Obama can’t ignore key moment in Iraq

So now is themoment of testing for Iraq’s political leadership and for Obama’s strategy to degrade and ultimately defeat the jihadis.

I’m heading to Iraq this week and then to Jordan for a closer look at the progress ( or regress) of the war on ISIS.

I’ll be visiting Iraqi Kurdistan, in the north, where Kurdish peshmerga fighters are training to lead an eventual effort to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second- largest city, which ISIS seized in June and made the headquarters of its so- called caliphate.

Throughout my trip, I will be looking for answers to this $ 64 million question: Who will do the actual fighting against ISIS? Will it be Iraq’s national army, along with Sunni fighters and Kurdish peshmerga troops — backed by U. S. airstrikes?

Or will it be Iraqi Shiite militias backed by Tehran?

The answer will help determine whether the entire region sinks into a series of protracted sectarian wars.

To understand why, a little history is needed. After the U. S. pulled all its troops from Iraq in 2011, a vacuum was created, says Ryan Crocker, the former U. S. ambassador to Iraq. “The region will not tolerate a vacuum,” he points out. A sectarian Shiite prime minister, Nouri al- Maliki, sacked professional Iraqi generals and packed the Iraqi army with crony officers. Meanwhile, Iranian- backed militias became more powerful than the official security forces.

Maliki’s repression of Sunnis so alienated large segments of Sunni- majority regions that many tolerated the advance of ISIS in Anbar and Nineveh provinces. In the meantime, the degraded Iraqi army collapsed when ISIS advanced on Mosul.

Fast- forward. Maliki has been replaced by the far more open- minded Haidar al- Abadi, who made clear last week in Washington that he wants to rebuild his army with U. S. assistance. He also wants to bring Shiite militias and thousands of Shiite volunteers under the central command of the Iraq army. And he wants Sunni tribal leaders to join the fight.

But pro- Iranian militias are keen to lead the battle against ISIS, believing that will make them the most powerful force in the country. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has ostentatiously appeared by their side on the battlefield. “It will be a major challenge for the prime minister of Iraq to try to keep these groups under the Iraqi state,” says Sinan Adnan, an Iraqi analyst who follows the battlefield closely for the Institute for the Study of War.

Yet if Iran’s proxy forces head the fight against ISIS, they will make a terrible situation even more ugly. Local Sunnis, fearful of the militias, won’t join the battle.

The Shiite militias can’t win on their own, as was clear in the recent battle for Tikrit, where ISIS fought them to a draw until U. S. airstrikes tipped the balance. Yet Washington has rightly made clear it won’t act as an air force for Iranian proxies. U. S. planes came to the rescue in Tikrit only when the Shiite militias withdrew.

Unfortunately, there aren’t yet enough of those rebuilt national Iraqi forces to win the battle.

Nor is it clear how much backing the White House will give Abadi. The result: Thousands of Iraqi families fled Anbar province last week as ISIS moved forward. If Ramadi falls, it will set back any hope of crushing the ISIS caliphate anytime soon.

So now is the moment of testing for Iraq’s political leadership and for Obama’s strategy to defeat the jihadis. “This is the moment when we and the Iraqis have to decide what is next,” Crocker says. “I hope it will be Anbar without Shia militias. The stakes are pretty high, enough to make this administration recognize you can’t win by withdrawing from the battlefield.”

Let’s hope Crocker is correct. Let’s hope the president isn’t too distracted by the nuclear talks with Iran. If ISIS makes further gains, it will further undercut the U. S. negotiating hand.

I’m heading for Iraq at a critical moment when the White House needs to fully focus its attention on ISIS and Iraq.