Guest views are now limited to 12 pages. If you get an "Error" message, just sign in! If you need to create an account, click here.

Jump to content
  • CRYPTO REWARDS!

    Full endorsement on this opportunity - but it's limited, so get in while you can!

Iraq Sunni militias pinched by jihadis, corruption


yota691
 Share

Recommended Posts

Posted on Friday, 07.25.14

 



Iraq Sunni militias pinched by jihadis, corruption
 
 
 




 
421-1dXEzk.St.55.jpeg




BY RYAN LUCAS AND QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD -- Wisam al-Hardan's cellphone rang late into the night. He let it ring on and on. He couldn't bear to answer.
Al-Hardan, a leader in the Sunni tribal militias that allied with the U.S. to help turn the tide against al-Qaida in Iraq, knew what the Sunni fighters on the other end of the line wanted: weapons to fight the Islamic extremists rampaging across their lands. Al-Hardan also knew he had nothing to offer them.
"I don't want to remember these hours," he said. "Very painful hours."
The various threads that came together to leave al-Hardan sitting powerless in his Baghdad home wind back through the years of broken promises and failed policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki toward the Sunni militiamen popularly known as Sahwa, or Awakening Councils. Al-Hardan and former Sahwa members say that under the Shiite prime minister, the militias were neglected, corruption flourished — and though millions of dollars were appropriated, militiamen were still left poorly armed and ill equipped.
The results speak for themselves. Over the past month, militants led by the extremist Islamic State group overpowered the military and the Sahwa, seizing control of most of the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq. The jihadis have systematically killed dozens of former Sahwa leaders, forced others to flee and recruited the remaining foot soldiers through intimidation.
The checkered dealings with the Sahwa in recent years drained the Sunni community of any trust in the Baghdad government and particularly in al-Maliki, who is seeking a third consecutive four-year term. That presents an immense challenge to inducing the Sunni tribal fighters who turned on al-Qaida once before to risk everything again — even if they wanted to — and side with the government against the new insurgency.
"We have zero trust in al-Maliki, who will continue to deceive us and hurt us if he is to win a third term. If al-Maliki stays in power, then nobody will be willing to return to Sahwa," said Abu Sahir, a former Sahwa leader in Khan Bani Saad in Diyala province who became a fighter in the anti-government Mujahedeen Army militant group.
"But if al-Maliki is to be replaced by another person who would do something to stop the corruption and the humiliation, we might reconsider our position."
It's impossible to gauge how widespread that sentiment is. Other former Sahwa fighters who have joined the militants say they have severed ties with Baghdad for good. The internal dynamics of the insurgency — such as sometimes divergent interests between the Islamic State group and other Sunnis who have joined its fight — are also unpredictable and could affect the decisions of thousands of individual fighters on whether to stick with the movement.
But the bitterness Sunnis feel about their treatment under al-Maliki is clear.
The Sahwa emerged in late 2006 when Sunni tribesmen who had previously battled the U.S. military decided to team up with the Americans instead to fight al-Qaida in Iraq after becoming alienated by the group's brutality. The Americans provided the weapons, training and money — at least $370 million over a three-year period — and the Sunni fighters helped the U.S. troops root out much of the extremist group.
In 2009, the U.S. handed responsibility for the Sahwa over to Iraq's Shiite-led government, which promised Washington it would fold the some 100,000 Sunni fighters into the security forces or other government jobs. Around 23,000 former Sahwa fighters were eventually put on the government payroll, according to Ahmed Abu Risha, a leading Sahwa figure.
But many more were not.
Al-Maliki — a Shiite wary of an armed Sunni force — withheld political and financial support for years, happy to watch the Sahwa wither. That contributed to a sense of neglect among many former Sahwa fighters since the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal.
As the Sahwa waned, al-Qaida in Iraq slowly regained its footing. It pushed aggressively into Syria's civil war in early 2013 and rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Its success in Syria helped fuel its resurgence on the Iraqi side of the border, leading to a sharp deterioration of security in Iraq.
In February of 2013, al-Maliki's government hit upon the idea of resurrecting the Sahwa. In part the aim was to rally Sunni militiamen against the extremists. But there were also political considerations: With parliamentary elections a year off, the prime minister might be able to garner a bit of goodwill by putting Sunnis on the government payroll.
But the new Sahwa from the start was undermined by Sunni divisions over al-Maliki.
Al-Hardan was elected in early 2013 as the head of the "new Sahwa," but he was never fully welcomed by many of the old Sahwa leaders, particularly Ahmed Abu Risha, who had long been recognized as the leading figure in the movement. The old guard viewed al-Hardan as al-Maliki's man — a label that turned toxic as Sunni protests against the prime minister's Shiite-led government gained pace.
"The new Sahwa formed by the government is corrupt, and the government wanted to copy the old Sahwa with new pro-government leaders," said Dhari al-Rishawi, an adviser to the Anbar governor and a Sahwa leader with Abu Risha.
The relations among senior Sahwa figures were further complicated by traditional rivalries among the tribes, as well as tussling over control of business interests and patronage networks. Personalities and egos clashed.
Amer al-Khuzaie, al-Maliki's adviser on reconciliation and Sahwa, said that as of June 1, 2014, there were 31,000 fighters nationwide for the new Sahwa. The largest contingents were in Mosul and Anbar, which boasted 10,000 members apiece, he said, and the budget stood at $250 million a year for the project.
But the Sahwa seemed to exist more on paper than on the ground, said Kirk Sowell, a political risk analyst who is the publisher of the bi-weekly newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics.
"It was clearly a very half-baked idea," he said. "The government provided money, for sure, but I never saw an armed formation per se."
Members of the new Sahwa say most of those funds were not reaching the fighters.
Al-Hardan complained of a lack of weapons and ammunition, and said "corruption, salary cuts and personal interests have all affected the national interest."
"They give each one only 20 bullets, not enough to enter a battle," he said, in comments echoed by others. "We buy weapons and ammunition with our own money to defend ourselves."
When the Islamic State group took Mosul in early June, it seized documents from the military and intelligence headquarters in the city that detailed the names and addresses of old Sahwa figures, said al-Khuzaie. The militants then went to their houses and killed them.
"Sahwa is going through a big problem. There is fear, killing and displacement," said al-Hardan. "Sahwa is now between two fires: the fire of the Islamic State and the fire of corruption and the lack of support."
---
Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, and Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.****************.com/t97201-us-and-islamic-state-we-did-see-this-coming#135158

