Last Sunday, Iraqi forces announced that Fallujah, the first major city captured by the Islamic State (ISIS) has been fully liberated. This is a significant win for the coalition fighting ISIS, allowing plans for the campaign to regain control of Mosul to begin. However, victory in Fallujah masks deeper problems. Beset by sectarian tension, foreign influence, and simmering political unrest, the government of Prime Minister Haider al Abadi will find it difficult to both rebuild trust in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province and regain control over Iraq’s political system. Former Vice Chief of Staff for the U.S. Army, four-star General Jack Keane, who is Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, sat down with The Cipher Brief to discuss Iraq’s future.
The Cipher Brief: What is the current state of play in Iraq, both militarily and politically, after the capture of Fallujah?
General Jack Keane: Clearly the Iraqi army is slowly and methodically retaking lost territory in Anbar Province, and they will continue to consolidate those gains in Anbar Province around Ramadi and Fallujah with the intent of securing the Euphrates river valley from Baghdad to the Syrian border. Meanwhile, they’re planning and preparing to retake Mosul.
The Iraqi army would like to launch that assault this year, but the U.S. military command is recommending they do it next year, after they’ve been able to train more forces. I also believe that General Sean MacFarland – the Commander of Coalition forces fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria – has made a request for additional U.S. forces, somewhere north of one thousand trainers, advisers and, I believe, tactical air controllers who can better facilitate the use of air power for the attack on Mosul. Of course, how all this will be resolved between the Iraqi government and U.S. government and both military commands remains to be seen.
On the political front, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi is still in a very weak position. He doesn’t have a unity government behind him, he’s got divisions within his own party – the Islamic Dawa party – with a branch opposing him headed by former Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. He also faces opposition from Moqtada al Sadr, also a Shi’a, who is very closely tied to Iran. In fact, that’s actually where al Sadr is right now. Finally, Abadi also has opposition from the Kurds and the Sunnis.
So, we’re far away from what the original intent of this government was, which was to establish a national unity government for the single purpose of reuniting the country and reclaiming lost territory. The Iraqi Parliament – Council of Representatives – is also going to reconvene in July. It remains to be seen how many of them will return and that will be one signal, in and of itself, of how much support Abadi really has.
TCB: Speaking of Abadi and the recent political crisis, how do you view his political reform initiative and its goal of replacing the sectarian power-sharing system, which has existed in one form or another since 2003?
JK: I think Abadi’s move to conduct political reform, to reduce the number of ministries, to make the ministers more accountable to the central government, that is all good. The net effect is to reduce their power and the corruption that goes along with it. But clearly there is significant opposition to Abadi, which has nothing to do with the reforms. His opponents just use that as a political vehicle, particularly former Prime Minister Maliki.
It’s going to be very difficult to pull this reform initiative off, given the amount of opposition that Abadi has. Obviously, this has already caused a crisis in the government by igniting pro-reform protests and demonstrations by Moqtada al Sadr’s supporters, who actually breached the Green Zone in Baghdad.
On a separate point, I don’t think Tehran wants al Sadr to repeat that again. The Iranians are backing the Abadi government, and their goal is to have a weak but stable government that is dependent on Iran and not aligned with the United States. I think they felt that Moqtada al Sadr was overstepping.
TCB: They see him as too strong in your opinion?
JK: Yes. First of all, Moqtada al Sadr has no intention of taking over the government. But I do believe that the Iranians thought that al Sadr was weakening Abadi so much that the government could have collapsed, and they do not want that chaos and uncertainty.
TCB: What role have the Iranians been playing militarily in Fallujah? What is the role of Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces – an umbrella group of some 40 state-sponsored, largely Shi’a, civilian militias?
JK: The Popular Mobilization Units did participate in retaking Fallujah, particularly in the surrounding areas. The actual assault on the city was conducted by the Iraqi Army Counterterrorism Unit. Think of them more like our Rangers, they are elite infantry, and they are the same assault force that was used to take Ramadi as well. But the Popular Mobilization Forces were conducting supporting attacks, while the main attack was executed by the Counterterrorism Unit.
TCB: And how do you think that has effected the relationships with the local Sunni populations?
