Battered Mosul needs help to find its feet
While in Paris last week, President Donald Trump praised the liberation of Mosul while blaming the Obama administration for allowing Daesh to run amok in Iraq in 2014. But Trump’s administration is repeating mistakes of the past on counterterrorism, neglecting the long game and increasing the likelihood that the terrorists will be back.
“Now we must work with the government of Iraq and our partners and allies to consolidate the gains and to ensure that the victory stays a victory, unlike the last time,” Trump said.
While he was making those remarks, a senior UN official was shaking a cup around Washington, explaining to lawmakers and administration officials that if urgent humanitarian relief funds were not forthcoming, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled Mosul during the fighting would soon lack basic necessities.
Bruno Geddo, the Iraq representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told me that the gains achieved militarily in Mosul, at great human and financial cost, could be squandered if the international community fumbles the next stage — stabilisation and reconstruction.
“The stakes are higher than just shelter, food and water,” he said. “We think Iraq is at a crucial stage. It’s a turning point, and we want to make sure we do everything we can to make sure it turns to a better future.”
More than 900,000 Iraqis fled the city, with more than 700,000 yet to return, but only 21 per cent of UNHCR’s Iraq budget for this year has been funded, Geddo said. Unless the organisation gets $126 million in the next two months, it will be forced to scale back crucial humanitarian services. The United States covers about a quarter of UNHCR’s Iraq programme. If humanitarian assistance is cut off, the largely Sunni population in northern Iraq could feel abandoned and turn back to the extremists, Geddo said. That, of course, is what happened about a decade ago. “Hopefully this time around, a lesson will have been learned,” he said.
The Trump administration doesn’t seem to have learned that lesson. For example, the US doesn’t have a well-developed plan to help rebuild the cities in Iraq and Syria damaged during the fight. “The best breeding ground for terrorists is a city without services,” said former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke.
Trump’s budget shows a clear disdain for programmes focused on preventing wars or keeping finished wars finished. The State Department’s spending request would slash programmes that build capacity in partner countries for fighting terrorism and cut funding for all manner of UN activities. After cutting $600 million from the UN’s peacekeeping budget, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley boasted, “We’re only getting started.”
The US must do more to help local Sunni governance take hold, not hand over Sunni land to the regime, said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute. “We need to continue to invest in these communities.”
The shortsighted nature of US strategy is not limited to the Middle East; counterterrorism policies at home are similarly out of balance.
Terrorism isn’t a root cause; it’s a symptom of wider problems faced by disenfranchised populations in the Middle East and at home. The Trump administration’s penny-wise, poundfoolish approach addresses the symptoms while leaving the causes in place.
— Washington Post Syndicate
Terrorism isn’t a root cause; it’s a symptom of problems faced by disenfranchised populations