Mosul fight may be just a prelude
Wider, deadlier war could be next
Iraqi Shia militias backed by Iran — sometimes even flying the Iranian flag — were the easiest forces to spot and to speak with last December as they mustered on the outskirts of besieged Mosul.
Operating freely for the first time in a heavily Sunni part of Iraq they had never thought they would get to, the young militiamen were euphoric.
A few days later these opportunistic Shia gunmen, with their hodgepodge of weapons and uniforms, leapfrogged U.S.-backed Iraqi special forces and regular forces doing the heavy work against the Islamic State in the country’s second-largest city, moving quickly toward and across the Syrian border. After the Iraqi government declared last week that Mosul had fallen, the race for geographic and therefore strategic advantage in Syria accelerated.
Holding sway in western Iraq and eastern Syria would bring Tehran one big step closer to its grand ambition, the creation of a Shia corridor running from Iran across Iraq, whose predominantly Shia government is friendly to Iran, and Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s Alawite Shia sect have Russian backing, to southern Lebanon, where Shia Hezbollah runs the show.
The boast by Baghdad that the brutal half-year urban battle for Mosul had finally been won was a bit premature. Several hundred ISIL fighters are still holed up in the northwest of the flattened city. From there they continue to cause such havoc that U.S.-led airstrikes remain a daily feature — the latest in a series of more than 1,100 airstrikes.
Still under ISIL control are the cities of Tal Afar, an hour west of Mosul by car or tank, Al Qaim, which is to the south of Tal Afar, and Hawija, where the jihadis, totally surrounded and 100 kilometres from the front lines, somehow manage to hang on.
Yet these are surely the last gasps of ISIL in Iraq. After an unbelievably cruel three-year run, it is finished as a fighting force there.
The problem for Washington as well as for the Sunnidominated Arab countries grouped around Iraq is not much different than it was when marines with whom I was embedded closed in on Baghdad during the Second Gulf War in 2003. There, beside a highway on the eastern outskirts of the capital, were a group of smiling, immaculately groomed Shia clerics eager to greet the marines and let them know they had patiently outlasted Saddam Hussein.
As a slew of somewhat panicked American analysts have noted over the past few days, the U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion and lost 4,200 soldiers in Iraq since 9/11, but the only clear winners there have been Iran and its Iraqi Shia co-religionists. The hard-line Sunnis of ISIL — like the hard-line Sunnis of al-Qaida and Saddam’s dictatorship before them — are vanquished and in retreat. The Shias, who already mostly run Baghdad, are positioning themselves to fill the vacuum.
Sunni resentment across the Middle East has only grown with every Shia victory. So does Israeli anxiety at the idea that Tehran may be ascendant.
What form Sunni anger and aggrievement take next is hard to predict. But with Shia militias now strung out across traditional Sunni lands in western Iraq, there will likely be another reckoning between Sunnis and Shias before too long. The next round could be part of a much bigger war pitting the Sunni-led Gulf sheikdoms against Iran and its proxies. Yet another complication is that Russia, which dealt itself back into the Middle East on Barack Obama’s watch, will, as usual, be looking to create such mischief as it can.
Whatever happens between Iran and its long list of enemies, Syria still has to get sorted out. The roster of belligerents there is even harder to follow than it is in Iraq.
Still in ISIL’s grip, the Syrian city of Raqqa — the socalled capital of the rapidly disappearing caliphate — is being fought over by five countries or their proxies including Turkey. Foremost among these smaller players are the Syrian Kurds, who have U.S. advisers and U.S. weapons and already control several parts of the city.
Even in defeat, ISIL has an abiding appeal to some young Muslims. As its fortunes turned in Iraq and Syria it has established itself as a force for evil in North Africa, and most recently the Philippines, while sending a stream of terrorists back home to Europe. As a string of attacks have proven, many of them still have jihad on their minds.
The wild card, as so often today, is Donald Trump. Judging by comments the U.S. president made last week, he is spoiling for a war against Iran. If it comes to that and the Israelis, Saudis and other Sunni regimes line up one side with the Americans, with the Iranians, Syrians, Hezbollah and possibly even the Russians on the other, watch out.
The almost-finished battle for Mosul may be the prelude to a wider, more lethal new front in the centuriesold conflict between Sunnis and Shias.
A NEW FRONT IN THE CENTURIESOLD CONFLICT BETWEEN SUNNIS AND SHIAS.