JK: I believe it’s too early to tell. If Popular Mobilization units stay in the area, it’s going to be a problem. If they just drive out ISIS and depart the area, that should not be an issue. This speaks to a larger problem because what’s missing is a Sunni tribal force, which should be the main force here, not the Popular Mobilization Units, which are Shi’a forces.
Now, why aren’t the Sunni tribal forces there in the numbers that they should be? Well, some of them are supporting ISIS, but the vast majority of them are reconcilable. However, the Abadi government has not done what it should do to reconcile the Sunnis and these Sunni forces are going to be very careful before they make the kind of commitment that they made in 2006 and 2007, when they participated in the counterinsurgency to take down Al Qaeda – the so-called “Surge.”
I was on the ground there for those two years, on and off, with General David Petraeus. I watched these guys very closely, and the reconciliation that was done there couldn’t have been any better. General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker played a very heavy role in this effort and the resulting movement was called the “Sons of Iraq” and it grew to 102,000 fighters. There’s nothing like that now, although those potential numbers are there. We really need a Sunni tribal force like that to secure these areas, and also to participate in the attacks. ISIS is sitting on nothing but Sunni lands now, so that’s the reality of what we’re dealing with.
So, if that’s the case, why hasn’t Abadi done this? Two reasons: First, the Iranians do not want a strong Sunni presence, they want the Shi’a Popular Mobilization units to be the prominent force assisting the Iraqi Army.
Second, the U.S. government has been AWOL – a military term meaning missing from one’s post. I mean the United States has played a very weak hand. Despite the U.S. goal of establishing a unity government, Secretary Kerry rarely goes into Baghdad, to work his lane. He should be in and out of there on a regular basis, and the strategic objective should be to reduce the Iranian influence over the Baghdad government. Instead, by the U.S. absence is allowing an increase of Iranian influence over the Baghdad government. The U.S. was previously very successful at convincing Prime Minister Maliki, against his better judgement, toward reconciliation with the Sunnis and the “Surge” campaign would not have been successful without it.
TCB: The idea of partitioning, or devolving authority away from the central government to semi-autonomous regions in the Kurdish north, Sunni west, and Shi’a south through some sort of enhanced federalism has regained some popularity in recent years. Do you see this as a credible strategy? In other words, after ISIS, what comes next in terms of a lasting political solution?
JK: Well, this has always been a popular notion. Most of us who’ve spent time there know that Sunnis and Shi’a actually live side by side in many places in Iraq without any difficulty, and there’s many mixed provinces in Iraq, and it’s been that way for years. So this so-called “Sunni-Shi’a Divide” has been overstated. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, of course it does, but it’s overstated that they can’t live together. There’s mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad and there’s mixed provinces outside of Baghdad where both groups live together.
It’s possible to have a clean break between Kurdistan and Iraq for sure. There’s a clear cultural, ethnic, and geographic separation to build on. But the separation between Sunnis and Shi’a is much more difficult to obtain politically, and economically I don’t see how it works because the majority Sunni areas don’t have any resources other than the Euphrates River Valley. So they would be totally and completely dependent on the Shi’a government, as they are now, for economic support from the oil-producing south. That’s why this idea just doesn’t work very well in my mind. You just can’t get there, where the Sunnis would be sufficiently appeased politically and financially to go on their own.
I don’t think the Iranians would be all that troubled if ISIS stayed in a part of Iraq and, in a sense, enforced this kind of a divide. But the Iraqi government simply cannot permit that to happen. They cannot permit Mosul to stay in the hands of ISIS, even though the Iranians are probably indifferent about it. So I believed strongly, back in 2006 and 2007 that a federated division was neither desirable nor feasible. It may be more desirable now, given this calamity that’s happened with ISIS, but it’s still not feasible in my mind.
A better solution would be to run ISIS out of Iraq and keep the country unified as best as possible, but it’s going to take a stronger government then we have now to be able to do that. And we really need the United States very much involved here. Even the other Sunni Arab states are frustrated with us. They have no love for the Shi’a-dominated government represented by Maliki and now by Abadi but they want Iraq to be stable and they don’t want undue Iranian influence in Iraq. That is very troublesome for them.