 

YOU KNOW WHAT.. THEY TRY TO HAMMER IN OUR BRAINS THAT MALIKI IS THE REAL PROBLEM BUT AFTER YOU READ YOU WILL SEE WHO IS BEHIND ALL THIS ISIS, JIHAD,TERRORIST CRAP AND MALIKI WAS TRYING TO STOP THEM  WASHINGTON IGNORE ALL HIS PLY.. I REMEMBER EVEN WHEN MALIKI TRAVELS TO WASHINGTON TO MEET TO TALK ABOUT THE SITUATION...MMMM MALIKI WON THE ELECTION DIDN'T HE? WELL IF WASHINGTON BEHIND IT PUSHING HIM OUT THAT MUST MEANS HE IS NOT DOING THE DIRTY DEEDS THEY WANTED...

 

 

WASHINGTON — Like the rest of the world, the U.S. government appeared to have been taken aback last month when Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell to an offensive by jihadis of the Islamic State that triggered the collapse of five Iraqi army divisions and carried the extremists to the threshold of Baghdad.

A review of the record shows, however, that the Obama administration wasn’t surprised at all.

In congressional testimony as far back as November, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials made clear that the United States had been closely tracking the al Qaida spinoff since 2012, when it enlarged its operations from Iraq to civil war-torn Syria, seized an oil-rich province there and signed up thousands of foreign fighters who’d infiltrated Syria through NATO ally Turkey.

The testimony, which received little news media attention at the time, also showed that Obama administration officials were well aware of the group’s declared intention to turn its Syrian sanctuary into a springboard from which it would send men and materiel back into Iraq and unleash waves of suicide bombings there. And they knew that the Iraqi security forces couldn’t handle it.

The group’s operations “are calculated, coordinated and part of a strategic campaign led by its Syria-based leader, Abu Bakr al Baghadi,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk told a House committee on Feb. 5, four months before fighting broke out in Mosul. “The campaign has a stated objective to cause the collapse of the Iraqi state and carve out a zone of governing control in western regions of Iraq and Syria.”

