US side by side with bitter foes
AMERICAN, Iranian and Syrian military aircraft buzzed the skies of Iraq yesterday, conducting parallel surveillance missions and airstrikes as the global battle to halt a Sunni militant offensive grew more intense and complex, drawing in old enemies to the same side.
While the southward offensive towards Baghdad appears to have stalled, gains by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) in Anbar have brought fresh jitters to the capital.
Isis fighters were bearing down on the Haditha dam, the second largest in the country, raising fears that they intend to open its floodgates. That could send a tidal wave as far south as Karbala, potentially cutting off roads south of the capital.
The Isis fighters did as much when they captured the smaller Fallujah dam earlier this year, flooding farmlands as far south as the Shia spiritual capital, Najaf.
American drones conducted at least 30 flights over militantcontrolled northern Iraq yesterday, gathering intelligence about targets for possible future strikes by US warplanes. The first of 300 American military advisers also began setting up a joint operations centre in Baghdad to work alongside Iraq’s military.
At the same time, drones were reportedly Iranian conduct- ing surveillance missions from an airfield in the Iraqi capital as part of a secret programme to provide military assistance to the government of Nouri al-Maliki.
American officials confirmed that Syrian warplanes sent by President Bashar al-Assad’s government were responsible for a series of airstrikes in western Iraq, where Isis is seeking to erase the border between the two states and establish a contiguous Islamic statelet under its control.
While the White House is seeking to open a dialogue with Iran over the crisis in Iraq, there is no direct co-operation between them in their military operations there.
The parallel military presences underline the urgency and complexity of the threat to Iraq and to the region in what is rapidly evolving from a jihadist offensive into a generalised Sunni uprising. While they may be intervening on the same side, their methods, motivations and desired outcomes vary.
Caitlin
Hayden,
the
spokes- woman for the White House’s National Security Council, said: ‘‘Iran can play a constructive role if it is helping to send the same message to the Iraqi government that we’re sending, which is that Iraq will only successfully combat the Isis threat if the Iraqi government is inclusive and if the interests of Sunni, Shia and Kurds are all respected.’’
Iran, the pre-eminent Shia power in the region, is seeking to preserve Iraq’s Shia-led government and with it its sphere of influence, as it has done in rushing assistance to the Assad regime in Damascus.
America fears the violent breakup of Iraq and the consequences for the region, as well as the potential terror threat to the West from a jihadist-ruled statelet in the heart of the Middle East.
Both could be dragged into a deepening sectarian war. US military advisers are already examining the possibility of resurrecting the Sahwa, or Awakening, the Sunni tribal militia that helped to drive Iraq in 2008.
Iran, meanwhile, is seeking to strengthen Shia militias that it already backs and arms.
The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned the US this week not to intervene in the crisis, accusing Washington of seeking to bring Iraq ‘‘under its hegemony and ruled by its stooges’’.
Yesterday, however, Iraq’s chief military spokesman, Lieutenant-General Qassem Atta, appealed for greater American assistance, saying: ‘‘We hope there will be a true intervention in order to offer real help for Iraq.’’
Isis also found itself back on the same side as an old enemy yesterday when commanders from the al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, pledged fealty to the group in a flashpoint town on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Isis and the front fell out violently in Syria earlier this year amid a power struggle over rebelcontrolled territory.
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