is already evident, though, here on the ground around Mosul is that many aspects of the fighting are grim, irrespective of how well the disparate forces involved are prepared and willing to cooperate to liberate the city.
One Iraqi army officer I spoke to the other day made the point that, as a soldier, all that concerns him is defeating the enemy that is IS and, to that end, he welcomes the alliance his forces have with the Kurdish peshmerga.
The politicians, he was quick to add however, were another thing altogether.
The problem is that there is no way of safely politicising the battle for Mosul. For the Iraqi security forces, not only do they need to dislodge a brutal and – at times – literally suicidal opponent, but they also need to retake the city in a way that facilitates Baghdad’s future rule over the Sunni minority population and the encroaching ambitions of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
So far during other campaigns to liberate Iraqi towns and cities from IS, the Baghdad government has done little to ease sectarian tension amidst claims that Shia militias carried out atrocities during and after the recapture of key Sunni cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah.
These cities, it is important to remember, are comparatively small operations compared to Mosul.
In order to prevent such atrocities from recurring in Mosul and to counter previous accusations of sectarian misrule, Baghdad has seemingly ordered the Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU) not to enter Mosul itself.
A similar ruling also applies to the Kurdish peshmerga, who in some instances around Mosul have already halted their advance in line with the territorial agreements drawn up before the operation to liberate the city began.
But it is still early days and the competition, prejudice and lack of trust that have fractured these groups could still hinder the fight for Mosul as much as the suicide truck bombers, tunnel networks and diversionary tactics that have been the hallmark of IS resistance so far.
While it is likely that IS will collapse under pressure, it’s arguably just as probable that Mosul will be the scene of another human tragedy in the Iraq- Syria conflict. Shot through with suspicion and resentment, there is always the danger that the battle for Mosul could become simply a prelude to a potentially wider internecine conflict following IS’s ousting from thecity.
Talk of “winning” in Mosul is highly relative. Yes, it is important to free the city from IS. Just as critical, however, is whether Iraq’s deeply divided factions can find a sense of unity, solidarity and political cooperation after IS in Mosul has been dealt with.
Should they succeed in doing so positively, that political and civil outcome in Mosul will set a precedent for helping to deal with the human tragedy in Syria
The alternative, however, does not bear thinking about and could so easily tip Iraq into an all-out civil war, pitching Sunni against Shiite, Arab against Kurd, and Turkey, Iran, outside Arab states, and Russia and the West all competing to serve their own ends.
If that sounds familiar then it should; it’s a similar fate to the one that has befallen Syria.
A few days ago I asked Hemen Hawrami, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) Foreign Relations Office, as to how confident he was on a sliding scale of one to 10 that the political situation postliberation Mosul would be stable and good? “It’s a five” he replied. “It’s 50-50.” Here’s hoping for the sake of the Iraqi people that the odds improve. If not, it’s likely I will be filling my reporters’ notebook with violent, depressing and tragic lines from Iraq for a long time to come.
‘‘ There is always the danger that the battle for Mosul could become simply a prelude to a potentially wider internecine conflict