The testimony raises an obvious question: If the Obama administration had such early warning of the Islamic State’s ambitions, why, nearly two months after the fall of Mosul, is it still assessing what steps, if any, to take to halt the advance of Islamist extremists who threaten U.S. allies in the region and have vowed to attack Americans?

In fresh testimony before Congress this week, McGurkrevealed that the administration knew three days in advance that the attack on Mosul was coming. He acknowledged that the Islamic State is no longer just a regional terrorist organization but a “full-blown” army that now controls nearly 50 percent of Iraq and more than one-third of Syria. Its fighters have turned back some of the best-trained Iraqi units trying to retake key cities, while in Syria, it’s seized nearly all that country’s oil and natural gas fields and is pushing the Syrian military from its last outposts in the country’s east.

“What started as a crisis in Syria has become a regional disaster with serious global implications,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday.

Yet Defense Department officials say they might not complete work on proposed options for U.S. actions until the middle of August, a lifetime in a region where every day brings word of another town or village falling to the Islamic State. Some lawmakers and experts say the delay borders on diplomatic malpractice.

“We did see this coming,” said Royce, adding that Iraqi officials and some diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad began urging the administration in August 2013 to launch U.S. drone strikes against Islamic State bases near Iraq’s border with Syria.

“This was a very clear case in which the U.S. knew what was going on but followed a policy of deliberate neglect,” said Vali Nasr, the dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department adviser on the Middle East.

“This miscalculation essentially has helped realize the worst nightmare for this administration, an administration that prided itself on its counterterrorism strategy,” said Nasr. “It is now presiding over the resurgence of a nightmare of extremism and terrorism.”

Administration officials deny the charges of inaction. U.S. policy, they contend, was aimed at helping the Iraqi government deal with the growing threat.

“That was also the desire of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government wanted to act on its own with our assistance,” McGurk told Congress this week. He insisted that Baghdad didn’t formally request U.S. airstrikes until May.

The situation, however, was far beyond the Iraqi government’s ability to cope.

One complicating factor was the administration’s approach to Syria and the uprising there to topple President Bashar Assad, a goal President Barack Obama adopted as America’s own in an August 2011 statement that said Assad had lost all legitimacy to rule and must go.

Some experts argue that Obama committed a key error in 2012 by rejecting calls from top national security aides, lawmakers and others to train and arm a moderate rebel force to fight Assad.

Obama administration officials say that rejection was based on a variety of concerns, including that weapons passed to moderate rebels might end up in the hands of more radical elements such as the Nusra Front, an al Qaida affiliate that by mid-2012 had taken the lead in many of the anti-Assad movement’s major victories.

But without a well-armed moderate force, the battlefield was left open to increasing jihadi influence, others respond.

“This crisis was allowed to fester and get worse in many ways due to inaction against Assad and ISIS,” said Phillip Smyth, a Middle East researcher at the University of Maryland.

A review of the record shows, however, that support for the anti-Assad movement also hampered U.S. action to quash the Islamic State, which until earlier this year rebels considered an ally in the push to topple Assad.

In testimony in November, McGurk said that one of the reasons the United States had not granted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s request for assistance against the Islamic State was Maliki’s refusal to close Iraqi airspace to Iranian planes flying arms to Assad’s military.

While Maliki’s fears about the Islamic State “are legitimate,” McGurk said then, “it’s equally legitimate to question Iraq’s independence given Iran’s ongoing use of Iraqi airspace to resupply the Assad regime.”

In another misstep, some experts said, the Obama administration appears to have turned a blind eye as U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others provided arms and money that allowed Islamist groups to hijack the Assad opposition and ultimately provide Baghdadi with a secure patch in Syria from which he eventually would send men and weapons back into Iraq.

Smyth disputed that idea in part, noting that the Islamic State was largely self-sufficient financially, although the influx of foreign fighters provided a crucial boost to its manpower.

What is indisputable, Smyth said, is that the White House became immobilized by the complexity of the crisis: Having declared that Assad had to go, it found that there was no opposition group that didn’t have some ties to jihadists, and actively backing the rebels would put the United States on the same side as al Qaida.

“When you have a policy that was paralyzed by a number of different things, the result is a confused policy,” he said.

On Iraq, meanwhile, the public testimony shows that the administration moved slowly to respond to the rising Islamic State threat. One complication: Doing so would have put the United States effectively on the same side as Iran, the main regional ally of Baghdad and Damascus.

Maliki, whose Shiite Muslim majority dominated Iraq’s government, formally sought stepped-up U.S. military and counterterrorism assistance in October 2013. But he had been asking privately for help much earlier.

One such appeal came after a March 4, 2013, attack inside Iraq by Islamic State forces on Iraqi army troops who were escorting back to the border dozens of Syrian soldiers who’d fled into Iraq to escape an attack on their post by anti-Assad rebels. While still inside Iraq, their buses drove into bombs and gunfire. At least 49 Syrians and 14 Iraqis died. It was one of the first documented instances of the Islamic State coordinating attacks on both sides of the border.

Ali al Mousawi, Maliki’s spokesman, called then for the United States to immediately give priority to arming Iraq with weapons that the country already had requested so that it could fend off any future incidents.

“We need equipment as fast as it was delivered to Turkey,” Mousawi said, referring to the deployment of Patriot anti-missile batteries by the United States and several NATO allies after Syrian missiles landed in Turkish territory.

“They managed to install the Patriot systems within two weeks. We need something like that,” he told McClatchy the day after the incident.

Instead, the White House stuck with a policy that tried to make use of the crisis to pressure Maliki into replicating the U.S. success late in the 2003-2011 occupation of enlisting Sunni tribes to help fight al Qaida’s Iraqi affiliate, which eventually became the Islamic State.

“We made it clear to Maliki and other Iraqi leaders that the fight against terrorists and militias will require a holistic – security, political, economic – approach,” McGurk told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 13 in describing talks held with the Iraqi leader during a visit he’d made to Washington a week earlier.

The approach called for Maliki to be more accommodating to his Sunni Muslim political rivals. The administration called on Maliki to end a harsh crackdown on Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority, restore their political rights and provide salaries and other benefits to Sunni tribes that agreed to fight the Islamic State. Maliki failed to make good on numerous assurances that he’d comply.

Washington also had other priorities: trying to mediate a feud between Maliki and Kurdish leaders over oil revenues, boost the country’s petroleum industry and promote ties between Iraq and its Arab neighbors.

It was only after Islamic State assaults in December on the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi that the administration began stepping up military aid to Baghdad. It sent unarmed spy drones and 75 Hellfire missiles – which had to be dropped from propeller-driven passenger planes – for use against Islamic State bases in western Iraq.

And the United States has yet to deliver helicopter gunships and F-16 jet fighters that Iraq already had purchased. It also dragged its feet on Baghdad’s request for U.S. military advisers, some 300 of whom were dispatched only after Mosul fell.

While there are many reasons for the Obama administration’s failure to tackle the rise of the Islamic State earlier, lacking intelligence is not among them.

By early 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies began delivering more than a dozen top-secret high-level reports, known as strategic warnings, to senior administration officials detailing the danger posed by the Islamic State’s rise, said a senior U.S. intelligence official. The reports also covered the threat to Europe and the United States from the return of thousands of battle-hardened foreign fighters, including dozens of Americans, who’d fought to topple Assad.

Intelligence analysts well into this year “continued to provide strategic warning of (the) increasing threat to Iraq’s stability . . . the increasing difficulties Iraq’s security forces faced . . . and the political strains that were contributing to Iraq’s declining stability,” said the senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive issue.

On Feb. 11, Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in public that the Islamic State “probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014.”

Flynn warned then that Iraqi forces were “unable to stem rising violence in part because they lack mature intelligence, logistics and other capabilities.” They also “lack cohesion, are undermanned, and are poorly trained, equipped and supplied,” leaving them “vulnerable to terrorist attack, infiltration and corruption,” he said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee had been regularly briefed on both Syria and Iraq.

“I do not think it was an intelligence failure. I think that we got the information we needed to have,” he said recently when asked his assessment of the developments in the region. “I don’t feel like I could lay responsibility at the feet of the intelligence community for not seeing this coming, because they were aware of the growing risk.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.